none transcriber's note: minor printing errors have been corrected. phrases printed in italics in the original version are indicated in this electronic version by _ (underscore). a list of amendments are given at the end of the book. madame bovary a tale of provincial life by gustave flaubert with a critical introduction by ferdinand brunetiÈre of the french academy and a biographical preface by robert arnot, m. a volume i. simon p. magee, publisher, chicago, ill. copyright, , by m. walter dunne entered at stationers' hall, london contents part i. i. the new boy ii. a good patient iii. a lonely widower iv. consolation v. the new mÉnage vi. a maiden's yearnings vii. disillusion viii. glimpses of the world ix. idle dreams part ii. i. a new field ii. new friends iii. added cares iv. silent homage v. smothered flames vi. spiritual counsel vii. a woman's whims viii. a village festival ix. a woodland idyll x. lovers' vows xi. an experiment and a failure xii. preparations for flight xiii. deserted xiv. religious fervor xv. a new delight critical introduction _domi mansit, lanam fecit:_ "he remained at home and wrote," is the first thing that should be said of gustave flaubert. this trait, which he shares with many of the writers of his generation,--renan, taine, leconte de lisle and dumas _fils_,--distinguishes them and distinguishes him from those of the preceding generation, who voluntarily sought inspiration in disorder and agitation,--balzac and george sand, for instance (to speak only of romance writers), and the elder dumas or eugène sue. flaubert, indeed, had no "outward life;" he lived only for his art. a second trait of his character, and of his genius as a writer, is that of seeing in his art only the art itself--and art alone, without the mingling of any vision of fortune or success. a competency,--which he had inherited from the great surgeon, his father,--and moderate tastes, infinitely more _bourgeois_ than his literature,--permitted him to shun the great stumbling-block of the professional man of letters, which, in our day, and doubtless in the united states as well as in france, is the temptation to coin money with the pen. never was writer more disinterested than flaubert; and the story is that _madame bovary_ brought him francs--in debts. a third trait, which helps not only to characterise but to individualise him, is his subordination not only of his own existence, but of life in general, to his conception of art. it is not enough to say that he lived for his art: he saw nothing in the world or in life but material for that art,--_hostis quid aliud quam perpetua materia gloriæ?_--and if it be true that others have died of their ambition, it could literally be said of flaubert that he was killed by his art. it is this point that i should like to bring out in this introduction,--where we need not speak of his norman origin, or (as his friend ducamp has written in his _literary souvenirs_ with a disagreeable persistence, and so uselessly!) of his nervousness and epilepsy; of his loves or his friendships, but solely of his work. we know, in fact, to-day, that if all such details are made clear in the biography of a great writer, in no way do they explain his work. the author of _gil blas_, alain rené lesage, was a breton, like the author of _atala_; the corneille brothers had almost nothing in common. of all our great writers, the one nearest, perhaps, to jean-jacques rousseau, who died a victim to delirium from persecution, was madame sand, who had, without doubt, the sanest and best balanced temperament. other writers have sought,--for instance, our great classical authors, pascal, bossuet and perhaps corneille,--to influence the thought of their time; some, like molière, la fontaine, and la bruyère, to correct customs. others still,--such as our romantic writers, hugo or de musset,--desired only to express their personal conception of the world and of life. and then balzac, whose object,--almost scientific,--was to make a "natural history," a study and description, of the social species, as an animal or vegetable species is described in zoology or botany. gustave flaubert attempted only to work out his art, for and through the love of art. very early in life, as we clearly see from his correspondence, his consideration for art was not even that of a social but of a _sacred_ function, in which the artist was the priest. we hear sometimes, in metaphor and not without irony, of the "priesthood" of the artist and the "worship" of art. these expressions must be taken literally in flaubert's case. he was cloistered in his art as a monk in his convent or by his discipline; and he truly lived only in meditation upon that art, as a mystic in contemplation of the perfections of his god. nothing outside of art truly interested him, neither science, nor things political or religious, nor men, nor women, nor anything in the world; and if, sometimes, it was his duty to occupy himself with them, it was never in a degree greater than could benefit his art. "the accidents of the world"--this is his own expression--appeared to him only as things permitted _for the sake of description_, so much so that his own existence, even, seemed to him to have no other excuse. it is that which explains the mixture of "romanticism," "naturalism," and i will add, of "classicism"--which has been pointed out more than once in flaubert's work. _madame bovary_ is the masterpiece of naturalistic romance and has not been surpassed by the studies of zola or the stories of de maupassant. on the other hand, there is nothing in hugo, even, more romantic than _the temptation of saint antony_. but it is necessary to look for many things in romanticism; and the romanticism of hugo, which was one of the delights of flaubert, did not resemble that of de musset, (lord de musset, as flaubert called him) which he strongly disliked. what he loved in romanticism was the "colour," and nothing but the colour. he loved the romanticism of the orientals, of hugo and chateaubriand, that plastic romanticism, whose object is to substitute in literature "sensations of art" for the "expression of ideas," or even of sentiments. it is precisely here that naturalism and romanticism--or at least french naturalism, which is very different from that of the russians or the english--join hands. in the one case, as in the other, the attempt is made to "represent"--as he himself puts it; and when one represents nothing except the vulgar, the common, the mediocre, the everyday, commonplace, or grotesque, he is a "naturalist," like the author of _madame bovary_; but one is a "romanticist" when, like the author of _salammbô_, he makes this world vanish, and recreates a strange land filled with byzantine or carthaginian civilization, with its barbaric luxury, its splendour of corruption, immoderate appetites, and monstrous deities. we have done wrong in considering flaubert a naturalist impeded by his romanticism, or a romanticist impenitent, irritated with himself because of his tendency to naturalism. he was both naturalist and romanticist. and in both he was an artist, so much of an artist (i say this without fear of contradiction) that he saw nothing in his art but "representation," the telling of the truth in all its depth and fidelity. _les fileuses_ and _la reddition de bréda_ are always by velasquez; but the genius of the painter has nothing in common with the subject he has chosen or the circumstances that inspired him. from this source proceeds that insensibility in flaubert with which he has so often been reproached, not without reason, and which divides his naturalism from that of the author of _adam bede_ or that of the author of _anna karenina_ by an abyss. honest, as a man, a good citizen, a good son, a good brother, a good friend, flaubert was indifferent, as an artist, to all that did not belong to his art. "i believe that it is necessary to love nothing," he has written somewhere, and even underscored it--that is to say, it is necessary to hover impartially above all objective points. and, in fact, as nothing passed before his eyes that he considered did not lie within the possibility of representation, he made it a law unto himself to look nothing in the face except from this point of view. in this regard one may compare his attitude in the presence of his model to that of his contemporaries, renan, for example, or taine, in the presence of the object of their studies. with them also critical impartiality resembles not only indifference but insensibility. not only have they refused to confound their emotions with their judgments, but their judgments have no value in their eyes except as they separate them from their emotions,--as they emancipate themselves from them or even place themselves in opposition to them. in like manner did flaubert. the first condition of an exact representation of things is to dominate them; and in order to dominate them, is it not necessary to begin by detaching yourself from them? we see dimly through tears, and we are too much absorbed in that which gives us pleasure to be good judges of it. "an ideal society would be one where each individual performed his duty according to his ability. now, then, i do my duty as best i can; i am forsaken.... no one pities my misfortunes; those of others occupy their attention! i give to humanity what it gives to me--_indifference!_" is not the link between flaubert's "indifference" and his conception of art evident here? but flaubert said besides: "living does not concern me! it is only necessary to shun suffering." should we not change the name of this to "egotism" or "insensibility?" we might, indeed, did we not know that this egotism germinated in flaubert as a means of discipline. the object of this discipline was to concentrate, for the profit of his art, those qualities or forces which the ordinary man dissipates in the pursuit of useless pleasures, or squanders in intensity of life. we may take account at the same time of the nature of his pessimism. for there are many ways of being a pessimist, and flaubert's was not at all like that of schopenhauer or leopardi. his pessimism, real and sincere, proceeded neither from personally grievous experiences of life, as did that of the recluse of recanati, nor from a philosophic or logical view of the conditions of existence in which humanity is placed, like the pessimism of the frankfort philosopher. flaubert was rather a victim of what théophile gautier, in his well-known _emaux et camées_, calls by the singularly happy name of "the luminous spleen of the orient." to tell the truth, what flaubert could not pardon in humanity was that it did not make enough of art, and so his pessimism was a consequence of his æstheticism. "as lovers of the beautiful," he tells us, "we are all outlaws! humanity hates us; we do not serve it; we hate it because it wounds us! let us love, then, in art, as the mystics love their god; and let all pale before this love." these lines are dated , before he had published anything. therefore, flaubert did not express himself thus because he was not successful. his self-love was not in question! no one had yet criticised or discussed him. but he felt that his ideal of art, an art which he could not renounce, was opposed to the ideal methods, if they are ideal, held by his contemporaries; and the vision of the combats that he must face at once exalted and exasperated him. his pessimism was of the élite, or rather the minority of one who feels himself, or at least believes himself to be, superior, and who, knowing well that he will always be in the minority, fears, and rightly too, that he will not be recognised. it is a form of pessimism less rare in our day than one would think, and taine, among others, said practically the same thing when he averred that "one writes only for one or two hundred people in europe, or in the world." it may be that this is too individual a case! a more liberal estimate would be that we write for all those who can comprehend us; that style has for its first object the increase of such a number; and, after that, if there still be those who cannot comprehend us, no reason for despair exists on our part or on theirs. let us follow, now, the consequences of this principle in flaubert's work, and see successively all that his work means, and the dogma of art which proceeds from it. at first you are tempted to believe that flaubert's work is diverse, though inconsiderable in volume; and, primarily do not see clearly the threads which unite the _education sentimentale_ with the _tentation de saint antoine_ or _salammbô_ with _madame bovary_. on the one side christian egypt, and on the other the france of , madame arnoux, rosanette, and frederick moreau, the orleanist carnival, and the "underwood" of fontainebleau. here, carthage, hamilcar, hannibal, narr' havas, the numidian hero, and spendius, the greek slave, the lions in bondage, the pomegranate trees which they sprinkled with silphium, the whole a strange and barbaric world; then charles bovary, the chemist homais, his son napoléon and his daughter athalie, provincial life in the time of the second empire; _bourgeois_ adultery, _diligences_ and notaries' clerks. then again herodias, salome, saint jean-baptiste, or saint julien l'hospitalier, the middle ages and antiquity,--all, at first sight, seem far removed, one from the other. at first one must admire, in such a contrast of subjects and colors, the extraordinary skill, let us say the _virtuosité_, of the artist. but, if we look more closely, we shall not be slow to perceive that no work is more homogeneous than that of flaubert, and that, in truth, the _education sentimentale_, differs from _salammbô_ only as a kermesse of rubens, for example, or a bacchante of poussin differs from the apotheoses or the church pictures of the painters themselves. the making is the same, and you immediately recognise the hand. the difference is in the choice of subjects, which is of no importance, since flaubert is only attempting to "represent" something, and in the choice of material, when he is "representing," he is no longer free. that is the reason why, if one seek for lessons in "naturalism" in _salammbô_, he will find them, and will also find all the "romanticism" he seeks in the _education sentimentale_ and in _madame bovary_. from the other lessons that flow from this work, i find some in rhetoric, in art, in invention, in composition, and two or three of great import, eloquent in their bearing upon the history of contemporary french literature. a master does not mingle or engage his personality in his subject; but, as a god creates from the height of his serenity, without passion, if without love, so the poet or the artist expands the thing he touches, and, on each occasion, brings to bear upon it all the faculties that are his by toil but not innate. nothing is demanded of the workers, and they make no confessions or confidences. literature and art are not, nor should be, the expression of men's emotions, and still less the history of their lives. that is the reason why, while from reading _rené_, for example, or _fraziella_, _delphine_, _corinne_, _adolphe_, _indiana_, _volupté_, or some of the romances of balzac--_la muse du departement_, or _un grand homme de province à paris_,--you could induct balzac's entire psychology, or sainte-beuve's, or madame sand's, benjamin constant's, madame de staël's or chateaubriand's, you would find in _madame bovary_ or _salammbô_ nothing of flaubert, except his temperament, his taste, and his ideals as an artist. let us suppose another flaubert, who did not live at rouen, whose life is not that related in his correspondence, who was not the friend of maxime ducamp or of louise colet, and the _education sentimentale_ or the _tentation de saint antoine_ would not be in the least different from what they are now, nor should we see one line of change to be made. this is a triumph in objective art. "i do not wish to consider art as an overflow of passion," he wrote once, a little brutally. "i love my little niece as if she were my daughter, and i am sufficiently active in her behalf to prove that these are not empty phrases. but may i be flayed alive rather than exploit that kind of thing in style!" it has been but a short hundred years since, as he expressed it, romanticism "exploited its emotions in style," and made art from the heart. "ah! strike upon the heart, 'tis there that genius lies!" but, for a whole generation, _madame bovary_, _salammbô_ and _education sentimentale_ have been teaching the contrary. "the author in his work should be like god in the universe, everywhere present but nowhere visible. art being second nature, the creator of this nature should act through analogous procedure. he must be felt in each atom, under every aspect, concealed but infinite; the effect upon the spectator should be a kind of amazement." furthermore, he remarks that this principle was the core of greek art. i know not, or at least i do not recall, whether he had observed (as he should, since anglo-saxons have been quick to notice it) that this "principle" underlies the art of shakespeare. to realize this principle in work you must proceed scientifically, and, in this connection, we may notice that flaubert's idea is that of leconte de lisle in the preface to his _poèmes antiques_, and of taine in his lectures upon _l'idéal dans l'art_. romanticism had confounded the picturesque with the anecdotal; character with accident; colour with oddity. _han d'islande_, _nôtre-dame de paris_ and some romances of balzac, the first and poorest, not signed with his name, may serve as an example. the classic writers on their side, had not always distinguished very profoundly the difference between the general and the universal, the principal and the accessory, the permanent and the superficial. we see this in the french comedies of the eighteenth century, even in some of molière's--in his _l'avare_ and his _le misanthrope_, for example. flaubert believed that a means of terminating this conflict is to be found in method; and that is the reason why, if we confine ourselves wholly to the consideration of the medium in his works, we shall find the _tentation de saint antoine_ entirely romantic; while, as a retaliation, nothing is more classic than _madame bovary_. the reason for this is, that in his subject, whatever it was, carthaginian or low norman, refined or _bourgeois_, modern or antique, he saw only the subject itself, with the eyes and after the manner of a naturalist, who is concerned only in knowing thoroughly the plant or the animal under observation. there is no sentiment in botany or in chemistry, and in them the desideratum is truth. singleness of aim is the primary virtue in a _savant_. things are what they are, and we demand of him that he show them to us as they are. we accuse him of lying if he disguises, weakens, alters or embellishes them. likewise the artist! his function is ever to "represent:" and in order to accomplish this, he should, like the savant, mirror only the facts. after this, what do the names "romanticism" or "classicism" signify? their sole use is to indicate the side taken; they are, so to speak, an acknowledgment that the writer is adorning the occurrence he is about to represent. he may make it more universal or more characteristic than nature! but, inversely, if all art is concentrated upon the representation, what matters the subject? is one animal or plant more interesting than another to the naturalist? does a name matter? all demand the same attention. art can make exception in its subjects no more than science. if we ask in what consists the difference between science and art, on this basis, flaubert, with leconte de lisle and with taine, will tell us that it is in the beauty which communicates prestige to the work, or in the power of form. "what i have just written might be taken for something of paul de kock's, had i not given it a profoundly literary form," wrote flaubert, while he was at work on _madame bovary_; "but how, out of trivial dialogue, produce style? yet it is absolutely necessary! it must be done!" he went further still, and persuaded himself that style had a value in itself, intrinsic and absolute, aside from the subject. in fact, if the subject had no importance of its own, and if there were no personal motives for choosing one subject rather than another, what reason would there be for writing _madame bovary_ or _salammbô_? one alone: and that to "make something out of nothing," to produce a work of art from things of no import. for though everyone has some ideas, and everyone has had experience in some kind of life, it is given to few to be able to express their experience or their ideas in terms of beauty. this, precisely, is the goal of art. form, then, is the great preoccupation of the artist, since, if he is an artist, it is through form, and in the perfection or originality of that form, that his triumph comes. nothing stands out from the general mediocrity except by means of form; nothing becomes concrete, assuming immortality, save through form. form in art is queen and sovereign. even truth makes itself felt only through the attractiveness of form. and further, we cannot part one from the other; they are not opposed to each other; they are at one; and art in every phase consists only in this union. it is the end of art to give the superior life of form to that which has it not; and finally, this superior life of form, this magic wand of style, rhythmic as verse and terse as science, by firmly establishing the thing it touches, withdraws it from that law of change, constant in its inconstancy, which is the miserable condition of existence. all passes; art in its strength alone remains to all eternity; the bust survives the city. this it is that makes up the charm, the social dignity, and the lasting grandeur of art. this is not the place to discuss the "æsthetic" quality, and i shall content myself with indicating briefly some of the objections it has called forth. has form indeed all the importance in literature that flaubert claimed for it? and what importance has it in sculpture, for example, or in painting? let us grant its necessity. colour and line, which are, so to speak, the primal elements in the alphabet of painting and of sculpture, have not in themselves determined and precise significance. yellow and red, green and blue are only general and confused sensations. but words express particular sentiments and well-defined ideas, and have a value that does not depend upon the form or the quality of the words. you cannot, then, in using them, distinguish between significance and form, or combine them independently of the idea they are intended to convey, as is possible with colours and with lines, solely for the beauty that results from combination. if literary art is a "representation," it is also something more; and the lapse in flaubert, as in all those who have followed him in the letter, lies in having missed this distinction. you cannot write merely to represent; you write also to express ideas, to determine or to modify convictions; you write that you may act, or impel others to act: these are effects beyond the power of painting or of sculpture. a statue or a picture never brought about a revolution; a book, a pamphlet, nay, a few fiery words, have overturned a dynasty. it is no longer true, as a whole generation of writers has believed, that art and science may be one and the same thing; or that the first, as taine has said, may be an "anticipation of the second." we could not in the presence of our fellow-creatures and their suffering affect the indifference of a naturalist before the plant or the animal he is studying. whatever the nature of "human phenomena" may be, we in our quality as man can only look at them with human eyes, and could temptation make us change our point of view, it would properly be called inhuman. one might add that, if it is not certain that nature was made for man, and if, for that reason, science is wholly independent of conscience, as we take it, it is otherwise with art. we know that man was not made for art, but that art was made for man. we forget each time we speak of "art for art's sake" that there is need precisely to define the meaning of the expression and to recall that but for truth art could not have for its object the perfecting of political institutions, the uplifting of the masses, the correction of customs, the teachings of religion, and that although this may lead finally to the realization of beauty, it nevertheless remains the duty of man, and consequently, is human in its origin, human in its development, and human in its aim. upon all these points, it is only necessary to think sensibly, as also upon the question--which we have not touched upon,--of knowing under what conditions, in what sense, and in what degree the person of the artist can or should remain foreign to his work. but a peculiarity of flaubert's,--and one more personal, which even most of the naturalists have not shared with him, neither the dutch in their paintings, nor the english in the history of romance (the author of _tom jones_ or of _clarissa harlowe_), nor the russians, tolstoi or dostoiefski,--is to despise the rôle of irony in art. "my personages are profoundly repugnant to me," he wrote, _à propos_ of _madame bovary_. but they were not always repugnant to him, at least not all of them, and, in verification of this, we find that he has not for spendius, matho, hamilcar, and hanno, the boundless scorn that he affects for homais or for bournisien, for bouvard or for pecuchet. we recognise here the particular and special form of flaubert's pessimism. that there could be people in the world, among his contemporaries, who were not wholly absorbed and preoccupied with art, surpassed his comprehension, and when this indifference did not arouse an indignation which exasperated him even to blows, it drew from him a scornful laughter that one might call homeric or rabelaisian, since it incited more to anger than to gaiety. and this is the reason why _madame bovary_, _education sentimentale_, _un coeur simple_, and _bouvard et pecuchet_ would be more truly named were they called satires and not representations. the exaggeration of the principle here recoils upon itself. that disinterestedness, that impartiality, that serenity which permitted him to "hover impartially above all objects" deserted him. a satirist, or to be more exact, a caricaturist, awoke within the naturalist. he raged at his own characters. he railed at them and mocked them. the interest of the representation had undergone a change. he was no longer in the attitude of mere fidelity to facts, but in a state of scorn and violent derision. homais and bournisien are no longer studies in themselves, but a burden to flaubert. his _education sentimentale_, in spite of him, became, to use his own expression, an overflow of rancour. in _bouvard et pecuchet_ he gave way to his hatred of humanity; here, as a favour, and under the mask of irony, he brings himself into his work, and, like a simple madame sand, or a vulgar de musset, we perceive flaubert himself, bull-necked and ruddy, with the moustaches of a gallic chief, agonizing at each turn in the romance. it is not necessary to exaggerate flaubert's influence. in his time there were ten other writers, none of whom equalled him,--parnassians in poetry, positivists in criticism, realists in romance or in dramatic writing,--who laboured at the same work. his æstheticism is not his alone, yet _madame bovary_ and _salammbô_ shot like unexpected meteors out of a grey sky, the dull, low sky of the second empire. in the sky was not so grey or so low; and the _poèmes antiques_ of leconte de lisle, the _Études d'histoire religieuse_ of renan, and the _essais de critique_ of taine, are possibly not unworthy to be placed in parallel or comparison with the first writings of flaubert. an exquisite judge of things of the mind, j. j. weiss, very clearly saw at that time what there was in common in all these works, in the glory of which he was not deceived when he added the _fleurs du mai_ by charles baudelaire, and the first comedies of alexandre dumas _fils_. but the truth is, not one of these works was marked with signs of masterly maturity in like degree with _madame bovary_. it is, then, natural that, from day to day, flaubert should become a guide, and here, if we consider the nature of the lessons he gives, we cannot deny their towering excellence. if there was need to agitate against romanticism, _madame bovary_ performed the duty; and if in this agitation there was need to save what was worth salvation, _salammbô_ saved it. if it was fitting to recall to poets and to writers of romance, to madame sand herself and victor hugo, that art was not invented as a public carrier for their confidences, it is still flaubert who does it. he taught the school of hasty writers that talent, or even genius, is in need of discipline,--the discipline of a long and painful prenticehood in the making and unmaking of their work. he has widened, and especially has he hollowed and deepened, the notion that romanticism was born of nature, and, in doing this, has brought art back to the fountain-head of inspiration. his rhetoric and æstheticism brought him face to face with nature, enabled him to see her, a gift as rare as it is great, and to "represent" her--the proof of the preceding. it is the artist that judges the model. poets and romance-writers, like painters, we value only in as much as they represent life--by and for the fidelity, the originality, the novelty, the depth, the distinction, the perfection with which they represent it. it is the rule of rules, the principle of principles! and if flaubert had no other merit than to have seen this better than any other writer of his age, it would be enough to assure for him a place, and a very exalted place, in the pantheon of french literature. f. brunetiÈre biographical preface gustave flaubert was born at rouen, december , . his father was a physician, who later became chief surgeon in the hôtel dieu of that city, and his mother, anne-justine-carline fleuriot, was of norman extraction. fourth of a family of six children, as a child flaubert exhibited marked fondness for stories, and, with his favourite sister, caroline, would invent them for pastime. as a youth, he was exceedingly handsome, tall, broad-shouldered and athletic, of independent turn of mind, fond of study, and caring little for the luxuries of life. he attended the college of rouen, but showed no marked characteristic save a pronounced taste for history. after graduating, he went to paris to read law, at the École de droit. at this time disease, the nature of which he always endeavored to conceal from the world, attacked him and compelled a return to rouen. the complaint, as revealed after his death by maxime ducamp, was epilepsy, and the constant fear of suffering an attack in public led flaubert to live the life of a recluse. the death of his father occurring at this critical period, flaubert abandoned the study of law, which he had begun only in obedience to the formally expressed wish of his family. having a comfortable income, he turned his thoughts to literature, and from that time all other work was distasteful. he read and wrote incessantly, although at this period he never completed anything. among his papers were found several fragments written between his eighteenth and twentieth years. some bear the stamp of his individuality, if not in the substance, which is romantic,--at least in the form, which is peculiarly lucid and concise,--for instance, the slight, romantic, autobiographic sketch entitled _novembre_. flaubert wrote neither for money nor for fame. to him, art was religion, and to it he sacrificed his life. perfection of style was his goal; and unremitting devotion to his ideal slew him. that he was never satisfied with what he wrote, his letters show; and all who knew him marvelled at his laborious and pathetic application to his work. he settled first in croisset, near rouen, with his family, but shortly afterwards went to brittany with maxime ducamp. on his return he planned _la tentation de saint antoine_, which grew out of a fragmentary sketch entitled _smarh_ (a mediæval mystery, the manuscript tells us), written in early youth. _la tentation_ proved a source of labor, for he never ceased revising it until it appeared in book form in . in , he wrote a modern play, entitled _le candidat_, produced in at the vaudeville. it was not his first dramatic effort, as he had already written a sort of lyric fairy-play, _le château des coeurs_, which was published in his _oeuvres posthumes_. in flaubert visited greece, egypt, and syria, again accompanied by his friend maxime ducamp. after his return he planned a book of impressions similar to _par les champs et par les grèves_, which was the result of the trip to brittany; but the beginning only was achieved. still he gathered many data for his future great novel, _salammbô_. the year found him back in croisset, working at _la tentation de saint antoine_, which he dropped suddenly, when half finished, for an entirely different subject--_madame bovary_, a novel of provincial life, published first in in the _revue de paris_. for this flaubert was prosecuted, on the charge of offending against public morals, but was acquitted after the remarkable defense offered by maître senard. flaubert's fame dates from _madame bovary_, which was much discussed by press and public. many, including his friend, maxime ducamp, condemned it, but sainte-beuve gave it his decisive and courageous approval. it was generally considered, however, as the starting point of a new phase in letters, frankly realistic, and intent on understanding and expressing everything. such success might have influenced flaubert's artistic inclinations but did not, for while _madame bovary_ was appearing in the _revue de paris_, the _artiste_ was publishing fragments of _la tentation de saint antoine_. in flaubert went to tunis, visited the site of ancient carthage, and four years afterwards wrote _salammbô_, a marvellous reconstitution, more than half intuitive, of a civilisation practically unrecorded in history. this extraordinary book did not call forth the enthusiasm that greeted _madame bovary_. flaubert, in whom correctness of detail was a passion, was condemned, even by sainte-beuve, for choosing from all history a civilisation of which so little is known. the author replied, and a lengthy controversy ensued, but it was not a subject that could be settled definitely in one way or another. in _l'education sentimentale, roman d'un jeune homme_, published in , flaubert returns momentarily to the style which brought him such rapid and deserved celebrity. in appeared _trois contes_, three short stories written in the impersonal style of _salammbô_, contrasting strangely with _la legende de saint julien l'hospitalier_ and _herodias_, wherein flaubert shows himself supreme in the art of word-painting. death came to him on may , , as he was writing the last chapters of a new work, _bouvard et pecuchet_, which was published in part after he died and later appeared in book form ( ). at the age of twenty-five, flaubert met the only woman who in any way entered his sentimental life. she was an author, the wife of lucien colet, and the "madame x" of the correspondence. their friendship lasted eight years and ended unpleasantly, flaubert being too absorbed by his worship for art to let passion sway him. he remained unmarried because his love for his mother and family made calls upon him that he would not neglect. he was indifferent to women, treated them with paternal indulgence, and often avowed that "woman is the undoing of the just." yet a warm friendship existed between him and george sand, and many of his letters are addressed to her, touching upon various questions in art, literature, and politics. the misanthropy which haunted flaubert, of which so much has been said, was not innate, but was acquired through the constant contemplation of human folly. it was natural for him to be cheerful and kind-hearted, and of his generosity and disinterestedness not enough can be said. at the close of his life financial difficulties assailed him, for he had given a great part of his fortune to the support of a niece, restricting his own expenses and living as modestly as possible. in , m. jules ferry, then minister of public instruction, offered him a place in the bibliothèque mazarine, but the appointment was not confirmed. flaubert's method of production was slow and laborious. sometimes weeks were required to write a few pages, for he accumulated masses of notes and, it must be said, so much erudition as at times to impede action. he thought no toil too great, did it but aid him in his pursuit of literary perfection, and when the work that called for such expenditure of strength and thought was finished, he looked for no reward save that of a satisfied soul. alien to business wisdom, he believed that to set a price upon his work disparaged it. in flaubert, a romanticist and a naturalist at first were blended. but the latter tendency was fostered and acknowledged, while the former was repressed. he was an ardent advocate of the impersonal in art, declaring that an author should not in a page, a line, or a word, express the smallest part of an opinion. to him a writer was a mirror, but a mirror that reflected life while adding that divine effulgence which is art. of him a french romanticist still living says: "imagination was espoused by unremitting-toil-in-faith and bore flaubert. france fed the child, but art stepped in and gave him to the nations as a beacon for the worshippers of truth-in-letters-and-in-life." the city of rouen reared a monument to flaubert's memory, but on the spot where he breathed his last are reared the chimneys and the buildings of a factory, a tribute--possibly unconscious--to reality in life. before writing _madame bovary_ flaubert had tested himself, and an idea of the scope and variety of his ideas may be gained from the following list of inedited and unfinished fragments: historical the death of the due de guise, norman chronicle of the tenth century, two hands on a crown, or, during the fifteenth century, . essay on the struggle between priesthood and empire, . rome and the cæsars, . travels various notes on travels to the pyrenean mountains, corsica, spain and the orient, from to . tales and novels the plague in florence, rage and impotence, the society woman, fantastic verses, bibliomania, an exquisite perfume, or, the buffoons, . dreams of the infernal regions, passion and chastity, the funeral of dr. mathurin, or, during the xvth century, . frenzy and death, sentimental education (not the novel published under same title). . plays louis xi, drama, discovery of vaccination, a parody of tragic style; one act only was written. criticisms on romantic literature in france miscellany quidquid volueris? a psychological study, . agony (sceptical thoughts), art and commerce, . several nameless sketches. unfortunately, nearly all the works of flaubert's youth were mere sketches, laid aside by him. their publication would have added nothing to his fame. still, the loss of some would have been deplorable, to wit, such gems as _novembre_, _the dance of death_, _rabelais_, and the travels, _over strand and field_. these sketches will be found in this edition. robert arnot madame bovary part i. i. the new boy. we were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work. the head-master made a sign to us to sit down. then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice: "monsieur roger, here is a pupil whom i recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. if his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age." the "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. his hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the armholes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. his legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces. he wore stout, ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots. we began repeating the lesson. he listened with all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us. when we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on the floor so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the thing." but, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it, the "new fellow" was still holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were over. it was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton nightcap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long, thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. the cap was new; its peak shone. "rise," said the master. he stood up; his cap fell. the whole class began to laugh. he stooped to pick it up. a neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once more. "get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag. there was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the floor, or put it on his head. he sat down again and placed it on his knee. "rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name." the new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name. "again!" the same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of the class. "louder!" cried the master; "louder!" the "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling some one the word, "charbovari." a hubbub broke out, rose in _crescendo_ with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "charbovari! charbovari!"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh. however, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of "charles bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the master's desk. he got up, but before going hesitated. "what are you looking for?" asked the master. "my c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round him. "five hundred verses for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice, stopped, like the _quos ego_, a fresh outburst "silence!" continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he had just taken from his cap. "as to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate '_ridiculus sum_' twenty times." then, in a gentler tone, "come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't been stolen." quiet was restored. heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. but he wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered. in the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. we saw him working conscientiously, looking out every word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below. but though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish in composition. it was the curé of his village who had taught him his first latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible. his father, monsieur charles denis bartolomé bovary, retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about in certain conscription scandals, and forced at that time to leave the service, had then taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his good looks. a fine man, a great talker, making his spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache, his fingers always garnished with rings, and dressed in loud colors, he had the dash of a military man with the easy air of a commercial traveller. once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theater, and haunting cafés. the father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought he would make money. but, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he would do better to give up all speculation. for two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of the provinces of caux and picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his luck, jealous of every one, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live in peace. his wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. lively once, expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. she had suffered so much without complaint at first, when she had seen him going after all the village drabs, and when a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. then her pride revolted. after that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. she was constantly going about looking after business matters. she called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home, ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders. when she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. when he came home, the lad was spoiled as if he were a prince. his mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. as opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a spartan, to give him a strong constitution. he sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum, and to jeer at religious processions. but, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. his mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. in her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. she dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. she taught him to read, and even on an old piano she had taught him two or three little songs. but to all this monsieur bovary, caring little for letters, said: "it is not worth while. shall we ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or to start him in business? besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world." madame bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village. he went after the laborers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. he ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fêtes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong of hand, fresh of color. when he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began his lessons. the curé took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use. they were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the curé, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the _angelus_. they went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. it was close, the child fell asleep and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. on other occasions, when monsieur le curé, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighborhood, caught sight of charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour, and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. the rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. all the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had a very good memory. charles could not go on like this. madame bovary took strong steps. ashamed, or rather tired out, monsieur bovary gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take his first communion. six months more passed, and the year after charles was finally sent to school at rouen, whither his father took him towards the end of october, at the time of the st. romain fair. it would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him. he was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory. he had _in loco parentis_ a wholesale ironmonger in the rue ganterie, who took him out once a month on sundays after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before supper. every thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or read an old volume of "anarchasis" that was knocking about the study. when we went for walks he talked to the servant who, like himself, came from the country. by dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once even he got a certificate in natural history. but at the end of his third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself. his mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she knew, overlooking the eau-de-robec. she made arrangements for his board, got him furniture, a table and two chairs, sent home for an old cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child. then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to be good, now that he was going to be left to himself. the syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him: lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics, without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness. he understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did not follow. still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all the courses, never missed a single lecture. he did his little daily task like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work he is doing. to spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, on which he lunched when he came back from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall. after this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. in the evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his room and set to work again in his wet clothes, that smoked as he sat in front of the hot stove. on the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are empty, when the servants are playing shuttlecock at the doors, he opened his window and leaned out. the river, that makes of this quarter of rouen a wretched little venice, flowed beneath him, between the bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. working men, kneeling on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. on poles projecting from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. opposite, beyond the roofs, spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. how pleasant it must be at home! how fresh under the beech-tree! and he expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odors of the country which did not reach him. he grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look that made it almost interesting. naturally, through indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he had made. once he missed a lecture; the next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little he gave up work altogether. he got into the habit of going to the public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. to shut himself up every evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the small sheep-bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. it was beginning to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. then many things hidden within him come out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to his boon companions, became enthusiastic about béranger, learnt how to make punch, and, finally, how to make love. thanks to these preparatory labors, he failed completely in his examination for an ordinary degree. he was expected home the same night to celebrate his success. he started on foot, stopped at the beginning of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. she excused him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight. it was only five years later that monsieur bovary knew the truth; it was old then, and he accepted it. moreover, he could not believe that a man born of him could be a fool. so charles set to work again and crammed for his examination, ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. he passed pretty well. what a happy day for his mother! they gave a grand dinner. where should he go to practise? to tostes, where there was only one old doctor. for a long time madame bovary had been on the look-out for his death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when charles was installed, opposite his place, as his successor. but it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him taught medicine, and discovered tostes, where he could practise it; he must have a wife. she found him one--the widow of a bailiff at dieppe, who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs. though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds, madame dubuc had no lack of suitors. to attain her ends madame bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a pork-butcher backed up by the priests. charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. but his wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast every friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients who did not pay. she opened his letters, watched his comings and goings, and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his surgery. she must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. she constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. the noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. when charles returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting her, he loved another. she had been warned she would be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little more love. ii. a good patient. one night toward eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of a horse pulling up outside their door. the servant opened the garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below. he came for the doctor, had a letter for him. nastasie came downstairs shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. the man left his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. he pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in a rag and presented it gingerly to charles, who rested his elbow on the pillow to read it. nastasie, standing near the bed, held the light. madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back. this letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged monsieur bovary to come immediately to the farm of the bertaux to set a broken leg. now from tostes to the bertaux was a good eighteen miles across country by way of longueville and saint-victor. it was a dark night; madame bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. so it was decided the stable-boy should go on first; charles would start three hours later when the moon rose. a boy was to be sent to meet him, and show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him. towards four o'clock in the morning, charles, well wrapped up in his cloak, set out for the bertaux. still sleepy from the warmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. when it stopped of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that are dug on the margin of furrows, charles awoke with a start, suddenly remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures he knew. the rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers bristling in the cold morning wind. the flat country stretched as far as eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals seemed like dark violet stains on the vast gray surface, that on the horizon faded into the gloom of the sky, charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein his recent sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation theater as of old. the warm smell of poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh odor of dew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed, and saw his wife sleeping. as he passed vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the grass at the edge of a ditch. "are you the doctor?" asked the child. and on charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on in front of him. the general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk that monsieur rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers. he had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a twelfth-night feast at a neighbor's. his wife had been dead for two years. there was only his daughter, who helped him to keep house, with him. the ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the bertaux. the little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared; then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. the horse slipped on the wet grass; charles had to stoop to pass under the branches. the watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their chains. as he entered the bertaux the horse took fright and stumbled. it was a substantial-looking farm. in the stables, over the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys five or six peacocks, a luxury in chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of it. the sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your hand. under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with their whips, shafts, and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. the courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond. a young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the threshold of the door to receive monsieur bovary, whom she led to the kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. the servants' breakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. some damp clothes were drying inside the chimney-corner. the shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the window, was mirrored fitfully. charles went up to the first floor to see the patient. he found him in his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap far away from him. he was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin and blue eyes, the fore part of his head was bald, and he wore ear-rings. near him on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured himself out a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, he began to groan feebly. the fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication. charles could not have hoped for an easier case. then calling to mind the devices of his masters at the bedside of patients, he comforted the sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon that are like the oil they put on bistouries. in order to make some splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. charles selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment of window-pane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and mademoiselle emma tried to sew some pads. as she was a long time before she found her workcase, her father grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck. charles was much surprised at the whiteness of her nails. they were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of dieppe, and almond-shaped. yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. her real beauty was in her eyes. although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness. the bandaging over, the doctor was invited by monsieur rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he left. charles went down into the room on the ground-floor. knives and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing turks. there was an odor of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. on the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. these were the overflow from the neighboring granary, to which three stone steps led. by way of decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint had scaled off from the effects of saltpeter, was a crayon head of minerva in a gold frame, underneath which was written in gothic letters "to dear papa." first they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night. mademoiselle rouault did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. as the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. this showed something of her full lips, that she had a habit of biting when silent. her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. her hair, whose two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. the upper part of her cheek was rose-colored. she had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. when charles, after bidding farewell to old rouault, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. she turned round. "are you looking for anything?" she asked. "my whip, if you please," he answered. he began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. it had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. mademoiselle emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. charles, out of politeness, made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him. she drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip. instead of returning to the bertaux in three days as he had promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident. everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favorably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old rouault was seen trying to walk alone in his "den," monsieur bovary began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. old rouault said that he could not have been cured better by the first doctor of yvetot, or even of rouen. as to charles, he did not stay to ask himself why it was a pleasure to him to go to the bertaux. had he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. was it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of his life? on these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. he liked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him. he liked the granary and the stables; he liked old rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his savior; he liked the small wooden shoes of mademoiselle emma on the scoured flags of the kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots. she always reconducted him to the first step of the stairs. when his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. they had said "good-bye;" there was no more talking. the open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips her apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. once, during a thaw, the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. the sunshade, of silk of the color of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. she smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk. during the first period of charles's visits to the bertaux, madame bovary, junior, never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for monsieur rouault. but when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt that mademoiselle rouault, brought up at the ursuline convent, had received what is called "a good education;" and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider and play the piano. that was the last straw. "so it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it with the rain. ah! that woman! that woman!" and she detested her instinctively. at first she solaced herself by allusions that charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. "why did he go back to the bertaux now that monsieur rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who knew how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. that was what he cared about; he wanted town misses." and she went on: "the daughter of old rouault a town miss! get out! their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. it is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on sundays in a silk gown, like a countess. besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears." for very weariness charles left off going to the bertaux. héloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more, after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. he obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naïve hypocrisy, that this interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her. and then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over gray stockings. charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations. it was wrong of him to eat so much. why did he always offer a glass of something to every one who came? what obstinacy not to wear flannels! in the spring it came about that a notary at ingouville, the holder of the widow dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. héloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the rue st. françois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. the matter had to be gone into. the house at dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed with the notary god only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. she had lied, the good lady! in his exasperation, monsieur bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused the misfortune of their son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. they came to tostes. explanations followed. there were scenes. héloise in tears, throwing her arms about her husband, conjured him to defend her from his parents. charles tried to speak up for her. they grew angry and left the house. but the blow had struck home. a week after, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, while charles had his back turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, "o god!" gave a sigh and fainted. she was dead! what a surprise! when all was over at the cemetery, charles went home. he found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. she had loved him, after all! iii. a lonely widower. one morning old rouault brought charles the money for setting his leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. he had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could. "i know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "i've been through it. when i lost my dear departed, i went into the fields to be quite alone. i fell at the foot of a tree; i cried; i called on god; i talked nonsense to him. i wanted to be like the moles that i saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. and when i thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, i struck great blows on the earth with my stick. i was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a café disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, i should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom, as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart. but since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. you must pull yourself together, monsieur bovary. it will pass away. come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. spring will soon be here. we'll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit." charles followed his advice. he went back to the bertaux. he found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. the pear trees were already in blossom, and farmer rouault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life. thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. he told stories. charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her. he thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. the new delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. he could now change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch himself full length on his bed. so he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. on the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his business, since for a month people had been saying, "the poor young man! what a loss!" his name had been talked about, his practice had increased; and, moreover, he could go to the bertaux just as he liked. he had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass. one day he got there about three o'clock. everybody was in the fields. he went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of emma; the outside shutters were closed. through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. the daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. between the window and the hearth emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders. after the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to drink. he said no; she insisted and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. so she went to fetch a bottle of curaçoa from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after clinking their glasses, carried hers to her mouth. as it was almost empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the strain. she laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass. she sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. she worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did charles. the air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs. she complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, charles of his school; words came to them. they went up into her bedroom. she showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. she spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. but their gardeners had understood nothing about it; servants were so careless. she would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. and, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden, all languor, lingering out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself; now joyous, opening big, naïve eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering. going home at night, charles went over her words, one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. but he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married, and to whom? alas! old rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! but emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "if you should marry, after all! if you should marry!" at night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. he got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. the night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. he turned his head toward the bertaux. thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, charles promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips. old rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. in his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. far from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most people. he did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. he liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, _glorias_[ ] well beaten up. he took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid, as on the stage. [footnote : a mixture of coffee and spirits.--trans.] when, therefore, he perceived that charles's cheeks grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. he certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well-conducted, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. now, as old rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property," as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "if he asks for her," he said to himself, "i'll give her to him." at michaelmas charles went to spend three days at the bertaux. the last had passed like the others, in procrastinating from hour to hour. old rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. this was the time. charles gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it: "monsieur rouault," he murmured, "i should like to say something to you." they stopped. charles was silent. "well, tell me your story. don't i know all about it?" said old rouault, laughing softly. "monsieur rouault--monsieur rouault," stammered charles. "i ask nothing better," the farmer went on. "although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. so you get off--i'll go back home. if it is 'yes,' you needn't return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. but so that you mayn't be eating your heart, i'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge." and he went off. charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. half-an-hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging. the next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. old rouault embraced his future son-in-law. the discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till charles was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year. the winter passed waiting for this. mademoiselle rouault was busy with her trousseau. part of it was ordered at rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. when charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be the entrées. emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old rouault could not understand such an idea. so there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following. iv. consolation. the guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, wagonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. some came from a distance of thirty miles, from goderville, from normanville, and from cany. all the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to. from time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. they got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. the ladies wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little colored fichus fastened down behind with a pin, that left the back of the neck bare. the lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day handselled their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a word, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion, were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose-pomade, and very much afraid of soiling their gloves. as there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. according to their different social positions, they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting-jackets, cutaway-coats: fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that came out of the wardrobe only on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting-jackets of coarse cloth, usually worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very far down with a worked belt. and the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! every one had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaven; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air _en route_ had inflamed, so that the great, white, beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs. the _mairie_ was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. the procession, first united like one long colored scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up in different groups that loitered to talk. the fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons in its pegs. then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing among themselves unseen. emma's skirt, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. old rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to madame bovary, senior. as to monsieur bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. she bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. the other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. when he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. the noise of the instrument drove the little birds far away. the table was laid under the cart-shed. on it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassées, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast sucking-pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. at the corners were decanters of brandy. sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. a confectioner of yvetot had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. as he had only just set up in the place, he had taken great trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. to begin with, at its base was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the niches were constellations of gilt paper stars; on the second stage was a dungeon of savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper layer was a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing, whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top. until night they ate. when any of them were too tired of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the granary, and then returned to table. toward the finish some went to sleep and snored. but with the coffee every one woke up. then they began songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad jokes, kissed the women. at night when they left, the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore; and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins. those who stayed at the bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen. the children had fallen asleep under the seats. the bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage pleasantries. however, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water from his mouth through the keyhole, when old rouault came up just in time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. the cousin all the same did not give in to these reasons readily. in his heart he accused old rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints hoping he would ruin himself. madame bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. she had been consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. her husband, instead of following her, sent to saint-victor for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. this added greatly to the consideration in which he was held. charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding. he answered feebly to the puns, _doubles entendres_, compliments, and chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup appeared. the next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. it was he who might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. the shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. but charles concealed nothing. he called her "my wife," _tutoyéd_ her, asked for her of every one, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards where he could be seen from afar, among the trees putting his arm round her waist, and walking half bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice with his head. two days after the wedding the married pair left. charles, on account of his patients, could not be away longer. old rouault had them driven back in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as vassonville. here he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way. when he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh. then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near christmas-time, and the country was all white. she held him by one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her cauchois head-dress so that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. to warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. how long ago it all was! their son would have been thirty by now. then he looked back and saw nothing on the road. he felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. as he was afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went directly home. monsieur and madame charles arrived at tostes about six o'clock. the neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife. the old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should look over her house. v. the new mÉnage. the brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road. behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor in a corner, were a pair of leggings still covered with dry mud. on the right was the one apartment that was both dining and sitting room. a canary-yellow paper, relieved at the top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly-stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crosswise the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with a head of hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks under oval shades. on the other side of the passage was charles's consulting-room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table, three chairs, and an office-chair. volumes of the "dictionary of medical science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive sales through which they had gone, occupied almost alone the six shelves of a deal bookcase. the smell of melted butter penetrated the thin walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in the consulting-room and recounting their whole histories. then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to guess. the garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. in the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower-beds with eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen-garden bed. at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a curé in plaster reading his breviary. emma went upstairs. the first room was not furnished, but in the second, which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery. a shell-box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood in a bottle. it was a bride's bouquet; it was the other one's. she looked at it. charles noticed it; he took it and carried it up to the attic, while emma, seated in an armchair (they were putting her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she were to die. during the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in the house. she took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wall-paper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. finally, her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out, picked up a second-hand dog-cart, which, with new lamps and a splash-board in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury. he was happy then, and without a care in the world. a meal together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and many another thing in which charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now made up the endless round of his happiness. in bed, in the morning, by her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her nightcap. seen thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. black in the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different colors, that, darker in the center, grew paler toward the surface of the eye. his own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open. he rose. she came to the window to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium, clad in her dressing-gown hanging loosely about her. charles in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or leaf that she blew out at him. then this, eddying, floating, described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless at the door. charles from horseback threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. and then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbors, along paths where the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are digesting. until now what good had he had of his life? his time at school, when he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school with cakes in their muffs? or later, when he studied medicine, and never had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have become his mistress? afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. but now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he adored. for him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her. he wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly, ran up the stairs with a beating heart. emma, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry. he could not keep from continually touching her comb, her rings, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you. before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. and emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words _felicity_, _passion_, _rapture_, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books. vi. a maiden's yearnings. she had read "paul and virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger domingo, the dog fidèle, but above all the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest. when she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her in the convent. they stopped at an inn in the st. gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the story of mademoiselle de la vallière. the explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court. far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. she played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered monsieur le vicaire's difficult questions. living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the class-rooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. she tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. she puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill. when she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. the comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. in the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. on week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the lectures of the abbé frayssinous, and on sundays passages from the "génie du christianisme," as a recreation. how she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing through the world and eternity! if her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. but she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. she loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. she wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. at the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. the girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. she knew by heart the love-songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. she told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. they were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, somber forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. for six months, then, emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. with walter scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. she would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted châtelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. at this time she had a cult for mary stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. joan of arc, héloise, agnès sorel, the beautiful ferronnière, and clémence isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow and all unconnected, st. louis with his oak, the dying bayard, some cruelties of louis xi, a little of st. bartholomew's, the plume of the béarnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honor of louis xiv. in the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;--mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. these had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. she trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of english ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage, driven at a trot by two small postilions in white breeches. others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. the naïve ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. and you too were there, sultans with long pipes, reclining beneath arbors in the arms of bayadères; djiaours, turkish sabers, greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm-trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. and the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the boulevards. when her mother died she cried much the first few days. she had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried some day in the same grave. the goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. she let herself glide along with lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the eternal discoursing down the valleys. she wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. the good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that mademoiselle rouault seemed to be slipping from them. they had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses: she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. this nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. when her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. the lady superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. emma at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. when charles came to the bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. but the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-colored wings, had hung in the splendor of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed. vii. disillusion. she thought sometimes that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. to taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. in post-chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep roads, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon-trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. it seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, that cannot thrive elsewhere. why could not she lean over balconies in swiss châlets, or enshrine her melancholy in a scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to some one. but how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? words failed her--the opportunity, the courage. if charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. but as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him. charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and every one's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. he had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from paris. he could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel. a man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? but this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. he thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him. sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to charles to stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. as to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. she struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bareheaded and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand. emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. she sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a bill. when they had a neighbor to dinner on sundays, she managed to have some dainty dish--piled up pyramids of green-gages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. from all this, much consideration was extended to bovary. charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife. he showed with pride in the sitting-room two small pencil sketches by her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the wall-paper by long green cords. people returning from mass saw him at his door in his wool-work slippers. he came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, emma waited on him. he took off his coat to dine more at his ease. he told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored. as he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. he always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. he said that was "quite good enough for the country." his mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly when there had been some violent scene at her place; and yet madame bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. she thought "her ways too fine for their position;" the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as at "a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. she put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. emma put up with these lessons. madame bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger. in madame dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the favorite; but now the love of charles for emma seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his old house. she recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively. charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. when madame bovary had gone he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma emma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients. and yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make herself in love with him. by moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before, and charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved. when she had thus for a while struck the flint of her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. his outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. it was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner. a gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had given madame a little italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. she went as far as the beeches of banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the country. amid the vegetation of the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut. she began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last she had been there. she found again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, emma repeated to herself, "good heavens! why did i marry?" she asked herself if by some other chance combination it would not have been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would have been these unrealized events, this different life, this unknown husband. all, surely, could not be like this one. he might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. what were they doing now? in town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theaters, and the lights of the ball-room, they were living lives where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. but she--her life was cold as a garret whose dormer-window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. she recalled the prize-days, when she mounted the platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. in her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music-master with his violin-case bowed in passing by. how far off all this! how far away! she called djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long, delicate head, saying, "come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles." then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling. occasionally there came gusts of wind, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. the rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. emma drew her shawl round her shoulders and rose. in the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lighted the short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. the sun was setting; the sky showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. a fear took hold of her; she called djali, and hurriedly returned to tostes by the highroad, threw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak. but towards the end of september something extraordinary fell upon her life; she was invited by the marquis d'andervilliers to vaubyessard. secretary of state under the restoration, the marquis, anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the chamber of deputies long beforehand. in the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in the conseil général always enthusiastically demanded new roads for his arrondissement. during the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess, which charles had cured as if by miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. the steward sent to tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. now cherry-trees did not thrive at vaubyessard; the marquis asked bovary for some slips; made it his business to thank him personally; saw emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple. one wednesday at three o'clock, monsieur and madame bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front on the apron. besides these charles held a bandbox between his knees. they arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lighted to show the carriage-drive. viii. glimpses of the world. the château, a modern building in italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path. a river flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently-sloping well-timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel lines the coach-houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old château. charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants appeared; the marquis came forward, and offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule. it was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church. opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard-room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. as she crossed it to go to the drawing-room, emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. they all wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their strokes. on the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black letters. she read: "jean-antoine d'andervilliers d'yverbonville, count de la vaubyessard and baron de la fresnaye, killed at the battle of coutras on the th of october ." and on another: "jean-antoine-henry-guy d'andervilliers de la vaubyessard, admiral of france and chevalier of the order of st. michael, wounded at the battle of the hougue-saint-vaast on the th of may ; died at vaubyessard on the rd of january ." one could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf. the marquis opened the drawing-room door; one of the ladies (the marchioness herself) came to meet emma. she made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. she was about forty years old, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. a fair young woman was by her side in a high-backed chair, and gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire. at seven dinner was served. the men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the dining-room with the marquis and marchioness. emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odor of the truffles. the silver dish-covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected pale rays from one to the other; bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's miter, held between its two gaping folds a small oval-shaped roll. the red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offered ready-carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, and with a touch of the spoon gave the piece chosen. on the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life. madame bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses. but at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. his eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black ribbon. he was the marquis's father-in-law, the old duke de laverdière, once on a time favorite of the count d'artois, in the days of the vaudreuil hunting-parties at the marquis de conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of queen marie antoinette, between monsieur de coigny and monsieur de lauzun. he had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. a servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. he had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! iced champagne was poured out. emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. she had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples. the powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. the ladies afterward went to their rooms to prepare for the ball. emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her début. she did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barège dress spread out upon the bed. charles's trousers were tight across the belly. "my trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said. "dancing?" repeated emma. "yes!" "why, you must be mad! they would make fun of you; keep your place. besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added. charles was silent. he walked up and down waiting for emma to finish dressing. he saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. her black eyes seemed blacker than ever. her hair, undulating toward the ears, shone with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tips of the leaves. she wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green. charles came and kissed her on her shoulder. "let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me." one could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. she went downstairs restraining herself from running. dancing had begun. guests were arriving. there was some crushing. she sat down on a form near the door. the quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid smiling faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. the hair, well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and cornflowers. calmly seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans. emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. but her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. a smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis-d'or that were being thrown down upon the card-tables in the next room; then all struck in again, the cornet-à-piston uttered its sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again. a few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress, or face. their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. they had the complexion of wealth,--that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs, with embroidered initials, that gave forth a subtle perfume. those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young. in their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women. a few steps from emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls. they were praising the breadth of the columns of st. peter's, tivoli, vesuvius, castellamare, and cassines, the roses of genoa, the coliseum by moonlight. with her other ear emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand. a circle gathered round a very young man who the week before had beaten "miss arabella" and "romulus," and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in england. one complained that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors that had disfigured the name of his horse. the atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. guests were flocking to the billiard-room. a servant got upon a chair and broke the window-panes. at the crash of the glass madame bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at them. then the memory of the bertaux came back to her. she saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple-trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. but in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. she was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. she was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth. a lady near her dropped her fan. a gentleman was passing. "would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has fallen behind the sofa?" the gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, emma saw the hand of the young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. the gentleman picking up the fan, offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began smelling her bouquet. after supper, where were plenty of spanish and rhine wines, soups _à la bisque_ and _au lait d'amandes_, puddings _à la trafalgar_, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off. raising the corner of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. the seats began to empty, some card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door. at three o'clock the cotillion began. emma did not know how to waltz. every one was waltzing, mademoiselle d'andervilliers herself and the marquis only the guests staying at the castle were still there about a dozen persons. one of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask madame bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well. they began slowly, then went more rapidly. they turned; all around them was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. on passing near the doors the bottom of emma's dress caught against his trousers. their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. a torpor seized her; she stopped. they started again, and with a more rapid movement; the viscount, dragging her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where, panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast. and then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. she leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. when she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing-room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. she chose the viscount, and the violin struck up once more. every one looked at them. they passed and re-passed, she with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. that woman knew how to waltz! they kept up a long time, and tired out all the others. then they talked a few moments longer, and after the good-nights, or rather good-mornings, the guests of the château retired to bed. charles dragged himself up by the balusters. his knees were going up into his body. he had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card-tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots. emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out. the night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. she breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. the music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears, and she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up. day began to break. she looked long at the windows of the château, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before. she would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them. but she was shivering with cold. she undressed, and cowered down between the sheets against charles, who was asleep. there were a great many people to luncheon. the repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. next, mademoiselle d'andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from overfilled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. the orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the château. the marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables. above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. each animal in its stall whisked its tail when any one went near and said "tchk! tchk!" the boards of the harness-room shone like the flooring of a drawing-room. the carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall. charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. the dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and all the parcels being crammed in, the bovarys paid their respects to the marquis and marchioness and set out again for tostes. emma watched the turning wheels in silence. charles, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. the loose reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it. they were on the heights of thibourville when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed, laughing. emma thought she recognized the viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop. a mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces that had broken. but charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the ground between the horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border and blazoned in the center like the door of a carriage. "there are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening after dinner." "why, do you smoke?" she asked. "sometimes, when i get a chance." he put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag. when they reached home the dinner was not ready. madame lost her temper. nastasie answered rudely. "leave the room!" said emma. "you are forgetting yourself. i give you warning." for dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel. charles, seated opposite emma, rubbed his hands gleefully. "how good it is to be at home again!" nastasie could be heard crying. he was rather fond of the poor girl. she had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowerhood, kept him company many an evening. she had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place. "have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last. "yes. who is to prevent me?" she replied. then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being made ready. charles began to smoke. he smoked with his lips protruded, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff. "you'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully. he put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. emma seizing hold of the cigar-case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard. the next day was a long one. she walked above her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. how far off the ball seemed already! what was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day? her journey to vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevasses that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. still she was resigned. she devoutly put away in her closets her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose sole were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. her heart was like these. in its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced. the memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for emma. whenever the wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "ah! i was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." and little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance. she forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her. ix. idle dreams. often when charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar-case. she looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odor of the lining--a mixture of verbena and tobacco. whose was it? the viscount's? perhaps it was a present from his mistress. it had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. a breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. and then one morning the viscount had taken it away with him. of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-manteled chimneys between flower-vases and pompadour clocks? she was at tostes; he was at paris now, far away! what was this paris like? what a vague name! she repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her pomade-pots. at night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts singing the "marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the soil. "they will be there to-morrow!" she said to herself. and she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. at the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into which her dream died. she bought a plan of paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. she went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. at last she would close the lids of her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles of theatres. she took in "la corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "sylphe des salons." she devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirées, took an interest in the début of a singer, in the opening of a new shop. she knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the bois and the opera. in eugène sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read balzac and george sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires. even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while charles ate and talked to her. the memory of the viscount always returned as she read. between him and the imaginary personages she made comparisons. but the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened out beyond, lighting up her other dreams. paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before emma's eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. the many lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. emma perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity. the world of ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing-rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. there were skirts with trains; deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. then came the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore english point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at baden, and towards the forties married heiresses. in the private rooms of restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. they were prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. this was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime. for the rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place, and as if non-existent. the nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. all her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched as far as eye could see an immense land of joys and of passions. she confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. did not love, like indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? sighs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a raised dais, nor from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries. the lad from the posting-house, who came to groom the mare every morning, passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. and this was the groom in knee-breeches with whom she had to be content! his work done, he did not come back again all day, for charles on his return put up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could into the manger. to replace nastasie (who left tostes shedding torrents of tears) emma took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. she forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her,--tried to make a lady's-maid of her. the new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not to be sent away; and, as madame usually left the key in the sideboard, félicité every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone in her bed after she had said her prayers. sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. madame was in her room upstairs. she wore an open dressing-gown, that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chemisette with three gold buttons. her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet-colored slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. she had bought herself a blotting-book, writing-case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. she longed to travel or to go back to her convent. she wished at the same time to die and to live in paris. charles in snow and rain trotted across country. he ate omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odor of freshness, though no one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous her chemise. she charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the servant had spoilt, but that charles swallowed with pleasure to the last mouthful. at rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on their watch-chains; she bought some charms. she wanted for her mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory _nécessaire_ with a silver-gilt thimble. the less charles understood these refinements the more they seduced him. they added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. it was like a golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life. he was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established. the country-folk loved him because he was not proud. he petted the children, never went to the public-house, and, moreover, his morals inspired confidence. he was specially successful with catarrhs and chest complaints. being much afraid of killing his patients, charles, in fact, prescribed only sedatives, from time to time an emetic, a footbath, or leeches. it was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the "devil's own wrist." finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "la ruche médicale," a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. he read it a little after dinner, but in about five minutes, the warmth of the room added to the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp. emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. why, at least, was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age when rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coats? she could have wished this name of bovary, which was hers, had been illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the newspapers, known to all france. but charles had no ambition. an yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives. when, in the evening, charles told her this anecdote, emma inveighed loudly against his colleague. charles was much touched. he kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. but she was angered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself. "what a man! what a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips. besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. as he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples. sometimes emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest into his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the soiled gloves he was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation. sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, charles was something, an ever-open ear, an ever-ready approbation. she confided many a thing to her greyhound. she would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock. at bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. she did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, toward what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the port-holes. but each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow. spring came round. with the first warm weather, when the pear-trees began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea. from the beginning of july she counted how many weeks there were to october, thinking that perhaps the marquis d'andervilliers would give another ball at vaubyessard. but all september passed without letters or visits. after the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. so now they would thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing nothing. other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some event. one adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences, and the scene changed. but nothing happened to her; god had willed it so! the future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast. she gave up music. what was the good of playing? who would hear her? since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory keys of an erard at a concert, feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while boring herself with practising. her drawing cardboard and her embroidery she left in the cupboard. what was the good? what was the good? sewing irritated her. "i have read everything," she said to herself. and she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling. how sad she was on sundays when vespers sounded! she listened with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. a cat slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. the wind on the highroad blew up clouds of dust. afar off a dog sometimes howled; and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away over the fields. but the people came out from church. the women in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the little bareheaded children skipping along in front of them, all were going home. and till nightfall, five or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn. the winter was severe. the windows every morning were covered with rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass, sometimes did not change the whole day long. at four o'clock the lamp had to be lighted. on fine days she went down into the garden. the dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one to the other. no birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the many-footed woodlice crawling. under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curé in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white scabs on his face. then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. she would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame restrained her. every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skull-cap opened the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre over his blouse, passed by. night and morning the post-horses, three by three, crossed the street to water at the pond. from time to time the bell of a public-house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. this shop had as decoration an old engraving of a fashion-plate stuck against a window-pane and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. he, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town--at rouen, for example, overlooking the harbor, near the theater--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church, sombre, and waiting for customers. when madame bovary looked up, she always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skull-cap over his ears and his waistcoat of lasting. sometimes in the afternoon, outside the window of her room, the head of a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. a waltz immediately began, and on the organ, in a little drawing-room, dancers the size of a finger, women in pink turbans, tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock-coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking-glass held together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. the man turned his handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. now and again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee he raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. they were airs played in other places at the theaters, sung in drawing-rooms, danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to emma. endless sarabands ran through her head, and, like an indian dancing-girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leaped with the notes, swung from dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. when the man had caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. she watched him going. but it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground-floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness of life seemed served up on her plate, and with the smoke of the boiled beef arose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. charles was a slow eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oil-cloth table-cover with the point of her knife. she now let everything in her household take care of itself, and madame bovary senior, when she came to spend part of lent at tostes, was much surprised at the change. she who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now passed whole days without dressing, wore gray cotton stockings, and burnt tallow candles. she kept saying they must be economical since they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law. besides, emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice; once even, madame bovary having thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman did not mention it again. emma was growing _difficile_, capricious. she ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, and the next cups of tea by the dozen. often she persisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light frocks. after she had well scolded her servant, she gave her presents or sent her out to see the neighbors, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal hands. toward the end of february old rouault, in memory of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at tostes. charles being with his patients, emma kept him company. he smoked in the room, spat on the fire-dogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. moreover, she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all which made her husband open his eyes widely. would this misery last forever? would she never issue from it? yet she was as good as all the women who were living happily. she had seen duchesses at vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated the injustice of god. she leant her head against the walls to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent pleasures, with all the wildness, that she did not know, but that these must surely yield. she grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart. charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more. on certain days she chattered with feverish rapidity, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without moving. what then revived her was pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms. as she was constantly complaining about tostes, charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere. from that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite. it cost charles much to give up tostes after living there four years and when he was "beginning to get on there." yet if it must be! he took her to rouen to see his old master. it was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed. after looking about him on this side and on that, charles learnt that in the neufchâtel arrondissement there was a considerable market-town called yonville l'abbaye, whose doctor, a polish refugee, had decamped a week before. then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if emma's health did not improve. one day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. it was a wire of her wedding-bouquet. the orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. she threw it into the fire. it flared up more quickly than dry straw. then it was like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. she watched it burn. the little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shrivelled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney. when they left tostes in the month of march, madame bovary was pregnant. part ii. i. a new field. yonville-l'abbaye (so called from an old capuchin abbey of which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from rouen, between the abbeville and beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the rieule, a little river that runs into the andelle after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on sundays. we leave the highroad at la boissière and keep straight on to the top of the leux hill, whence the valley is seen. the river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies,--all on the left is pasture land, all on the right arable. the meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. the water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the color of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver. before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of argueil, with the steeps of the saint-jean hills scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain-tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the gray color of the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country. here we are on the confines of normandy, picardy, and the Île-de-france, a bastard land, whose language is without accent as its landscape is without character. it is there that they make the worst neufchâtel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints. up to there was no practicable road for getting to yonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of abbeville to that of amiens, and is occasionally used by the rouen wagoners on their way to flanders. yonville-l'abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet." instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. it is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the waterside. at the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. these, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds, and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. the thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. against the plaster wall, diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans, and the ground floors have at their door a small swing-gate, to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. but the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that partly block up the way. then across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a cupid, his finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons[ ] blaze upon the door. it is the notary's house, and the finest in the place. [footnote : the _panonceaux_ that have to be hung over the doors of notaries.--trans.] the church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. the little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast-high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. the church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of charles x. the wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its blue color. over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes. the daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "monsieur so-and-so's pew." and at the spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the sandwich islands; and, finally, a copy of the "holy family, presented by the minister of the interior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. the choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted. the market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of yonville. the town hall, constructed "from the designs of a paris architect," is a sort of greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. on the ground floor are three ionic columns, and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "charte" and holding in the other the scales of justice. but that which most attracts the eye is, opposite the lion d'or inn, the chemist's shop of monsieur homais. in the evening especially its argand lamp is lighted, and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of color; then across them, as if in bengal lights, is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. his house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "vichy, seltzer, barège waters, blood purifiers, raspail patent medicine, arabian racahout, darcet lozenges, regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," &c. and the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "homais, chemist." then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word "laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats "homais" in gold letters on a black ground. beyond this there is nothing to see at yonville. the street (the only one) a gunshot in length, and flanked by a few shops on either side, stops short at the turn of the highroad. if it is left on the right hand and the foot of the saint-jean hills followed, the cemetery is soon reached. at the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together toward the gate. the keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there. from year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials. "you live on the dead, lestiboudois!" the curé at last said to him one day. this grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally. since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at yonville. the tin tricolor flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linendraper's; the chemist's foetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane. on the evening when the bovarys were to arrive at yonville, widow lefrançois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. to-morrow was market-day. the meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. moreover, she had the boarders' meals to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in the small parlor were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which the spinach was being chopped. from the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls which the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks. a man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. his face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist. "artémise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! if only i knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! good heavens! those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front door! the 'hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. call polyte and tell him to put it up. only to think, monsieur homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider! why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand. "that wouldn't be much of a loss," replied monsieur homais. "you would buy another." "another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow. "since that one is coming to pieces, madame lefrançois. i tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! and besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. hazards aren't played now; everything is changed! one must keep pace with the times! just look at tellier!" the hostess reddened with vexation. the chemist went on: "you may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for poland or the sufferers from the lyons floods"-- "it isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "come, come, monsieur homais; as long as the 'lion d'or' exists people will come to it. we've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'café français' closed with a big placard on the shutters. change my billiard-table!" she went on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, i have slept six visitors! but that dawdler, hivert, doesn't come!" "are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?" "wait for him! and what about monsieur binet? as the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. he must always have his seat in the small parlor. he'd rather die than dine anywhere else. and so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! not like monsieur léon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. such a nice young man! never speaks a rough word!" "well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector." six o'clock struck. binet came in. he wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. he wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, gray trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big toes. not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin-rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois. he went to the small parlor, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, binet remained silent in his place near the stove. then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way. "it isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was alone with the landlady. "he never talks more," she replied. "last week two travelers in the cloth line were here--such clever chaps, who told such jokes in the evening, that i fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish and never said a word." "yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society man." "yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady. "parts!" replied monsieur homais; "he parts! in his own line it is possible," he added in a calmer tone. and he went on-- "ah! that a merchant, who has large connections, a juris-consult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, i can understand; such cases are cited in history. but at least it is because they are thinking of something. myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that i had put it behind my ear?" madame lefrançois just then went to the door to see if the "hirondelle" were not coming. she started. a man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. by the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic. "what can i do for you, monsieur le curé?" asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. "will you take something? a thimbleful of _cassis_? a glass of wine?" the priest declined very politely. he had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the ernemont convent, and after asking madame lefrançois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the angelus was ringing. when the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behavior just now very unbecoming. this refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe. the landlady took up the defense of her curé. "besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong." "bravo!" said the chemist. "now just send your daughters to confess to fellows with such a temperament! i, if i were the government, i'd have the priests bled once a month. yes, madame lefrançois, every month--a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals." "be quiet, monsieur homais. you are an infidel; you've no religion." the chemist answered: "i have a religion, my religion, and i even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. i adore god, on the contrary. i believe in the supreme being, in a creator, whatever he may be. i care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but i don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. for one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. my god! mine is the god of socrates, of franklin, of voltaire, and béranger! i am for the profession of faith of the 'savoyard vicar,' and the immortal principles of ' ! and i can't admit of an old boy of a god who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them." he ceased looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. but the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling. one could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at last the "hirondelle" stopped at the door. it was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and soiled their shoulders. the small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. it was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground. some of the inhabitants of yonville came out into the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. hivert did not know whom to answer. it was he who did the errands of the place in town. he went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hairdresser's, and all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the yards. an accident had delayed him. madame bovary's greyhound had run across the field. they had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to go on. emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused charles of this misfortune. monsieur lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long years. one, he said, had been told of who had come back to paris from constantinople. another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swam four rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town. ii. new friends. emma got out first, then félicité, monsieur lheureux, and a nurse, and they had to wake up charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in. homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away. when madame bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney. with the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. the flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gown, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. a great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door. on the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her silently. as he was a good deal bored at yonville, where he was a clerk at the notary's, monsieur guillaumin monsieur léon dupuis (it was he who was the second _habitué_ of the "lion d'or") frequently put back his dinner-hour in the hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. on the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a _tête-à-tête_ with binet. it was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlor where madame lefrançois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four. homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza; then turning to his neighbor-- "madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in our 'hirondelle.'" "that is true," replied emma; "but moving about always amuses me. i like change of place." "it is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same places." "if you were like me," said charles, "constantly obliged to be in the saddle"-- "but," léon went on, addressing himself to madame bovary, "nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added. "moreover," said the chemist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are well off, they pay pretty well. we have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our peasant dwellings. ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, monsieur bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. the climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. the thermometer (i have made some observations) falls in winter to degrees and in the hottest season rises to or degrees centigrade at the outside, which gives us degrees réaumur as the maximum, or otherwise degrees fahrenheit (english scale), not more. and, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the st. jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapors given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata,--this heat, i say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the seine, reach us sometimes all at once, like breezes from russia." "at any rate, you have some walks in the neighborhood?" continued madame bovary, speaking to the young man. "oh, very few," he answered. "there is a place they call la pâture, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. sometimes, on sundays, i go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset." "i think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but especially by the side of the sea." "oh, i adore the sea!" said monsieur léon. "and then, does it not seem to you," continued madame bovary, "that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?" "it is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued léon. "a cousin of mine who traveled in switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. one sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and i no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing site." "you play?" she asked. "no, but i am very fond of music," he replied. "ah! don't you listen to him, madame bovary," interrupted homais, bending over his plate. "that's sheer modesty. why, my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing 'l'ange gardien' ravishingly. i heard you from the laboratory. you gave it like an actor." léon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's, where he had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the place. he blushed at the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of yonville. he was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known exactly, and "there was the tuvache household," who made a good deal of show. emma continued, "and what music do you prefer?" "oh, german music; that which makes you dream." "have you been to the opera?" "not yet; but i shall go next year, when i am living at paris to finish reading for the bar." "as i had the honor of putting it to your husband," said the chemist, "with regard to this poor yanoda who has run away, you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the most comfortable houses of yonville. its greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the walk, where one can go in and out unseen. moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, etc. he was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. at the end of the garden, by the side of the water, he had an arbor built just for the purpose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be able"-- "my wife doesn't care about it," said charles; "although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading." "like me," replied léon. "and indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?" "what, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him. "one thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. it mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes." "that is true! that is true!" she said. "has it ever happened to you," léon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?" "i have experienced it," she replied. "that is the reason why," he said, "i especially love the poets. i think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." "still in the long run it is tiring," continued emma. "now i, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. i detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature." "in fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart, it seems to me, the true end of art. it is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. for myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but yonville affords so few resources." "like tostes, no doubt," replied emma; "and so i always subscribed to a lending library." "if madame will do me the honor of making use of it," said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, "i have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, voltaire, rousseau, delille, walter scott, the 'echo des feuilletons;' and in addition i receive various periodicals, among them the 'fanal de rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of buchy, forges, neufchâtel, yonville and vicinity." for two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant artémise, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks. unconsciously, léon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which madame bovary was sitting. she wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out from it. thus, side by side, while charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed center of a common sympathy. the paris theaters, titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; tostes, where she had lived, and yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner. when coffee was served félicité went away to get ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. madame lefrançois was asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting to show monsieur and madame bovary the way home. bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. when he had taken in his other hand the curé's umbrella, they started. the town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was all gray as on a summer's night. but as the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company dispersed. as soon as she entered the passage, emma felt the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. the walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. in their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows. she could catch glimpses of tree-tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. in the middle of the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the floor,--the two men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly. this was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. the first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her arrival at tostes; the third, at vaubyessard; and this was the fourth. and each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. she did not believe that things could present themselves in the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better. iii. added cares. the next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the place. she had on a dressing-gown. he looked up and bowed. she nodded quickly and reclosed the window. léon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but monsieur binet, already at table. the dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." how then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could not have said so well before? he was usually shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation. at yonville he was considered "well-bred." he listened to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. then he had some accomplishments; he painted in water-colors, could read the key of _g_, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards. monsieur homais respected him for his education; madame homais liked him for his good-nature, for he often took the little homaises into the garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoiled, and somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. besides the servant to look after them, they had justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of monsieur homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time as a servant. the chemist proved the best of neighbors. he gave madame bovary information as to the tradespeople, sent expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with lestiboudois, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funereal functions, looked after the principal gardens at yonville by the hour or the year, according to the taste of the customers. the need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it all. he had infringed the law of the th ventôse, year xi, article , which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practice medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, homais had been summoned to rouen to see the procureur of the king in his own private room; the magistrate receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. it was in the morning, before the court opened. in the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were shut. the chemist's ears tingled as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke: he saw the depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a café and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits. little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his back-parlor. but the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over monsieur bovary by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later, should he notice anything. so every morning homais brought him "the paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the doctor. charles was dull: patients did not come. he remained seated for hours without speaking, went into his consulting-room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing. then for diversion he employed himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. but money matters worried him. he had spent so much for repairs at tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two years. then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from tostes to yonville, without counting the plaster curé, who, falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavement of quincampoix! a pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. as the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the more. it was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. when from afar he saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to make her dance, and, half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. the idea of having begotten a child delighted him. now he wanted nothing. he knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity. emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. but not being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing anything. thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated. as charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively. she hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him george; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. a man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. but a woman is always hampered. at once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. she was confined on a sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was rising. "it is a girl!" said charles. she turned her head away and fainted. madame homais, as well as madame lefrançois of the lion d'or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. the chemist, as a man of discretion, offered only a few provisional felicitations through the half-open door. he wished to see the child, and thought it well made. while she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name for her daughter. first she went over all those that have italian endings, such as clara, louisa, amanda, atala; she liked galsuinde very well, and yseult or léocadie still better. charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; emma opposed this. they ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders. "monsieur léon," said the chemist, "with whom i was talking about it the other day, wonders you do not choose madeleine. it is very much in fashion just now." but madame bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a sinner. as to monsieur homais, he had a preference for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he baptized his four children. thus napoléon represented glory and franklin liberty; irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the french stage. for his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination and fanaticism. in this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. when he read the fine passages he was transported, but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown racine with both his hands and argue with him for a good quarter of an hour. at last emma remembered that at the château of vaubyessard she had heard the marchioness call a young lady berthe; from that moment this name was chosen; and as old rouault could not come, monsieur homais was requested to stand godfather. his gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marsh-mallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy, into the bargain, that he had come across in a cupboard. on the evening of the ceremony there was a grand dinner; the curé was present; there was much excitement. monsieur homais toward liqueur-time began singing "le dieu des bonnes gens." monsieur léon sang a barcarolle, and madame bovary, senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the empire; finally, m. bovary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. this mockery of the first of the sacraments made the abbé bournisien angry; old bovary replied by a quotation from "la guerre des dieux;" the curé wished to leave; the ladies implored, homais interfered; and they succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer. monsieur bovary, senior, stayed at yonville a month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the lion d'or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne. the latter did not at all dislike his company. he had knocked about the world, he talked about berlin, vienna, and strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "charles, look out for yourself." then madame bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. monsieur bovary was not the man to respect anything. one day emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and without looking at the almanac to see whether the six weeks of the virgin were yet passed, she set out for the rollets' house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the highroad and the fields. it was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed, and the slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of their gables. a heavy wind was blowing; emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest. at this moment monsieur léon came out from a neighboring door with a bundle of papers under his arm. he came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of lheureux's shop under the projecting gray awning. madame bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was beginning to grow tired. "if--" said léon, not daring to go on. "have you any business to attend to?" she asked. and on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. that same evening this was known in yonville, and madame tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "madame bovary was compromising herself." to get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. they were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. through openings in the hedges one could see into the huts, some pig on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. the two, side by side, walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air. they recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. low, and covered with brown tiles, outside it hung, beneath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuces, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen, were spread over the hedge. at the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. with her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country. "go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep." the room on the ground floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. in the corner behind the door, shining hobnailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a _matthieu laensberg_ lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gun-flints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs. emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. she took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro. léon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. madame bovary reddened, he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. then she put back the baby girl, who had just vomited over her frock. the nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show. "she gives me other doses," she said; "i am always a-washing of her. if you would have the goodness to order camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap; it would really be more convenient for you, as i needn't trouble you then." "very well! very well!" said emma. "good morning, madame rollet," and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door. the good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights. "i'm that worn out sometimes as i drop asleep on my chair. i'm sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a month, and i'd take it of a morning with some milk." after submitting to her thanks, madame bovary left. she had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned round. it was the nurse. "what is it?" then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year that the captain-- "oh, be quick!" said emma. "well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "i'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone; you know men--" "but you are to have some," emma repeated; "i will give you some. you bother me!" "oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see, in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. he even says that cider weakens him." "do make haste, mère rollet!" "well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and i'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue." once rid of the nurse, emma again took monsieur léon's arm. she walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvet collar. his brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. she noticed his nails, which were longer than one wore them at yonville. it was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing-desk. they returned to yonville by the waterside. in the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to its foot the garden walls, whence a few steps led to the river. it flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the top of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with thin legs crawled or rested. the sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their gray backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. it was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of emma's skirts rustling around her. the walls of the gardens, with pieces of bottle on their coping, were as hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade madame bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk. they were talking of a troupe of spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the rouen theatre. "are you going?" she asked. "if i can," he answered. had they nothing else to say to one another? yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases they felt the same languor stealing over them both. it was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know. in one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. she often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on the stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water. when they arrived in front of her garden, madame bovary opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared. léon returned to his office. his chief was away; he just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went out. he went to la pâture at the top of the argueil hills at the beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and gazed at the sky through his fingers. "how bored i am!" he said to himself, "how bored i am!" he thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with homais for a friend and monsieur guillaumin for master. the latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff english manner, which in the beginning had impressed the clerk. as to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for others' woes, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown. and what else was there? binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the curé, and, finally, monsieur tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions. but from the general background of all these human faces emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss. in the beginning he had called on her several times along with the druggist. charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and léon did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible. iv. silent homage. when the first cold days set in emma left her bedroom for the sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the looking-glass. seated in her armchair near the window, she could see the villagers pass along the pavement. twice a day léon went from his office to the lion d'or. emma could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without turning his head. but in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past. she would get up and order the table to be laid. monsieur homais called at dinner-time. skull-cap in hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase, "good evening, everybody." then, when he had taken his seat at table between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter consulted him as to the probability of their payment. next they talked of what was in the paper. homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred in france or abroad. but the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him. sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning. he talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. moreover, homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the last inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of preserving cheeses and of curing sick wines. at eight o'clock justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop. then monsieur homais gave him a sly look, especially if félicité was there, for he had noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house. "the young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil take me if i don't believe he's in love with your servant!" but a more serious fault with which he reproached justin was his constantly listening to conversation. on sunday, for example, one could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither madame homais had called him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the armchairs, and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too large. not many people came to these soirées at the chemist's, his scandal-mongering and political opinions having successively alienated various respectable persons from him. the clerk never failed to be there. as soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet madame bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow. first they played some hands at trente-et-un; next monsieur homais played écarté with emma; léon behind her gave her advice. standing up with his hands on the back of her chair, he saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. with every movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of her bodice was drawn up. from her turned-up hair a dark color fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. then her skirt fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out, full of folds, and reaching the floor. when léon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one. when the game of cards was over, the druggist and the doctor played dominoes, and emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of "l'illustration." she had brought her ladies' journal with her. léon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited for each other at the bottom of the pages. she often begged him to read her the verses; léon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. but the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. monsieur homais was strong at the game; he could beat charles and give him a double-six. then, the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were soon asleep. the fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot was empty, léon was still reading. emma listened to him, mechanically turning round the lamp-shade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dancers with their balancing-poles. léon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard. thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of books and of romances. monsieur bovary, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it. on his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax, and painted blue. this was an attention of the clerk's. he showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, léon bought some for madame bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the "hirondelle," pricking his fingers with their stiff hairs. she had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the pots. the clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers at their windows. of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for on sundays, from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of a garret the profile of monsieur binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard at the lion d'or. one evening on coming home léon found in his room a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. he called madame homais, monsieur homais, justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one wished to see this rug. why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? it looked queer. they decided that she must be in love with him. he made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and of her wit; so much so, that binet once roughly answered him: "what does it matter to me since i'm not in her set?" he tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and, always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred. often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in emma's presence, and when charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighborhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. her husband, was he not something belonging to her? as to emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. she did not know that on the terraces of houses lakes are formed when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in its wall. v. smothered flames. it was a sunday in february, an afternoon when the snow was falling. they had all, monsieur and madame bovary, homais, and monsieur léon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and half from yonville. the druggist had taken napoléon and athalie to give them some exercise, and justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder. nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. a great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and stones, were a few brake-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. the building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. attached to the top-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricolored ribbons in the wind. homais was talking. he explained to the company the future importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as monsieur binet possessed for his own special use. emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale splendor. she turned. charles was there. his cap was drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer. while she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, léon made a step forward. the cold that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to emma more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored. "wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist. and he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. at the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed napoléon began to roar, while justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. but a knife was wanted; charles offered his. "ah!" she said to herself, "he carries a knife in his pocket like a peasant." the hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to yonville. in the evening madame bovary did not go to her neighbor's, and when charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison recurred with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. looking from her bed at the clear fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down there, léon standing up with one hand bending his cane, and with the other holding athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. she thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss-- "yes, charming! charming! is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but with whom? with me?" all the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. the flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms. then began the eternal lamentation: "oh, if heaven had but willed it! and why not? what prevented it?" when charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening. "monsieur léon," he said, "went to his room early." she could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a new delight. the next day, at dusk, she received a visit from monsieur lheureux, the draper. he was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. born a gascon but bred a norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the cauchois. his fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. no one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar, said some, a banker at routot, according to others. what was certain was, that he made complex calculations in his head that would have frightened binet himself. polite to obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who invites. after leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without gaining her confidence. a poor shop like his was not made to attract a "fashionable lady;" he emphasized the words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly four times a month. he was connected with the best houses. you could speak of him at the "trois frères," at the "barbe d'or," or at the "grand sauvage;" all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. to-day, then, he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. and he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered collars from the box. madame bovary examined them. "i do not require anything," she said. then monsieur lheureux delicately exhibited three algerian scarves, several packets of english needles, a pair of straw slippers, and, finally, four eggcups in cocoa-nut wood, carved in open-work by convicts. then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid these goods. from time to time, as if to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little stars. "how much are they?" "a mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. but there's no hurry; whenever it's convenient. we are not jews." she reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining monsieur lheureux's offer. he replied quite unconcernedly: "very well. we shall understand each other by and by. i have always got on with ladies--if i didn't with my own!" emma smiled. "i wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that it isn't the money i should trouble about. why, i could give you some, if need be." she made a gesture of surprise. "ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "i shouldn't have to go far to find you some, rely on that." and he began asking after père tellier, the proprietor of the "café français," whom monsieur bovary was then attending. "what's the matter with père tellier? he coughs so that he shakes his whole house, and i'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel vest. he was such a rake as a young man! that sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. still it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off." and while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's patients. "it's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor, "that causes these illnesses. i, too, don't feel the thing. one of these days i shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain i have in my back. well, good-bye, madame bovary. at your service; your very humble servant." and he closed the door gently. emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with her. "how good i was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves. she heard some steps on the stairs. it was léon. she got up and took from the chest of drawers the first of a pile of dusters to be hemmed. when he came in she seemed very busy. the conversation languished; madame bovary gave it up every few minutes, while he himself seemed quite embarrassed. seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. she stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. she did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech. "poor fellow!" she thought. "how have i displeased her?" he asked himself. at last, however, léon said that he should have, one of these days, to go to rouen on some office business. "your music subscription is out; am i to renew it?" "no," she replied. "why?" "because--" and pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of gray thread. this work irritated léon. it seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers. a gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it. "then you are giving it up?" he went on. "what?" she asked hurriedly. "music? ah! yes! have i not my house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?" she looked at the clock. charles was late. then she affected anxiety. two or three times she even repeated, "he is so good!" the clerk was fond of monsieur bovary. but this tenderness in his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up his praises, which he said every one was singing, especially the chemist. "ah! he is a good fellow," continued emma. "certainly," replied the clerk. and he began talking of madame homais, whose very untidy appearance generally made them laugh. "what does it matter?" interrupted emma. "a good housewife does not trouble about her appearance." then she relapsed into silence. it was the same on the following days; her talk, her manners, everything changed. she took interest in the house-work, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity. she took berthe from nurse. when visitors called, félicité brought her in, and madame bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. she declared she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outbursts which would have reminded any one but the yonville people of sachette in "nôtre dame de paris." when charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire. his waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the nightcaps arranged in piles of the same height. she no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when léon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his armchair to kiss his forehead: "what madness!" he said to himself. "and how to reach her!" and thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. but by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. to him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. it was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices. emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. with her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? she was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. the others even did not escape from this seduction. the chemist said-- "she is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a sub-prefecture." the housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the poor her charity. but she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. that dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted heart, of whose torment those chaste lips said nothing. she was in love with léon, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease delight in his image. the sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness of this meditation. emma thrilled at the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended in sorrow. léon did not know that when he left her in despair, she rose after he had gone to see him in the street. she concerned herself about his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find an excuse for going to his room. the chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centred upon this house, like the "lion d'or" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white wings in its gutters. but the more emma recognized her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. she would have liked léon to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this. what restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. she thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. then pride, the joy of being able to say to herself, "i am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making. then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion, all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasions for it. she was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home. what exasperated her was that charles did not seem to notice her anguish. his conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. for whose sake, then, was she virtuous? was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that buckled her in on all sides? on him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation between them. her own gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tendernesses to adulterous desires. she would have liked charles to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. she was surprised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed. yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. she was seized with the temptation to flee somewhere with léon to try a new life; but at once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul. "besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "what is to become of me? what help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?" she was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with flowing tears. "why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in during these crises. "it is the nerves," said emma. "do not speak to him of it; it would worry him." "ah! yes," félicité went on, "you are just like la guérine, père guérin's daughter, the fisherman at pollet, that i used to know at dieppe before i came to you. she was so sad, so sad, that to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. when she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the seashore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. then, after her marriage, it went off, they say." "but with me," replied emma, "it was after marriage that it began." vi. spiritual counsel. one evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the angelus ringing. it was the beginning of april, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fêtes. through the bars of the arbor and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. the evening vapors rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. in the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation. with this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. she remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. she would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stiff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-dieu. at mass on sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, inclined to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it. on the place she met lestiboudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labor, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the angelus to suit his own convenience. besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour. already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the cemetery. others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. this was the only green spot. all the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom. the children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure made for them. the shouts of their voices could be heard through the humming of the bell. this grew less and less with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. at the end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. its light from a distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. a long ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners. "where is the curé?" asked madame bovary of one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it. "he is just coming," he answered. and in fact the door of the presbytery grated; abbé bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church. "these young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!" then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with his foot, "they respect nothing!" but as soon as he caught sight of madame bovary, "excuse me," he said; "i did not recognize you." he thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers. the light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, ravelled at the hem. grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. he had just dined, and was breathing noisily. "how are you?" he added. "not well," replied emma; "i am ill." "well, and so am i," answered the priest. "these first warm days weaken one most remarkably, don't they? but, after all, we are born to suffer, as st. paul says. but what does monsieur bovary think of it?" "he!" she said with a gesture of contempt. "what!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe something for you?" "ah!" said emma, "it is no earthly remedy i need." but the curé from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards. "i should like to know--" she went on. "you look out, riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "i'll warm your ears, you imp!" then turning to emma. "he's boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. and so sometimes for a joke i call him _ri_boudet (like the road one takes to go to maromme), and i even say '_mon_ riboudet.' ha! ha! '_mont_ riboudet.' the other day i repeated that jest to monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it. and how is monsieur bovary?" she seemed not to hear him. and he went on: "always very busy, no doubt; for he and i are certainly the busiest people in the parish. but he is doctor of the body," he added with a thick laugh, "and i of the soul." she fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "yes," she said, "you solace all sorrows." "ah! don't talk to me of it, madame bovary. this morning i had to go to bas-diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell. all their cows, i don't know how it is--but pardon me! longuemarre and boudet! bless me! will you leave off?" and with a bound he ran into the church. the boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional. but the priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them. seizing them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there. "yes," said he, when he returned to emma, unfolding his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are much to be pitied." "others, too," she replied. "assuredly. town-laborers, for example." "it is not they--" "pardon! i've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, i assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread." "but those," replied emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she spoke, "those, monsieur le curé, who have bread and have no--" "fire in the winter," said the priest. "oh, what does that matter?" "what! what does it matter? it seems to me that when one has firing and food--for, after all--" "my god! my god!" she sighed. "do you feel unwell?" he asked, approaching her anxiously. "it is indigestion, no doubt? you must get home, madame bovary; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a little moist sugar." "why?" and she looked like one awaking from a dream. "well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. i thought you felt faint." then, bethinking himself, "but you were asking me something? what was it? i really don't remember." "i? nothing! nothing!" repeated emma. and the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the cassock. they looked at one another face to face without speaking. "then, madame bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you know; i must look after my good-for-nothings. the first communion will soon be upon us, and i fear we shall be behind after all. so after ascension day i keep them _recta_ an extra hour every wednesday. poor children! one cannot lead them too soon into the path of the lord, as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his divine son. good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband." and he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached the door. emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two hands half-open behind him. then she turned on her heel with one movement, like a statue on a pivot, and went homewards. but the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her. "are you a christian?" "yes, i am a christian?" "what is a christian?" "he who, being baptized--baptized--baptized--" she went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an armchair. the whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations. the furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. the fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. but little berthe was there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her apron-strings. "leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand. the little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron. "leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably. her face frightened the child, who began to scream. "will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow. berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting against it her cheek, which began to bleed. madame bovary sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might, and she was just going to curse herself when charles appeared. it was the dinner-hour; he had come home. "look, dear!" said emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down while she was playing, and has hurt herself." charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for some sticking plaster. madame bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to remain alone to look after the child. then, watching her sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little. berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed. her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. big tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely. "it is very strange," thought emma, "how ugly this child is!" when at eleven o'clock charles came back from the chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle. "i assure you it's nothing," he said, kissing her on the forehead. "don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill." he had stayed a long time at the chemist's. although he had not seemed much moved, homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to "keep up his spirits." then they had talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. madame homais knew something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her good parents took no end of trouble for her. the knives were not sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows and strong bars across the fireplace; the little homaises, in spite of their spirit, could not stir without some one watching them; at the slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded head-protectors. this, it is true, was a fancy of madame homais's; her husband was inwardly afflicted at it. fearing the possible consequences of such compression to the intellectual organs, he even went so far as to say to her, "do you want to make caribs or botocudos of them?" charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation. "i should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him. "can he suspect anything?" léon asked himself. his heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises. at last, charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what would be the price at rouen of a fine daguerreotype. it was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his portrait in a frock-coat. but he wanted first to know how much it would be. the inquiries would not put monsieur léon out, since he went to town almost every week. why? monsieur homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom of it, an intrigue. but he was mistaken. léon was after no love-making. he was sadder than ever, as madame lefrançois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. to find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. binet answered roughly that he wasn't paid by the police. all the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for léon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely of life. "it's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector. "what recreation?" "if i were you i'd have a lathe." "but i don't know how to turn," answered the clerk. "ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction. léon was weary of loving without any result; moreover, he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. he was so bored with yonville and the yonvillers, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him. this apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. as he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? what prevented him? and he began making home preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. he furnished in his head an apartment. he would lead an artist's life there! he would take lessons on the guitar! he would have a dressing-gown, a basque cap, blue velvet slippers! he even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's-head on the guitar above them. the difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable. even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. taking a middle course, then, léon looked for some place as second clerk at rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at paris immediately. she consented. he did not hurry. every day for a month hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from yonville to rouen and from rouen to yonville; and when léon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three armchairs restuffed, bought a stock of cravats, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage round the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation. when the moment for the farewells had come, madame homais wept, justin sobbed; homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking léon to rouen in his carriage. the latter had just time to bid farewell to monsieur bovary. when he reached the head of the stairs he stopped, he was so out of breath. on his coming in, madame bovary rose hurriedly. "it is i again!" said léon. "i was sure of it!" she bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. she remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot. "the doctor is not here?" he went on. "he is out." she repeated, "he is out." then there was silence. they looked one at the other, and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts. "i should like to kiss berthe," said léon. emma went down a few steps and called félicité. he threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the brackets, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. but she returned, and the servant brought berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downward at the end of a string. léon kissed her several times on the neck. "good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!" and he gave her back to her mother. "take her away," she said. they remained alone--madame bovary, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; léon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh. "it is going to rain," said emma. "i have a cloak," he answered. "ah!" she turned round, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. the light fell on it as on a piece of marble to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what emma was seeing in the horizon or what she was thinking within herself. "well, good-bye," he sighed. she raised her head with a quick movement. "yes, good-bye--go!" they advanced toward each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated. "in the english fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh. léon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared. when he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. he thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds, that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. léon set off running. from afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. homais and monsieur guillaumin were talking. they were waiting for him. "embrace me," said the chemist with tears in his eyes. "here is your coat, my good friend. mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself." "come, léon, jump in," said the notary. homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs, uttered these three sad words: "a pleasant journey!" "good-night," said monsieur guillaumin. "give him his head." they set out, and homais went back. * * * * * madame bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched the clouds. they were gathering round the sunset on the side of rouen, and swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. but a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves. then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia. "ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought. monsieur homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner. "well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!" "so it seems," replied the doctor. then turning on his chair: "any news at home?" "nothing much. only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. you know women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. and we should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours." "poor léon!" said charles. "how will he live at paris? will he get used to it?" madame bovary sighed. "get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "the outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly enough, i assure you." "i don't think he'll go wrong," objected bovary. "nor do i," said monsieur homais quickly; "although he'll have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a jesuit. and you don't know what a life those dogs lead in the latin quarter with actresses. besides, students are thought a great deal of at paris. provided they have a few accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even ladies of the faubourg saint-germain who fall in love with them, which subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches." "but," said the doctor, "i fear for him that down there--" "you are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the medal. and one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket there. thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. an individual presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, whom any one would take for a diplomatist. he approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. then you become more intimate; he takes you to a café, invites you to his country-house, introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into some pernicious step." "that is true," said charles; "but i was thinking especially of illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the provinces." emma shuddered. "because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. and then the water at paris, don't you know! the dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good soup. for my own part, i have always preferred plain living; it is more healthful. so when i was studying pharmacy at rouen, i boarded in a boardinghouse; i dined with the professors." and thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal likings, until justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted. "not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! i can't go out for a minute! like a plough-horse, i have always to be moiling and toiling. what drudgery!" then, when he was at the door, "by the way, do you know the news?" "what news?" "that it is very likely," homais went on, raising his eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious expressions, "that the agricultural meeting of the seine-inférieure will be held this year at yonville-l'abbaye. the rumor, at all events, is going the round. this morning the paper alluded to it. it would be of the utmost importance for our district. but we'll talk it over later on. i can see, thank you; justin has the lantern." vii. a woman's whims. the next day was a dreary one for emma. every thing seemed to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulphed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. it was that reverie which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on. as on the return from vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. léon reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. though separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to hold his shadow. she could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. the river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery banks. they had often walked there to the murmur of the waves, over the moss-covered pebbles. how bright the sun had been! what happy afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! he read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbor. ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy. why had she not seized this happiness when it came to her? why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with both knees, when it was about to flee from her? and she cursed herself for not having loved léon. she thirsted for his lips. the wish took possession of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, "it is i; i am yours." but emma recoiled beforehand at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret, became only the more acute. henceforth the memory of léon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire travelers leave on the snow of a russian steppe. she sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything that could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined, her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost hopes, the domestic tête-à-tête,--she gathered it all up, took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy. the flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up too much. love, little by little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. in the supineness of her conscience she even took her repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her. then the evil days of tostes began again. she thought herself now far more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty that it would not end. a woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself certain whims. she bought a gothic prie-dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of lheureux's finest scarves, and wore it knotted round her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch in this garb. she often changed her coiffure; she did her hair _à la chinoise_, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted it on one side and rolled it under like a man's. she wished to learn italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a supply of white paper. she tried serious reading, history, and philosophy. sometimes in the night charles woke up with a start, thinking he was being called to a patient. "i'm coming," he stammered; and it was the noise of a match emma had struck to relight the lamp. but her reading fared like her pieces of embroidery, all of which, only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to other books. she had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any folly. she maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as charles was stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop. in spite of her vaporish airs (as the housewives of yonville called them), emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. she was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. after discovering three gray hairs on her temples, she talked much of her old age. she often fainted. one day she even spat blood, and, as charles fussed round her showing his anxiety-- "bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?" charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table, sitting in an armchair at his bureau under the phrenological head. then he wrote to his mother to beg her to come, and they had many long consultations together on the subject of emma. what should they decide? what was to be done since she rejected all medical treatment? "do you know what your wife wants?" replied madame bovary, senior. "she wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. if she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have these vapors, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in which she lives." "yet she is always busy," said charles. "ah! always busy at what? reading novels, bad books, works against religion, in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from voltaire. but all that leads you far astray, my poor child. any one who has no religion always ends by turning out badly." so they decided to stop emma from reading novels. the enterprise did not seem easy. the good lady undertook it. she was, when she passed through rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that emma had discontinued her subscription. would they not have a right to apply to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? the farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. during the three weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in the evening before going to bed. madame bovary left on a wednesday, the market-day at yonville. the place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses from the church to the inn. on the other side there were canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind. the coarse hardware was spread out on the ground between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw stuck out. near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks through the bars of flat cages. the people, crowding in the same place and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the shop-front of the chemist. on wednesdays his shop was never empty, and the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations, so great was homais's reputation in the neighboring villages. his robust aplomb had fascinated the rustics. they considered him a greater doctor than all the doctors. emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. the window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, and she amused herself with watching the crowd of boors, when she saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. he had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant walking with bent head and quite a thoughtful air. "can i see the doctor?" he asked justin, who was talking on the doorsteps with félicité, and, taking him for a servant of the house: "tell him that monsieur rodolphe boulanger of la huchette is here." it was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of la huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known. la huchette, in fact, was an estate near yonville, where he had just bought the château and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however, troubling very much about them. he lived as a bachelor, and was supposed to have at least fifteen thousand francs a year. charles came into the room. monsieur boulanger introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over." "that'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning. so bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked justin to hold it. then addressing the countryman, already pale-- "don't be afraid, my lad." "no, no, sir," said the other; "get on." and with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. at the prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass. "hold the basin nearer," exclaimed charles. "lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain flowing. how red my blood is! that's a good sign isn't it?" "sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution like this man." at these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between his fingers. a shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. his hat fell off. "i thought as much," said bovary, pressing his finger on the vein. the basin was beginning to tremble in justin's hands; his knees shook, he turned pale. "emma! emma!" called charles. with one bound she came down the staircase. "some vinegar," he cried. "o dear! two at once!" and in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress. "it is nothing," said monsieur boulanger quietly, taking justin in his arms. he seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall. madame bovary began taking off his cravat. the strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers about the young fellow's neck. then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly. the ploughman revived, but justin's syncope still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in their pale sclerotic like blue flowers in milk. "we must hide this from him," said charles. madame bovary took the basin to put it under the table. with the movement she made in bending down, her skirt (it was a summer frock with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the room; and as emma, stooping, staggered a little as she stretched out her arms, the stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust. then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. the servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. seeing his pupil with his eyes open he drew a long breath; then going round him he looked at him from head to foot. "fool!" he said, "really a little fool! a fool in four letters! a phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! and a fellow who isn't afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts. oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about yourself! here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile." justin did not answer. the chemist went on-- "who asked you to come? you are always pestering the doctor and madame. on wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. there are now twenty people in the shop. i left everything because of the interest i take in you. come, get along! sharp! wait for me, and keep an eye on the jars." when justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a little while about fainting-fits. madame bovary said she had never fainted. "that is extraordinary for a lady," said monsieur boulanger; "but some people are very susceptible. thus, in a duel, i have seen a second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols." "for my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would make me faint, if i reflected upon it too much." monsieur boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over. "it procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added, and he looked at emma as he said this. then he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out. he was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to la huchette), and emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects. "she is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this doctor's wife. fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a parisienne's. where the devil does she come from? wherever did this fat fellow pick her up?" monsieur rodolphe boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them well. this one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband. "i think he is very stupid. she is tired of him, no doubt. he has dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. while he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks. and she gets bored! she would like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. poor little woman! she is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table. with three words of gallantry she'd adore one, i'm sure of it. she'd be tender, charming! yes; but how get rid of her afterwards?" then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by contrast think of his mistress. she was an actress at rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated-- "ah! madame bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher. virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. she is so finikin with her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns." the fields were empty, and around him rodolphe heard only the regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with the cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. he again saw emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her. "oh, i will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him. and he at once began to consider the political part of the enterprise. he asked himself-- "where shall we meet? by what means? we shall always be having the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of worries. pshaw! one would lose too much time over it." then he resumed, "she really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a gimlet. and that pale complexion; i adore pale women!" when he reached the top of the argueil hills he had made up his mind. "it's only finding the opportunities. well, i will call in now and then. i'll send them venison, poultry; i'll have myself bled, if need be. we shall become friends; i'll invite them to my place. by jove!" added he, "there's the agricultural show coming on. she'll be there. i shall see her. we'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way." viii. a village festival. at last it came, the famous agricultural show. on the morning of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the preparations. the pediment of the townhall had been hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the middle of the place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained prizes. the national guard of buchy (there was none at yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom binet was captain. on that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into his legs; which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement. as there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. one saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and repass alternately; there was no end to it, and it continually began again. there had never been such a display of pomp. several citizens had washed down their houses the evening before; tricolored flags hung from half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the colored neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with their motley colors the somber monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. the neighboring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses, pulled out a long pin that fastened round them their skirts, turned up for fear of mud; the husbands, on the contrary, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs round them, holding one corner between their teeth. the crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village. people poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see the fête. what was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a platform on which the authorities were to sit. besides this there were against the four columns of the townhall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters. on one was written, "to commerce;" on the other, "to agriculture;" on the third, "to industry;" and on the fourth, "to the fine arts." but the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of madame lefrançois, the innkeeper. standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, "what rubbish! what rubbish! with their canvas booth! do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? they call all this fussing doing good to the place! then it wasn't worth while sending to neufchâtel for the keeper of a cookshop! and for whom? for cowherds! tatterdemalions!" the chemist was passing. he had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown. "your servant! excuse me, i am in a hurry." and as the fat widow asked where he was going-- "it seems odd to you, doesn't it, to see me, who am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese, taking a holiday?" "what cheese?" asked the landlady. "oh, nothing! nothing!" homais continued. "i merely wished to convey to you, madame lefrançois, that i usually live at home like a recluse. to-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--" "oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously. "yes, i am going," replied the chemist, astonished. "am i not a member of the consulting commission?" mère lefrançois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying with a smile: "that's another pair of shoes! but what does agriculture matter to you? do you understand anything about it?" "certainly i understand it, since i am a druggist,--that is to say, a chemist. and the object of chemistry, madame lefrançois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. and, in fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, i ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?" the landlady did not answer. homais went on: "do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? it is necessary rather to know the composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. and one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticise the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of the domestics. and, moreover, madame lefrançois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements." the landlady never took her eyes off the "café français," and the chemist went on: "would to god our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science. thus, lately i myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of more than seventy-two pages, entitled, 'cider, its manufacture and its effects, together with some new reflections on this subject,' that i sent to the agricultural society of rouen, and which even procured me the honor of being received among its members--section, agriculture; class, pomological. well, if my work had been given to the public--" but the druggist stopped, madame lefrançois seemed so preoccupied. "just look at them!" she said. "it's past comprehension! such a cookshop as that!" and with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "well, it won't last long," she added; "it'll be over before a week." homais drew back with stupefaction. she came down three steps and whispered in his ear: "what! you didn't know it? there'll be an execution in next week. it's lheureux who is selling him up; he has killed him with bills." "what a terrible catastrophe!" cried the chemist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances. then the landlady began telling him this story, that she had heard from théodore, monsieur guillaumin's servant, and although she detested telher, she blamed lheureux. he was "a wheedler, a sneak." "there!" she said. "look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to madame bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. why, she's taking monsieur boulanger's arm." "madame bovary!" exclaimed homais. "i must go at once and pay her my respects. perhaps she'd be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle." and, without heeding madame lefrançois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing exuberantly right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind. rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but madame bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone: "it's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist." she pressed his elbow. "what's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. and he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. it stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the leaves of reeds. her eyes with their long curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheekbones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. a pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. her head leaned towards her shoulder, and the pearly tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips. "is she making fun of me?" thought rodolphe. emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for monsieur lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter into the conversation. "what a superb day! everybody is out! the wind is east!" and neither madame bovary nor rodolphe answered him, while at the slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "i beg your pardon!" and raised his hat. when they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up to the fence, rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him madame bovary. he called out: "good evening, monsieur lheureux! see you again presently." "how you got rid of him!" she said, laughing. "why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? and as to-day i have the happiness of being with you----" emma blushed. he did not finish his sentence. then he talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. a few daisies had sprung up again. "here are some pretty easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." he added, "shall i pick some? what do you think?" "are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little. "h'm, h'm! who knows?" answered rodolphe. the meadow began to fill, and the housewives, hustled one with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. one had often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who smelled of milk when one passed close to them. they walked along holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent. but this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks. the beasts were there, their noses toward the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps. drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils, looking toward the mares. these stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then came and sucked them. and above the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. a child in rags was holding him by a rope. between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. one who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he walked along. this was the president of the jury, monsieur derozerays de la panville. as soon as he recognized rodolphe he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said: "what! monsieur boulanger, you are deserting us?" rodolphe protested that he was just coming. but when the president had disappeared: "_ma foi!_" said he, "i shall not go. your company is better than his." and while poking fun at the show, rodolphe, to move about more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast which madame bovary did not at all admire. he noticed this and began jeering at the yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apologized for the negligence of his own. he had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of gray ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. these were so polished that they reflected the grass. he trampled on horses' dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one side. "besides," added he, "when one lives in the country----" "it's waste of time," said emma. "that is true," replied rodolphe. "to think that not one of these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!" then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there. "and i too," said rodolphe, "am drifting into depression." "you!" she said in astonishment; "i thought you very light-hearted." "ah! yes. i seem so, because in the midst of the world i know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have i not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!" "oh! and your friends?" she said. "you do not think of them." "my friends! what friends? have i any? who cares for me?" and he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips. but they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. he was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. it was lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs about among the people. alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. in fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelled of incense, and they lent against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration. madame bovary again took rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to himself: "yes, i have missed so many things. always alone! ah! if i had some aim in life, if i had met some love, if i had found some one! oh, how i would have spent all the energy of which i am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!" "yet it seems to me," said emma, "that you are not to be pitied." "ah! you think so?" said rodolphe. "for, after all," she went on, "you are free----" she hesitated, "rich----" "do not mock me," he replied. and she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell toward the village. it was a false alarm. the prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait. at last at the end of the place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses, whom a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. binet had only just time to shout, "present arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. all ran toward the enclosure; every one pushed forward. a few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment when the national guard and firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time. "present!" shouted binet. "halt!" shouted the colonel. "left about, march." and after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. then were seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. his eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. he recognized the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to come. he himself was a councilor at the prefecture; then he added a few apologies. monsieur tuvache answered them with compliments; the other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages, the national guard and the crowd. the councilor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast repeated his bows, while tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy and the honor that was being done to yonville. hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of the "lion d'or," where a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. the drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet armchairs that had been lent by madame tuvache. all these people looked alike. their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the color of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows. all the waistcoats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; every one rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of his trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of his heavy boots. the ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between the pillars, while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on chairs. as a matter of fact, lestiboudois had brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the church. he caused such confusion with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the platform. "i think," said monsieur lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his place, "that they ought to have put up two venetian masts with something rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty effect." "to be sure," replied homais; "but what can you expect? the mayor took everything on his own shoulders. he hasn't much taste. poor tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art." rodolphe, meanwhile, with madame bovary, had gone up to the first floor of the townhall, to the "council-room," and as it was empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. he fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other. there was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying. at last the councilor got up. they knew now that his name was lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. after he had collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began: "gentlemen! may i be permitted first of all (before addressing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment, will, i am sure, be shared by you all), may i be permitted, i say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentlemen, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts." "i ought," said rodolphe, "to get back a little further." "why?" said emma. but at this moment the voice of the councilor rose to an extraordinary pitch. he declaimed: "this is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations." "well, some one down there might see me," rodolphe resumed, "then i should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation----" "oh, you are slandering yourself," said emma. "no! it is dreadful, i assure you." "but, gentlemen," continued the councilor, "if, banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, i carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do i see there? everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. our great industrial centers have recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and france breathes once more!" "besides," added rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they are right." "how so?" she asked. "what!" said he. "do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? they need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies." then she looked at him as one looks at a traveler who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on: "we have not even this distraction, we poor women!" "a sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it." "but is it ever found?" she asked. "yes; one day it comes," he answered. "and this is what you have understood," said the councilor. "you farmers, agricultural laborers! you pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you men of progress and morality, you have understood, i say, that political storms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!" "it comes one day," repeated rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one is despairing of it. then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice cried, 'it is here!' you feel the need of confiding the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. there is no need for explanations; they understand one another. they have seen each other in dreams!" he looked at her. "in fine, here it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you. it glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from darkness into light!" and as he ended rodolphe suited the action to the word. he passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. then he let it fall on emma's. she took hers away. "and who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? he only who was so blind, so plunged (i do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural populations. where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? and, gentlemen, i do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty----" "ah! again!" said rodolphe. "always 'duty.' i am sick of the word. they are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'duty, duty!' ah! by jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us." "yet--yet----" objected madame bovary. "no, no! why cry out against the passions? are they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?" "but one must," said emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code." "ah! but there are two," he replied. "the small, the conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthy, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there. but the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us light." monsieur lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief. he continued: "and what should i do here, gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? who supplies our wants? who provides our means of subsistence? is it not the agriculturist? the agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. again, is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks in the pastures? for how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? and, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples? who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? but i should never end if i were to enumerate one after the other all the different products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother, lavishes upon her children. here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple-tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and to which i will more particularly call your attention." he had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his words. tuvache by his side listened to him with starting eyes. monsieur derozerays from time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son napoléon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. the chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval. the firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and binet, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. his lieutenant, the youngest son of monsieur tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. he smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness. the square as far as the houses was crowded with people. one saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors, and justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. in spite of the silence monsieur lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. it reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. in fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths. rodolphe had drawn nearer to emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly: "does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? is there a single sentiment it does not condemn? the noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend together. yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other. oh! no matter. sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other." his arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face toward emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. she noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelled the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. then a faintness came over her; she recalled the viscount who had waltzed with her at vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this hair an odor of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. but in making this movement, as she leaned back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence the "hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. it was in this yellow carriage that léon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. she fancied she saw him opposite at his window; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on the arm of the viscount, and that léon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of rodolphe's head by her side. this sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. she opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. she took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councilor intoning his phrases. he said: "continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in the hope of better success. and you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labor no government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices." monsieur lieuvain then sat down; monsieur derozerays got up, beginning another speech. his was not perhaps so florid as that of the councilor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. thus the praise of the government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. he showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilization. rodolphe with madame bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? monsieur derozerays set himself this problem. from magnetism little by little rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing cincinnatus and his plough, diocletian planting his cabbages, and the emperors of china inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence. "thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? what chance willed it? it was because across the infinite, like two streams that flow but to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us toward each other." and he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it. "for good farming generally!" cried the president. "just now, for example, when i went to your house." "to monsieur bizat of quincampoix." "did i know i should accompany you?" "seventy francs." "a hundred times i wished to go; and i followed you--i remained." "manures!" "and i shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!" "to monsieur caron of argueil, a gold medal!" "for i have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm." "to monsieur bain of givry-saint-martin." "and i shall carry away with me the remembrance of you." "for a merino ram!" "but you will forget me; i shall pass away like a shadow." "to monsieur belot of nôtre-dame." "oh, no! i shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall i not?" "porcine race; prizes--equal, to messrs. lehérissé and cullembourg, sixty francs!" rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that tries to fly away; but, whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure, she made a movement with her fingers. he exclaimed-- "oh, i thank you! you do not repulse me! you are good! you understand that i am yours! let me look at you; let me contemplate you!" a gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering. "use of oil-cakes," continued the president. he was hurrying on: "flemish manure--flax-growing--drainage--long leases--domestic service." rodolphe was no longer speaking. they looked at one another. a supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and softly, without an effort, their fingers intertwined. "catherine nicaise elizabeth leroux, of sassetot-la-guerrière, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value, twenty-five francs!" "where is catherine leroux?" repeated the councilor. she did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering: "go up!" "don't be afraid!" "oh, how stupid she is!" "well, is she there?" cried tuvache. "yes; here she is." "then let her come up!" then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. on her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. her pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple, and from the sleeves of her red jacket hung down two large hands with knotty joints. the dust of barns, the potash of washings, and the grease of wools had so incrusted, roughened, hardened these, that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. something of monastic rigidity dignified her face. nothing of sadness or of emotion weakened that pale look. in her constant living with animals she had caught their dumbness and their calm. it was the first time that she found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the councilor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at her. thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of servitude. "approach, venerable catherine nicaise elizabeth leroux!" said the councilor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president; and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he repeated in a fatherly tone: "approach! approach!" "are you deaf?" said tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began shouting in her ear, "fifty-four years of service. a silver medal! twenty-five francs! for you!" then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her muttering: "i'll give it to our curé up home, to say some masses for me!" "what fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary. the meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green crown on their horns. the national guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the townhall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. madame bovary took rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet. the feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under their weight. they ate hugely. each one stuffed himself on his own account. sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapor of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging lamps. rodolphe, leaning against the calico of the tent, was thinking so earnestly of emma that he heard nothing. behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates; his neighbors were talking; he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise. he was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future. he saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with her husband. madame homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and give some advice to binet. the pyrotechnic pieces sent to monsieur tuvache had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely. now and then a meager roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. emma silently nestled gently against charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns. they went out one by one. the stars shone out. a few drops of rain began to fall. she knotted her fichu round her bare head. at this moment the councilor's carriage came out from the inn. his coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces. "truly," said the chemist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against drunkenness! i should like to see written up weekly at the door of the townhall on a board _ad hoc_ the names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of need. but excuse me!" and he once more ran off to the captain. the latter was going back to see his lathe again. "perhaps you would not do ill," homais said to him, "to send one of your men, or to go yourself----" "leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "it's all right!" "do not be uneasy," said the chemist, when he returned to his friends. "monsieur binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. no sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. let us go to rest." "_ma foi!_ i want it," said madame homais, yawning at large. "but never mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fête." rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "oh, yes! very beautiful." and having bowed to one another, they separated. two days later, in the "fanal de rouen," there was a long article on the show. homais had composed it with _verve_ the very next morning. "why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? whither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?" then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. certainly the government was doing much, but not enough. "courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" then touching on the entry of the councilor, he did not forget "the martial air of our militia," nor "our most merry village maidens," nor the "bald-headed old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our immortal phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums." he cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that monsieur homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society. when he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "the father embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. more than one showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot. "about six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of monsieur leigeard brought together the principal personages of the fête. the greatest cordiality reigned here. divers toasts were proposed. monsieur lieuvain, the king; monsieur tuvache, the prefect; monsieur derozerays, agriculture; monsieur homais, industry and the fine arts, those twin sisters; monsieur leplichey, progress. in the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. one would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the 'thousand and one nights.' "let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." and he added: "only the absence of the clergy was remarked. no doubt the priests understand progress in another fashion. just as you please, messieurs the followers of loyola!" ix. a woodland idyll. six weeks passed. rodolphe did not come again. at last one evening he appeared. the day after the show he had said to himself: "we mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake." and at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. after the hunting he had thought he was too late, and then he reasoned thus: "if from the first day she loved me, she must, from impatience to see me again, love me more. let's go on with it!" and he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the room, he saw emma turn pale. she was alone. the day was drawing in. the small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral. rodolphe remained standing, and emma hardly answered his first conventional phrases. "i," he said, "have been busy. i have been ill." "seriously?" she cried. "well," said rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it was because i did not want to come back." "why?" "can you not guess?" he looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing. he went on: "emma!" "sir," she said, drawing back a little. "ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that i was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! madame bovary! why all the world calls you thus! besides it is not your name; it is the name of another!" he repeated, "of another!" and he hid his face in his hands. "yes, i think of you constantly. the memory of you drives me to despair. ah! forgive me! i will leave you! farewell! i will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--i know not what force impelled me toward you. for one does not struggle against heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable." it was the first time that emma had heard such words spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully at this glowing language. "but if i did not come," he continued, "if i could not see you, at least i have gazed long on all that surrounds you. at night--every night--i arose; i came hither; i watched your house, its roof glimmering in the moonlight, the trees in the garden before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!" she turned toward him with a sob. "oh, you are good!" she said. "no, i love you, that is all! you do not doubt that! tell me--one word--only one word!" and rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the floor; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and, he noticed the door of the room was not closed. "how kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humor a whim of mine." it was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and madame bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when charles came in. "good morning, doctor," rodolphe said to him. the doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obsequious phrases. of this the other took advantage to pull himself together a little. "madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health." charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. then rodolphe asked if riding would not be good. "certainly! excellent! just the thing! there's an idea! you ought to follow it up." and as she objected that she had no horse, monsieur rodolphe offered one. she refused his offer; he did not insist. then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness. "i'll call round," said bovary. "no, no! i'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient for you." "ah! very good! i thank you." and as soon as they were alone, "why don't you accept monsieur boulanger's kind offer?" she assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd. "well, what the deuce do i care for that?" said charles, making a pirouette. "health before everything! you are wrong." "and how do you think i can ride when i haven't got a habit?" "you must order one," he answered. the riding-habit decided her. when the habit was ready, charles wrote to monsieur boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature. the next day at noon rodolphe appeared at charles's door with two saddle-horses. one had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle. rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. in fact, emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. she was ready; she was waiting for him. justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also came out. he was giving monsieur boulanger a little good advice. "an accident happens so easily. be careful! your horses perhaps are mettlesome." she heard a noise above her; it was félicité drumming on the window-panes to amuse little berthe. the child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip. "a pleasant ride!" cried monsieur homais. "prudence! above all, prudence!" and he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear. as soon as he felt the ground, emma's horse set off at a gallop. rodolphe galloped by her side. now and then they exchanged a word. her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. at the bottom of the hill rodolphe gave his horse its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her. it was early in october. there was fog over the land. hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roofs of yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls, and the church steeple. emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. from the height on which they were, the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapor into the air. clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind. beside them, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. the earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them. rodolphe and emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. she turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy. the horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked. just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out. "god protects us!" said rodolphe. "do you think so?" she said. "forward! forward!" he continued. he "tchk'd" with his tongue. the two beasts set off at a trot. long ferns by the roadside caught in emma's stirrup. rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. at other times to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. the sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. there were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were gray, fawn, or golden colored, according to the nature of their leaves. often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amid the oaks. they dismounted. rodolphe fastened up the horses. she walked on in front on the moss between the paths. but her long habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and rodolphe, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness. she stopped. "i am tired," she said. "come, try again," he went on. "courage!" then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves. "but where are we going?" he did not answer. she was breathing irregularly. rodolphe looked round him biting his mustache. they came to a larger space where the coppice had been cut. they sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. he did not begin by frightening her with compliments. he was calm, serious, melancholy. emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. but at the words, "are not our destinies now one?----" "oh, no!" she replied. "you know that well. it is impossible!" she rose to go. he seized her by the wrist. she stopped. then, having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said hurriedly: "ah! do not speak of it again! where are the horses? let us go back." he made a gesture of anger and annoyance. she repeated: "where are the horses? where are the horses?" then smiling a strange smile, his pupils fixed, his teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms. she recoiled trembling. she stammered: "oh, you frighten me! you hurt me! let us go!" "if it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became respectful, caressing, timid. she gave him her arm. they went back. he said: "what was the matter with you? why? i do not understand. you were mistaken, no doubt. in my soul you are as a madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. but i want you for my life. i must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! be my friend, my sister, my angel!" and he put out his arm around her waist. she feebly tried to disengage herself. he supported her thus as they walked along. but they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves. "oh! one moment!" said rodolphe. "do not let us go! stay!" he drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water. faded waterlilies lay motionless between the reeds. at the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves. "i am wrong! i am wrong!" she said. "i am mad to listen to you!" "why? emma! emma!" "oh, rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder. the cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. she threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him. the shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as if humming-birds flying about had scattered their feathers. silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves. rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles. they returned to yonville by the same road. on the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones in the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places. rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it. she was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face something flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening. on entering yonville she made her horse prance in the road. people looked at her from the windows. at dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles. "'emma!" he said. "what?" "well, i spent the afternoon at monsieur alexandre's. he has an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, that could be bought, i am very sure, for a hundred crowns." he added, "and thinking it might please you, i have bespoken it--bought it. have i done right? do tell me!" she nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later-- "are you going out to-night?" she asked. "yes. why?" "oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!" and as soon as she had got rid of charles she went and shut herself up in her room. at first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches, rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled. but when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. something subtle about her being transfigured her. she repeated, "i have a lover! a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her. so at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! she was entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. an azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary existence appeared remote, far below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights. then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. she became herself, as it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and realized the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so envied. besides, emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. had she not suffered enough? but now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full joyous bubblings. she tasted it without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble. the day following passed with a new sweetness. they made vows to one another. she told him of her sorrows. rodolphe interrupted her with kisses; and she, looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to call her again by her name--to say that he loved her. they were in the forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some wooden-shoe maker. the walls were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. they were seated side by side on a bed of dry leaves. from that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with as too short. one morning, when charles had gone out before daybreak, she was seized with the fancy to see rodolphe at once. she would go quickly to la huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at yonville while every one was still asleep. this idea made her pant with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without looking behind her. day was just breaking. emma from afar recognized her lover's house. its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn. beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must be the château. she entered it as if the doors at her approach had opened wide of their own accord. a large straight staircase led up to the corridor, emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man sleeping. it was rodolphe. she uttered a cry. "you here? you here?" he repeated, "how did you manage to come? ah! your dress is damp." "i love you," she answered, passing her arms round his neck. this first piece of daring successful, now every time charles went out early emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led to the waterside. but when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling, and clogging her thin shoes. her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. she was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. at this hour rodolphe still slept. it was like a spring morning coming into his room. the yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter softly. emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face. rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him and pressed her to his breast. then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his shaving-glass. often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water. it took them a good quarter of an hour to say good-bye. then emma wept. she would have wished never to leave rodolphe. something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out. "what is the matter with you?" she said. "are you ill? tell me!" at last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself. x. lovers' vows. gradually rodolphe's fears took possession of her. at first, love had intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. but now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. when she came back from his house, she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. she listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead. one morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. it stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a jack-in-the-box. he had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. it was captain binet lying in ambush for wild ducks. "you ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed. "when one sees a gun, one should always give warning." the tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duck-hunting except in boats, monsieur binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. but this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cleverness. at sight of emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation. "it isn't warm; it's nipping." emma answered nothing. he went on-- "and you're out so early?" "yes," she said stammering; "i am just coming from the nurse where my child is." "ah! very good! very good! for myself, i am here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun----" "good evening, monsieur binet," she interrupted him, turning on her heel. "your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub. emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. no doubt he would form unfavorable conjectures. the story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, every one at yonville knowing that the little bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to la huchette. binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. she remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag. charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the tax-collector again. he was standing in front of the counter, lighted by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying: "please give me half an ounce of vitriol." "justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." then to emma, who was going up to madame homais' room, "no, stay here; it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming down. warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. excuse me. good-day, doctor" (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "now, take care not to upset the mortars! you'd better fetch some chairs from the little room; you know very well that the armchairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room." and to put his armchair back in its place he was darting away from the counter, when binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid. "sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; i'm ignorant of it! but perhaps you want oxalic acid. it is oxalic acid, isn't it?" binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copper-water with which to remove rust from his hunting things. emma shuddered. the chemist began, saying: "indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp." "nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are people who like it." she was stifling. "and give me----" "will he never go?" thought she. "half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs." the chemist was beginning to cut the wax when madame homais appeared, irma in her arms, napoléon by her side, and athalie following. she sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. the latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up parcels. around him all were silent; only from time to time were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil. "and how's the little woman?" suddenly asked madame homais. "silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in his waste-book. "why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice. "hush! hush!" said emma, pointing with her finger to the chemist. but binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard nothing. at last he went out. then emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh. "how hard you are breathing!" said madame homais. "well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied. the next day the lovers discussed how to arrange their rendezvous. emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to find some safe house at yonville. rodolphe promised to look for one. all through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night he came to the garden. emma had on purpose taken away the key of the gate, which charles thought lost. to call her, rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. she jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. she was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. at last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. but charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too. "come, now, emma," he said, "it is time." "yes, i am coming," she answered. then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell asleep. she escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm around her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden. it was in the arbor, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly léon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. she never thought of him now. the stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. the cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and reverberating in multiplied vibrations. when the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the car-shed and the stable. she lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. rodolphe settled down there as if at home. the sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about charles, which rather embarrassed emma. she would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley. "some one is coming!" she said. he blew out the light. "have you your pistols?" "why?" "why, to defend yourself," replied emma. "from your husband? oh, poor devil!" and rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that said, "i could crush him with a flip of my finger." she was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naïve coarseness that scandalized her. rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. if she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject emma had treated him to a lecture, which he did not think in the best taste. besides, she was growing very sentimental. she had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. she often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. emma none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would soothe a forsaken child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon: "i am sure that above there together they approve of our love." but she was so pretty! he had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. this love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him. then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed. he had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. she would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less. she did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. the humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. it was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. he subjugated her; she almost feared him. appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, rodolphe having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame. it was the time of year when old rouault sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. the present always arrived with a letter. emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines:-- "my dear children,--i hope this will find you in good health, and that it will be as good as the others, for it seems to me a little more tender, if i may venture to say so, and heavier. but next time, for a change, i'll give you a turkey-cock, unless you have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. i have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees. the harvest has not been over-good either. finally, i don't know when i shall come to see you. it is so difficult now to leave the house since i am alone, my poor emma." here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while. "for myself, i am very well, except for a cold i caught the other day at the fair at yvetot, where i had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty. how we are to be pitied with such a lot of thieves! besides, he was also rude. i heard from a pedlar, who, traveling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that bovary was as usual working hard. that doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. i asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which i conclude that business is looking up. so much the better, my dear children, and may god send you every imaginable happiness! it grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, berthe bovary. i have planted an orleans plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and i won't have it touched unless it is to have jam made for her by-and-bye, that i will keep in the cupboard for when she comes. "good-bye my dear children. i kiss you, my girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. i am, with best compliments, your loving father, "thÉodore rouault." she held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. the mistakes in spelling interwove with one another, but emma followed the kindly thought that chattered through it all like a hen half hidden in a hedge of thorns. the writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. how long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! she remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. the colts neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped. under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. what happiness she had had at that time, what freedom, what hope! what an abundance of illusions! nothing was left of them now. she had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life,--maidenhood, her marriage, and her love;--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road. but what, then, made her so unhappy? what was the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? and she raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer. an april ray was dancing on the china of the _étagère_; the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter. in fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. she was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. the servant was holding her by her skirt. lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she leant forward, beating the air with both her arms. "bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "how i love you, my poor child! how i love you!" then, noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunder-stricken at this excess of tenderness. that evening rodolphe found her more serious than usual. "that will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim." and he missed three rendezvous running. when he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous. "ah! you're losing your time, my lady!" and he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out. then emma repented. she even asked herself why she detested charles; if it had not been better to have been able to love him? but he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the chemist came just in time to provide her with an opportunity. xi. an experiment and a failure. he had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot. "for," said he to emma, "what risk is there? see" (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain relief and beautifying the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator. why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor hippolyte of the 'lion d'or'? note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers, and then" (homais lowered his voice and looked round him), "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to the paper? eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! and who knows? who knows?" in fact, bovary might succeed. nothing proved to emma that he was not clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by which his reputation and fortune would be increased! she only wished to lean on something more solid than love. charles, urged by the chemist and by her, allowed himself to be persuaded. he sent to rouen for dr. duval's volume, and every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it. while he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say, _katastrephopody_, _endostrephopody_, and _exostrephopody_ (or better, the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with the _hypostrephopody_ and _anastrephopody_), otherwise torsion downwards and upwards, monsieur homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at the inn to submit to the operation. "you will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns." hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes. "however," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. it's for your sake, for pure humanity! i should like to see you, my friend, rid of your hideous deformity, together with that waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling." then homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily. then he attacked him through his vanity:-- "aren't you a man? hang it! what would you have done if you had had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? ah! hippolyte!" and homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science. the poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. binet, who never interfered with other people's business, madame lefrançois, artémise, the neighbors, even the mayor, monsieur tuvache--every one persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing. bovary even undertook to provide the machine for the operation. this generosity was an idea of emma's, and charles consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel. so, by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds, in which iron, wood, sheet-iron, leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared. but to know which of hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had. he had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which, however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with a strong tendency to equinus. but with this equinus, wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which the black nails looked as if made of iron, the club-foot ran about like a deer from morn till night. he was constantly to be seen on the place, jumping around the carts, thrusting his limping foot forward. he seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. by dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and of energy; and when he was doing some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its fellow. now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendo achillis, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that he did not know. neither ambrose paré, applying for the first time since celsus, after an interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain, nor gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as had the doctor when he approached hippolyte, his tenotome between his fingers. and, as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of bandages--every bandage to be found at the chemist's. it was monsieur homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. charles pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. the tendon was cut, the operation over. hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over bovary's hands to cover them with kisses. "come, be calm," said the chemist; "later you will show your gratitude to your benefactor." and he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were waiting in the yard, and who fancied that hippolyte would reappear walking properly. then charles, having buckled his patient into the machine, went home, where emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door. she threw herself on his neck: they sat down to table; he ate much, and at dessert he even wished to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he permitted himself only on sundays when there was company. the evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. they talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. the thought of rodolphe for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth. they were in bed when monsieur homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. it was the paragraph he intended for the "fanal de rouen." he brought it them to read. "read it yourself," said bovary. he read: "'despite the prejudices that still cover a part of the face of europe like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country places. thus on tuesday our little town of yonville found itself the scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of loftiest philanthropy. monsieur bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners----" "oh, that is too much! too much!" said charles, choking with emotion. "no, no! not at all! what next!" "'----performed an operation on a club-footed man.' i have not used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper every one would not perhaps understand. the masses must----" "no doubt," said bovary; "go on!" "i proceed," said the chemist. "'monsieur bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man called hippolyte tautain, stable-man for the last twenty-five years at the hotel of the "lion d'or," kept by widow lefrançois, at the place d'armes. the novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. the operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as if to show that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. the patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain. his condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired. everything tends to show that his convalescence will be brief; and who knows whether, at our next village festivity, we shall not see our good hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure? honor, then, to the generous savants! honor to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! honor, thrice honor! is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? but that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. we shall keep our readers informed as to the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'" * * * this did not prevent mère lefrançois from coming five days after, scared, and crying out-- "help! he is dying! i am going crazy!" charles rushed to the "lion d'or," and the chemist, who caught sight of him passing along the place hatless, abandoned his shop. he appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking every one who was going up the stairs-- "why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?" the strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to break it. with many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. the outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. no attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. but hardly had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten matters. at last, three days after, hippolyte being unable to endure it any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised at the result they saw. the livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters here and there, whence oozed a black liquid. matters were taking a serious turn. hippolyte began to worry himself, and mère lefrançois had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so that he might at least have some distraction. but the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of such companionship. then hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. he lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale, with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. madame bovary went to see him. she brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted and encouraged him. besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days, when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled. "how are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "ah! you're not up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. you should do this! do that!" and then they told him stories of people who had all been cured by other remedies than his. then by way of consolation they added:-- "you give way too much! get up! you coddle yourself like a king! all the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!" gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. bovary himself turned sick at it. he came every hour, every moment. hippolyte looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing-- "when shall i get well? oh, save me! how unfortunate i am! how unfortunate i am!" and the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself. "don't listen to him, my lad," said mère lefrançois. "haven't they tortured you enough already? you'll grow still weaker. here! swallow this." and she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the strength to put to his lips. abbé bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him. he began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the lord, and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to heaven. "for," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. how many years is it since you approached the holy table? i understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your salvation. but now is the time to reflect. yet don't despair. i have known great sinners, who, about to appear before god (you are not yet at this point, i know), had implored his mercy, and who certainly died in the best frame of mind. let us hope that, like them, you will set us a good example. thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying morning and evening a 'hail mary, full of grace,' and 'our father which art in heaven'? yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. that won't cost you anything. will you promise me?" the poor devil promised. the curé came back day after day. he chatted with the landlady, and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and puns that hippolyte did not understand. then, as soon as he could, he fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression of face. his zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire to go on a pilgrimage to bon-secours if he were cured; to which monsieur bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better than one; it was no risk. the chemist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to hippolyte's convalescence, and he kept repeating to madame lefrançois, "leave him alone! leave him alone! you perturb his morals with your mysticism." but the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. from a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box. religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the stomach. it was all very well to vary the potions and change the poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when mère lefrançois asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for monsieur canivet of neufchâtel, who was a celebrity. a doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and self-possessed, charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. then having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. shaking monsieur homais by the button of his coat, he shouted out in the shop: "these are the inventions of paris! these are the ideas of those gentry of the capital! it is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the government ought to prohibit. but they want to do the clever, and they cram you with remedies without troubling about the consequences. we are not so clever, not we! we are not savants, coxcombs, fops! we are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not dream of operating on any one who is in perfect health. straighten club-feet! as if one could straighten club-feet! it is as if one wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!" homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour monsieur canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as yonville. so he did not take up the defense of bovary; he did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more serious interests of his business. this amputation of the thigh by doctor canivet was a great event in the village. on that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the grande rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as if an execution had been expected. at the grocer's they discussed hippolyte's illness; the shops did no business, and madame tuvache, the mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to see the operator arrive. he came in his gig, which he drove himself. but the springs of the right side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly. after he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "lion d'or," the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. then he went into the stable to see that he was eating his oats all right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his gig. people even said about this: "ah! monsieur camvet's a character!" and he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. the universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed the smallest of his habits. homais presented himself. "i count on you," said the doctor. "are we ready? come along!" but the chemist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to assist at such an operation. "when one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know, is impressed. and then i have such a nervous system!" "pshaw!" interrupted canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined to apoplexy. besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your constitutions. now just look at me. i get up every day at four o'clock; i shave with cold water (and am never cold). i don't wear flannels, and i never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! i live now in one way, now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why i am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a christian as the first fowl that turns up. then, perhaps, you will say, habit! habit!" then, without any consideration for hippolyte, who was sweating with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation, in which the chemist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general; and this comparison was pleasing to canivet, who launched out on the exigencies of his art. he looked upon it as a sacred office, although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. at last, coming back to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by homais, the same that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for some one to hold the limb for him. lestiboudois was sent for, and monsieur canivet having turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the chemist stayed with artémise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons, and with ears strained towards the door. bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house. he kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. "what a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" perhaps, after all, he had made some slip. he thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. but the most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe! people, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! it would spread as far as forges, as neufchâtel, as rouen, everywhere! who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. hippolyte might even prosecute him. he saw himself dishonored, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves. emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. as if twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity. charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the floor. "sit down," she said; "you fidget me." he sat down again. how was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? she recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that she might have had! and for what? for what? in the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending cry rose on the air. bovary turned white to fainting. she knit her brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. and it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! for he was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would henceforth sully hers as well as his. she had made efforts to love him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another! "but it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed bovary, who was meditating. at the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, emma, shuddering, raised her head in order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked one at the other in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. charles gazed at her with the dull look of a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered. emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral that she had broken, fixed on charles the burning glance of her eyes like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. everything in him irritated her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his existence, in fine. she repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and what still remained of it crumbled away beneath the furious blows of her pride. she revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery. the memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh enthusiasm; and charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as absent for ever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about to die and were passing under her eyes. there was a sound of steps on the pavement. charles looked up, and through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in the broad sunshine dr. canivet, who was wiping his brow with his handkerchief. homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his hand, and both were going towards the chemist's. then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement charles turned to his wife saying to her: "oh, kiss me, my own!" "leave me!" she said, red with anger. "what is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "be calm; compose yourself. you know well enough that i love you. come!" "enough!" she cried with a terrible look. and escaping from the room, emma closed the door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor. charles sank back into his armchair overwhelmed, trying to discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him. when rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. they threw their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss. xii. preparations for flight. they began to love one another again. often, even in the middle of the day, emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to la huchette. rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored; that her husband was odious, her life frightful. "but what can i do?" he cried one day impatiently. "ah! if you would--" she was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look lost. "why, what?" said rodolphe. she sighed. "we would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!" "you are really mad!" he said laughing. "how could that be possible?" she returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned the conversation. what he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair as love. she had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection. her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her husband. the more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed the other. never had charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with rodolphe. then, while playing the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. it was for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs. she loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. when he was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince. the servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day félicité did not stir from the kitchen, where little justin, who often kept her company, watched her at work. with his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily watched all these women's clothes spread out about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below. "what is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes. "why, haven't you ever seen anything?" félicité answered laughing. "as if your mistress, madame homais, didn't wear the same." "oh, i daresay! madame homais!" and he added with a meditative air, "as if she were a lady like madame!" but félicité grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. she was six years older than he, and théodore, monsieur guillaumin's servant, was beginning to pay court to her. "let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "you'd better be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. before you meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your chin." "oh, don't be cross! i'll go and clean her boots." and he at once took down from the shelf emma's boots, all coated with mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight. "how afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her. emma had many shoes in her closet that she wore out one after the other, without charles allowing himself the slightest observation. so also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper to make a present of to hippolyte. its top was covered with cork, and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. but hippolyte, not daring to use such a handsome leg every day, begged madame bovary to get him another more convenient one. the doctor, of course, had again to defray the expense of this purchase. so little by little the stable-man took up his work again. one saw him running about the village as before, and when charles heard from afar the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction. it was monsieur lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order; this provided him with an excuse for visiting emma. he chatted with her about the new goods from paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. emma yielded to this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. thus she wanted to have a very handsome riding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at rouen, to give to rodolphe. the week after monsieur lheureux placed it on her table. but the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and seventy francs, not counting the centimes. emma was much embarrassed; all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a fortnight's wages to lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and bovary was impatiently expecting monsieur derozerays' account, which he was in the habit of paying him every year about midsummer. she succeeded at first in putting off lheureux. at last he lost patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received. "oh, very well, take them!" said emma. "i was only joking," he replied; "the only thing i regret is the whip. my word! i'll ask monsieur to return it to me." "no, no!" she said. "ah! i've got you!" thought lheureux. and, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an undertone, and with his usual low whistle: "good! we shall see! we shall see!" she was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from monsieur derozerays." emma pounced upon and opened it. it contained fifteen napoleons; it was the account. she heard charles on the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key. three days after lheureux reappeared. "i have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "if, instead of the sum agreed on, you would take----" "here it is," she said, placing fourteen napoleons in his hand. the tradesman was astounded. then, to conceal his disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which emma declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. she promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on. "pshaw!" she thought, "he won't think about it again." * * * besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, rodolphe had received a seal with the motto _amor nel cor_; furthermore, a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the viscount's, that charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that emma had kept. these presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and over-exacting. then she had strange ideas. "when midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me." and if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal question: "do you love me?" "why, of course i love you," he answered. "a great deal?" "certainly!" "you haven't loved any others?" "did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing. emma wept, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with puns. "oh," she went on, "i love you! i love you so that i could not live without you, do you see? there are times when i long to see you again, when i am torn by all the anger of love. i ask myself, where is he? perhaps he is talking to other women. they smile upon him; he approaches. oh no! no one else pleases you. there are some more beautiful, but i love you best. i know how to love best. i am your servant, your concubine! you are my king, my idol! you are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!" he had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. he did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fulness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. but with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him, who, in no matter what circumstance, holds back, rodolphe saw other delights to be got out of this love. he thought all modesty in the way. he treated her quite _sans façon_. he made of her something supple and corrupt. hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like clarence in his butt of malmsey. by the mere effect of her love madame bovary's manners changed. her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the impropriety of walking out with monsieur rodolphe, a cigarette in her mouth, "as if to defy the people." at last those who still doubted doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the "hirondelle" her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and madame bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk. many other things displeased her. first, charles had not attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the house" annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were quarrels, especially one on account of félicité. madame bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage, had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped through the kitchen. then emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to look after those of one's servants. "where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so impertinent a look that madame bovary asked her if she were not perhaps defending her own case. "leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a bound. "emma! mamma!" cried charles, trying to reconcile them. but both had fled in their exasperation. emma was stamping her feet as she repeated-- "oh! what manners! what a peasant!" he ran to his mother; she was beside herself. she stammered: "she is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!" and she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologize. so charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he knelt to her; she ended by saying-- "very well! i'll go to her." and in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity of a marchioness as she said: "excuse me, madame." then having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow. she and rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind, so that if by chance he happened to be in yonville, he could hurry to the lane behind the house. emma made the signal; she had been waiting three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of rodolphe at the corner of the market. she felt tempted to open the window and call him, but he had already disappeared. she fell back in despair. soon, however, it seemed to her that some one was walking on the pavement. it was he, no doubt. she went downstairs, crossed the yard. he was there outside. she threw herself into his arms. "do take care!" he said. "ah! if you knew!" she replied. and she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly, exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses that he understood nothing of it. "come, my poor angel, courage! be comforted! be patient!" "but i have been patient; i have suffered for four years. a love like ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. they torture me! i can bear it no longer! save me!" she clung to rodolphe. her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so that he lost his head and said: "what is it? what do you wish?" "take me away," she cried, "carry me off! oh, i entreat you!" and she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the unexpected consent it breathed forth in a kiss. "but----" rodolphe resumed. "what?" "your little girl!" she reflected a few moments, then replied-- "we will take her! it can't be helped!" "what a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. for she had run into the garden. some one was calling her. on the following days madame bovary senior was much surprised at the change in her daughter-in-law. emma, in fact, was showing herself more docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for pickling gherkins. was it the better to deceive them both? or did she wish by a sort of voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the things she was about to leave? but she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as if lost in the anticipated delight of her coming happiness. it was an eternal subject for conversation with rodolphe. she leant on his shoulder murmuring-- "ah! when we are in the mail-coach! do you think about it? can it be? it seems to me that the moment i feel the carriage start, it will be as if we were rising in a balloon as if we were setting out for the clouds. do you know that i count the hours? and you?" never had madame bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all the plenitude of her nature. her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. one would have thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. her voice now took more mellow inflections, her figure also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the line of her foot. charles, as when they were first married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible. when he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake her. the porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed, as it were, a white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside charles looked at them. he seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. she would grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. he already saw her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. then she would have to be sent to a boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be done? then he reflected. he thought of hiring a small farm in the neighborhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his patients. he would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the savings-bank. then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where; besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he wanted berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play the piano. ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen, when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters. he pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her gaiety. at last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy; this would last for ever. emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her side she awakened to other dreams. to the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a new land, whence they would return no more. they went on and on, their arms entwined, without a word. often from the top of a mountain there suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose pointed steeples were storks' nests. they went at a walking-pace because of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. they heard the chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled beneath playing waters. and then, one night they came to a fishing village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of the huts. it was there that they would stay; they would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf, by the sea. they would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. however, in the immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonized, azure, and bathed in sunshine. but the child began to cough in her cot or bovary snored more loudly, and emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn whitened the window, and when little justin was already in the square taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop. she had sent for monsieur lheureux, and had said to him-- "i want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar." "you are going on a journey?" he asked. "no; but--never mind. i may count on you, may i not, and quickly?" he bowed. "besides, i shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--handy." "yes, yes, i understand. about three feet by a foot and a half, as they are being made just now." "and a travelling bag." "decidedly," thought lheureux, "there's a row on here." "and," said madame bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take this; you can pay yourself out of it." but the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another; did he doubt her? what childishness! she insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and lheureux had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him back. "you will leave everything at your place. as to the cloak"--she seemed to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's address, and tell him to have it ready for me." it was the next month that they were to run away. she was to leave yonville as if she was going on some business to rouen. rodolphe would have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without stopping to genoa. she would take care to send her luggage to lheureux', whence it would be taken direct to the "hirondelle," so that no one would have any suspicion. and in all this there never was any allusion to the child. rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it. he wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill; next he went on a journey. the month of august passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the th september--a monday. at length the saturday before arrived. rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual. "everything is ready?" she asked him. "yes." then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the terrace on the curb-stone of the wall. "you are sad," said emma. "no; why?" and yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion. "is it because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are leaving what is dear to you--your life? ah! i understand. i have nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall i be to you. i will be your people, your country; i will tend, i will love you!" "how sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms. "really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "do you love me? swear it then!" "do i love you--love you? i adore you, my love!" the moon, full and purple-colored, was rising right out of the earth at the end of the meadow. she rose quickly between the branches of the poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with holes. then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a headless serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together. the soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches. emma, her eyes half-closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind that was blowing. they did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of their reverie. the tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass. often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach falling all alone from the espalier. "ah! what a lovely night!" said rodolphe. "we shall have others," replied emma; and, as if speaking to herself, "yes, it will be good to travel. and yet, why should my heart be so heavy? is it dread of the unknown? the effect of habits left? or rather----? no; it is the excess of happiness. how weak i am, am i not? forgive me!" "there is still time!" he cried. "reflect! perhaps you may repent!" "never!" she cried impetuously. and coming closer to him: "what ill could come to me? there is no desert, no precipice, no ocean i would not traverse with you. the longer we live together the more it will be like an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. there will be nothing to trouble us, no care, no obstacle. we shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally. oh, speak! answer me!" at regular intervals he answered, "yes--yes--" she had passed her hands through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big tears which were falling, "rodolphe! rodolphe! ah! rodolphe! dear little rodolphe!" midnight struck. "midnight!" said she. "come! it is to-morrow! one day more!" he rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for their flight, emma said, suddenly, assuming a gay air-- "you have the passports?" "yes." "you are forgetting nothing?" "no." "are you sure?" "certainly." "it is at the hôtel de provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at mid-day?" he nodded. "till to-morrow then!" said emma, in a last caress; and she watched him go. he did not turn round. she ran after him, and, leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes-- "to-morrow!" she cried. he was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across the meadow. after a few moments rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall. "what an imbecile i am!" he said with a fearful oath. "no matter! she was a pretty mistress!" and immediately emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. for a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her. "for, after all," he exclaimed gesticulating, "i can't exile myself--have a child on my hands." he was saying these things to give himself firmness. "and besides, the worry, the expense! ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand times no! it would have been too stupid." xiii. deserted. no sooner was rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. but when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect. emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between them. to get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the bedside an old rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an odor of dry dust and withered roses. first he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. it was a handkerchief of hers. once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. then, from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its original, emma's features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other. finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. he wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. in order to find them at the bottom of the box, rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened. thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. they were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money. a word recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all. in fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalized them all. so taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. at last, bored and weary, rodolphe took back the box to the cupboard, saying to himself, "what a lot of rubbish!" which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall. "come," said he, "let's begin." he wrote-- "courage, emma! courage! i would not bring misery into your life." "after all, that's true," thought rodolphe. "i am acting in her interest; i am honest." "have you carefully weighed your resolution? do you know to what an abyss i was dragging you, poor angel? no, you do not, do you? you were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!" rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse. "if i told her all my fortune is lost? no! besides that would stop nothing. it would all have to be begun over again later on. as if one could make women like that listen to reason!" he reflected, then went on-- "i shall not forget you, oh! believe it; and i shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if i should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since i should have been its cause? the mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, emma. forget me! why did i ever know you? why were you so beautiful? is it my fault? o my god! no, no! accuse only fate." "that's a word that always tells," he said to himself. "ah! if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees, certainly i might, through egotism, have made an experiment, in that case without danger for you. but that delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. nor had i reflected upon this at first, and i rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences." "perhaps she'll think i'm giving it up from avarice. ah, well! so much the worse; it must be stopped!" "the world is cruel, emma. wherever we might have gone, it would have persecuted us. you would have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult, perhaps. insult to you! oh! and i, who would place you on a throne! i who bear with me your memory as a talisman! for i am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill i have done you. i am going away. whither i know not. i am mad. adieu! be good always. preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. teach my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers." the wicks of the candles flickered. rodolphe got up to shut the window, and when he had sat down again-- "i think it's all right. ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt me up." "i shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for i have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again. no weakness! i shall return, and perhaps later we shall talk together very coldly of our old love. adieu!" and there was a last 'adieu' divided into two words: "a dieu!" which he thought in very excellent taste. "now how am i to sign?" he said to himself. "yours devotedly?' no! 'your friend?' yes, that's it." "your friend." he re-read his letter. he considered it very good. "poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "she'll think me harder than a rock. there ought to have been some tears on this; but i can't cry; it isn't my fault." then, having emptied some water into a glass, rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. then looking for a seal, he came upon the one "_amor nel cor_." "that doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. pshaw! never mind!" after which he smoked three pipes and went to bed. the next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late), rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. he put his letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to madame bovary. he made use of this means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits or game. "if she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that i have gone on a journey. you must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands. get along and take care!" girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the apricots, and, walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound galoshes, made his way to yonville. madame bovary, when he got to her house was arranging a bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with félicité. "here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you from master." she was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a present could so move any one. at last he went out. félicité remained. emma could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting-room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her, she flew to her room terrified. charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. on the second floor she stopped before the attic-door, that was closed. then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. and where? how? she would be seen! "ah, no! here," she thought, "i shall be all right." emma pushed open the door and went in. the slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. she drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap. opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country until it was lost to the sight. underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were motionless. at the corner of the street, from a lower story, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations. it was binet turning. she leant against the embrasure of the window, and re-read the letter with angry sneers. but the more she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused were her ideas. she saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and the throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. she looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. why not end it all? what restrained her? she was free. she advanced, looked at the paving-stones, saying to herself, "come! come!" the luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. it seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls, and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. she was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. the blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her. "emma! emma!" cried charles. she stopped. "wherever are you? come!" the thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint with terror. she closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was félicité. "master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table." and she had to go down to sit at table. she tried to eat. the food choked her. then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen. suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. how had she lost it? where could she find it? but she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving the table. then she became a coward; she was afraid of charles; he knew all, that was certain! indeed he pronounced these words in a strange manner: "we are not likely to see monsieur rodolphe soon again, it seems." "who told you?" she said, shuddering. "who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "why, girard, whom i met just now at the door of the café-français. he has gone on a journey, or is to go." she gave a sob. "what surprises you in that? he absents himself like that from time to time for a change, and, _ma foi_, i think he's right, when one has a fortune and is a bachelor. besides, he has jolly times, has our friend. he's a bit of a rake. monsieur langlois told me--" he stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. she put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. charles, without noticing his wife's color, had them brought to him, took one, and bit into it. "ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!" and he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently. "do just smell! what an odor!" he remarked, passing it under her nose several times. "i am choking," she cried, leaping up. but by an effort of will the spasm passed; then-- "it is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! it is nervousness. sit down and go on eating." for she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left alone. charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate. suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground. in fact, rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for rouen. now, as from la huchette to buchy there is no other way than by yonville, he had to go through the village, and emma had recognized him by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the twilight. the chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house, ran thither. the table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; charles was calling for help; berthe, scared, was crying; and félicité, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively. "i'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the chemist. then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle: "i was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for you!" "speak to us," said charles; "collect yourself; it is i--your charles, who loves you. do you know me? see! here is your little girl! oh, kiss her!" the child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. but turning away her head, emma said in a broken voice-- "no, no! no one!" she fainted again. they carried her to her bed. she lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow. charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions of life. "do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "i think the paroxysm is past." "yes, she is resting a little now," answered charles, watching her sleep. "poor girl! poor girl! she has gone off now!" then homais asked how the accident had come about. charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots. "extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "but it might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope. some natures are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both in its pathological and physiological relation. the priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. it is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other. some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread--" "take care; you'll wake her!" said bovary in a low voice. "and not only," the chemist went on, "are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the _nepeta cataria_, vulgarly called cat-mint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity i can answer for, bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the rue malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. he often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at guillaume wood. would any one believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? it is extremely curious, is it not?" "yes," said charles, who was not listening to him. "this shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system. with regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, i confess, very susceptible. and so i should by no means recommend to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. no; no useless physicking! diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification. then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked upon?" "in what way? how?" said bovary. "ah! that is it. such is indeed the question. 'that is the question,' as i lately read in a newspaper." but emma, awaking, cried out-- "the letter! the letter!" they thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. brain-fever had set in. for forty-three days charles did not leave her. he gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. he sent justin as far as neufchâtel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. he called monsieur canivet into consultation; he sent for dr. larivière, his old master, from rouen; he was in despair. what alarmed him most was emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after all their troubles. about the middle of october she could sit up in bed supported by pillows. charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. her strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the garden. the sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers, and leaning against charles's shoulder. she smiled all the time. they went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. she drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. she looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills. "you will tire yourself, my darling!" said bovary. and pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour, "sit down on this seat; you'll be comfortable." "oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice. she was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more complex symptoms. now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which charles thought he saw the first signs of cancer. and besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters. xiv. religious fervor. to begin with, he did not know how he could pay monsieur homais for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an obligation. then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was mistress, became terrible. bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; monsieur lheureux especially harassed him. in fact, at the height of emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other things. it was very well for charles to say he did not want them. the tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his goods. charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop. félicité forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more about them. monsieur lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns threatening and whining, so managed that bovary ended by signing a bill at six months. but hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from lheureux. so, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them, adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. lheureux ran off to his shop, brought back the money and dictated another bill, by which bovary undertook to pay to his order on the st of september next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus lending at six per cent, in addition to one-fourth for commission; and the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. he hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag. everything, moreover, succeeded with him. he was adjudicator for a supply of cider to the hospital at neufchâtel; monsieur guillaumin promised him some shares in the turf-pits of gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence service between arcueil and rouen, which no doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "lion d'or," and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of yonville. charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be able to pay back so much money. he reflected, imagined expedients, such as applying to his father or selling something. but his father would be deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind. he reproached himself with forgetting emma, as if, all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to be constantly thinking of her. the winter was severe, madame bovary's convalescence slow. when it was fine they wheeled her armchair to the window that overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on that side were always down. she wished the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now displeased her. all her ideas seemed to be limited to the care of herself. she stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. the snow on the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain began to fall; and emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no relation to her. the most important was the arrival of the "hirondelle" in the evening. then the landlady shouted out, and other voices answered, while hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a star in the darkness. at mid-day charles came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one after the other. it was at this hour that monsieur bournisien came to see her. he inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion in a coaxing little gossip that was not without its charm. the mere thought of his cassock comforted her. one day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the night-table covered with sirups into an altar, and while félicité was strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, emma felt some power passing over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward god, would be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into vapour. the bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the saviour presented to her. the curtains of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, god the father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms. this splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation, that still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. her soul, tortured by pride, at length found rest in christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. there existed, then, in the place of happiness, still greater joys,--another love beyond all loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! she saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. she wanted to become a saint. she bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening. the curé marvelled at this humour, although emma's religion, he thought, might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. but not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a certain limit he wrote to monsieur boulard, bookseller to monsignor, to send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." the bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up, pell-mell, everything that was then the fashion in the pious book trade. there were little manuals in questions and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of monsieur de maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent blue-stockings. there were the "think of it; the man of the world at mary's feet, by monsieur de * * *, _décoré_ with many orders;" "the errors of voltaire, for the use of the young," &c. madame bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much hurry. she grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking. nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive. as for the memory of rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than a king's mummy in a catacomb. an exhalation escaped from this embalmed love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. when she knelt on her gothic prie-dieu, she addressed to the lord the same suave words that she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. it was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic dupery. this searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more, and in the pride of her devoutness emma compared herself to those grand ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of la vallière, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded. then she gave herself up to excessive charity. she sewed clothes for the poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and charles one day, on coming home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table eating soup. she had her little girl, whom during her illness her husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. she wanted to teach her to read; even when berthe cried, she was not vexed. she had made up her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. her language about everything was full of ideal expressions. she said to her child, "is your stomach-ache better, my angel?" madame bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen; but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even staid there till after easter, to escape the sarcasms of old bovary, who never failed on good friday to order chitterlings. besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, emma almost every day had other visitors. these were madame langlois, madame caron, madame dubreuil, madame tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent madame homais, who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle about her neighbor. the little homais also came to see her; justin accompanied them. he went up with them to her bedroom, and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. often even madame bovary, taking no heed of him, began her toilette. she began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him. emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity. she had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. besides, she now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. one evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext. then suddenly-- "so you love him?" she said. and without waiting for any answer from félicité, who was blushing, she added, "there! run along; enjoy yourself!" in the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end, despite bovary's remonstrances. however, he was glad to see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. as she grew stronger she displayed more wilfulness. first, she found occasion to expel mère rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a cannibal. then she got rid of the homais family, successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented church less assiduously, to the great approval of the chemist, who said to her in a friendly way-- "you were going in a bit for the cassock!" as formerly, monsieur bournisien dropped in every day when he came out after catechism class. he preferred staying out of doors to taking the air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. this was the time when charles came home. they were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's complete restoration. binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace wall, fishing for cray-fish. bovary invited him to have a drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles. "you must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at restaurants." but during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this joke-- "it's goodness strikes the eye!" he was, in fact, a good fellow, and one day he was not even scandalised at the chemist, who advised charles to give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre at rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, lagardy. homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature. but the chemist took up the defence of letters. the theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue. "_castigat ridendo mores_, monsieur bournisien! thus, consider the greater part of voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections, that make them a very school of morals and diplomacy for the people." "i," said binet, "once saw a piece called the 'gamin de paris,' in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a t. he sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the end----" "certainly," continued homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that imprisoned galileo." "i know very well," objected the curé, "that there are good works, good authors. however, if it were only those persons of different sexes together in a bewitching apartment, decorated with worldly pomp, and then, those pagan disguises, that rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts, and impure temptations. such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the fathers. finally," he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice, while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, "if the church has condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her decrees." "why," asked the chemist, "should she excommunicate actors? for formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called 'mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency." the ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the chemist went on-- "it's just as it is in the bible; for there, you know, are more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!" and on a gesture of irritation from monsieur bournisien-- "ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young girl, and i should be sorry if athalie----" "but it is the protestants, and not we," cried the other impatiently, "who recommend the bible." "no matter," said homais. "i am surprised that in our days, in this century of enlightenment, any one should still persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?" "no doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any ideas. the conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot a parthian arrow. "i've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers kicking about." "come, come!" said the curé. "ah! i've known some!" and separating the words of his sentence, homais repeated, "i--have--known--some!" "well, they did wrong," said bournisien, resigned to anything. "by jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the chemist. "sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that homais was intimidated by them. "i only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion." "that is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again on his chair. but he stayed only a few moments. then, as soon as he had gone, monsieur homais said to the doctor-- "that's what i call a cock-fight. i beat him, did you see, in a way!--now take my advice. take madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! if any one could take my place, i would accompany you myself. be quick about it. lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to england at a high salary. from what i hear, he's a regular dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with him. all these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that stirs the imagination to some extent. but they die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay by. well, a pleasant dinner! good-bye till to-morrow." the idea of the theatre quickly germinated in bovary's head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. he saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling in of lheureux's bills was still so far off that there was no need to think about them. besides, imagining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight o'clock they set out in the "hirondelle." the chemist, whom nothing whatever kept at yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go. "well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that you are!" then addressing himself to emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with four flounces-- "you are as lovely as a venus. you'll cut a figure at rouen." the diligence stopped at the "croix-rouge" in the place beauvoisine. it was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers;--a good old house with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in sunday-clothes, has a café on the street, and towards the country-side a kitchen-garden. charles at once set out. he muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard. madame bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. the doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the theatre, which were still closed. xv. a new delight. the crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between the balustrades. at the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters "lucia de lammermoor--lagardy--opera--&c." the weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and again a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. a little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. this was an exhalation from the rue des charrettes, full of large black ware-houses where they make casks. for fear of seeming ridiculous, emma before going in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his stomach. her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. she involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. she was as pleased as a child to push with her finger the large tapestried door. she breathed in with all her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess. the theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing. they came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cotton, spirits of wine, or indigo. the heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. the young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or apple-green cravats, and madame bovary from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves. now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. but three knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene. it was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to the left. peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. another appeared; they went away, and the hunters started afresh. she felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of walter scott. she seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. then her remembrance of the novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. she gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. she had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when any one walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. but a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. she was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. lucia attacked her cavatina in g major bravely. she plained of love; she longed for wings. emma too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. suddenly edgar-lagardy appeared. he had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the south. his vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast around laughing looks showing his white teeth. they said that a polish princess having heard him sing one night on the beach at biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. she had ruined herself for him. he had deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. the diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. a fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable, charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toréador. from the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. he pressed lucia in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. she was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. she recognized all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. the voice of the prima donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that charmed her as some very thing of her own life. but no one on earth had loved her with such love. he had not wept like edgar that last moonlit night when they said, "to-morrow! to-morrow!" the theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords. "but why," asked bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?" "no, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!" "yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on before said, 'i love lucia and she loves me!' besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. for he certainly is her father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?" despite emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in which gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master ashton, charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive lucia, thought it was a love-gift sent by edgar. he confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words. "what does it matter?" said emma. "do be quiet!" "yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "i like to understand things." "be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently. lucia advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. emma dreamed of her marriage-day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church. oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? she, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. but that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. she now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. so, striving to divert her thoughts, emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak. his large spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; lucia, uttered her shrill plaint, arthur, at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. they were all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. the outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. he, she thought, must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. all her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had willed it. they would have known one another, loved one another. with him, through all the kingdoms of europe she would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. then each evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work, she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted he would have looked at her. but the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was certain. she longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out, "take me away! carry me with you! let us go! thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!" the curtain fell. the smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the fans, made the air more suffocating. emma wanted to go out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her armchair with palpitations that choked her. charles, fearing that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water. he had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. her husband, who was a mill-owner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. at last charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath: "_ma foi!_ i thought i should have had to stay there. there is such a crowd--_such_ a crowd!" he added-- "just guess whom i met up there! monsieur léon!" "léon?" "himself! he's coming along to pay his respects." and as he finished these words the ex-clerk of yonville entered the box. he held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and madame bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. she had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. but soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words. "ah, good-day! what! you here?" "silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning. "so you are at rouen?" "yes." "and since when?" "turn them out! turn them out!" people were looking at them. they were silent. but from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests, the scene between ashton and his servant, the grand duet in d major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. she remembered the games at cards at the chemist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, _tête-à-tête_ by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so discreet, so tender and that she had nevertheless forgotten. and why had he come back? what combination of circumstances had brought him back into her life. he was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair. "does this amuse you?" he said, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. she replied carelessly: "oh, dear me, no, not much." then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere. "oh, not yet; let us stay," said bovary. "her hair's undone; this is going to be tragic." but the mad scene did not at all interest emma, and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated. "she screams too loud," said she, turning to charles, who was listening. "yes--perhaps--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion. then with a sigh léon said: "the heat is--" "unbearable! yes!" "do you feel unwell?" asked bovary. "yes, i am stifling; let us go." monsieur léon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a café. first they spoke of her illness, although emma interrupted charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring monsieur léon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two years at rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different in normandy and paris. then he inquired after berthe, the homais, mère lefrançois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end. people coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "_o bel ange, ma lucie!_" then léon playing the dilettante, began to talk music. he had seen tamburini, rubini, persiani, grisi, and compared with them, lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere. "yet," interrupted charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. i regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me." "why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance." but charles replied that they were going back next day. "unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone, pussy?" and changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of lagardy in the last number. it was really superb, sublime. then charles insisted-- "you would get back on sunday. come, make up your mind. you are wrong not to stay if you feel that this is doing you the least good." the tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood discreetly near them. charles, who understood, took out his purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble. "i am really sorry," said bovary, "about the money which you are----" the other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat said-- "it is settled, isn't it? to-morrow, at six o'clock?" charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but that nothing prevented emma---- "but," she stammered, with a strange smile, "i am not sure----" "well, you must think it over. we'll see. night brings counsel." then to léon, who was walking along with them, "now that you are in our part of the world, i hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then." the clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover, to go to yonville on some business for his office. and they parted before the saint-herbland passage just as the cathedral struck half-past eleven. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | page ix: "the elder dumas or eugene sue." has been changed | | to "the elder dumas or eugène sue." | | | | page xiv: emaux in "in his well-known emaux et camées" | | remains unchanged--without an accent | | | | education in "education sentimentale" remains unchanged-- | | without an accent on pages xvi, xvii, xviii, xxiv, xxx | | | | page xvi: "his son napoleon" has been changed to "his son | | napoléon" with an accent | | | | page xvii: departement in "la muse du departement" remains | | unchanged--without an accent | | | | page xxx: legende in "la legende de saint julien | | l'hospitalier" remains unchanged--without an accent | | | | page : "ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots." has been changed to | | "ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots." | | | | page : "under the cartshed" has been changed to "under | | the cart-shed" | | | | page : "than regularly twice a week," has been changed to | | "then regularly twice a week," | | | | page : "on the roofs of the out-buildings" has been | | changed to "on the roofs of the outbuildings" | | | | page : "opposite the fire. on a little table" has been | | changed to "opposite the fire, on a little table" | | | | page : in the original, the word tutoyéd is unclear in | | 'he called her "my wife," _tutoyéd_ her' | | | | page : "a second-hand dogcart," has been changed to | | "a second-hand dog-cart," | | | | page : "a siesta by the water-side." has been changed to | | "a siesta by the waterside." | | | | page : "madame lafrançois" has been changed to "madame | | lefrançois" | | | | page : "thus napoleon represented glory" has been changed | | to "thus napoléon represented glory" | | | | page : "yonville by the water-side." has been changed to | | "yonville by the waterside." | | | | page : "seated in her arm-chair" has been changed to | | "seated in her armchair" | | | | page : "falling asleep in the arm-chairs" has been | | changed to "falling asleep in the armchairs" | | | | page : "the druggist had taken napoleon" has been | | changed to "the druggist had taken napoléon" | | | | page : "napoleon began to roar," has been changed to | | "napoléon began to roar," | | | | page : "the night-caps arranged in piles" has been | | changed to "the nightcaps arranged in piles" | | | | page : "who came behind his arm-chair" has been | | changed to "who came behind his armchair" | | | | page : "threw herself into an arm-chair." has been | | changed to "threw herself into an armchair." | | | | page : "his three arm-chairs restuffed," has been | | changed to "his three armchairs restuffed," | | | | page : "an arm-chair at his bureau" has been changed to | | "an armchair at his bureau" | | | | page : "columns of the town-hall" has been changed to | | "columns of the townhall" | | | | page : "she had heard from theodore," has been changed to | | "she had heard from théodore," | | | | page : "and said to her it a low voice" has been changed | | to "and said to her in a low voice" | | | | page : "decending" has been changed to "descending" | | | | page : "monsieur belot of notre-dame." has been changed | | to "monsieur belot of nôtre-dame." | | | | page : "the arm-chairs are not to be taken" has been | | changed to "the armchairs are not to be taken" | | | | page : "to put his arm-chair back" has been changed to | | "to put his armchair back" | | | | page : "he sat down again" has been changed to | | "he sat down again." | | | | page : "into his arm-chair overwhelmed" has been changed | | to "into his armchair overwhelmed" | | | | page : closing quotation marks have been added to | | "ah! if you would--" | | | | page : closing quotation marks have been added to | | "very well! i'll go to her." | | | | page : "rumaging" has been changed to "rummaging" | | | | page : "they wheeled her arm-chair" has been changed | | to "they wheeled her armchair" | | | | page : "with them to her bed-room," has been changed | | to "with them to her bedroom," | | | | page : "her arm-chair with palpitations" has been changed | | to "her armchair with palpitations" | | | | page : "the tables round them, however, were emptying:" | | has been changed to "the tables round them, however, were | | emptying;" | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ none none the good soldier by ford madox ford contents part i part ii part iii part iv part i i this is the saddest story i have ever heard. we had known the ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of nauheim with an extreme intimacy�or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. my wife and i knew captain and mrs ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. this is, i believe, a state of things only possible with english people of whom, till today, when i sit down to puzzle out what i know of this sad affair, i knew nothing whatever. six months ago i had never been to england, and, certainly, i had never sounded the depths of an english heart. i had known the shallows. i don't mean to say that we were not acquainted with many english people. living, as we perforce lived, in europe, and being, as we perforce were, leisured americans, which is as much as to say that we were un-american, we were thrown very much into the society of the nicer english. paris, you see, was our home. somewhere between nice and bordighera provided yearly winter quarters for us, and nauheim always received us from july to september. you will gather from this statement that one of us had, as the saying is, a "heart", and, from the statement that my wife is dead, that she was the sufferer. captain ashburnham also had a heart. but, whereas a yearly month or so at nauheim tuned him up to exactly the right pitch for the rest of the twelvemonth, the two months or so were only just enough to keep poor florence alive from year to year. the reason for his heart was, approximately, polo, or too much hard sportsmanship in his youth. the reason for poor florence's broken years was a storm at sea upon our first crossing to europe, and the immediate reasons for our imprisonment in that continent were doctor's orders. they said that even the short channel crossing might well kill the poor thing. when we all first met, captain ashburnham, home on sick leave from an india to which he was never to return, was thirty-three; mrs ashburnham �leonora�was thirty-one. i was thirty-six and poor florence thirty. thus today florence would have been thirty-nine and captain ashburnham forty- two; whereas i am forty-five and leonora forty. you will perceive, therefore, that our friendship has been a young-middle-aged affair, since we were all of us of quite quiet dispositions, the ashburnhams being more particularly what in england it is the custom to call "quite good people". they were descended, as you will probably expect, from the ashburnham who accompanied charles i to the scaffold, and, as you must also expect with this class of english people, you would never have noticed it. mrs ashburnham was a powys; florence was a hurlbird of stamford, connecticut, where, as you know, they are more old-fashioned than even the inhabitants of cranford, england, could have been. i myself am a dowell of philadelphia, pa., where, it is historically true, there are more old english families than you would find in any six english counties taken together. i carry about with me, indeed�as if it were the only thing that invisibly anchored me to any spot upon the globe�the title deeds of my farm, which once covered several blocks between chestnut and walnut streets. these title deeds are of wampum, the grant of an indian chief to the first dowell, who left farnham in surrey in company with william penn. florence's people, as is so often the case with the inhabitants of connecticut, came from the neighbourhood of fordingbridge, where the ashburnhams' place is. from there, at this moment, i am actually writing. you may well ask why i write. and yet my reasons are quite many. for it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads. some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the whole sack of rome by the goths, and i swear to you that the breaking up of our little four-square coterie was such another unthinkable event. supposing that you should come upon us sitting together at one of the little tables in front of the club house, let us say, at homburg, taking tea of an afternoon and watching the miniature golf, you would have said that, as human affairs go, we were an extraordinarily safe castle. we were, if you will, one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and the safest of all the beautiful and safe things that god has permitted the mind of men to frame. where better could one take refuge? where better? permanence? stability? i can't believe it's gone. i can't believe that that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished in four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. upon my word, yes, our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet shelters. no, indeed, it can't be gone. you can't kill a minuet de la cour. you may shut up the music-book, close the harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may destroy the white satin favours. the mob may sack versailles; the trianon may fall, but surely the minuet�the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? isn't there any nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and everlasting souls? no, by god, it is false! it wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison�a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the taunus wald. and yet i swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. it was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins. for, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting�or, no, not acting�sitting here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? if for nine years i have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years i possessed a goodly apple? so it may well be with edward ashburnham, with leonora his wife and with poor dear florence. and, if you come to think of it, isn't it a little odd that the physical rottenness of at least two pillars of our four-square house never presented itself to my mind as a menace to its security? it doesn't so present itself now though the two of them are actually dead. i don't know.... i know nothing�nothing in the world�of the hearts of men. i only know that i am alone�horribly alone. no hearthstone will ever again witness, for me, friendly intercourse. no smoking-room will ever be other than peopled with incalculable simulacra amidst smoke wreaths. yet, in the name of god, what should i know if i don't know the life of the hearth and of the smoking-room, since my whole life has been passed in those places? the warm hearthside!�well, there was florence: i believe that for the twelve years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed irretrievably to have weakened her heart�i don't believe that for one minute she was out of my sight, except when she was safely tucked up in bed and i should be downstairs, talking to some good fellow or other in some lounge or smoking-room or taking my final turn with a cigar before going to bed. i don't, you understand, blame florence. but how can she have known what she knew? how could she have got to know it? to know it so fully. heavens! there doesn't seem to have been the actual time. it must have been when i was taking my baths, and my swedish exercises, being manicured. leading the life i did, of the sedulous, strained nurse, i had to do something to keep myself fit. it must have been then! yet even that can't have been enough time to get the tremendously long conversations full of worldly wisdom that leonora has reported to me since their deaths. and is it possible to imagine that during our prescribed walks in nauheim and the neighbourhood she found time to carry on the protracted negotiations which she did carry on between edward ashburnham and his wife? and isn't it incredible that during all that time edward and leonora never spoke a word to each other in private? what is one to think of humanity? for i swear to you that they were the model couple. he was as devoted as it was possible to be without appearing fatuous. so well set up, with such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm goodheartedness! and she�so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair! yes, leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real thing that she seemed too good to be true. you don't, i mean, as a rule, get it all so superlatively together. to be the county family, to look the county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly wealthy; to be so perfect in manner�even just to the saving touch of insolence that seems to be necessary. to have all that and to be all that! no, it was too good to be true. and yet, only this afternoon, talking over the whole matter she said to me: "once i tried to have a lover but i was so sick at the heart, so utterly worn out that i had to send him away." that struck me as the most amazing thing i had ever heard. she said "i was actually in a man's arms. such a nice chap! such a dear fellow! and i was saying to myself, fiercely, hissing it between my teeth, as they say in novels�and really clenching them together: i was saying to myself: 'now, i'm in for it and i'll really have a good time for once in my life�for once in my life!' it was in the dark, in a carriage, coming back from a hunt ball. eleven miles we had to drive! and then suddenly the bitterness of the endless poverty, of the endless acting�it fell on me like a blight, it spoilt everything. yes, i had to realize that i had been spoilt even for the good time when it came. and i burst out crying and i cried and i cried for the whole eleven miles. just imagine me crying! and just imagine me making a fool of the poor dear chap like that. it certainly wasn't playing the game, was it now?" i don't know; i don't know; was that last remark of hers the remark of a harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not county family, thinks at the bottom of her heart? or thinks all the time for the matter of that? who knows? yet, if one doesn't know that at this hour and day, at this pitch of civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the daughters in saecula saeculorum... but perhaps that is what all mothers teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or with heart whispering to heart. and, if one doesn't know as much as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and why is one here? i asked mrs ashburnham whether she had told florence that and what florence had said and she answered:�"florence didn't offer any comment at all. what could she say? there wasn't anything to be said. with the grinding poverty we had to put up with to keep up appearances, and the way the poverty came about�you know what i mean�any woman would have been justified in taking a lover and presents too. florence once said about a very similar position�she was a little too well-bred, too american, to talk about mine�that it was a case of perfectly open riding and the woman could just act on the spur of the moment. she said it in american of course, but that was the sense of it. i think her actual words were: 'that it was up to her to take it or leave it....'" i don't want you to think that i am writing teddy ashburnham down a brute. i don't believe he was. god knows, perhaps all men are like that. for as i've said what do i know even of the smoking-room? fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily gross stories�so gross that they will positively give you a pain. and yet they'd be offended if you suggested that they weren't the sort of person you could trust your wife alone with. and very likely they'd be quite properly offended�that is if you can trust anybody alone with anybody. but that sort of fellow obviously takes more delight in listening to or in telling gross stories�more delight than in anything else in the world. they'll hunt languidly and dress languidly and dine languidly and work without enthusiasm and find it a bore to carry on three minutes' conversation about anything whatever and yet, when the other sort of conversation begins, they'll laugh and wake up and throw themselves about in their chairs. then, if they so delight in the narration, how is it possible that they can be offended�and properly offended�at the suggestion that they might make attempts upon your wife's honour? or again: edward ashburnham was the cleanest looking sort of chap;�an excellent magistrate, a first rate soldier, one of the best landlords, so they said, in hampshire, england. to the poor and to hopeless drunkards, as i myself have witnessed, he was like a painstaking guardian. and he never told a story that couldn't have gone into the columns of the field more than once or twice in all the nine years of my knowing him. he didn't even like hearing them; he would fidget and get up and go out to buy a cigar or something of that sort. you would have said that he was just exactly the sort of chap that you could have trusted your wife with. and i trusted mine and it was madness. and yet again you have me. if poor edward was dangerous because of the chastity of his expressions�and they say that is always the hall-mark of a libertine�what about myself? for i solemnly avow that not only have i never so much as hinted at an impropriety in my conversation in the whole of my days; and more than that, i will vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute chastity of my life. at what, then, does it all work out? is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? am i no better than a eunuch or is the proper man�the man with the right to existence�a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbour's womankind? i don't know. and there is nothing to guide us. and if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? or are we meant to act on impulse alone? it is all a darkness. ii i don't know how it is best to put this thing down�whether it would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it reached me from the lips of leonora or from those of edward himself. so i shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. and i shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars. from time to time we shall get up and go to the door and look out at the great moon and say: "why, it is nearly as bright as in provence!" and then we shall come back to the fireside, with just the touch of a sigh because we are not in that provence where even the saddest stories are gay. consider the lamentable history of peire vidal. two years ago florence and i motored from biarritz to las tours, which is in the black mountains. in the middle of a tortuous valley there rises up an immense pinnacle and on the pinnacle are four castles�las tours, the towers. and the immense mistral blew down that valley which was the way from france into provence so that the silver grey olive leaves appeared like hair flying in the wind, and the tufts of rosemary crept into the iron rocks that they might not be torn up by the roots. it was, of course, poor dear florence who wanted to go to las tours. you are to imagine that, however much her bright personality came from stamford, connecticut, she was yet a graduate of poughkeepsie. i never could imagine how she did it�the queer, chattery person that she was. with the far-away look in her eyes�which wasn't, however, in the least romantic�i mean that she didn't look as if she were seeing poetic dreams, or looking through you, for she hardly ever did look at you!�holding up one hand as if she wished to silence any objection�or any comment for the matter of that�she would talk. she would talk about william the silent, about gustave the loquacious, about paris frocks, about how the poor dressed in , about fantin-latour, about the paris-lyons-mediterranée train-deluxe, about whether it would be worth while to get off at tarascon and go across the windswept suspension- bridge, over the rhone to take another look at beaucaire. we never did take another look at beaucaire, of course�beautiful beaucaire, with the high, triangular white tower, that looked as thin as a needle and as tall as the flatiron, between fifth and broadway�beaucaire with the grey walls on the top of the pinnacle surrounding an acre and a half of blue irises, beneath the tallness of the stone pines, what a beautiful thing the stone pine is!... no, we never did go back anywhere. not to heidelberg, not to hamelin, not to verona, not to mont majour�not so much as to carcassonne itself. we talked of it, of course, but i guess florence got all she wanted out of one look at a place. she had the seeing eye. i haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which i want to return�towns with the blinding white sun upon them; stone pines against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all carved and painted with stags and scarlet flowers and crowstepped gables with the little saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi and walled towns a mile or so back from the sea, on the mediterranean, between leghorn and naples. not one of them did we see more than once, so that the whole world for me is like spots of colour in an immense canvas. perhaps if it weren't so i should have something to catch hold of now. is all this digression or isn't it digression? again i don't know. you, the listener, sit opposite me. but you are so silent. you don't tell me anything. i am, at any rate, trying to get you to see what sort of life it was i led with florence and what florence was like. well, she was bright; and she danced. she seemed to dance over the floors of castles and over seas and over and over and over the salons of modistes and over the plages of the riviera�like a gay tremulous beam, reflected from water upon a ceiling. and my function in life was to keep that bright thing in existence. and it was almost as difficult as trying to catch with your hand that dancing reflection. and the task lasted for years. florence's aunts used to say that i must be the laziest man in philadelphia. they had never been to philadelphia and they had the new england conscience. you see, the first thing they said to me when i called in on florence in the little ancient, colonial, wooden house beneath the high, thin-leaved elms�the first question they asked me was not how i did but what did i do. and i did nothing. i suppose i ought to have done something, but i didn't see any call to do it. why does one do things? i just drifted in and wanted florence. first i had drifted in on florence at a browning tea, or something of the sort in fourteenth street, which was then still residential. i don't know why i had gone to new york; i don't know why i had gone to the tea. i don't see why florence should have gone to that sort of spelling bee. it wasn't the place at which, even then, you expected to find a poughkeepsie graduate. i guess florence wanted to raise the culture of the stuyvesant crowd and did it as she might have gone in slumming. intellectual slumming, that was what it was. she always wanted to leave the world a little more elevated than she found it. poor dear thing, i have heard her lecture teddy ashburnham by the hour on the difference between a franz hals and a wouvermans and why the pre-mycenaean statues were cubical with knobs on the top. i wonder what he made of it? perhaps he was thankful. i know i was. for do you understand my whole attentions, my whole endeavours were to keep poor dear florence on to topics like the finds at cnossos and the mental spirituality of walter pater. i had to keep her at it, you understand, or she might die. for i was solemnly informed that if she became excited over anything or if her emotions were really stirred her little heart might cease to beat. for twelve years i had to watch every word that any person uttered in any conversation and i had to head it off what the english call "things"�off love, poverty, crime, religion and the rest of it. yes, the first doctor that we had when she was carried off the ship at havre assured me that this must be done. good god, are all these fellows monstrous idiots, or is there a freemasonry between all of them from end to end of the earth?... that is what makes me think of that fellow peire vidal. because, of course, his story is culture and i had to head her towards culture and at the same time it's so funny and she hadn't got to laugh, and it's so full of love and she wasn't to think of love. do you know the story? las tours of the four castles had for chatelaine blanche somebody-or-other who was called as a term of commendation, la louve�the she-wolf. and peire vidal the troubadour paid his court to la louve. and she wouldn't have anything to do with him. so, out of compliment to her�the things people do when they're in love!�he dressed himself up in wolfskins and went up into the black mountains. and the shepherds of the montagne noire and their dogs mistook him for a wolf and he was torn with the fangs and beaten with clubs. so they carried him back to las tours and la louve wasn't at all impressed. they polished him up and her husband remonstrated seriously with her. vidal was, you see, a great poet and it was not proper to treat a great poet with indifference. so peire vidal declared himself emperor of jerusalem or somewhere and the husband had to kneel down and kiss his feet though la louve wouldn't. and peire set sail in a rowing boat with four companions to redeem the holy sepulchre. and they struck on a rock somewhere, and, at great expense, the husband had to fit out an expedition to fetch him back. and peire vidal fell all over the lady's bed while the husband, who was a most ferocious warrior, remonstrated some more about the courtesy that is due to great poets. but i suppose la louve was the more ferocious of the two. anyhow, that is all that came of it. isn't that a story? you haven't an idea of the queer old-fashionedness of florence's aunts�the misses hurlbird, nor yet of her uncle. an extraordinarily lovable man, that uncle john. thin, gentle, and with a "heart" that made his life very much what florence's afterwards became. he didn't reside at stamford; his home was in waterbury where the watches come from. he had a factory there which, in our queer american way, would change its functions almost from year to year. for nine months or so it would manufacture buttons out of bone. then it would suddenly produce brass buttons for coachmen's liveries. then it would take a turn at embossed tin lids for candy boxes. the fact is that the poor old gentleman, with his weak and fluttering heart, didn't want his factory to manufacture anything at all. he wanted to retire. and he did retire when he was seventy. but he was so worried at having all the street boys in the town point after him and exclaim: "there goes the laziest man in waterbury!" that he tried taking a tour round the world. and florence and a young man called jimmy went with him. it appears from what florence told me that jimmy's function with mr hurlbird was to avoid exciting topics for him. he had to keep him, for instance, out of political discussions. for the poor old man was a violent democrat in days when you might travel the world over without finding anything but a republican. anyhow, they went round the world. i think an anecdote is about the best way to give you an idea of what the old gentleman was like. for it is perhaps important that you should know what the old gentleman was; he had a great deal of influence in forming the character of my poor dear wife. just before they set out from san francisco for the south seas old mr hurlbird said he must take something with him to make little presents to people he met on the voyage. and it struck him that the things to take for that purpose were oranges�because california is the orange country�and comfortable folding chairs. so he bought i don't know how many cases of oranges�the great cool california oranges, and half-a- dozen folding chairs in a special case that he always kept in his cabin. there must have been half a cargo of fruit. for, to every person on board the several steamers that they employed�to every person with whom he had so much as a nodding acquaintance, he gave an orange every morning. and they lasted him right round the girdle of this mighty globe of ours. when they were at north cape, even, he saw on the horizon, poor dear thin man that he was, a lighthouse. "hello," says he to himself, "these fellows must be very lonely. let's take them some oranges." so he had a boatload of his fruit out and had himself rowed to the lighthouse on the horizon. the folding chairs he lent to any lady that he came across and liked or who seemed tired and invalidish on the ship. and so, guarded against his heart and, having his niece with him, he went round the world.... he wasn't obtrusive about his heart. you wouldn't have known he had one. he only left it to the physical laboratory at waterbury for the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an extraordinary kind of heart. and the joke of the matter was that, when, at the age of eighty- four, just five days before poor florence, he died of bronchitis there was found to be absolutely nothing the matter with that organ. it had certainly jumped or squeaked or something just sufficiently to take in the doctors, but it appears that that was because of an odd formation of the lungs. i don't much understand about these matters. i inherited his money because florence died five days after him. i wish i hadn't. it was a great worry. i had to go out to waterbury just after florence's death because the poor dear old fellow had left a good many charitable bequests and i had to appoint trustees. i didn't like the idea of their not being properly handled. yes, it was a great worry. and just as i had got things roughly settled i received the extraordinary cable from ashburnham begging me to come back and have a talk with him. and immediately afterwards came one from leonora saying, "yes, please do come. you could be so helpful." it was as if he had sent the cable without consulting her and had afterwards told her. indeed, that was pretty much what had happened, except that he had told the girl and the girl told the wife. i arrived, however, too late to be of any good if i could have been of any good. and then i had my first taste of english life. it was amazing. it was overwhelming. i never shall forget the polished cob that edward, beside me, drove; the animal's action, its high-stepping, its skin that was like satin. and the peace! and the red cheeks! and the beautiful, beautiful old house. just near branshaw teleragh it was and we descended on it from the high, clear, windswept waste of the new forest. i tell you it was amazing to arrive there from waterbury. and it came into my head�for teddy ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come and have a talk" with him�that it was unbelievable that anything essentially calamitous could happen to that place and those people. i tell you it was the very spirit of peace. and leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood on the top doorstep, with a butler and footman and a maid or so behind her. and she just said: "so glad you've come," as if i'd run down to lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having come half the world over at the call of two urgent telegrams. the girl was out with the hounds, i think. and that poor devil beside me was in an agony. absolute, hopeless, dumb agony such as passes the mind of man to imagine. iii it was a very hot summer, in august, ; and florence had already been taking the baths for a month. i don't know how it feels to be a patient at one of those places. i never was a patient anywhere. i daresay the patients get a home feeling and some sort of anchorage in the spot. they seem to like the bath attendants, with their cheerful faces, their air of authority, their white linen. but, for myself, to be at nauheim gave me a sense�what shall i say?�a sense almost of nakedness�the nakedness that one feels on the sea-shore or in any great open space. i had no attachments, no accumulations. in one's own home it is as if little, innate sympathies draw one to particular chairs that seem to enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem friendly when others may be hostile. and, believe me, that feeling is a very important part of life. i know it well, that have been for so long a wanderer upon the face of public resorts. and one is too polished up. heaven knows i was never an untidy man. but the feeling that i had when, whilst poor florence was taking her morning bath, i stood upon the carefully swept steps of the englischer hof, looking at the carefully arranged trees in tubs upon the carefully arranged gravel whilst carefully arranged people walked past in carefully calculated gaiety, at the carefully calculated hour, the tall trees of the public gardens, going up to the right; the reddish stone of the baths�or were they white half-timber châlets? upon my word i have forgotten, i who was there so often. that will give you the measure of how much i was in the landscape. i could find my way blindfolded to the hot rooms, to the douche rooms, to the fountain in the centre of the quadrangle where the rusty water gushes out. yes, i could find my way blindfolded. i know the exact distances. from the hotel regina you took one hundred and eighty- seven paces, then, turning sharp, left-handed, four hundred and twenty took you straight down to the fountain. from the englischer hof, starting on the sidewalk, it was ninety-seven paces and the same four hundred and twenty, but turning lefthanded this time. and now you understand that, having nothing in the world to do�but nothing whatever! i fell into the habit of counting my footsteps. i would walk with florence to the baths. and, of course, she entertained me with her conversation. it was, as i have said, wonderful what she could make conversation out of. she walked very lightly, and her hair was very nicely done, and she dressed beautifully and very expensively. of course she had money of her own, but i shouldn't have minded. and yet you know i can't remember a single one of her dresses. or i can remember just one, a very simple one of blue figured silk�a chinese pattern�very full in the skirts and broadening out over the shoulders. and her hair was copper-coloured, and the heels of her shoes were exceedingly high, so that she tripped upon the points of her toes. and when she came to the door of the bathing place, and when it opened to receive her, she would look back at me with a little coquettish smile, so that her cheek appeared to be caressing her shoulder. i seem to remember that, with that dress, she wore an immensely broad leghorn hat�like the chapeau de paille of rubens, only very white. the hat would be tied with a lightly knotted scarf of the same stuff as her dress. she knew how to give value to her blue eyes. and round her neck would be some simple pink, coral beads. and her complexion had a perfect clearness, a perfect smoothness... yes, that is how i most exactly remember her, in that dress, in that hat, looking over her shoulder at me so that the eyes flashed very blue�dark pebble blue... and, what the devil! for whose benefit did she do it? for that of the bath attendant? of the passers-by? i don't know. anyhow, it can't have been for me, for never, in all the years of her life, never on any possible occasion, or in any other place did she so smile to me, mockingly, invitingly. ah, she was a riddle; but then, all other women are riddles. and it occurs to me that some way back i began a sentence that i have never finished... it was about the feeling that i had when i stood on the steps of my hotel every morning before starting out to fetch florence back from the bath. natty, precise, well-brushed, conscious of being rather small amongst the long english, the lank americans, the rotund germans, and the obese russian jewesses, i should stand there, tapping a cigarette on the outside of my case, surveying for a moment the world in the sunlight. but a day was to come when i was never to do it again alone. you can imagine, therefore, what the coming of the ashburnhams meant to me. i have forgotten the aspect of many things, but i shall never forget the aspect of the dining-room of the hotel excelsior on that evening�and on so many other evenings. whole castles have vanished from my memory, whole cities that i have never visited again, but that white room, festooned with papier-maché fruits and flowers; the tall windows; the many tables; the black screen round the door with three golden cranes flying upward on each panel; the palm- tree in the centre of the room; the swish of the waiter's feet; the cold expensive elegance; the mien of the diners as they came in every evening�their air of earnestness as if they must go through a meal prescribed by the kur authorities and their air of sobriety as if they must seek not by any means to enjoy their meals�those things i shall not easily forget. and then, one evening, in the twilight, i saw edward ashburnham lounge round the screen into the room. the head waiter, a man with a face all grey�in what subterranean nooks or corners do people cultivate those absolutely grey complexions?�went with the timorous patronage of these creatures towards him and held out a grey ear to be whispered into. it was generally a disagreeable ordeal for newcomers but edward ashburnham bore it like an englishman and a gentleman. i could see his lips form a word of three syllables�remember i had nothing in the world to do but to notice these niceties�and immediately i knew that he must be edward ashburnham, captain, fourteenth hussars, of branshaw house, branshaw teleragh. i knew it because every evening just before dinner, whilst i waited in the hall, i used, by the courtesy of monsieur schontz, the proprietor, to inspect the little police reports that each guest was expected to sign upon taking a room. the head waiter piloted him immediately to a vacant table, three away from my own�the table that the grenfalls of falls river, n.j., had just vacated. it struck me that that was not a very nice table for the newcomers, since the sunlight, low though it was, shone straight down upon it, and the same idea seemed to come at the same moment into captain ashburnham's head. his face hitherto had, in the wonderful english fashion, expressed nothing whatever. nothing. there was in it neither joy nor despair; neither hope nor fear; neither boredom nor satisfaction. he seemed to perceive no soul in that crowded room; he might have been walking in a jungle. i never came across such a perfect expression before and i never shall again. it was insolence and not insolence; it was modesty and not modesty. his hair was fair, extraordinarily ordered in a wave, running from the left temple to the right; his face was a light brick-red, perfectly uniform in tint up to the roots of the hair itself; his yellow moustache was as stiff as a toothbrush and i verily believe that he had his black smoking jacket thickened a little over the shoulder-blades so as to give himself the air of the slightest possible stoop. it would be like him to do that; that was the sort of thing he thought about. martingales, chiffney bits, boots; where you got the best soap, the best brandy, the name of the chap who rode a plater down the khyber cliffs; the spreading power of number three shot before a charge of number four powder... by heavens, i hardly ever heard him talk of anything else. not in all the years that i knew him did i hear him talk of anything but these subjects. oh, yes, once he told me that i could buy my special shade of blue ties cheaper from a firm in burlington arcade than from my own people in new york. and i have bought my ties from that firm ever since. otherwise i should not remember the name of the burlington arcade. i wonder what it looks like. i have never seen it. i imagine it to be two immense rows of pillars, like those of the forum at rome, with edward ashburnham striding down between them. but it probably isn't�the least like that. once also he advised me to buy caledonian deferred, since they were due to rise. and i did buy them and they did rise. but of how he got the knowledge i haven't the faintest idea. it seemed to drop out of the blue sky. and that was absolutely all that i knew of him until a month ago�that and the profusion of his cases, all of pigskin and stamped with his initials, e. f. a. there were gun cases, and collar cases, and shirt cases, and letter cases and cases each containing four bottles of medicine; and hat cases and helmet cases. it must have needed a whole herd of the gadarene swine to make up his outfit. and, if i ever penetrated into his private room it would be to see him standing, with his coat and waistcoat off and the immensely long line of his perfectly elegant trousers from waist to boot heel. and he would have a slightly reflective air and he would be just opening one kind of case and just closing another. good god, what did they all see in him? for i swear there was all there was of him, inside and out; though they said he was a good soldier. yet, leonora adored him with a passion that was like an agony, and hated him with an agony that was as bitter as the sea. how could he arouse anything like a sentiment, in anybody? what did he even talk to them about�when they were under four eyes?�ah, well, suddenly, as if by a flash of inspiration, i know. for all good soldiers are sentimentalists�all good soldiers of that type. their profession, for one thing, is full of the big words, courage, loyalty, honour, constancy. and i have given a wrong impression of edward ashburnham if i have made you think that literally never in the course of our nine years of intimacy did he discuss what he would have called "the graver things." even before his final outburst to me, at times, very late at night, say, he has blurted out something that gave an insight into the sentimental view of the cosmos that was his. he would say how much the society of a good woman could do towards redeeming you, and he would say that constancy was the finest of the virtues. he said it very stiffly, of course, but still as if the statement admitted of no doubt. constancy! isn't that the queer thought? and yet, i must add that poor dear edward was a great reader�he would pass hours lost in novels of a sentimental type�novels in which typewriter girls married marquises and governesses earls. and in his books, as a rule, the course of true love ran as smooth as buttered honey. and he was fond of poetry, of a certain type�and he could even read a perfectly sad love story. i have seen his eyes filled with tears at reading of a hopeless parting. and he loved, with a sentimental yearning, all children, puppies, and the feeble generally... . so, you see, he would have plenty to gurgle about to a woman�with that and his sound common sense about martingales and his�still sentimental�experiences as a county magistrate; and with his intense, optimistic belief that the woman he was making love to at the moment was the one he was destined, at last, to be eternally constant to.... well, i fancy he could put up a pretty good deal of talk when there was no man around to make him feel shy. and i was quite astonished, during his final burst out to me�at the very end of things, when the poor girl was on her way to that fatal brindisi and he was trying to persuade himself and me that he had never really cared for her�i was quite astonished to observe how literary and how just his expressions were. he talked like quite a good book�a book not in the least cheaply sentimental. you see, i suppose he regarded me not so much as a man. i had to be regarded as a woman or a solicitor. anyhow, it burst out of him on that horrible night. and then, next morning, he took me over to the assizes and i saw how, in a perfectly calm and business-like way, he set to work to secure a verdict of not guilty for a poor girl, the daughter of one of his tenants, who had been accused of murdering her baby. he spent two hundred pounds on her defence... well, that was edward ashburnham. i had forgotten about his eyes. they were as blue as the sides of a certain type of box of matches. when you looked at them carefully you saw that they were perfectly honest, perfectly straightforward, perfectly, perfectly stupid. but the brick pink of his complexion, running perfectly level to the brick pink of his inner eyelids, gave them a curious, sinister expression�like a mosaic of blue porcelain set in pink china. and that chap, coming into a room, snapped up the gaze of every woman in it, as dexterously as a conjurer pockets billiard balls. it was most amazing. you know the man on the stage who throws up sixteen balls at once and they all drop into pockets all over his person, on his shoulders, on his heels, on the inner side of his sleeves; and he stands perfectly still and does nothing. well, it was like that. he had rather a rough, hoarse voice. and, there he was, standing by the table. i was looking at him, with my back to the screen. and suddenly, i saw two distinct expressions flicker across his immobile eyes. how the deuce did they do it, those unflinching blue eyes with the direct gaze? for the eyes themselves never moved, gazing over my shoulder towards the screen. and the gaze was perfectly level and perfectly direct and perfectly unchanging. i suppose that the lids really must have rounded themselves a little and perhaps the lips moved a little too, as if he should be saying: "there you are, my dear." at any rate, the expression was that of pride, of satisfaction, of the possessor. i saw him once afterwards, for a moment, gaze upon the sunny fields of branshaw and say: "all this is my land!" and then again, the gaze was perhaps more direct, harder if possible�hardy too. it was a measuring look; a challenging look. once when we were at wiesbaden watching him play in a polo match against the bonner hussaren i saw the same look come into his eyes, balancing the possibilities, looking over the ground. the german captain, count baron idigon von lelöffel, was right up by their goal posts, coming with the ball in an easy canter in that tricky german fashion. the rest of the field were just anywhere. it was only a scratch sort of affair. ashburnham was quite close to the rails not five yards from us and i heard him saying to himself: "might just be done!" and he did it. goodness! he swung that pony round with all its four legs spread out, like a cat dropping off a roof.... well, it was just that look that i noticed in his eyes: "it might," i seem even now to hear him muttering to himself, "just be done." i looked round over my shoulder and saw, tall, smiling brilliantly and buoyant�leonora. and, little and fair, and as radiant as the track of sunlight along the sea�my wife. that poor wretch! to think that he was at that moment in a perfect devil of a fix, and there he was, saying at the back of his mind: "it might just be done." it was like a chap in the middle of the eruption of a volcano, saying that he might just manage to bolt into the tumult and set fire to a haystack. madness? predestination? who the devil knows? mrs ashburnham exhibited at that moment more gaiety than i have ever since known her to show. there are certain classes of english people�the nicer ones when they have been to many spas, who seem to make a point of becoming much more than usually animated when they are introduced to my compatriots. i have noticed this often. of course, they must first have accepted the americans. but that once done, they seem to say to themselves: "hallo, these women are so bright. we aren't going to be outdone in brightness." and for the time being they certainly aren't. but it wears off. so it was with leonora�at least until she noticed me. she began, leonora did�and perhaps it was that that gave me the idea of a touch of insolence in her character, for she never afterwards did any one single thing like it�she began by saying in quite a loud voice and from quite a distance: "don't stop over by that stuffy old table, teddy. come and sit by these nice people!" and that was an extraordinary thing to say. quite extraordinary. i couldn't for the life of me refer to total strangers as nice people. but, of course, she was taking a line of her own in which i at any rate�and no one else in the room, for she too had taken the trouble to read through the list of guests�counted any more than so many clean, bull terriers. and she sat down rather brilliantly at a vacant table, beside ours�one that was reserved for the guggenheimers. and she just sat absolutely deaf to the remonstrances of the head waiter with his face like a grey ram's. that poor chap was doing his steadfast duty too. he knew that the guggenheimers of chicago, after they had stayed there a month and had worried the poor life out of him, would give him two dollars fifty and grumble at the tipping system. and he knew that teddy ashburnham and his wife would give him no trouble whatever except what the smiles of leonora might cause in his apparently unimpressionable bosom�though you never can tell what may go on behind even a not quite spotless plastron!�and every week edward ashburnham would give him a solid, sound, golden english sovereign. yet this stout fellow was intent on saving that table for the guggenheimers of chicago. it ended in florence saying: "why shouldn't we all eat out of the same trough?�that's a nasty new york saying. but i'm sure we're all nice quiet people and there can be four seats at our table. it's round." then came, as it were, an appreciative gurgle from the captain and i was perfectly aware of a slight hesitation�a quick sharp motion in mrs ashburnham, as if her horse had checked. but she put it at the fence all right, rising from the seat she had taken and sitting down opposite me, as it were, all in one motion. i never thought that leonora looked her best in evening dress. she seemed to get it too clearly cut, there was no ruffling. she always affected black and her shoulders were too classical. she seemed to stand out of her corsage as a white marble bust might out of a black wedgwood vase. i don't know. i loved leonora always and, today, i would very cheerfully lay down my life, what is left of it, in her service. but i am sure i never had the beginnings of a trace of what is called the sex instinct towards her. and i suppose�no i am certain that she never had it towards me. as far as i am concerned i think it was those white shoulders that did it. i seemed to feel when i looked at them that, if ever i should press my lips upon them that they would be slightly cold�not icily, not without a touch of human heat, but, as they say of baths, with the chill off. i seemed to feel chilled at the end of my lips when i looked at her... no, leonora always appeared to me at her best in a blue tailor-made. then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white shoulders. certain women's lines guide your eyes to their necks, their eyelashes, their lips, their breasts. but leonora's seemed to conduct your gaze always to her wrist. and the wrist was at its best in a black or a dog-skin glove and there was always a gold circlet with a little chain supporting a very small golden key to a dispatch box. perhaps it was that in which she locked up her heart and her feelings. anyhow, she sat down opposite me and then, for the first time, she paid any attention to my existence. she gave me, suddenly, yet deliberately, one long stare. her eyes too were blue and dark and the eyelids were so arched that they gave you the whole round of the irises. and it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me. i seemed to perceive the swift questions chasing each other through the brain that was behind them. i seemed to hear the brain ask and the eyes answer with all the simpleness of a woman who was a good hand at taking in qualities of a horse�as indeed she was. "stands well; has plenty of room for his oats behind the girth. not so much in the way of shoulders," and so on. and so her eyes asked: "is this man trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the lover; is he likely to let his women be troublesome? is he, above all, likely to babble about my affairs?" and, suddenly, into those cold, slightly defiant, almost defensive china blue orbs, there came a warmth, a tenderness, a friendly recognition... oh, it was very charming and very touching�and quite mortifying. it was the look of a mother to her son, of a sister to her brother. it implied trust; it implied the want of any necessity for barriers. by god, she looked at me as if i were an invalid�as any kind woman may look at a poor chap in a bath chair. and, yes, from that day forward she always treated me and not florence as if i were the invalid. why, she would run after me with a rug upon chilly days. i suppose, therefore, that her eyes had made a favourable answer. or, perhaps, it wasn't a favourable answer. and then florence said: "and so the whole round table is begun." again edward ashburnham gurgled slightly in his throat; but leonora shivered a little, as if a goose had walked over her grave. and i was passing her the nickel-silver basket of rolls. avanti!... iv so began those nine years of uninterrupted tranquillity. they were characterized by an extraordinary want of any communicativeness on the part of the ashburnhams to which we, on our part, replied by leaving out quite as extraordinarily, and nearly as completely, the personal note. indeed, you may take it that what characterized our relationship was an atmosphere of taking everything for granted. the given proposition was, that we were all "good people." we took for granted that we all liked beef underdone but not too underdone; that both men preferred a good liqueur brandy after lunch; that both women drank a very light rhine wine qualified with fachingen water�that sort of thing. it was also taken for granted that we were both sufficiently well off to afford anything that we could reasonably want in the way of amusements fitting to our station�that we could take motor cars and carriages by the day; that we could give each other dinners and dine our friends and we could indulge if we liked in economy. thus, florence was in the habit of having the daily telegraph sent to her every day from london. she was always an anglo-maniac, was florence; the paris edition of the new york herald was always good enough for me. but when we discovered that the ashburnhams' copy of the london paper followed them from england, leonora and florence decided between them to suppress one subscription one year and the other the next. similarly it was the habit of the grand duke of nassau schwerin, who came yearly to the baths, to dine once with about eighteen families of regular kur guests. in return he would give a dinner of all the eighteen at once. and, since these dinners were rather expensive (you had to take the grand duke and a good many of his suite and any members of the diplomatic bodies that might be there)�florence and leonora, putting their heads together, didn't see why we shouldn't give the grand duke his dinner together. and so we did. i don't suppose the serenity minded that economy, or even noticed it. at any rate, our joint dinner to the royal personage gradually assumed the aspect of a yearly function. indeed, it grew larger and larger, until it became a sort of closing function for the season, at any rate as far as we were concerned. i don't in the least mean to say that we were the sort of persons who aspired to mix "with royalty." we didn't; we hadn't any claims; we were just "good people." but the grand duke was a pleasant, affable sort of royalty, like the late king edward vii, and it was pleasant to hear him talk about the races and, very occasionally, as a bonne bouche, about his nephew, the emperor; or to have him pause for a moment in his walk to ask after the progress of our cures or to be benignantly interested in the amount of money we had put on lelöffel's hunter for the frankfurt welter stakes. but upon my word, i don't know how we put in our time. how does one put in one's time? how is it possible to have achieved nine years and to have nothing whatever to show for it? nothing whatever, you understand. not so much as a bone penholder, carved to resemble a chessman and with a hole in the top through which you could see four views of nauheim. and, as for experience, as for knowledge of one's fellow beings�nothing either. upon my word, i couldn't tell you offhand whether the lady who sold the so expensive violets at the bottom of the road that leads to the station, was cheating me or no; i can't say whether the porter who carried our traps across the station at leghorn was a thief or no when he said that the regular tariff was a lira a parcel. the instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. after forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. but one doesn't. i think the modern civilized habit�the modern english habit of taking every one for granted�is a good deal to blame for this. i have observed this matter long enough to know the queer, subtle thing that it is; to know how the faculty, for what it is worth, never lets you down. mind, i am not saying that this is not the most desirable type of life in the world; that it is not an almost unreasonably high standard. for it is really nauseating, when you detest it, to have to eat every day several slices of thin, tepid, pink india rubber, and it is disagreeable to have to drink brandy when you would prefer to be cheered up by warm, sweet kümmel. and it is nasty to have to take a cold bath in the morning when what you want is really a hot one at night. and it stirs a little of the faith of your fathers that is deep down within you to have to have it taken for granted that you are an episcopalian when really you are an old-fashioned philadelphia quaker. but these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole of this society owes to Æsculapius. and the odd, queer thing is that the whole collection of rules applies to anybody�to the anybodies that you meet in hotels, in railway trains, to a less degree, perhaps, in steamers, but even, in the end, upon steamers. you meet a man or a woman and, from tiny and intimate sounds, from the slightest of movements, you know at once whether you are concerned with good people or with those who won't do. you know, this is to say, whether they will go rigidly through with the whole programme from the underdone beef to the anglicanism. it won't matter whether they be short or tall; whether the voice squeak like a marionette or rumble like a town bull's; it won't matter whether they are germans, austrians, french, spanish, or even brazilians�they will be the germans or brazilians who take a cold bath every morning and who move, roughly speaking, in diplomatic circles. but the inconvenient�well, hang it all, i will say it�the damnable nuisance of the whole thing is, that with all the taking for granted, you never really get an inch deeper than the things i have catalogued. i can give you a rather extraordinary instance of this. i can't remember whether it was in our first year�the first year of us four at nauheim, because, of course, it would have been the fourth year of florence and myself�but it must have been in the first or second year. and that gives the measure at once of the extraordinariness of our discussion and of the swiftness with which intimacy had grown up between us. on the one hand we seemed to start out on the expedition so naturally and with so little preparation, that it was as if we must have made many such excursions before; and our intimacy seemed so deep.... yet the place to which we went was obviously one to which florence at least would have wanted to take us quite early, so that you would almost think we should have gone there together at the beginning of our intimacy. florence was singularly expert as a guide to archaeological expeditions and there was nothing she liked so much as taking people round ruins and showing you the window from which some one looked down upon the murder of some one else. she only did it once; but she did it quite magnificently. she could find her way, with the sole help of baedeker, as easily about any old monument as she could about any american city where the blocks are all square and the streets all numbered, so that you can go perfectly easily from twenty-fourth to thirtieth. now it happens that fifty minutes away from nauheim, by a good train, is the ancient city of m��, upon a great pinnacle of basalt, girt with a triple road running sideways up its shoulder like a scarf. and at the top there is a castle�not a square castle like windsor, but a castle all slate gables and high peaks with gilt weathercocks flashing bravely�the castle of st elizabeth of hungary. it has the disadvantage of being in prussia; and it is always disagreeable to go into that country; but it is very old and there are many double-spired churches and it stands up like a pyramid out of the green valley of the lahn. i don't suppose the ashburnhams wanted especially to go there and i didn't especially want to go there myself. but, you understand, there was no objection. it was part of the cure to make an excursion three or four times a week. so that we were all quite unanimous in being grateful to florence for providing the motive power. florence, of course, had a motive of her own. she was at that time engaged in educating captain ashburnham�oh, of course, quite pour le bon motif! she used to say to leonora: "i simply can't understand how you can let him live by your side and be so ignorant!" leonora herself always struck me as being remarkably well educated. at any rate, she knew beforehand all that florence had to tell her. perhaps she got it up out of baedeker before florence was up in the morning. i don't mean to say that you would ever have known that leonora knew anything, but if florence started to tell us how ludwig the courageous wanted to have three wives at once�in which he differed from henry viii, who wanted them one after the other, and this caused a good deal of trouble�if florence started to tell us this, leonora would just nod her head in a way that quite pleasantly rattled my poor wife. she used to exclaim: "well, if you knew it, why haven't you told it all already to captain ashburnham? i'm sure he finds it interesting!" and leonora would look reflectively at her husband and say: "i have an idea that it might injure his hand�the hand, you know, used in connection with horses' mouths...." and poor ashburnham would blush and mutter and would say: "that's all right. don't you bother about me." i fancy his wife's irony did quite alarm poor teddy; because one evening he asked me seriously in the smoking-room if i thought that having too much in one's head would really interfere with one's quickness in polo. it struck him, he said, that brainy johnnies generally were rather muffs when they got on to four legs. i reassured him as best i could. i told him that he wasn't likely to take in enough to upset his balance. at that time the captain was quite evidently enjoying being educated by florence. she used to do it about three or four times a week under the approving eyes of leonora and myself. it wasn't, you understand, systematic. it came in bursts. it was florence clearing up one of the dark places of the earth, leaving the world a little lighter than she had found it. she would tell him the story of hamlet; explain the form of a symphony, humming the first and second subjects to him, and so on; she would explain to him the difference between arminians and erastians; or she would give him a short lecture on the early history of the united states. and it was done in a way well calculated to arrest a young attention. did you ever read mrs markham? well, it was like that... . but our excursion to m�� was a much larger, a much more full dress affair. you see, in the archives of the schloss in that city there was a document which florence thought would finally give her the chance to educate the whole lot of us together. it really worried poor florence that she couldn't, in matters of culture, ever get the better of leonora. i don't know what leonora knew or what she didn't know, but certainly she was always there whenever florence brought out any information. and she gave, somehow, the impression of really knowing what poor florence gave the impression of having only picked up. i can't exactly define it. it was almost something physical. have you ever seen a retriever dashing in play after a greyhound? you see the two running over a green field, almost side by side, and suddenly the retriever makes a friendly snap at the other. and the greyhound simply isn't there. you haven't observed it quicken its speed or strain a limb; but there it is, just two yards in front of the retriever's outstretched muzzle. so it was with florence and leonora in matters of culture. but on this occasion i knew that something was up. i found florence some days before, reading books like ranke's history of the popes, symonds' renaissance, motley's rise of the dutch republic and luther's table talk. i must say that, until the astonishment came, i got nothing but pleasure out of the little expedition. i like catching the two-forty; i like the slow, smooth roll of the great big trains�and they are the best trains in the world! i like being drawn through the green country and looking at it through the clear glass of the great windows. though, of course, the country isn't really green. the sun shines, the earth is blood red and purple and red and green and red. and the oxen in the ploughlands are bright varnished brown and black and blackish purple; and the peasants * are dressed in the black and white of magpies; and there are great flocks of magpies too. or the peasants' dresses in another field where there are little mounds of hay that will be grey-green on the sunny side and purple in the shadows�the peasants' dresses are vermilion with emerald green ribbons and purple skirts and white shirts and black velvet stomachers. still, the impression is that you are drawn through brilliant green meadows that run away on each side to the dark purple fir-woods; the basalt pinnacles; the immense forests. and there is meadowsweet at the edge of the streams, and cattle. why, i remember on that afternoon i saw a brown cow hitch its horns under the stomach of a black and white animal and the black and white one was thrown right into the middle of a narrow stream. i burst out laughing. but florence was imparting information so hard and leonora was listening so intently that no one noticed me. as for me, i was pleased to be off duty; i was pleased to think that florence for the moment was indubitably out of mischief�because she was talking about ludwig the courageous (i think it was ludwig the courageous but i am not an historian) about ludwig the courageous of hessen who wanted to have three wives at once and patronized luther�something like that!�i was so relieved to be off duty, because she couldn't possibly be doing anything to excite herself or set her poor heart a-fluttering�that the incident of the cow was a real joy to me. i chuckled over it from time to time for the whole rest of the day. because it does look very funny, you know, to see a black and white cow land on its back in the middle of a stream. it is so just exactly what one doesn't expect of a cow. i suppose i ought to have pitied the poor animal; but i just didn't. i was out for enjoyment. and i just enjoyed myself. it is so pleasant to be drawn along in front of the spectacular towns with the peaked castles and the many double spires. in the sunlight gleams come from the city�gleams from the glass of windows; from the gilt signs of apothecaries; from the ensigns of the student corps high up in the mountains; from the helmets of the funny little soldiers moving their stiff little legs in white linen trousers. and it was pleasant to get out in the great big spectacular prussian station with the hammered bronze ornaments and the paintings of peasants and flowers and cows; and to hear florence bargain energetically with the driver of an ancient droschka drawn by two lean horses. of course, i spoke german much more correctly than florence, though i never could rid myself quite of the accent of the pennsylvania duitsch of my childhood. anyhow, we were drawn in a sort of triumph, for five marks without any trinkgeld, right up to the castle. and we were taken through the museum and saw the fire- backs, the old glass, the old swords and the antique contraptions. and we went up winding corkscrew staircases and through the rittersaal, the great painted hall where the reformer and his friends met for the first time under the protection of the gentleman that had three wives at once and formed an alliance with the gentleman that had six wives, one after the other (i'm not really interested in these facts but they have a bearing on my story). and we went through chapels, and music rooms, right up immensely high in the air to a large old chamber, full of presses, with heavily-shuttered windows all round. and florence became positively electric. she told the tired, bored custodian what shutters to open; so that the bright sunlight streamed in palpable shafts into the dim old chamber. she explained that this was luther's bedroom and that just where the sunlight fell had stood his bed. as a matter of fact, i believe that she was wrong and that luther only stopped, as it were, for lunch, in order to evade pursuit. but, no doubt, it would have been his bedroom if he could have been persuaded to stop the night. and then, in spite of the protest of the custodian, she threw open another shutter and came tripping back to a large glass case. "and there," she exclaimed with an accent of gaiety, of triumph, and of audacity. she was pointing at a piece of paper, like the half-sheet of a letter with some faint pencil scrawls that might have been a jotting of the amounts we were spending during the day. and i was extremely happy at her gaiety, in her triumph, in her audacity. captain ashburnham had his hands upon the glass case. "there it is�the protest." and then, as we all properly stage-managed our bewilderment, she continued: "don't you know that is why we were all called protestants? that is the pencil draft of the protest they drew up. you can see the signatures of martin luther, and martin bucer, and zwingli, and ludwig the courageous...." i may have got some of the names wrong, but i know that luther and bucer were there. and her animation continued and i was glad. she was better and she was out of mischief. she continued, looking up into captain ashburnham's eyes: "it's because of that piece of paper that you're honest, sober, industrious, provident, and clean-lived. if it weren't for that piece of paper you'd be like the irish or the italians or the poles, but particularly the irish...." and she laid one finger upon captain ashburnham's wrist. i was aware of something treacherous, something frightful, something evil in the day. i can't define it and can't find a simile for it. it wasn't as if a snake had looked out of a hole. no, it was as if my heart had missed a beat. it was as if we were going to run and cry out; all four of us in separate directions, averting our heads. in ashburnham's face i know that there was absolute panic. i was horribly frightened and then i discovered that the pain in my left wrist was caused by leonora's clutching it: "i can't stand this," she said with a most extraordinary passion; "i must get out of this." i was horribly frightened. it came to me for a moment, though i hadn't time to think it, that she must be a madly jealous woman�jealous of florence and captain ashburnham, of all people in the world! and it was a panic in which we fled! we went right down the winding stairs, across the immense rittersaal to a little terrace that overlooks the lahn, the broad valley and the immense plain into which it opens out. "don't you see?" she said, "don't you see what's going on?" the panic again stopped my heart. i muttered, i stuttered�i don't know how i got the words out: "no! what's the matter? whatever's the matter?" she looked me straight in the eyes; and for a moment i had the feeling that those two blue discs were immense, were overwhelming, were like a wall of blue that shut me off from the rest of the world. i know it sounds absurd; but that is what it did feel like. "don't you see," she said, with a really horrible bitterness, with a really horrible lamentation in her voice, "don't you see that that's the cause of the whole miserable affair; of the whole sorrow of the world? and of the eternal damnation of you and me and them... ." i don't remember how she went on; i was too frightened; i was too amazed. i think i was thinking of running to fetch assistance�a doctor, perhaps, or captain ashburnham. or possibly she needed florence's tender care, though, of course, it would have been very bad for florence's heart. but i know that when i came out of it she was saying: "oh, where are all the bright, happy, innocent beings in the world? where's happiness? one reads of it in books!" she ran her hand with a singular clawing motion upwards over her forehead. her eyes were enormously distended; her face was exactly that of a person looking into the pit of hell and seeing horrors there. and then suddenly she stopped. she was, most amazingly, just mrs ashburnham again. her face was perfectly clear, sharp and defined; her hair was glorious in its golden coils. her nostrils twitched with a sort of contempt. she appeared to look with interest at a gypsy caravan that was coming over a little bridge far below us. "don't you know," she said, in her clear hard voice, "don't you know that i'm an irish catholic?" v those words gave me the greatest relief that i have ever had in my life. they told me, i think, almost more than i have ever gathered at any one moment�about myself. i don't think that before that day i had ever wanted anything very much except florence. i have, of course, had appetites, impatiences... why, sometimes at a table d'hôte, when there would be, say, caviare handed round, i have been absolutely full of impatience for fear that when the dish came to me there should not be a satisfying portion left over by the other guests. i have been exceedingly impatient at missing trains. the belgian state railway has a trick of letting the french trains miss their connections at brussels. that has always infuriated me. i have written about it letters to the times that the times never printed; those that i wrote to the paris edition of the new york herald were always printed, but they never seemed to satisfy me when i saw them. well, that was a sort of frenzy with me. it was a frenzy that now i can hardly realize. i can understand it intellectually. you see, in those days i was interested in people with "hearts." there was florence, there was edward ashburnham�or, perhaps, it was leonora that i was more interested in. i don't mean in the way of love. but, you see, we were both of the same profession�at any rate as i saw it. and the profession was that of keeping heart patients alive. you have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become. just as the blacksmith says: "by hammer and hand all art doth stand," just as the baker thinks that all the solar system revolves around his morning delivery of rolls, as the postmaster-general believes that he alone is the preserver of society�and surely, surely, these delusions are necessary to keep us going�so did i and, as i believed, leonora, imagine that the whole world ought to be arranged so as to ensure the keeping alive of heart patients. you have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become�how imbecile, in view of that engrossment, appear the ways of princes, of republics, of municipalities. a rough bit of road beneath the motor tyres, a couple of succeeding "thank'ee-marms" with their quick jolts would be enough to set me grumbling to leonora against the prince or the grand duke or the free city through whose territory we might be passing. i would grumble like a stockbroker whose conversations over the telephone are incommoded by the ringing of bells from a city church. i would talk about medieval survivals, about the taxes being surely high enough. the point, by the way, about the missing of the connections of the calais boat trains at brussels was that the shortest possible sea journey is frequently of great importance to sufferers from the heart. now, on the continent, there are two special heart cure places, nauheim and spa, and to reach both of these baths from england if in order to ensure a short sea passage, you come by calais�you have to make the connection at brussels. and the belgian train never waits by so much the shade of a second for the one coming from calais or from paris. and even if the french train, are just on time, you have to run�imagine a heart patient running!�along the unfamiliar ways of the brussels station and to scramble up the high steps of the moving train. or, if you miss connection, you have to wait five or six hours.... i used to keep awake whole nights cursing that abuse. my wife used to run�she never, in whatever else she may have misled me, tried to give me the impression that she was not a gallant soul. but, once in the german express, she would lean back, with one hand to her side and her eyes closed. well, she was a good actress. and i would be in hell. in hell, i tell you. for in florence i had at once a wife and an unattained mistress�that is what it comes to�and in the retaining of her in this world i had my occupation, my career, my ambition. it is not often that these things are united in one body. leonora was a good actress too. by jove she was good! i tell you, she would listen to me by the hour, evolving my plans for a shock-proof world. it is true that, at times, i used to notice about her an air of inattention as if she were listening, a mother, to the child at her knee, or as if, precisely, i were myself the patient. you understand that there was nothing the matter with edward ashburnham's heart�that he had thrown up his commission and had left india and come half the world over in order to follow a woman who had really had a "heart" to nauheim. that was the sort of sentimental ass he was. for, you understand, too, that they really needed to live in india, to economize, to let the house at branshaw teleragh. of course, at that date, i had never heard of the kilsyte case. ashburnham had, you know, kissed a servant girl in a railway train, and it was only the grace of god, the prompt functioning of the communication cord and the ready sympathy of what i believe you call the hampshire bench, that kept the poor devil out of winchester gaol for years and years. i never heard of that case until the final stages of leonora's revelations.... but just think of that poor wretch.... i, who have surely the right, beg you to think of that poor wretch. is it possible that such a luckless devil should be so tormented by blind and inscrutable destiny? for there is no other way to think of it. none. i have the right to say it, since for years he was my wife's lover, since he killed her, since he broke up all the pleasantnesses that there were in my life. there is no priest that has the right to tell me that i must not ask pity for him, from you, silent listener beyond the hearth-stone, from the world, or from the god who created in him those desires, those madnesses.... of course, i should not hear of the kilsyte case. i knew none of their friends; they were for me just good people�fortunate people with broad and sunny acres in a southern county. just good people! by heavens, i sometimes think that it would have been better for him, poor dear, if the case had been such a one that i must needs have heard of it�such a one as maids and couriers and other kur guests whisper about for years after, until gradually it dies away in the pity that there is knocking about here and there in the world. supposing he had spent his seven years in winchester gaol or whatever it is that inscrutable and blind justice allots to you for following your natural but ill-timed inclinations�there would have arrived a stage when nodding gossips on the kursaal terrace would have said, "poor fellow," thinking of his ruined career. he would have been the fine soldier with his back now bent.... better for him, poor devil, if his back had been prematurely bent. why, it would have been a thousand times better.... for, of course, the kilsyte case, which came at the very beginning of his finding leonora cold and unsympathetic, gave him a nasty jar. he left servants alone after that. it turned him, naturally, all the more loose amongst women of his own class. why, leonora told me that mrs maidan�the woman he followed from burma to nauheim�assured her he awakened her attention by swearing that when he kissed the servant in the train he was driven to it. i daresay he was driven to it, by the mad passion to find an ultimately satisfying woman. i daresay he was sincere enough. heaven help me, i daresay he was sincere enough in his love for mrs maidan. she was a nice little thing, a dear little dark woman with long lashes, of whom florence grew quite fond. she had a lisp and a happy smile. we saw plenty of her for the first month of our acquaintance, then she died, quite quietly�of heart trouble. but you know, poor little mrs maidan�she was so gentle, so young. she cannot have been more than twenty-three and she had a boy husband out in chitral not more than twenty-four, i believe. such young things ought to have been left alone. of course ashburnham could not leave her alone. i do not believe that he could. why, even i, at this distance of time am aware that i am a little in love with her memory. i can't help smiling when i think suddenly of her�as you might at the thought of something wrapped carefully away in lavender, in some drawer, in some old house that you have long left. she was so�so submissive. why, even to me she had the air of being submissive�to me that not the youngest child will ever pay heed to. yes, this is the saddest story... no, i cannot help wishing that florence had left her alone�with her playing with adultery. i suppose it was; though she was such a child that one has the impression that she would hardly have known how to spell such a word. no, it was just submissiveness�to the importunities, to the tempestuous forces that pushed that miserable fellow on to ruin. and i do not suppose that florence really made much difference. if it had not been for her that ashburnham left his allegiance for mrs maidan, then it would have been some other woman. but still, i do not know. perhaps the poor young thing would have died�she was bound to die, anyhow, quite soon�but she would have died without having to soak her noonday pillow with tears whilst florence, below the window, talked to captain ashburnham about the constitution of the united states.... yes, it would have left a better taste in the mouth if florence had let her die in peace.... leonora behaved better in a sense. she just boxed mrs maidan's ears�yes, she hit her, in an uncontrollable access of rage, a hard blow on the side of the cheek, in the corridor of the hotel, outside edward's rooms. it was that, you know, that accounted for the sudden, odd intimacy that sprang up between florence and mrs ashburnham. because it was, of course, an odd intimacy. if you look at it from the outside nothing could have been more unlikely than that leonora, who is the proudest creature on god's earth, would have struck up an acquaintanceship with two casual yankees whom she could not really have regarded as being much more than a carpet beneath her feet. you may ask what she had to be proud of. well, she was a powys married to an ashburnham�i suppose that gave her the right to despise casual americans as long as she did it unostentatiously. i don't know what anyone has to be proud of. she might have taken pride in her patience, in her keeping her husband out of the bankruptcy court. perhaps she did. at any rate that was how florence got to know her. she came round a screen at the corner of the hotel corridor and found leonora with the gold key that hung from her wrist caught in mrs maidan's hair just before dinner. there was not a single word spoken. little mrs maidan was very pale, with a red mark down her left cheek, and the key would not come out of her black hair. it was florence who had to disentangle it, for leonora was in such a state that she could not have brought herself to touch mrs maidan without growing sick. and there was not a word spoken. you see, under those four eyes�her own and mrs maidan's�leonora could just let herself go as far as to box mrs maidan's ears. but the moment a stranger came along she pulled herself wonderfully up. she was at first silent and then, the moment the key was disengaged by florence she was in a state to say: "so awkward of me... i was just trying to put the comb straight in mrs maidan's hair...." mrs maidan, however, was not a powys married to an ashburnham; she was a poor little o'flaherty whose husband was a boy of country parsonage origin. so there was no mistaking the sob she let go as she went desolately away along the corridor. but leonora was still going to play up. she opened the door of ashburnham's room quite ostentatiously, so that florence should hear her address edward in terms of intimacy and liking. "edward," she called. but there was no edward there. you understand that there was no edward there. it was then, for the only time of her career, that leonora really compromised herself�she exclaimed.... "how frightful!... poor little maisie!..." she caught herself up at that, but of course it was too late. it was a queer sort of affair.... i want to do leonora every justice. i love her very dearly for one thing and in this matter, which was certainly the ruin of my small household cockle-shell, she certainly tripped up. i do not believe�and leonora herself does not believe�that poor little maisie maidan was ever edward's mistress. her heart was really so bad that she would have succumbed to anything like an impassioned embrace. that is the plain english of it, and i suppose plain english is best. she was really what the other two, for reasons of their own, just pretended to be. queer, isn't it? like one of those sinister jokes that providence plays upon one. add to this that i do not suppose that leonora would much have minded, at any other moment, if mrs maidan had been her husband's mistress. it might have been a relief from edward's sentimental gurglings over the lady and from the lady's submissive acceptance of those sounds. no, she would not have minded. but, in boxing mrs maidan's ears, leonora was just striking the face of an intolerable universe. for, that afternoon she had had a frightfully painful scene with edward. as far as his letters went, she claimed the right to open them when she chose. she arrogated to herself the right because edward's affairs were in such a frightful state and he lied so about them that she claimed the privilege of having his secrets at her disposal. there was not, indeed, any other way, for the poor fool was too ashamed of his lapses ever to make a clean breast of anything. she had to drag these things out of him. it must have been a pretty elevating job for her. but that afternoon, edward being on his bed for the hour and a half prescribed by the kur authorities, she had opened a letter that she took to come from a colonel hervey. they were going to stay with him in linlithgowshire for the month of september and she did not know whether the date fixed would be the eleventh or the eighteenth. the address on this letter was, in handwriting, as like colonel hervey's as one blade of corn is like another. so she had at the moment no idea of spying on him. but she certainly was. for she discovered that edward ashburnham was paying a blackmailer of whom she had never heard something like three hundred pounds a year... it was a devil of a blow; it was like death; for she imagined that by that time she had really got to the bottom of her husband's liabilities. you see, they were pretty heavy. what had really smashed them up had been a perfectly common-place affair at monte carlo�an affair with a cosmopolitan harpy who passed for the mistress of a russian grand duke. she exacted a twenty thousand pound pearl tiara from him as the price of her favours for a week or so. it would have pipped him a good deal to have found so much, and he was not in the ordinary way a gambler. he might, indeed, just have found the twenty thousand and the not slight charges of a week at an hotel with the fair creature. he must have been worth at that date five hundred thousand dollars and a little over. well, he must needs go to the tables and lose forty thousand pounds.... forty thousand solid pounds, borrowed from sharks! and even after that he must�it was an imperative passion�enjoy the favours of the lady. he got them, of course, when it was a matter of solid bargaining, for far less than twenty thousand, as he might, no doubt, have done from the first. i daresay ten thousand dollars covered the bill. anyhow, there was a pretty solid hole in a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds or so. and leonora had to fix things up; he would have run from money-lender to money-lender. and that was quite in the early days of her discovery of his infidelities�if you like to call them infidelities. and she discovered that one from public sources. god knows what would have happened if she had not discovered it from public sources. i suppose he would have concealed it from her until they were penniless. but she was able, by the grace of god, to get hold of the actual lenders of the money, to learn the exact sums that were needed. and she went off to england. yes, she went right off to england to her attorney and his while he was still in the arms of his circe�at antibes, to which place they had retired. he got sick of the lady quite quickly, but not before leonora had had such lessons in the art of business from her attorney that she had her plan as clearly drawn up as was ever that of general trochu for keeping the prussians out of paris in . it was about as effectual at first, or it seemed so. that would have been, you know, in , about nine years before the date of which i am talking�the date of florence's getting her hold over leonora; for that was what it amounted to.... well, mrs ashburnham had simply forced edward to settle all his property upon her. she could force him to do anything; in his clumsy, good-natured, inarticulate way he was as frightened of her as of the devil. and he admired her enormously, and he was as fond of her as any man could be of any woman. she took advantage of it to treat him as if he had been a person whose estates are being managed by the court of bankruptcy. i suppose it was the best thing for him. anyhow, she had no end of a job for the first three years or so. unexpected liabilities kept on cropping up�and that afflicted fool did not make it any easier. you see, along with the passion of the chase went a frame of mind that made him be extraordinarily ashamed of himself. you may not believe it, but he really had such a sort of respect for the chastity of leonora's imagination that he hated�he was positively revolted at the thought that she should know that the sort of thing that he did existed in the world. so he would stick out in an agitated way against the accusation of ever having done anything. he wanted to preserve the virginity of his wife's thoughts. he told me that himself during the long walks we had at the last�while the girl was on the way to brindisi. so, of course, for those three years or so, leonora had many agitations. and it was then that they really quarrelled. yes, they quarrelled bitterly. that seems rather extravagant. you might have thought that leonora would be just calmly loathing and he lachrymosely contrite. but that was not it a bit... along with edward's passions and his shame for them went the violent conviction of the duties of his station�a conviction that was quite unreasonably expensive. i trust i have not, in talking of his liabilities, given the impression that poor edward was a promiscuous libertine. he was not; he was a sentimentalist. the servant girl in the kilsyte case had been pretty, but mournful of appearance. i think that, when he had kissed her, he had desired rather to comfort her. and, if she had succumbed to his blandishments i daresay he would have set her up in a little house in portsmouth or winchester and would have been faithful to her for four or five years. he was quite capable of that. no, the only two of his affairs of the heart that cost him money were that of the grand duke's mistress and that which was the subject of the blackmailing letter that leonora opened. that had been a quite passionate affair with quite a nice woman. it had succeeded the one with the grand ducal lady. the lady was the wife of a brother officer and leonora had known all about the passion, which had been quite a real passion and had lasted for several years. you see, poor edward's passions were quite logical in their progression upwards. they began with a servant, went on to a courtesan and then to a quite nice woman, very unsuitably mated. for she had a quite nasty husband who, by means of letters and things, went on blackmailing poor edward to the tune of three or four hundred a year�with threats of the divorce court. and after this lady came maisie maidan, and after poor maisie only one more affair and then�the real passion of his life. his marriage with leonora had been arranged by his parents and, though he always admired her immensely, he had hardly ever pretended to be much more than tender to her, though he desperately needed her moral support, too.... but his really trying liabilities were mostly in the nature of generosities proper to his station. he was, according to leonora, always remitting his tenants' rents and giving the tenants to understand that the reduction would be permanent; he was always redeeming drunkards who came before his magisterial bench; he was always trying to put prostitutes into respectable places�and he was a perfect maniac about children. i don't know how many ill-used people he did not pick up and provide with careers�leonora has told me, but i daresay she exaggerated and the figure seems so preposterous that i will not put it down. all these things, and the continuance of them seemed to him to be his duty�along with impossible subscriptions to hospitals and boy scouts and to provide prizes at cattle shows and antivivisection societies.... well, leonora saw to it that most of these things were not continued. they could not possibly keep up branshaw manor at that rate after the money had gone to the grand duke's mistress. she put the rents back at their old figures; discharged the drunkards from their homes, and sent all the societies notice that they were to expect no more subscriptions. to the children, she was more tender; nearly all of them she supported till the age of apprenticeship or domestic service. you see, she was childless herself. she was childless herself, and she considered herself to be to blame. she had come of a penniless branch of the powys family, and they had forced upon her poor dear edward without making the stipulation that the children should be brought up as catholics. and that, of course, was spiritual death to leonora. i have given you a wrong impression if i have not made you see that leonora was a woman of a strong, cold conscience, like all english catholics. (i cannot, myself, help disliking this religion; there is always, at the bottom of my mind, in spite of leonora, the feeling of shuddering at the scarlet woman, that filtered in upon me in the tranquility of the little old friends' meeting house in arch street, philadelphia.) so i do set down a good deal of leonora's mismanagement of poor dear edward's case to the peculiarly english form of her religion. because, of course, the only thing to have done for edward would have been to let him sink down until he became a tramp of gentlemanly address, having, maybe, chance love affairs upon the highways. he would have done so much less harm; he would have been much less agonized too. at any rate, he would have had fewer chances of ruining and of remorse. for edward was great at remorse. but leonora's english catholic conscience, her rigid principles, her coldness, even her very patience, were, i cannot help thinking, all wrong in this special case. she quite seriously and naïvely imagined that the church of rome disapproves of divorce; she quite seriously and naïvely believed that her church could be such a monstrous and imbecile institution as to expect her to take on the impossible job of making edward ashburnham a faithful husband. she had, as the english would say, the nonconformist temperament. in the united states of north america we call it the new england conscience. for, of course, that frame of mind has been driven in on the english catholics. the centuries that they have gone through�centuries of blind and malignant oppression, of ostracism from public employment, of being, as it were, a small beleagured garrison in a hostile country, and therefore having to act with great formality�all these things have combined to perform that conjuring trick. and i suppose that papists in england are even technically nonconformists. continental papists are a dirty, jovial and unscrupulous crew. but that, at least, lets them be opportunists. they would have fixed poor dear edward up all right. (forgive my writing of these monstrous things in this frivolous manner. if i did not i should break down and cry.) in milan, say, or in paris, leonora would have had her marriage dissolved in six months for two hundred dollars paid in the right quarter. and edward would have drifted about until he became a tramp of the kind i have suggested. or he would have married a barmaid who would have made him such frightful scenes in public places and would so have torn out his moustache and left visible signs upon his face that he would have been faithful to her for the rest of his days. that was what he wanted to redeem him.... for, along with his passions and his shames there went the dread of scenes in public places, of outcry, of excited physical violence; of publicity, in short. yes, the barmaid would have cured him. and it would have been all the better if she drank; he would have been kept busy looking after her. i know that i am right in this. i know it because of the kilsyte case. you see, the servant girl that he then kissed was nurse in the family of the nonconformist head of the county�whatever that post may be called. and that gentleman was so determined to ruin edward, who was the chairman of the tory caucus, or whatever it is�that the poor dear sufferer had the very devil of a time. they asked questions about it in the house of commons; they tried to get the hampshire magistrates degraded; they suggested to the war ministry that edward was not the proper person to hold the king's commission. yes, he got it hot and strong. the result you have heard. he was completely cured of philandering amongst the lower classes. and that seemed a real blessing to leonora. it did not revolt her so much to be connected�it is a sort of connection�with people like mrs maidan, instead of with a little kitchenmaid. in a dim sort of way, leonora was almost contented when she arrived at nauheim, that evening.... she had got things nearly straight by the long years of scraping in little stations in chitral and burma�stations where living is cheap in comparison with the life of a county magnate, and where, moreover, liaisons of one sort or another are normal and inexpensive too. so that, when mrs maidan came along�and the maidan affair might have caused trouble out there because of the youth of the husband�leonora had just resigned herself to coming home. with pushing and scraping and with letting branshaw teleragh, and with selling a picture and a relic of charles i or so, she had got�and, poor dear, she had never had a really decent dress to her back in all those years and years�she had got, as she imagined, her poor dear husband back into much the same financial position as had been his before the mistress of the grand duke had happened along. and, of course, edward himself had helped her a little on the financial side. he was a fellow that many men liked. he was so presentable and quite ready to lend you his cigar puncher�that sort of thing. so, every now and then some financier whom he met about would give him a good, sound, profitable tip. and leonora was never afraid of a bit of a gamble�english papists seldom are, i do not know why. so nearly all her investment turned up trumps, and edward was really in fit case to reopen branshaw manor and once more to assume his position in the county. thus leonora had accepted maisie maidan almost with resignation�almost with a sigh of relief. she really liked the poor child�she had to like somebody. and, at any rate, she felt she could trust maisie�she could trust her not to rook edward for several thousands a week, for maisie had refused to accept so much as a trinket ring from him. it is true that edward gurgled and raved about the girl in a way that she had never yet experienced. but that, too, was almost a relief. i think she would really have welcomed it if he could have come across the love of his life. it would have given her a rest. and there could not have been anyone better than poor little mrs maidan; she was so ill she could not want to be taken on expensive jaunts.... it was leonora herself who paid maisie's expenses to nauheim. she handed over the money to the boy husband, for maisie would never have allowed it; but the husband was in agonies of fear. poor devil! i fancy that, on the voyage from india, leonora was as happy as ever she had been in her life. edward was wrapped up, completely, in his girl�he was almost like a father with a child, trotting about with rugs and physic and things, from deck to deck. he behaved, however, with great circumspection, so that nothing leaked through to the other passengers. and leonora had almost attained to the attitude of a mother towards mrs maidan. so it had looked very well�the benevolent, wealthy couple of good people, acting as saviours to the poor, dark-eyed, dying young thing. and that attitude of leonora's towards mrs maidan no doubt partly accounted for the smack in the face. she was hitting a naughty child who had been stealing chocolates at an inopportune moment. it was certainly an inopportune moment. for, with the opening of that blackmailing letter from that injured brother officer, all the old terrors had redescended upon leonora. her road had again seemed to stretch out endless; she imagined that there might be hundreds and hundreds of such things that edward was concealing from her�that they might necessitate more mortgagings, more pawnings of bracelets, more and always more horrors. she had spent an excruciating afternoon. the matter was one of a divorce case, of course, and she wanted to avoid publicity as much as edward did, so that she saw the necessity of continuing the payments. and she did not so much mind that. they could find three hundred a year. but it was the horror of there being more such obligations. she had had no conversation with edward for many years�none that went beyond the mere arrangements for taking trains or engaging servants. but that afternoon she had to let him have it. and he had been just the same as ever. it was like opening a book after a decade to find the words the same. he had the same motives. he had not wished to tell her about the case because he had not wished her to sully her mind with the idea that there was such a thing as a brother officer who could be a blackmailer�and he had wanted to protect the credit of his old light of love. that lady was certainly not concerned with her husband. and he swore, and swore, and swore, that there was nothing else in the world against him. she did not believe him. he had done it once too often�and she was wrong for the first time, so that he acted a rather creditable part in the matter. for he went right straight out to the post-office and spent several hours in coding a telegram to his solicitor, bidding that hard-headed man to threaten to take out at once a warrant against the fellow who was on his track. he said afterwards that it was a bit too thick on poor old leonora to be ballyragged any more. that was really the last of his outstanding accounts, and he was ready to take his personal chance of the divorce court if the blackmailer turned nasty. he would face it out�the publicity, the papers, the whole bally show. those were his simple words.... he had made, however, the mistake of not telling leonora where he was going, so that, having seen him go to his room to fetch the code for the telegram, and seeing, two hours later, maisie maidan come out of his room, leonora imagined that the two hours she had spent in silent agony edward had spent with maisie maidan in his arms. that seemed to her to be too much. as a matter of fact, maisie's being in edward's room had been the result, partly of poverty, partly of pride, partly of sheer innocence. she could not, in the first place, afford a maid; she refrained as much as possible from sending the hotel servants on errands, since every penny was of importance to her, and she feared to have to pay high tips at the end of her stay. edward had lent her one of his fascinating cases containing fifteen different sizes of scissors, and, having seen from her window, his departure for the post-office, she had taken the opportunity of returning the case. she could not see why she should not, though she felt a certain remorse at the thought that she had kissed the pillows of his bed. that was the way it took her. but leonora could see that, without the shadow of a doubt, the incident gave florence a hold over her. it let florence into things and florence was the only created being who had any idea that the ashburnhams were not just good people with nothing to their tails. she determined at once, not so much to give florence the privilege of her intimacy�which would have been the payment of a kind of blackmail�as to keep florence under observation until she could have demonstrated to florence that she was not in the least jealous of poor maisie. so that was why she had entered the dining-room arm in arm with my wife, and why she had so markedly planted herself at our table. she never left us, indeed, for a minute that night, except just to run up to mrs maidan's room to beg her pardon and to beg her also to let edward take her very markedly out into the gardens that night. she said herself, when mrs maidan came rather wistfully down into the lounge where we were all sitting: "now, edward, get up and take maisie to the casino. i want mrs dowell to tell me all about the families in connecticut who came from fordingbridge." for it had been discovered that florence came of a line that had actually owned branshaw teleragh for two centuries before the ashburnhams came there. and there she sat with me in that hall, long after florence had gone to bed, so that i might witness her gay reception of that pair. she could play up. and that enables me to fix exactly the day of our going to the town of m��. for it was the very day poor mrs maidan died. we found her dead when we got back�pretty awful, that, when you come to figure out what it all means.... at any rate the measure of my relief when leonora said that she was an irish catholic gives you the measure of my affection for that couple. it was an affection so intense that even to this day i cannot think of edward without sighing. i do not believe that i could have gone on any more with them. i was getting too tired. and i verily believe, too, if my suspicion that leonora was jealous of florence had been the reason she gave for her outburst i should have turned upon florence with the maddest kind of rage. jealousy would have been incurable. but florence's mere silly jibes at the irish and at the catholics could be apologized out of existence. and that i appeared to fix up in two minutes or so. she looked at me for a long time rather fixedly and queerly while i was doing it. and at last i worked myself up to saying: "do accept the situation. i confess that i do not like your religion. but i like you so intensely. i don't mind saying that i have never had anyone to be really fond of, and i do not believe that anyone has ever been fond of me, as i believe you really to be." "oh, i'm fond enough of you," she said. "fond enough to say that i wish every man was like you. but there are others to be considered." she was thinking, as a matter of fact, of poor maisie. she picked a little piece of pellitory out of the breast-high wall in front of us. she chafed it for a long minute between her finger and thumb, then she threw it over the coping. "oh, i accept the situation," she said at last, "if you can." vi i remember laughing at the phrase, "accept the situation", which she seemed to repeat with a gravity too intense. i said to her something like: "it's hardly as much as that. i mean, that i must claim the liberty of a free american citizen to think what i please about your co-religionists. and i suppose that florence must have liberty to think what she pleases and to say what politeness allows her to say." "she had better," leonora answered, "not say one single word against my people or my faith." it struck me at the time, that there was an unusual, an almost threatening, hardness in her voice. it was almost as if she were trying to convey to florence, through me, that she would seriously harm my wife if florence went to something that was an extreme. yes, i remember thinking at the time that it was almost as if leonora were saying, through me to florence: "you may outrage me as you will; you may take all that i personally possess, but do not you care to say one single thing in view of the situation that that will set up�against the faith that makes me become the doormat for your feet." but obviously, as i saw it, that could not be her meaning. good people, be they ever so diverse in creed, do not threaten each other. so that i read leonora's words to mean just no more than: "it would be better if florence said nothing at all against my co- religionists, because it is a point that i am touchy about." that was the hint that, accordingly, i conveyed to florence when, shortly afterwards, she and edward came down from the tower. and i want you to understand that, from that moment until after edward and the girl and florence were all dead together, i had never the remotest glimpse, not the shadow of a suspicion, that there was anything wrong, as the saying is. for five minutes, then, i entertained the possibility that leonora might be jealous; but there was never another flicker in that flame-like personality. how in the world should i get it? for, all that time, i was just a male sick nurse. and what chance had i against those three hardened gamblers, who were all in league to conceal their hands from me? what earthly chance? they were three to one�and they made me happy. oh god, they made me so happy that i doubt if even paradise, that shall smooth out all temporal wrongs, shall ever give me the like. and what could they have done better, or what could they have done that could have been worse? i don't know.... i suppose that, during all that time i was a deceived husband and that leonora was pimping for edward. that was the cross that she had to take up during her long calvary of a life.... you ask how it feels to be a deceived husband. just heavens, i do not know. it feels just nothing at all. it is not hell, certainly it is not necessarily heaven. so i suppose it is the intermediate stage. what do they call it? limbo. no, i feel nothing at all about that. they are dead; they have gone before their judge who, i hope, will open to them the springs of his compassion. it is not my business to think about it. it is simply my business to say, as leonora's people say: "requiem aeternam dona eis, domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. in memoria aeterna erit...." but what were they? the just? the unjust? god knows! i think that the pair of them were only poor wretches, creeping over this earth in the shadow of an eternal wrath. it is very terrible.... it is almost too terrible, the picture of that judgement, as it appears to me sometimes, at nights. it is probably the suggestion of some picture that i have seen somewhere. but upon an immense plain, suspended in mid-air, i seem to see three figures, two of them clasped close in an intense embrace, and one intolerably solitary. it is in black and white, my picture of that judgement, an etching, perhaps; only i cannot tell an etching from a photographic reproduction. and the immense plain is the hand of god, stretching out for miles and miles, with great spaces above it and below it. and they are in the sight of god, and it is florence that is alone.... and, do you know, at the thought of that intense solitude i feel an overwhelming desire to rush forward and comfort her. you cannot, you see, have acted as nurse to a person for twelve years without wishing to go on nursing them, even though you hate them with the hatred of the adder, and even in the palm of god. but, in the nights, with that vision of judgement before me, i know that i hold myself back. for i hate florence. i hate florence with such a hatred that i would not spare her an eternity of loneliness. she need not have done what she did. she was an american, a new englander. she had not the hot passions of these europeans. she cut out that poor imbecile of an edward�and i pray god that he is really at peace, clasped close in the arms of that poor, poor girl! and, no doubt, maisie maidan will find her young husband again, and leonora will burn, clear and serene, a northern light and one of the archangels of god. and me.... well, perhaps, they will find me an elevator to run.... but florence... . she should not have done it. she should not have done it. it was playing it too low down. she cut out poor dear edward from sheer vanity; she meddled between him and leonora from a sheer, imbecile spirit of district visiting. do you understand that, whilst she was edward's mistress, she was perpetually trying to reunite him to his wife? she would gabble on to leonora about forgiveness�treating the subject from the bright, american point of view. and leonora would treat her like the whore she was. once she said to florence in the early morning: "you come to me straight out of his bed to tell me that that is my proper place. i know it, thank you." but even that could not stop florence. she went on saying that it was her ambition to leave this world a little brighter by the passage of her brief life, and how thankfully she would leave edward, whom she thought she had brought to a right frame of mind, if leonora would only give him a chance. he needed, she said, tenderness beyond anything. and leonora would answer�for she put up with this outrage for years�leonora, as i understand, would answer something like: "yes, you would give him up. and you would go on writing to each other in secret, and committing adultery in hired rooms. i know the pair of you, you know. no. i prefer the situation as it is." half the time florence would ignore leonora's remarks. she would think they were not quite ladylike. the other half of the time she would try to persuade leonora that her love for edward was quite spiritual�on account of her heart. once she said: "if you can believe that of maisie maidan, as you say you do, why cannot you believe it of me?" leonora was, i understand, doing her hair at that time in front of the mirror in her bedroom. and she looked round at florence, to whom she did not usually vouchsafe a glance,�she looked round coolly and calmly, and said: "never do you dare to mention mrs maidan's name again. you murdered her. you and i murdered her between us. i am as much a scoundrel as you. i don't like to be reminded of it." florence went off at once into a babble of how could she have hurt a person whom she hardly knew, a person whom with the best intentions, in pursuance of her efforts to leave the world a little brighter, she had tried to save from edward. that was how she figured it out to herself. she really thought that.... so leonora said patiently: "very well, just put it that i killed her and that it's a painful subject. one does not like to think that one had killed someone. naturally not. i ought never to have brought her from india." and that, indeed, is exactly how leonora looked at it. it is stated a little baldly, but leonora was always a great one for bald statements. what had happened on the day of our jaunt to the ancient city of m�� had been this: leonora, who had been even then filled with pity and contrition for the poor child, on returning to our hotel had gone straight to mrs maidan's room. she had wanted just to pet her. and she had perceived at first only, on the clear, round table covered with red velvet, a letter addressed to her. it ran something like: "oh, mrs ashburnham, how could you have done it? i trusted you so. you never talked to me about me and edward, but i trusted you. how could you buy me from my husband? i have just heard how you have�in the hall they were talking about it, edward and the american lady. you paid the money for me to come here. oh, how could you? how could you? i am going straight back to bunny...." bunny was mrs maidan's husband. and leonora said that, as she went on reading the letter, she had, without looking round her, a sense that that hotel room was cleared, that there were no papers on the table, that there were no clothes on the hooks, and that there was a strained silence�a silence, she said, as if there were something in the room that drank up such sounds as there were. she had to fight against that feeling, whilst she read the postscript of the letter. "i did not know you wanted me for an adulteress," the postscript began. the poor child was hardly literate. "it was surely not right of you and i never wanted to be one. and i heard edward call me a poor little rat to the american lady. he always called me a little rat in private, and i did not mind. but, if he called me it to her, i think he does not love me any more. oh, mrs ashburnham, you knew the world and i knew nothing. i thought it would be all right if you thought it could, and i thought you would not have brought me if you did not, too. you should not have done it, and we out of the same convent...." leonora said that she screamed when she read that. and then she saw that maisie's boxes were all packed, and she began a search for mrs maidan herself�all over the hotel. the manager said that mrs maidan had paid her bill, and had gone up to the station to ask the reiseverkehrsbureau to make her out a plan for her immediate return to chitral. he imagined that he had seen her come back, but he was not quite certain. no one in the large hotel had bothered his head about the child. and she, wandering solitarily in the hall, had no doubt sat down beside a screen that had edward and florence on the other side. i never heard then or after what had passed between that precious couple. i fancy florence was just about beginning her cutting out of poor dear edward by addressing to him some words of friendly warning as to the ravages he might be making in the girl's heart. that would be the sort of way she would begin. and edward would have sentimentally assured her that there was nothing in it; that maisie was just a poor little rat whose passage to nauheim his wife had paid out of her own pocket. that would have been enough to do the trick. for the trick was pretty efficiently done. leonora, with panic growing and with contrition very large in her heart, visited every one of the public rooms of the hotel�the dining-room, the lounge, the schreibzimmer, the winter garden. god knows what they wanted with a winter garden in an hotel that is only open from may till october. but there it was. and then leonora ran�yes, she ran up the stairs�to see if maisie had not returned to her rooms. she had determined to take that child right away from that hideous place. it seemed to her to be all unspeakable. i do not mean to say that she was not quite cool about it. leonora was always leonora. but the cold justice of the thing demanded that she should play the part of mother to this child who had come from the same convent. she figured it out to amount to that. she would leave edward to florence and to me�and she would devote all her time to providing that child with an atmosphere of love until she could be returned to her poor young husband. it was naturally too late. she had not cared to look round maisie's rooms at first. now, as soon as she came in, she perceived, sticking out beyond the bed, a small pair of feet in high-heeled shoes. maisie had died in the effort to strap up a great portmanteau. she had died so grotesquely that her little body had fallen forward into the trunk, and it had closed upon her, like the jaws of a gigantic alligator. the key was in her hand. her dark hair, like the hair of a japanese, had come down and covered her body and her face. leonora lifted her up�she was the merest featherweight�and laid her on the bed with her hair about her. she was smiling, as if she had just scored a goal in a hockey match. you understand she had not committed suicide. her heart had just stopped. i saw her, with the long lashes on the cheeks, with the smile about the lips, with the flowers all about her. the stem of a white lily rested in her hand so that the spike of flowers was upon her shoulder. she looked like a bride in the sunlight of the mortuary candles that were all about her, and the white coifs of the two nuns that knelt at her feet with their faces hidden might have been two swans that were to bear her away to kissing-kindness land, or wherever it is. leonora showed her to me. she would not let either of the others see her. she wanted, you know, to spare poor dear edward's feelings. he never could bear the sight of a corpse. and, since she never gave him an idea that maisie had written to her, he imagined that the death had been the most natural thing in the world. he soon got over it. indeed, it was the one affair of his about which he never felt much remorse. part ii i the death of mrs maidan occurred on the th of august, . and then nothing happened until the th of august, . there is the curious coincidence of dates, but i do not know whether that is one of those sinister, as if half jocular and altogether merciless proceedings on the part of a cruel providence that we call a coincidence. because it may just as well have been the superstitious mind of florence that forced her to certain acts, as if she had been hypnotized. it is, however, certain that the th of august always proved a significant date for her. to begin with, she was born on the th of august. then, on that date, in the year , she set out with her uncle for the tour round the world in company with a young man called jimmy. but that was not merely a coincidence. her kindly old uncle, with the supposedly damaged heart, was in his delicate way, offering her, in this trip, a birthday present to celebrate her coming of age. then, on the th of august, , she yielded to an action that certainly coloured her whole life�as well as mine. she had no luck. she was probably offering herself a birthday present that morning.... on the th of august, , she married me, and set sail for europe in a great gale of wind�the gale that affected her heart. and no doubt there, again, she was offering herself a birthday gift�the birthday gift of my miserable life. it occurs to me that i have never told you anything about my marriage. that was like this: i have told you, as i think, that i first met florence at the stuyvesants', in fourteenth street. and, from that moment, i determined with all the obstinacy of a possibly weak nature, if not to make her mine, at least to marry her. i had no occupation�i had no business affairs. i simply camped down there in stamford, in a vile hotel, and just passed my days in the house, or on the verandah of the misses hurlbird. the misses hurlbird, in an odd, obstinate way, did not like my presence. but they were hampered by the national manners of these occasions. florence had her own sitting-room. she could ask to it whom she liked, and i simply walked into that apartment. i was as timid as you will, but in that matter i was like a chicken that is determined to get across the road in front of an automobile. i would walk into florence's pretty, little, old-fashioned room, take off my hat, and sit down. florence had, of course, several other fellows, too�strapping young new englanders, who worked during the day in new york and spent only the evenings in the village of their birth. and, in the evenings, they would march in on florence with almost as much determination as i myself showed. and i am bound to say that they were received with as much disfavour as was my portion�from the misses hurlbird.... they were curious old creatures, those two. it was almost as if they were members of an ancient family under some curse�they were so gentlewomanly, so proper, and they sighed so. sometimes i would see tears in their eyes. i do not know that my courtship of florence made much progress at first. perhaps that was because it took place almost entirely during the daytime, on hot afternoons, when the clouds of dust hung like fog, right up as high as the tops of the thin-leaved elms. the night, i believe, is the proper season for the gentle feats of love, not a connecticut july afternoon, when any sort of proximity is an almost appalling thought. but, if i never so much as kissed florence, she let me discover very easily, in the course of a fortnight, her simple wants. and i could supply those wants.... she wanted to marry a gentleman of leisure; she wanted a european establishment. she wanted her husband to have an english accent, an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from real estate and no ambitions to increase that income. and�she faintly hinted�she did not want much physical passion in the affair. americans, you know, can envisage such unions without blinking. she gave out this information in floods of bright talk�she would pop a little bit of it into comments over a view of the rialto, venice, and, whilst she was brightly describing balmoral castle, she would say that her ideal husband would be one who could get her received at the british court. she had spent, it seemed, two months in great britain�seven weeks in touring from stratford to strathpeffer, and one as paying guest in an old english family near ledbury, an impoverished, but still stately family, called bagshawe. they were to have spent two months more in that tranquil bosom, but inopportune events, apparently in her uncle's business, had caused their rather hurried return to stamford. the young man called jimmy had remained in europe to perfect his knowledge of that continent. he certainly did: he was most useful to us afterwards. but the point that came out�that there was no mistaking�was that florence was coldly and calmly determined to take no look at any man who could not give her a european settlement. her glimpse of english home life had effected this. she meant, on her marriage, to have a year in paris, and then to have her husband buy some real estate in the neighbourhood of fordingbridge, from which place the hurlbirds had come in the year . on the strength of that she was going to take her place in the ranks of english county society. that was fixed. i used to feel mightily elevated when i considered these details, for i could not figure out that amongst her acquaintances in stamford there was any fellow that would fill the bill. the most of them were not as wealthy as i, and those that were were not the type to give up the fascinations of wall street even for the protracted companionship of florence. but nothing really happened during the month of july. on the st of august florence apparently told her aunts that she intended to marry me. she had not told me so, but there was no doubt about the aunts, for, on that afternoon, miss florence hurlbird, senior, stopped me on my way to florence's sitting-room and took me, agitatedly, into the parlour. it was a singular interview, in that old-fashioned colonial room, with the spindle-legged furniture, the silhouettes, the miniatures, the portrait of general braddock, and the smell of lavender. you see, the two poor maiden ladies were in agonies�and they could not say one single thing direct. they would almost wring their hands and ask if i had considered such a thing as different temperaments. i assure you they were almost affectionate, concerned for me even, as if florence were too bright for my solid and serious virtues. for they had discovered in me solid and serious virtues. that might have been because i had once dropped the remark that i preferred general braddock to general washington. for the hurlbirds had backed the losing side in the war of independence, and had been seriously impoverished and quite efficiently oppressed for that reason. the misses hurlbird could never forget it. nevertheless they shuddered at the thought of a european career for myself and florence. each of them really wailed when they heard that that was what i hoped to give their niece. that may have been partly because they regarded europe as a sink of iniquity, where strange laxities prevailed. they thought the mother country as erastian as any other. and they carried their protests to extraordinary lengths, for them.... they even, almost, said that marriage was a sacrament; but neither miss florence nor miss emily could quite bring herself to utter the word. and they almost brought themselves to say that florence's early life had been characterized by flirtations�something of that sort. i know i ended the interview by saying: "i don't care. if florence has robbed a bank i am going to marry her and take her to europe." and at that miss emily wailed and fainted. but miss florence, in spite of the state of her sister, threw herself on my neck and cried out: "don't do it, john. don't do it. you're a good young man," and she added, whilst i was getting out of the room to send florence to her aunt's rescue: "we ought to tell you more. but she's our dear sister's child." florence, i remember, received me with a chalk-pale face and the exclamation: "have those old cats been saying anything against me?" but i assured her that they had not and hurried her into the room of her strangely afflicted relatives. i had really forgotten all about that exclamation of florence's until this moment. she treated me so very well�with such tact�that, if i ever thought of it afterwards i put it down to her deep affection for me. and that evening, when i went to fetch her for a buggy-ride, she had disappeared. i did not lose any time. i went into new york and engaged berths on the "pocahontas", that was to sail on the evening of the fourth of the month, and then, returning to stamford, i tracked out, in the course of the day, that florence had been driven to rye station. and there i found that she had taken the cars to waterbury. she had, of course, gone to her uncle's. the old man received me with a stony, husky face. i was not to see florence; she was ill; she was keeping her room. and, from something that he let drop�an odd biblical phrase that i have forgotten�i gathered that all that family simply did not intend her to marry ever in her life. i procured at once the name of the nearest minister and a rope ladder�you have no idea how primitively these matters were arranged in those days in the united states. i daresay that may be so still. and at one o'clock in the morning of the th of august i was standing in florence's bedroom. i was so one-minded in my purpose that it never struck me there was anything improper in being, at one o'clock in the morning, in florence's bedroom. i just wanted to wake her up. she was not, however, asleep. she expected me, and her relatives had only just left her. she received me with an embrace of a warmth.... well, it was the first time i had ever been embraced by a woman�and it was the last when a woman's embrace has had in it any warmth for me.... i suppose it was my own fault, what followed. at any rate, i was in such a hurry to get the wedding over, and was so afraid of her relatives finding me there, that i must have received her advances with a certain amount of absence of mind. i was out of that room and down the ladder in under half a minute. she kept me waiting at the foot an unconscionable time�it was certainly three in the morning before we knocked up that minister. and i think that that wait was the only sign florence ever showed of having a conscience as far as i was concerned, unless her lying for some moments in my arms was also a sign of conscience. i fancy that, if i had shown warmth then, she would have acted the proper wife to me, or would have put me back again. but, because i acted like a philadelphia gentleman, she made me, i suppose, go through with the part of a male nurse. perhaps she thought that i should not mind. after that, as i gather, she had not any more remorse. she was only anxious to carry out her plans. for, just before she came down the ladder, she called me to the top of that grotesque implement that i went up and down like a tranquil jumping-jack. i was perfectly collected. she said to me with a certain fierceness: "it is determined that we sail at four this afternoon? you are not lying about having taken berths?" i understood that she would naturally be anxious to get away from the neighbourhood of her apparently insane relatives, so that i readily excused her for thinking that i should be capable of lying about such a thing. i made it, therefore, plain to her that it was my fixed determination to sail by the "pocahontas". she said then�it was a moonlit morning, and she was whispering in my ear whilst i stood on the ladder. the hills that surround waterbury showed, extraordinarily tranquil, around the villa. she said, almost coldly: "i wanted to know, so as to pack my trunks." and she added: "i may be ill, you know. i guess my heart is a little like uncle hurlbird's. it runs in families." i whispered that the "pocahontas" was an extraordinarily steady boat.... now i wonder what had passed through florence's mind during the two hours that she had kept me waiting at the foot of the ladder. i would give not a little to know. till then, i fancy she had had no settled plan in her mind. she certainly never mentioned her heart till that time. perhaps the renewed sight of her uncle hurlbird had given her the idea. certainly her aunt emily, who had come over with her to waterbury, would have rubbed into her, for hours and hours, the idea that any accentuated discussions would kill the old gentleman. that would recall to her mind all the safeguards against excitement with which the poor silly old gentleman had been hedged in during their trip round the world. that, perhaps, put it into her head. still, i believe there was some remorse on my account, too. leonora told me that florence said there was�for leonora knew all about it, and once went so far as to ask her how she could do a thing so infamous. she excused herself on the score of an overmastering passion. well, i always say that an overmastering passion is a good excuse for feelings. you cannot help them. and it is a good excuse for straight actions�she might have bolted with the fellow, before or after she married me. and, if they had not enough money to get along with, they might have cut their throats, or sponged on her family, though, of course, florence wanted such a lot that it would have suited her very badly to have for a husband a clerk in a dry-goods store, which was what old hurlbird would have made of that fellow. he hated him. no, i do not think that there is much excuse for florence. god knows. she was a frightened fool, and she was fantastic, and i suppose that, at that time, she really cared for that imbecile. he certainly didn't care for her. poor thing.... at any rate, after i had assured her that the "pocahontas" was a steady ship, she just said: "you'll have to look after me in certain ways�like uncle hurlbird is looked after. i will tell you how to do it." and then she stepped over the sill, as if she were stepping on board a boat. i suppose she had burnt hers! i had, no doubt, eye-openers enough. when we re-entered the hurlbird mansion at eight o'clock the hurlbirds were just exhausted. florence had a hard, triumphant air. we had got married about four in the morning and had sat about in the woods above the town till then, listening to a mocking-bird imitate an old tom-cat. so i guess florence had not found getting married to me a very stimulating process. i had not found anything much more inspiring to say than how glad i was, with variations. i think i was too dazed. well, the hurlbirds were too dazed to say much. we had breakfast together, and then florence went to pack her grips and things. old hurlbird took the opportunity to read me a full-blooded lecture, in the style of an american oration, as to the perils for young american girlhood lurking in the european jungle. he said that paris was full of snakes in the grass, of which he had had bitter experience. he concluded, as they always do, poor, dear old things, with the aspiration that all american women should one day be sexless�though that is not the way they put it.. .. well, we made the ship all right by one-thirty�and there was a tempest blowing. that helped florence a good deal. for we were not ten minutes out from sandy hook before florence went down into her cabin and her heart took her. an agitated stewardess came running up to me, and i went running down. i got my directions how to behave to my wife. most of them came from her, though it was the ship doctor who discreetly suggested to me that i had better refrain from manifestations of affection. i was ready enough. i was, of course, full of remorse. it occurred to me that her heart was the reason for the hurlbirds' mysterious desire to keep their youngest and dearest unmarried. of course, they would be too refined to put the motive into words. they were old stock new englanders. they would not want to have to suggest that a husband must not kiss the back of his wife's neck. they would not like to suggest that he might, for the matter of that. i wonder, though, how florence got the doctor to enter the conspiracy�the several doctors. of course her heart squeaked a bit�she had the same configuration of the lungs as her uncle hurlbird. and, in his company, she must have heard a great deal of heart talk from specialists. anyhow, she and they tied me pretty well down�and jimmy, of course, that dreary boy�what in the world did she see in him? he was lugubrious, silent, morose. he had no talent as a painter. he was very sallow and dark, and he never shaved sufficiently. he met us at havre, and he proceeded to make himself useful for the next two years, during which he lived in our flat in paris, whether we were there or not. he studied painting at julien's, or some such place.... that fellow had his hands always in the pockets of his odious, square- shouldered, broad-hipped, american coats, and his dark eyes were always full of ominous appearances. he was, besides, too fat. why, i was much the better man.... and i daresay florence would have given me the better. she showed signs of it. i think, perhaps, the enigmatic smile with which she used to look back at me over her shoulder when she went into the bathing place was a sort of invitation. i have mentioned that. it was as if she were saying: "i am going in here. i am going to stand so stripped and white and straight�and you are a man...." perhaps it was that.... no, she cannot have liked that fellow long. he looked like sallow putty. i understand that he had been slim and dark and very graceful at the time of her first disgrace. but, loafing about in paris, on her pocket- money and on the allowance that old hurlbird made him to keep out of the united states, had given him a stomach like a man of forty, and dyspeptic irritation on top of it. god, how they worked me! it was those two between them who really elaborated the rules. i have told you something about them�how i had to head conversations, for all those eleven years, off such topics as love, poverty, crime, and so on. but, looking over what i have written, i see that i have unintentionally misled you when i said that florence was never out of my sight. yet that was the impression that i really had until just now. when i come to think of it she was out of my sight most of the time. you see, that fellow impressed upon me that what florence needed most of all were sleep and privacy. i must never enter her room without knocking, or her poor little heart might flutter away to its doom. he said these things with his lugubrious croak, and his black eyes like a crow's, so that i seemed to see poor florence die ten times a day�a little, pale, frail corpse. why, i would as soon have thought of entering her room without her permission as of burgling a church. i would sooner have committed that crime. i would certainly have done it if i had thought the state of her heart demanded the sacrilege. so at ten o'clock at night the door closed upon florence, who had gently, and, as if reluctantly, backed up that fellow's recommendations; and she would wish me good night as if she were a cinquecento italian lady saying good-bye to her lover. and at ten o'clock of the next morning there she would come out the door of her room as fresh as venus rising from any of the couches that are mentioned in greek legends. her room door was locked because she was nervous about thieves; but an electric contrivance on a cord was understood to be attached to her little wrist. she had only to press a bulb to raise the house. and i was provided with an axe�an axe!�great gods, with which to break down her door in case she ever failed to answer my knock, after i knocked really loud several times. it was pretty well thought out, you see. what wasn't so well thought out were the ultimate consequences�our being tied to europe. for that young man rubbed it so well into me that florence would die if she crossed the channel�he impressed it so fully on my mind that, when later florence wanted to go to fordingbridge, i cut the proposal short�absolutely short, with a curt no. it fixed her and it frightened her. i was even backed up by all the doctors. i seemed to have had endless interviews with doctor after doctor, cool, quiet men, who would ask, in reasonable tones, whether there was any reason for our going to england�any special reason. and since i could not see any special reason, they would give the verdict: "better not, then." i daresay they were honest enough, as things go. they probably imagined that the mere associations of the steamer might have effects on florence's nerves. that would be enough, that and a conscientious desire to keep our money on the continent. it must have rattled poor florence pretty considerably, for you see, the main idea�the only main idea of her heart, that was otherwise cold�was to get to fordingbridge and be a county lady in the home of her ancestors. but jimmy got her, there: he shut on her the door of the channel; even on the fairest day of blue sky, with the cliffs of england shining like mother of pearl in full view of calais, i would not have let her cross the steamer gangway to save her life. i tell you it fixed her. it fixed her beautifully, because she could not announce herself as cured, since that would have put an end to the locked bedroom arrangements. and, by the time she was sick of jimmy�which happened in the year �she had taken on edward ashburnham. yes, it was a bad fix for her, because edward could have taken her to fordingbridge, and, though he could not give her branshaw manor, that home of her ancestors being settled on his wife, she could at least have pretty considerably queened it there or thereabouts, what with our money and the support of the ashburnhams. her uncle, as soon as he considered that she had really settled down with me�and i sent him only the most glowing accounts of her virtue and constancy�made over to her a very considerable part of his fortune for which he had no use. i suppose that we had, between us, fifteen thousand a year in english money, though i never quite knew how much of hers went to jimmy. at any rate, we could have shone in fordingbridge. i never quite knew, either, how she and edward got rid of jimmy. i fancy that fat and disreputable raven must have had his six golden front teeth knocked down his throat by edward one morning whilst i had gone out to buy some flowers in the rue de la paix, leaving florence and the flat in charge of those two. and serve him very right, is all that i can say. he was a bad sort of blackmailer; i hope florence does not have his company in the next world. as god is my judge, i do not believe that i would have separated those two if i had known that they really and passionately loved each other. i do not know where the public morality of the case comes in, and, of course, no man really knows what he would have done in any given case. but i truly believe that i would have united them, observing ways and means as decent as i could. i believe that i should have given them money to live upon and that i should have consoled myself somehow. at that date i might have found some young thing, like maisie maidan, or the poor girl, and i might have had some peace. for peace i never had with florence, and hardly believe that i cared for her in the way of love after a year or two of it. she became for me a rare and fragile object, something burdensome, but very frail. why it was as if i had been given a thin-shelled pullet's egg to carry on my palm from equatorial africa to hoboken. yes, she became for me, as it were, the subject of a bet�the trophy of an athlete's achievement, a parsley crown that is the symbol of his chastity, his soberness, his abstentions, and of his inflexible will. of intrinsic value as a wife, i think she had none at all for me. i fancy i was not even proud of the way she dressed. but her passion for jimmy was not even a passion, and, mad as the suggestion may appear, she was frightened for her life. yes, she was afraid of me. i will tell you how that happened. i had, in the old days, a darky servant, called julius, who valeted me, and waited on me, and loved me, like the crown of his head. now, when we left waterbury to go to the "pocahontas", florence entrusted to me one very special and very precious leather grip. she told me that her life might depend on that grip, which contained her drugs against heart attacks. and, since i was never much of a hand at carrying things, i entrusted this, in turn, to julius, who was a grey-haired chap of sixty or so, and very picturesque at that. he made so much impression on florence that she regarded him as a sort of father, and absolutely refused to let me take him to paris. he would have inconvenienced her. well, julius was so overcome with grief at being left behind that he must needs go and drop the precious grip. i saw red, i saw purple. i flew at julius. on the ferry, it was, i filled up one of his eyes; i threatened to strangle him. and, since an unresisting negro can make a deplorable noise and a deplorable spectacle, and, since that was florence's first adventure in the married state, she got a pretty idea of my character. it affirmed in her the desperate resolve to conceal from me the fact that she was not what she would have called "a pure woman". for that was really the mainspring of her fantastic actions. she was afraid that i should murder her.... so she got up the heart attack, at the earliest possible opportunity, on board the liner. perhaps she was not so very much to be blamed. you must remember that she was a new englander, and that new england had not yet come to loathe darkies as it does now. whereas, if she had come from even so little south as philadelphia, and had been an oldish family, she would have seen that for me to kick julius was not so outrageous an act as for her cousin, reggie hurlbird, to say�as i have heard him say to his english butler�that for two cents he would bat him on the pants. besides, the medicine-grip did not bulk as largely in her eyes as it did in mine, where it was the symbol of the existence of an adored wife of a day. to her it was just a useful lie.... well, there you have the position, as clear as i can make it�the husband an ignorant fool, the wife a cold sensualist with imbecile fears�for i was such a fool that i should never have known what she was or was not�and the blackmailing lover. and then the other lover came along.... well, edward ashburnham was worth having. have i conveyed to you the splendid fellow that he was�the fine soldier, the excellent landlord, the extraordinarily kind, careful and industrious magistrate, the upright, honest, fair-dealing, fair-thinking, public character? i suppose i have not conveyed it to you. the truth is, that i never knew it until the poor girl came along�the poor girl who was just as straight, as splendid and as upright as he. i swear she was. i suppose i ought to have known. i suppose that was, really, why i liked him so much�so infinitely much. come to think of it, i can remember a thousand little acts of kindliness, of thoughtfulness for his inferiors, even on the continent. look here, i know of two families of dirty, unpicturesque, hessian paupers that that fellow, with an infinite patience, rooted up, got their police reports, set on their feet, or exported to my patient land. and he would do it quite inarticulately, set in motion by seeing a child crying in the street. he would wrestle with dictionaries, in that unfamiliar tongue.... well, he could not bear to see a child cry. perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her the comfort of his physical attractions. but, although i liked him so intensely, i was rather apt to take these things for granted. they made me feel comfortable with him, good towards him; they made me trust him. but i guess i thought it was part of the character of any english gentleman. why, one day he got it into his head that the head waiter at the excelsior had been crying�the fellow with the grey face and grey whiskers. and then he spent the best part of a week, in correspondence and up at the british consul's, in getting the fellow's wife to come back from london and bring back his girl baby. she had bolted with a swiss scullion. if she had not come inside the week he would have gone to london himself to fetch her. he was like that. edward ashburnham was like that, and i thought it was only the duty of his rank and station. perhaps that was all that it was�but i pray god to make me discharge mine as well. and, but for the poor girl, i daresay that i should never have seen it, however much the feeling might have been over me. she had for him such enthusiasm that, although even now i do not understand the technicalities of english life, i can gather enough. she was with them during the whole of our last stay at nauheim. nancy rufford was her name; she was leonora's only friend's only child, and leonora was her guardian, if that is the correct term. she had lived with the ashburnhams ever since she had been of the age of thirteen, when her mother was said to have committed suicide owing to the brutalities of her father. yes, it is a cheerful story.... edward always called her "the girl", and it was very pretty, the evident affection he had for her and she for him. and leonora's feet she would have kissed�those two were for her the best man and the best woman on earth�and in heaven. i think that she had not a thought of evil in her head�the poor girl.... well, anyhow, she chanted edward's praises to me for the hour together, but, as i have said, i could not make much of it. it appeared that he had the d.s.o., and that his troop loved him beyond the love of men. you never saw such a troop as his. and he had the royal humane society's medal with a clasp. that meant, apparently, that he had twice jumped off the deck of a troopship to rescue what the girl called "tommies", who had fallen overboard in the red sea and such places. he had been twice recommended for the v.c., whatever that might mean, and, although owing to some technicalities he had never received that apparently coveted order, he had some special place about his sovereign at the coronation. or perhaps it was some post in the beefeaters'. she made him out like a cross between lohengrin and the chevalier bayard. perhaps he was.... but he was too silent a fellow to make that side of him really decorative. i remember going to him at about that time and asking him what the d.s.o. was, and he grunted out: "it's a sort of a thing they give grocers who've honourably supplied the troops with adulterated coffee in war-time"�something of that sort. he did not quite carry conviction to me, so, in the end, i put it directly to leonora. i asked her fully and squarely�prefacing the question with some remarks, such as those that i have already given you, as to the difficulty one has in really getting to know people when one's intimacy is conducted as an english acquaintanceship�i asked her whether her husband was not really a splendid fellow�along at least the lines of his public functions. she looked at me with a slightly awakened air�with an air that would have been almost startled if leonora could ever have been startled. "didn't you know?" she asked. "if i come to think of it there is not a more splendid fellow in any three counties, pick them where you will�along those lines." and she added, after she had looked at me reflectively for what seemed a long time: "to do my husband justice there could not be a better man on the earth. there would not be room for it�along those lines." "well," i said, "then he must really be lohengrin and the cid in one body. for there are not any other lines that count." again she looked at me for a long time. "it's your opinion that there are no other lines that count?" she asked slowly. "well," i answered gaily, "you're not going to accuse him of not being a good husband, or of not being a good guardian to your ward?" she spoke then, slowly, like a person who is listening to the sounds in a sea-shell held to her ear�and, would you believe it?�she told me afterwards that, at that speech of mine, for the first time she had a vague inkling of the tragedy that was to follow so soon�although the girl had lived with them for eight years or so: "oh, i'm not thinking of saying that he is not the best of husbands, or that he is not very fond of the girl." and then i said something like: "well, leonora, a man sees more of these things than even a wife. and, let me tell you, that in all the years i've known edward he has never, in your absence, paid a moment's attention to any other woman�not by the quivering of an eyelash. i should have noticed. and he talks of you as if you were one of the angels of god." "oh," she came up to the scratch, as you could be sure leonora would always come up to the scratch, "i am perfectly sure that he always speaks nicely of me." i daresay she had practice in that sort of scene�people must have been always complimenting her on her husband's fidelity and adoration. for half the world�the whole of the world that knew edward and leonora believed that his conviction in the kilsyte affair had been a miscarriage of justice�a conspiracy of false evidence, got together by nonconformist adversaries. but think of the fool that i was.... ii let me think where we were. oh, yes... that conversation took place on the th of august, . i remember saying to her that, on that day, exactly nine years before, i had made their acquaintance, so that it had seemed quite appropriate and like a birthday speech to utter my little testimonial to my friend edward. i could quite confidently say that, though we four had been about together in all sorts of places, for all that length of time, i had not, for my part, one single complaint to make of either of them. and i added, that that was an unusual record for people who had been so much together. you are not to imagine that it was only at nauheim that we met. that would not have suited florence. i find, on looking at my diaries, that on the th of september, , edward accompanied florence and myself to paris, where we put him up till the twenty-first of that month. he made another short visit to us in december of that year�the first year of our acquaintance. it must have been during this visit that he knocked mr jimmy's teeth down his throat. i daresay florence had asked him to come over for that purpose. in he was in paris three times�once with leonora, who wanted some frocks. in we spent the best part of six weeks together at mentone, and edward stayed with us in paris on his way back to london. that was how it went. the fact was that in florence the poor wretch had got hold of a tartar, compared with whom leonora was a sucking kid. he must have had a hell of a time. leonora wanted to keep him for�what shall i say�for the good of her church, as it were, to show that catholic women do not lose their men. let it go at that, for the moment. i will write more about her motives later, perhaps. but florence was sticking on to the proprietor of the home of her ancestors. no doubt he was also a very passionate lover. but i am convinced that he was sick of florence within three years of even interrupted companionship and the life that she led him.... if ever leonora so much as mentioned in a letter that they had had a woman staying with them�or, if she so much as mentioned a woman's name in a letter to me�off would go a desperate cable in cipher to that poor wretch at branshaw, commanding him on pain of an instant and horrible disclosure to come over and assure her of his fidelity. i daresay he would have faced it out; i daresay he would have thrown over florence and taken the risk of exposure. but there he had leonora to deal with. and leonora assured him that, if the minutest fragment of the real situation ever got through to my senses, she would wreak upon him the most terrible vengeance that she could think of. and he did not have a very easy job. florence called for more and more attentions from him as the time went on. she would make him kiss her at any moment of the day; and it was only by his making it plain that a divorced lady could never assume a position in the county of hampshire that he could prevent her from making a bolt of it with him in her train. oh, yes, it was a difficult job for him. for florence, if you please, gaining in time a more composed view of nature, and overcome by her habits of garrulity, arrived at a frame of mind in which she found it almost necessary to tell me all about it�nothing less than that. she said that her situation was too unbearable with regard to me. she proposed to tell me all, secure a divorce from me, and go with edward and settle in california.... i do not suppose that she was really serious in this. it would have meant the extinction of all hopes of branshaw manor for her. besides she had got it into her head that leonora, who was as sound as a roach, was consumptive. she was always begging leonora, before me, to go and see a doctor. but, none the less, poor edward seems to have believed in her determination to carry him off. he would not have gone; he cared for his wife too much. but, if florence had put him at it, that would have meant my getting to know of it, and his incurring leonora's vengeance. and she could have made it pretty hot for him in ten or a dozen different ways. and she assured me that she would have used every one of them. she was determined to spare my feelings. and she was quite aware that, at that date, the hottest she could have made it for him would have been to refuse, herself, ever to see him again.... well, i think i have made it pretty clear. let me come to the th of august, , the last day of my absolute ignorance�and, i assure you, of my perfect happiness. for the coming of that dear girl only added to it all. on that th of august i was sitting in the lounge with a rather odious englishman called bagshawe, who had arrived that night, too late for dinner. leonora had just gone to bed and i was waiting for florence and edward and the girl to come back from a concert at the casino. they had not gone there all together. florence, i remember, had said at first that she would remain with leonora, and me, and edward and the girl had gone off alone. and then leonora had said to florence with perfect calmness: "i wish you would go with those two. i think the girl ought to have the appearance of being chaperoned with edward in these places. i think the time has come." so florence, with her light step, had slipped out after them. she was all in black for some cousin or other. americans are particular in those matters. we had gone on sitting in the lounge till towards ten, when leonora had gone up to bed. it had been a very hot day, but there it was cool. the man called bagshawe had been reading the times on the other side of the room, but then he moved over to me with some trifling question as a prelude to suggesting an acquaintance. i fancy he asked me something about the poll-tax on kur-guests, and whether it could not be sneaked out of. he was that sort of person. well, he was an unmistakable man, with a military figure, rather exaggerated, with bulbous eyes that avoided your own, and a pallid complexion that suggested vices practised in secret along with an uneasy desire for making acquaintance at whatever cost.... the filthy toad... . he began by telling me that he came from ludlow manor, near ledbury. the name had a slightly familiar sound, though i could not fix it in my mind. then he began to talk about a duty on hops, about californian hops, about los angeles, where he had been. he fencing for a topic with which he might gain my affection. and then, quite suddenly, in the bright light of the street, i saw florence running. it was like that�i saw florence running with a face whiter than paper and her hand on the black stuff over her heart. i tell you, my own heart stood still; i tell you i could not move. she rushed in at the swing doors. she looked round that place of rush chairs, cane tables and newspapers. she saw me and opened her lips. she saw the man who was talking to me. she stuck her hands over her face as if she wished to push her eyes out. and she was not there any more. i could not move; i could not stir a finger. and then that man said: "by jove: florry hurlbird." he turned upon me with an oily and uneasy sound meant for a laugh. he was really going to ingratiate himself with me. "do you know who that is?" he asked. "the last time i saw that girl she was coming out of the bedroom of a young man called jimmy at five o'clock in the morning. in my house at ledbury. you saw her recognize me." he was standing on his feet, looking down at me. i don't know what i looked like. at any rate, he gave a sort of gurgle and then stuttered: "oh, i say...." those were the last words i ever heard of mr bagshawe's. a long time afterwards i pulled myself out of the lounge and went up to florence's room. she had not locked the door�for the first time of our married life. she was lying, quite respectably arranged, unlike mrs maidan, on her bed. she had a little phial that rightly should have contained nitrate of amyl, in her right hand. that was on the th of august, . part iii i the odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the rest of that evening was leonora's saying: "of course you might marry her," and, when i asked whom, she answered: "the girl." now that is to me a very amazing thing�amazing for the light of possibilities that it casts into the human heart. for i had never had the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; i never had the slightest idea even of caring for her. i must have talked in an odd way, as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic. it is as if one had a dual personality, the one i being entirely unconscious of the other. i had thought nothing; i had said such an extraordinary thing. i don't know that analysis of my own psychology matters at all to this story. i should say that it didn't or, at any rate, that i had given enough of it. but that odd remark of mine had a strong influence upon what came after. i mean, that leonora would probably never have spoken to me at all about florence's relations with edward if i hadn't said, two hours after my wife's death: "now i can marry the girl." she had, then, taken it for granted that i had been suffering all that she had been suffering, or, at least, that i had permitted all that she had permitted. so that, a month ago, about a week after the funeral of poor edward, she could say to me in the most natural way in the world�i had been talking about the duration of my stay at branshaw�she said with her clear, reflective intonation: "oh, stop here for ever and ever if you can." and then she added, "you couldn't be more of a brother to me, or more of a counsellor, or more of a support. you are all the consolation i have in the world. and isn't it odd to think that if your wife hadn't been my husband's mistress, you would probably never have been here at all?" that was how i got the news�full in the face, like that. i didn't say anything and i don't suppose i felt anything, unless maybe it was with that mysterious and unconscious self that underlies most people. perhaps one day when i am unconscious or walking in my sleep i may go and spit upon poor edward's grave. it seems about the most unlikely thing i could do; but there it is. no, i remember no emotion of any sort, but just the clear feeling that one has from time to time when one hears that some mrs so-and-so is au mieux with a certain gentleman. it made things plainer, suddenly, to my curiosity. it was as if i thought, at that moment, of a windy november evening, that, when i came to think it over afterwards, a dozen unexplained things would fit themselves into place. but i wasn't thinking things over then. i remember that distinctly. i was just sitting back, rather stiffly, in a deep arm-chair. that is what i remember. it was twilight. branshaw manor lies in a little hollow with lawns across it and pine- woods on the fringe of the dip. the immense wind, coming from across the forest, roared overhead. but the view from the window was perfectly quiet and grey. not a thing stirred, except a couple of rabbits on the extreme edge of the lawn. it was leonora's own little study that we were in and we were waiting for the tea to be brought. i, as i said, was sitting in the deep chair, leonora was standing in the window twirling the wooden acorn at the end of the window-blind cord desultorily round and round. she looked across the lawn and said, as far as i can remember: "edward has been dead only ten days and yet there are rabbits on the lawn." i understand that rabbits do a great deal of harm to the short grass in england. and then she turned round to me and said without any adornment at all, for i remember her exact words: "i think it was stupid of florence to commit suicide." i cannot tell you the extraordinary sense of leisure that we two seemed to have at that moment. it wasn't as if we were waiting for a train, it wasn't as if we were waiting for a meal�it was just that there was nothing to wait for. nothing. there was an extreme stillness with the remote and intermittent sound of the wind. there was the grey light in that brown, small room. and there appeared to be nothing else in the world. i knew then that leonora was about to let me into her full confidence. it was as if�or no, it was the actual fact that�leonora with an odd english sense of decency had determined to wait until edward had been in his grave for a full week before she spoke. and with some vague motive of giving her an idea of the extent to which she must permit herself to make confidences, i said slowly�and these words too i remember with exactitude� "did florence commit suicide? i didn't know." i was just, you understand, trying to let her know that, if she were going to speak she would have to talk about a much wider range of things than she had before thought necessary. so that that was the first knowledge i had that florence had committed suicide. it had never entered my head. you may think that i had been singularly lacking in suspiciousness; you may consider me even to have been an imbecile. but consider the position. in such circumstances of clamour, of outcry, of the crash of many people running together, of the professional reticence of such people as hotel- keepers, the traditional reticence of such "good people" as the ashburnhams�in such circumstances it is some little material object, always, that catches the eye and that appeals to the imagination. i had no possible guide to the idea of suicide and the sight of the little flask of nitrate of amyl in florence's hand suggested instantly to my mind the idea of the failure of her heart. nitrate of amyl, you understand, is the drug that is given to relieve sufferers from angina pectoris. seeing florence, as i had seen her, running with a white face and with one hand held over her heart, and seeing her, as i immediately afterwards saw her, lying upon her bed with the so familiar little brown flask clenched in her fingers, it was natural enough for my mind to frame the idea. as happened now and again, i thought, she had gone out without her remedy and, having felt an attack coming on whilst she was in the gardens, she had run in to get the nitrate in order, as quickly as possible, to obtain relief. and it was equally inevitable my mind should frame the thought that her heart, unable to stand the strain of the running, should have broken in her side. how could i have known that, during all the years of our married life, that little brown flask had contained, not nitrate of amyl, but prussic acid? it was inconceivable. why, not even edward ashburnham, who was, after all more intimate with her than i was, had an inkling of the truth. he just thought that she had dropped dead of heart disease. indeed, i fancy that the only people who ever knew that florence had committed suicide were leonora, the grand duke, the head of the police and the hotel-keeper. i mention these last three because my recollection of that night is only the sort of pinkish effulgence from the electric-lamps in the hotel lounge. there seemed to bob into my consciousness, like floating globes, the faces of those three. now it would be the bearded, monarchical, benevolent head of the grand duke; then the sharp-featured, brown, cavalry-moustached feature of the chief of police; then the globular, polished and high- collared vacuousness that represented monsieur schontz, the proprietor of the hotel. at times one head would be there alone, at another the spiked helmet of the official would be close to the healthy baldness of the prince; then m. schontz's oiled locks would push in between the two. the sovereign's soft, exquisitely trained voice would say, "ja, ja, ja!" each word dropping out like so many soft pellets of suet; the subdued rasp of the official would come: "zum befehl durchlaucht," like five revolver-shots; the voice of m. schontz would go on and on under its breath like that of an unclean priest reciting from his breviary in the corner of a railway-carriage. that was how it presented itself to me. they seemed to take no notice of me; i don't suppose that i was even addressed by one of them. but, as long as one or the other, or all three of them were there, they stood between me as if, i being the titular possessor of the corpse, had a right to be present at their conferences. then they all went away and i was left alone for a long time. and i thought nothing; absolutely nothing. i had no ideas; i had no strength. i felt no sorrow, no desire for action, no inclination to go upstairs and fall upon the body of my wife. i just saw the pink effulgence, the cane tables, the palms, the globular match-holders, the indented ash-trays. and then leonora came to me and it appears that i addressed to her that singular remark: "now i can marry the girl." but i have given you absolutely the whole of my recollection of that evening, as it is the whole of my recollection of the succeeding three or four days. i was in a state just simply cataleptic. they put me to bed and i stayed there; they brought me my clothes and i dressed; they led me to an open grave and i stood beside it. if they had taken me to the edge of a river, or if they had flung me beneath a railway train, i should have been drowned or mangled in the same spirit. i was the walking dead. well, those are my impressions. what had actually happened had been this. i pieced it together afterwards. you will remember i said that edward ashburnham and the girl had gone off, that night, to a concert at the casino and that leonora had asked florence, almost immediately after their departure, to follow them and to perform the office of chaperone. florence, you may also remember, was all in black, being the mourning that she wore for a deceased cousin, jean hurlbird. it was a very black night and the girl was dressed in cream-coloured muslin, that must have glimmered under the tall trees of the dark park like a phosphorescent fish in a cupboard. you couldn't have had a better beacon. and it appears that edward ashburnham led the girl not up the straight allée that leads to the casino, but in under the dark trees of the park. edward ashburnham told me all this in his final outburst. i have told you that, upon that occasion, he became deucedly vocal. i didn't pump him. i hadn't any motive. at that time i didn't in the least connect him with my wife. but the fellow talked like a cheap novelist.�or like a very good novelist for the matter of that, if it's the business of a novelist to make you see things clearly. and i tell you i see that thing as clearly as if it were a dream that never left me. it appears that, not very far from the casino, he and the girl sat down in the darkness upon a public bench. the lights from that place of entertainment must have reached them through the tree-trunks, since, edward said, he could quite plainly see the girl's face�that beloved face with the high forehead, the queer mouth, the tortured eyebrows, and the direct eyes. and to florence, creeping up behind them, they must have presented the appearance of silhouettes. for i take it that florence came creeping up behind them over the short grass to a tree that, i quite well remember, was immediately behind that public seat. it was not a very difficult feat for a woman instinct with jealousy. the casino orchestra was, as edward remembered to tell me, playing the rakocsy march, and although it was not loud enough, at that distance, to drown the voice of edward ashburnham it was certainly sufficiently audible to efface, amongst the noises of the night, the slight brushings and rustlings that might have been made by the feet of florence or by her gown in coming over the short grass. and that miserable woman must have got it in the face, good and strong. it must have been horrible for her. horrible! well, i suppose she deserved all that she got. anyhow, there you have the picture, the immensely tall trees, elms most of them, towering and feathering away up into the black mistiness that trees seem to gather about them at night; the silhouettes of those two upon the seat; the beams of light coming from the casino, the woman all in black peeping with fear behind the tree-trunk. it is melodrama; but i can't help it. and then, it appears, something happened to edward ashburnham. he assured me�and i see no reason for disbelieving him�that until that moment he had had no idea whatever of caring for the girl. he said that he had regarded her exactly as he would have regarded a daughter. he certainly loved her, but with a very deep, very tender and very tranquil love. he had missed her when she went away to her convent-school; he had been glad when she had returned. but of more than that he had been totally unconscious. had he been conscious of it, he assured me, he would have fled from it as from a thing accursed. he realized that it was the last outrage upon leonora. but the real point was his entire unconsciousness. he had gone with her into that dark park with no quickening of the pulse, with no desire for the intimacy of solitude. he had gone, intending to talk about polo-ponies, and tennis-racquets; about the temperament of the reverend mother at the convent she had left and about whether her frock for a party when they got home should be white or blue. it hadn't come into his head that they would talk about a single thing that they hadn't always talked about; it had not even come into his head that the tabu which extended around her was not inviolable. and then, suddenly, that� he was very careful to assure me that at that time there was no physical motive about his declaration. it did not appear to him to be a matter of a dark night and a propinquity and so on. no, it was simply of her effect on the moral side of his life that he appears to have talked. he said that he never had the slightest notion to enfold her in his arms or so much as to touch her hand. he swore that he did not touch her hand. he said that they sat, she at one end of the bench, he at the other; he leaning slightly towards her and she looking straight towards the light of the casino, her face illuminated by the lamps. the expression upon her face he could only describe as "queer". at another time, indeed, he made it appear that he thought she was glad. it is easy to imagine that she was glad, since at that time she could have had no idea of what was really happening. frankly, she adored edward ashburnham. he was for her, in everything that she said at that time, the model of humanity, the hero, the athlete, the father of his country, the law-giver. so that for her, to be suddenly, intimately and overwhelmingly praised must have been a matter for mere gladness, however overwhelming it were. it must have been as if a god had approved her handiwork or a king her loyalty. she just sat still and listened, smiling. and it seemed to her that all the bitterness of her childhood, the terrors of her tempestuous father, the bewailings of her cruel-tongued mother were suddenly atoned for. she had her recompense at last. because, of course, if you come to figure it out, a sudden pouring forth of passion by a man whom you regard as a cross between a pastor and a father might, to a woman, have the aspect of mere praise for good conduct. it wouldn't, i mean, appear at all in the light of an attempt to gain possession. the girl, at least, regarded him as firmly anchored to his leonora. she had not the slightest inkling of any infidelities. he had always spoken to her of his wife in terms of reverence and deep affection. he had given her the idea that he regarded leonora as absolutely impeccable and as absolutely satisfying. their union had appeared to her to be one of those blessed things that are spoken of and contemplated with reverence by her church. so that, when he spoke of her as being the person he cared most for in the world, she naturally thought that he meant to except leonora and she was just glad. it was like a father saying that he approved of a marriageable daughter... and edward, when he realized what he was doing, curbed his tongue at once. she was just glad and she went on being just glad. i suppose that that was the most monstrously wicked thing that edward ashburnham ever did in his life. and yet i am so near to all these people that i cannot think any of them wicked. it is impossible of me to think of edward ashburnham as anything but straight, upright and honourable. that, i mean, is, in spite of everything, my permanent view of him. i try at times by dwelling on some of the things that he did to push that image of him away, as you might try to push aside a large pendulum. but it always comes back�the memory of his innumerable acts of kindness, of his efficiency, of his unspiteful tongue. he was such a fine fellow. so i feel myself forced to attempt to excuse him in this as in so many other things. it is, i have no doubt, a most monstrous thing to attempt to corrupt a young girl just out of a convent. but i think edward had no idea at all of corrupting her. i believe that he simply loved her. he said that that was the way of it and i, at least, believe him and i believe too that she was the only woman he ever really loved. he said that that was so; and he did enough to prove it. and leonora said that it was so and leonora knew him to the bottom of his heart. i have come to be very much of a cynic in these matters; i mean that it is impossible to believe in the permanence of man's or woman's love. or, at any rate, it is impossible to believe in the permanence of any early passion. as i see it, at least, with regard to man, a love affair, a love for any definite woman�is something in the nature of a widening of the experience. with each new woman that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an acquiring of new territory. a turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gesture�all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love�all these things are like so many objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk beyond the horizon, to explore. he wants to get, as it were, behind those eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the world with the eyes that they overshadow. he wants to hear that voice applying itself to every possible proposition, to every possible topic; he wants to see those characteristic gestures against every possible background. of the question of the sex-instinct i know very little and i do not think that it counts for very much in a really great passion. it can be aroused by such nothings�by an untied shoelace, by a glance of the eye in passing�that i think it might be left out of the calculation. i don't mean to say that any great passion can exist without a desire for consummation. that seems to me to be a commonplace and to be therefore a matter needing no comment at all. it is a thing, with all its accidents, that must be taken for granted, as, in a novel, or a biography, you take it for granted that the characters have their meals with some regularity. but the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. he desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. for, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. and that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. we are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. so, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. he will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. but these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. it is sad, but it is so. the pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. well, this is the saddest story. and yet i do believe that for every man there comes at last a woman�or no, that is the wrong way of formulating it. for every man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal upon his imagination has set her seal for good. he will travel over no more horizons; he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders; he will retire from those scenes. he will have gone out of the business. that at any rate was the case with edward and the poor girl. it was quite literally the case. it was quite literally the case that his passions�for the mistress of the grand duke, for mrs basil, for little mrs maidan, for florence, for whom you will�these passions were merely preliminary canters compared to his final race with death for her. i am certain of that. i am not going to be so american as to say that all true love demands some sacrifice. it doesn't. but i think that love will be truer and more permanent in which self-sacrifice has been exacted. and, in the case of the other women, edward just cut in and cut them out as he did with the polo-ball from under the nose of count baron von lelöffel. i don't mean to say that he didn't wear himself as thin as a lath in the endeavour to capture the other women; but over her he wore himself to rags and tatters and death�in the effort to leave her alone. and, in speaking to her on that night, he wasn't, i am convinced, committing a baseness. it was as if his passion for her hadn't existed; as if the very words that he spoke, without knowing that he spoke them, created the passion as they went along. before he spoke, there was nothing; afterwards, it was the integral fact of his life. well, i must get back to my story. and my story was concerning itself with florence�with florence, who heard those words from behind the tree. that of course is only conjecture, but i think the conjecture is pretty well justified. you have the fact that those two went out, that she followed them almost immediately afterwards through the darkness and, a little later, she came running back to the hotel with that pallid face and the hand clutching her dress over her heart. it can't have been only bagshawe. her face was contorted with agony before ever her eyes fell upon me or upon him beside me. but i dare say bagshawe may have been the determining influence in her suicide. leonora says that she had that flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually of prussic acid, for many years and that she was determined to use it if ever i discovered the nature of her relationship with that fellow jimmy. you see, the mainspring of her nature must have been vanity. there is no reason why it shouldn't have been; i guess it is vanity that makes most of us keep straight, if we do keep straight, in this world. if it had been merely a matter of edward's relations with the girl i dare say florence would have faced it out. she would no doubt have made him scenes, have threatened him, have appealed to his sense of humour, to his promises. but mr bagshawe and the fact that the date was the th of august must have been too much for her superstitious mind. you see, she had two things that she wanted. she wanted to be a great lady, installed in branshaw teleragh. she wanted also to retain my respect. she wanted, that is to say, to retain my respect for as long as she lived with me. i suppose, if she had persuaded edward ashburnham to bolt with her she would have let the whole thing go with a run. or perhaps she would have tried to exact from me a new respect for the greatness of her passion on the lines of all for love and the world well lost. that would be just like florence. in all matrimonial associations there is, i believe, one constant factor�a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. for it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. it is really death to do so�that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily. i, for instance, am a rather greedy man; i have a taste for good cookery and a watering tooth at the mere sound of the names of certain comestibles. if florence had discovered this secret of mine i should have found her knowledge of it so unbearable that i never could have supported all the other privations of the régime that she extracted from me. i am bound to say that florence never discovered this secret. certainly she never alluded to it; i dare say she never took sufficient interest in me. and the secret weakness of florence�the weakness that she could not bear to have me discover, was just that early escapade with the fellow called jimmy. let me, as this is in all probability the last time i shall mention florence's name, dwell a little upon the change that had taken place in her psychology. she would not, i mean, have minded if i had discovered that she was the mistress of edward ashburnham. she would rather have liked it. indeed, the chief trouble of poor leonora in those days was to keep florence from making, before me, theatrical displays, on one line or another, of that very fact. she wanted, in one mood, to come rushing to me, to cast herself on her knees at my feet and to declaim a carefully arranged, frightfully emotional, outpouring as to her passion. that was to show that she was like one of the great erotic women of whom history tells us. in another mood she would desire to come to me disdainfully and to tell me that i was considerably less than a man and that what had happened was what must happen when a real male came along. she wanted to say that in cool, balanced and sarcastic sentences. that was when she wished to appear like the heroine of a french comedy. because of course she was always play acting. but what she didn't want me to know was the fact of her first escapade with the fellow called jimmy. she had arrived at figuring out the sort of low-down bowery tough that that fellow was. do you know what it is to shudder, in later life, for some small, stupid action�usually for some small, quite genuine piece of emotionalism�of your early life? well, it was that sort of shuddering that came over florence at the thought that she had surrendered to such a low fellow. i don't know that she need have shuddered. it was her footling old uncle's work; he ought never to have taken those two round the world together and shut himself up in his cabin for the greater part of the time. anyhow, i am convinced that the sight of mr bagshawe and the thought that mr bagshawe�for she knew that unpleasant and toadlike personality�the thought that mr bagshawe would almost certainly reveal to me that he had caught her coming out of jimmy's bedroom at five o'clock in the morning on the th of august, �that was the determining influence in her suicide. and no doubt the effect of the date was too much for her superstitious personality. she had been born on the th of august; she had started to go round the world on the th of august; she had become a low fellow's mistress on the th of august. on the same day of the year she had married me; on that th she had lost edward's love, and bagshawe had appeared like a sinister omen�like a grin on the face of fate. it was the last straw. she ran upstairs, arranged herself decoratively upon her bed�she was a sweetly pretty woman with smooth pink and white cheeks, long hair, the eyelashes falling like a tiny curtain on her cheeks. she drank the little phial of prussic acid and there she lay.�o, extremely charming and clear-cut�looking with a puzzled expression at the electric-light bulb that hung from the ceiling, or perhaps through it, to the stars above. who knows? anyhow, there was an end of florence. you have no idea how quite extraordinarily for me that was the end of florence. from that day to this i have never given her another thought; i have not bestowed upon her so much as a sigh. of course, when it has been necessary to talk about her to leonora, or when for the purpose of these writings i have tried to figure her out, i have thought about her as i might do about a problem in algebra. but it has always been as a matter for study, not for remembrance. she just went completely out of existence, like yesterday's paper. i was so deadly tired. and i dare say that my week or ten days of affaissement�of what was practically catalepsy�was just the repose that my exhausted nature claimed after twelve years of the repression of my instincts, after twelve years of playing the trained poodle. for that was all that i had been. i suppose that it was the shock that did it�the several shocks. but i am unwilling to attribute my feelings at that time to anything so concrete as a shock. it was a feeling so tranquil. it was as if an immensely heavy�an unbearably heavy knapsack, supported upon my shoulders by straps, had fallen off and left my shoulders themselves that the straps had cut into, numb and without sensation of life. i tell you, i had no regret. what had i to regret? i suppose that my inner soul�my dual personality�had realized long before that florence was a personality of paper�that she represented a real human being with a heart, with feelings, with sympathies and with emotions only as a bank- note represents a certain quantity of gold. i know that sort of feeling came to the surface in me the moment the man bagshawe told me that he had seen her coming out of that fellow's bedroom. i thought suddenly that she wasn't real; she was just a mass of talk out of guidebooks, of drawings out of fashion-plates. it is even possible that, if that feeling had not possessed me, i should have run up sooner to her room and might have prevented her drinking the prussic acid. but i just couldn't do it; it would have been like chasing a scrap of paper�an occupation ignoble for a grown man. and, as it began, so that matter has remained. i didn't care whether she had come out of that bedroom or whether she hadn't. it simply didn't interest me. florence didn't matter. i suppose you will retort that i was in love with nancy rufford and that my indifference was therefore discreditable. well, i am not seeking to avoid discredit. i was in love with nancy rufford as i am in love with the poor child's memory, quietly and quite tenderly in my american sort of way. i had never thought about it until i heard leonora state that i might now marry her. but, from that moment until her worse than death, i do not suppose that i much thought about anything else. i don't mean to say that i sighed about her or groaned; i just wanted to marry her as some people want to go to carcassonne. do you understand the feeling�the sort of feeling that you must get certain matters out of the way, smooth out certain fairly negligible complications before you can go to a place that has, during all your life, been a sort of dream city? i didn't attach much importance to my superior years. i was forty-five, and she, poor thing, was only just rising twenty-two. but she was older than her years and quieter. she seemed to have an odd quality of sainthood, as if she must inevitably end in a convent with a white coif framing her face. but she had frequently told me that she had no vocation; it just simply wasn't there�the desire to become a nun. well, i guess that i was a sort of convent myself; it seemed fairly proper that she should make her vows to me. no, i didn't see any impediment on the score of age. i dare say no man does and i was pretty confident that with a little preparation, i could make a young girl happy. i could spoil her as few young girls have ever been spoiled; and i couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. no man can, or if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him. but, as soon as i came out of my catalepsy, i seemed to perceive that my problem�that what i had to do to prepare myself for getting into contact with her, was just to get back into contact with life. i had been kept for twelve years in a rarefied atmosphere; what i then had to do was a little fighting with real life, some wrestling with men of business, some travelling amongst larger cities, something harsh, something masculine. i didn't want to present myself to nancy rufford as a sort of an old maid. that was why, just a fortnight after florence's suicide, i set off for the united states. ii immediately after florence's death leonora began to put the leash upon nancy rufford and edward. she had guessed what had happened under the trees near the casino. they stayed at nauheim some weeks after i went, and leonora has told me that that was the most deadly time of her existence. it seemed like a long, silent duel with invisible weapons, so she said. and it was rendered all the more difficult by the girl's entire innocence. for nancy was always trying to go off alone with edward�as she had been doing all her life, whenever she was home for holidays. she just wanted him to say nice things to her again. you see, the position was extremely complicated. it was as complicated as it well could be, along delicate lines. there was the complication caused by the fact that edward and leonora never spoke to each other except when other people were present. then, as i have said, their demeanours were quite perfect. there was the complication caused by the girl's entire innocence; there was the further complication that both edward and leonora really regarded the girl as their daughter. or it might be more precise to say that they regarded her as being leonora's daughter. and nancy was a queer girl; it is very difficult to describe her to you. she was tall and strikingly thin; she had a tortured mouth, agonized eyes, and a quite extraordinary sense of fun. you, might put it that at times she was exceedingly grotesque and at times extraordinarily beautiful. why, she had the heaviest head of black hair that i have ever come across; i used to wonder how she could bear the weight of it. she was just over twenty-one and at times she seemed as old as the hills, at times not much more than sixteen. at one moment she would be talking of the lives of the saints and at the next she would be tumbling all over the lawn with the st bernard puppy. she could ride to hounds like a maenad and she could sit for hours perfectly still, steeping handkerchief after handkerchief in vinegar when leonora had one of her headaches. she was, in short, a miracle of patience who could be almost miraculously impatient. it was, no doubt, the convent training that effected that. i remember that one of her letters to me, when she was about sixteen, ran something like: "on corpus christi"�or it may have been some other saint's day, i cannot keep these things in my head�"our school played roehampton at hockey. and, seeing that our side was losing, being three goals to one against us at halftime, we retired into the chapel and prayed for victory. we won by five goals to three." and i remember that she seemed to describe afterwards a sort of saturnalia. apparently, when the victorious fifteen or eleven came into the refectory for supper, the whole school jumped upon the tables and cheered and broke the chairs on the floor and smashed the crockery�for a given time, until the reverend mother rang a hand-bell. that is of course the catholic tradition�saturnalia that can end in a moment, like the crack of a whip. i don't, of course, like the tradition, but i am bound to say that it gave nancy�or at any rate nancy had�a sense of rectitude that i have never seen surpassed. it was a thing like a knife that looked out of her eyes and that spoke with her voice, just now and then. it positively frightened me. i suppose that i was almost afraid to be in a world where there could be so fine a standard. i remember when she was about fifteen or sixteen on going back to the convent i once gave her a couple of english sovereigns as a tip. she thanked me in a peculiarly heartfelt way, saying that it would come in extremely handy. i asked her why and she explained. there was a rule at the school that the pupils were not to speak when they walked through the garden from the chapel to the refectory. and, since this rule appeared to be idiotic and arbitrary, she broke it on purpose day after day. in the evening the children were all asked if they had committed any faults during the day, and every evening nancy confessed that she had broken this particular rule. it cost her sixpence a time, that being the fine attached to the offence. just for the information i asked her why she always confessed, and she answered in these exact words: "oh, well, the girls of the holy child have always been noted for their truthfulness. it's a beastly bore, but i've got to do it." i dare say that the miserable nature of her childhood, coming before the mixture of saturnalia and discipline that was her convent life, added something to her queernesses. her father was a violent madman of a fellow, a major of one of what i believe are called the highland regiments. he didn't drink, but he had an ungovernable temper, and the first thing that nancy could remember was seeing her father strike her mother with his clenched fist so that her mother fell over sideways from the breakfast-table and lay motionless. the mother was no doubt an irritating woman and the privates of that regiment appeared to have been irritating, too, so that the house was a place of outcries and perpetual disturbances. mrs rufford was leonora's dearest friend and leonora could be cutting enough at times. but i fancy she was as nothing to mrs rufford. the major would come in to lunch harassed and already spitting out oaths after an unsatisfactory morning's drilling of his stubborn men beneath a hot sun. and then mrs rufford would make some cutting remark and pandemonium would break loose. once, when she had been about twelve, nancy had tried to intervene between the pair of them. her father had struck her full upon the forehead a blow so terrible that she had lain unconscious for three days. nevertheless, nancy seemed to prefer her father to her mother. she remembered rough kindnesses from him. once or twice when she had been quite small he had dressed her in a clumsy, impatient, but very tender way. it was nearly always impossible to get a servant to stay in the family and, for days at a time, apparently, mrs rufford would be incapable. i fancy she drank. at any rate, she had so cutting a tongue that even nancy was afraid of her�she so made fun of any tenderness, she so sneered at all emotional displays. nancy must have been a very emotional child. then one day, quite suddenly, on her return from a ride at fort william, nancy had been sent, with her governess, who had a white face, right down south to that convent school. she had been expecting to go there in two months' time. her mother disappeared from her life at that time. a fortnight later leonora came to the convent and told her that her mother was dead. perhaps she was. at any rate, i never heard until the very end what became of mrs rufford. leonora never spoke of her. and then major rufford went to india, from which he returned very seldom and only for very short visits; and nancy lived herself gradually into the life at branshaw teleragh. i think that, from that time onwards, she led a very happy life, till the end. there were dogs and horses and old servants and the forest. and there were edward and leonora, who loved her. i had known her all the time�i mean, that she always came to the ashburnhams' at nauheim for the last fortnight of their stay�and i watched her gradually growing. she was very cheerful with me. she always even kissed me, night and morning, until she was about eighteen. and she would skip about and fetch me things and laugh at my tales of life in philadelphia. but, beneath her gaiety, i fancy that there lurked some terrors. i remember one day, when she was just eighteen, during one of her father's rare visits to europe, we were sitting in the gardens, near the iron-stained fountain. leonora had one of her headaches and we were waiting for florence and edward to come from their baths. you have no idea how beautiful nancy looked that morning. we were talking about the desirability of taking tickets in lotteries�of the moral side of it, i mean. she was all in white, and so tall and fragile; and she had only just put her hair up, so that the carriage of her neck had that charming touch of youth and of unfamiliarity. over her throat there played the reflection from a little pool of water, left by a thunderstorm of the night before, and all the rest of her features were in the diffused and luminous shade of her white parasol. her dark hair just showed beneath her broad, white hat of pierced, chip straw; her throat was very long and leaned forward, and her eyebrows, arching a little as she laughed at some old-fashionedness in my phraseology, had abandoned their tense line. and there was a little colour in her cheeks and light in her deep blue eyes. and to think that that vivid white thing, that saintly and swanlike being�to think that... why, she was like the sail of a ship, so white and so definite in her movements. and to think that she will never... why, she will never do anything again. i can't believe it... anyhow, we were chattering away about the morality of lotteries. and then, suddenly, there came from the arcades behind us the overtones of her father's unmistakable voice; it was as if a modified foghorn had boomed with a reed inside it. i looked round to catch sight of him. a tall, fair, stiffly upright man of fifty, he was walking away with an italian baron who had had much to do with the belgian congo. they must have been talking about the proper treatment of natives, for i heard him say: "oh, hang humanity!" when i looked again at nancy her eyes were closed and her face was more pallid than her dress, which had at least some pinkish reflections from the gravel. it was dreadful to see her with her eyes closed like that. "oh!" she exclaimed, and her hand that had appeared to be groping, settled for a moment on my arm. "never speak of it. promise never to tell my father of it. it brings back those dreadful dreams..." and, when she opened her eyes she looked straight into mine. "the blessed saints," she said, "you would think they would spare you such things. i don't believe all the sinning in the world could make one deserve them." they say the poor thing was always allowed a light at night, even in her bedroom.... and yet, no young girl could more archly and lovingly have played with an adored father. she was always holding him by both coat lapels; cross-questioning him as to how he spent his time; kissing the top of his head. ah, she was well-bred, if ever anyone was. the poor, wretched man cringed before her�but she could not have done more to put him at his ease. perhaps she had had lessons in it at her convent. it was only that peculiar note of his voice, used when he was overbearing or dogmatic, that could unman her�and that was only visible when it came unexpectedly. that was because the bad dreams that the blessed saints allowed her to have for her sins always seemed to her to herald themselves by the booming sound of her father's voice. it was that sound that had always preceded his entrance for the terrible lunches of her childhood... . i have reported, earlier in this chapter, that leonora said, during that remainder of their stay at nauheim, after i had left, it had seemed to her that she was fighting a long duel with unseen weapons against silent adversaries. nancy, as i have also said, was always trying to go off with edward alone. that had been her habit for years. and leonora found it to be her duty to stop that. it was very difficult. nancy was used to having her own way, and for years she had been used to going off with edward, ratting, rabbiting, catching salmon down at fordingbridge, district-visiting of the sort that edward indulged in, or calling on the tenants. and at nauheim she and edward had always gone up to the casino alone in the evenings�at any rate, whenever florence did not call for his attendance. it shows the obviously innocent nature of the regard of those two that even florence had never had any idea of jealousy. leonora had cultivated the habit of going to bed at ten o'clock. i don't know how she managed it, but, for all the time they were at nauheim, she contrived never to let those two be alone together, except in broad daylight, in very crowded places. if a protestant had done that it would no doubt have awakened a self-consciousness in the girl. but catholics, who have always reservations and queer spots of secrecy, can manage these things better. and i dare say that two things made this easier�the death of florence and the fact that edward was obviously sickening. he appeared, indeed, to be very ill; his shoulders began to be bowed; there were pockets under his eyes; he had extraordinary moments of inattention. and leonora describes herself as watching him as a fierce cat watches an unconscious pigeon in a roadway. in that silent watching, again, i think she was a catholic�of a people that can think thoughts alien to ours and keep them to themselves. and the thoughts passed through her mind; some of them even got through to edward with never a word spoken. at first she thought that it might be remorse, or grief, for the death of florence that was oppressing him. but she watched and watched, and uttered apparently random sentences about florence before the girl, and she perceived that he had no grief and no remorse. he had not any idea that florence could have committed suicide without writing at least a tirade to him. the absence of that made him certain that it had been heart disease. for florence had never undeceived him on that point. she thought it made her seem more romantic. no, edward had no remorse. he was able to say to himself that he had treated florence with gallant attentiveness of the kind that she desired until two hours before her death. leonora gathered that from the look in his eyes, and from the way he straightened his shoulders over her as she lay in her coffin�from that and a thousand other little things. she would speak suddenly about florence to the girl and he would not start in the least; he would not even pay attention, but would sit with bloodshot eyes gazing at the tablecloth. he drank a good deal, at that time�a steady soaking of drink every evening till long after they had gone to bed. for leonora made the girl go to bed at ten, unreasonable though that seemed to nancy. she would understand that, whilst they were in a sort of half mourning for florence, she ought not to be seen at public places, like the casino; but she could not see why she should not accompany her uncle upon his evening strolls though the park. i don't know what leonora put up as an excuse�something, i fancy, in the nature of a nightly orison that she made the girl and herself perform for the soul of florence. and then, one evening, about a fortnight later, when the girl, growing restive at even devotional exercises, clamoured once more to be allowed to go for a walk with edward, and when leonora was really at her wits' end, edward gave himself into her hands. he was just standing up from dinner and had his face averted. but he turned his heavy head and his bloodshot eyes upon his wife and looked full at her. "doctor von hauptmann," he said, "has ordered me to go to bed immediately after dinner. my heart's much worse." he continued to look at leonora for a long minute�with a sort of heavy contempt. and leonora understood that, with his speech, he was giving her the excuse that she needed for separating him from the girl, and with his eyes he was reproaching her for thinking that he would try to corrupt nancy. he went silently up to his room and sat there for a long time�until the girl was well in bed�reading in the anglican prayer-book. and about half-past ten she heard his footsteps pass her door, going outwards. two and a half hours later they came back, stumbling heavily. she remained, reflecting upon this position until the last night of their stay at nauheim. then she suddenly acted. for, just in the same way, suddenly after dinner, she looked at him and said: "teddy, don't you think you could take a night off from your doctor's orders and go with nancy to the casino. the poor child has had her visit so spoiled." he looked at her in turn for a long, balancing minute. "why, yes," he said at last. nancy jumped out of her chair and kissed him. those two words, leonora said, gave her the greatest relief of any two syllables she had ever heard in her life. for she realized that edward was breaking up, not under the desire for possession, but from the dogged determination to hold his hand. she could relax some of her vigilance. nevertheless, she sat in the darkness behind her half-closed jalousies, looking over the street and the night and the trees until, very late, she could hear nancy's clear voice coming closer and saying: "you did look an old guy with that false nose." there had been some sort of celebration of a local holiday up in the kursaal. and edward replied with his sort of sulky good nature: "as for you, you looked like old mother sideacher." the girl came swinging along, a silhouette beneath a gas-lamp; edward, another, slouched at her side. they were talking just as they had talked any time since the girl had been seventeen; with the same tones, the same joke about an old beggar woman who always amused them at branshaw. the girl, a little later, opened leonora's door whilst she was still kissing edward on the forehead as she had done every night. "we've had a most glorious time," she said. "he's ever so much better. he raced me for twenty yards home. why are you all in the dark?" leonora could hear edward going about in his room, but, owing to the girl's chatter, she could not tell whether he went out again or not. and then, very much later, because she thought that if he were drinking again something must be done to stop it, she opened for the first time, and very softly, the never-opened door between their rooms. she wanted to see if he had gone out again. edward was kneeling beside his bed with his head hidden in the counterpane. his arms, outstretched, held out before him a little image of the blessed virgin�a tawdry, scarlet and prussian blue affair that the girl had given him on her first return from the convent. his shoulders heaved convulsively three times, and heavy sobs came from him before she could close the door. he was not a catholic; but that was the way it took him. leonora slept for the first time that night with a sleep from which she never once started. iii and then leonora completely broke down�on the day that they returned to branshaw teleragh. it is the infliction of our miserable minds�it is the scourge of atrocious but probably just destiny that no grief comes by itself. no, any great grief, though the grief itself may have gone, leaves in its place a train of horrors, of misery, and despair. for leonora was, in herself, relieved. she felt that she could trust edward with the girl and she knew that nancy could be absolutely trusted. and then, with the slackening of her vigilance, came the slackening of her entire mind. this is perhaps the most miserable part of the entire story. for it is miserable to see a clean intelligence waver; and leonora wavered. you are to understand that leonora loved edward with a passion that was yet like an agony of hatred. and she had lived with him for years and years without addressing to him one word of tenderness. i don't know how she could do it. at the beginning of that relationship she had been just married off to him. she had been one of seven daughters in a bare, untidy irish manor-house to which she had returned from the convent i have so often spoken of. she had left it just a year and she was just nineteen. it is impossible to imagine such inexperience as was hers. you might almost say that she had never spoken to a man except a priest. coming straight from the convent, she had gone in behind the high walls of the manor-house that was almost more cloistral than any convent could have been. there were the seven girls, there was the strained mother, there was the worried father at whom, three times in the course of that year, the tenants took pot-shots from behind a hedge. the women-folk, upon the whole, the tenants respected. once a week each of the girls, since there were seven of them, took a drive with the mother in the old basketwork chaise drawn by a very fat, very lumbering pony. they paid occasionally a call, but even these were so rare that, leonora has assured me, only three times in the year that succeeded her coming home from the convent did she enter another person's house. for the rest of the time the seven sisters ran about in the neglected gardens between the unpruned espaliers. or they played lawn-tennis or fives in an angle of a great wall that surrounded the garden�an angle from which the fruit trees had long died away. they painted in water-colour; they embroidered; they copied verses into albums. once a week they went to mass; once a week to the confessional, accompanied by an old nurse. they were happy since they had known no other life. it appeared to them a singular extravagance when, one day, a photographer was brought over from the county town and photographed them standing, all seven, in the shadow of an old apple tree with the grey lichen on the raddled trunk. but it wasn't an extravagance. three weeks before colonel powys had written to colonel ashburnham: "i say, harry, couldn't your edward marry one of my girls? it would be a god-send to me, for i'm at the end of my tether and, once one girl begins to go off, the rest of them will follow." he went on to say that all his daughters were tall, upstanding, clean- limbed and absolutely pure, and he reminded colonel ashburnham that, they having been married on the same day, though in different churches, since the one was a catholic and the other an anglican�they had said to each other, the night before, that, when the time came, one of their sons should marry one of their daughters. mrs ashburnham had been a powys and remained mrs powys' dearest friend. they had drifted about the world as english soldiers do, seldom meeting, but their women always in correspondence one with another. they wrote about minute things such as the teething of edward and of the earlier daughters or the best way to repair a jacob's ladder in a stocking. and, if they met seldom, yet it was often enough to keep each other's personalities fresh in their minds, gradually growing a little stiff in the joints, but always with enough to talk about and with a store of reminiscences. then, as his girls began to come of age when they must leave the convent in which they were regularly interned during his years of active service, colonel powys retired from the army with the necessity of making a home for them. it happened that the ashburnhams had never seen any of the powys girls, though, whenever the four parents met in london, edward ashburnham was always of the party. he was at that time twenty-two and, i believe, almost as pure in mind as leonora herself. it is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence untouched in this world. that was partly due to the careful handling of his mother, partly to the fact that the house to which he went at winchester had a particularly pure tone and partly to edward's own peculiar aversion from anything like coarse language or gross stories. at sandhurst he had just kept out of the way of that sort of thing. he was keen on soldiering, keen on mathematics, on land-surveying, on politics and, by a queer warp of his mind, on literature. even when he was twenty-two he would pass hours reading one of scott's novels or the chronicles of froissart. mrs ashburnham considered that she was to be congratulated, and almost every week she wrote to mrs powys, dilating upon her satisfaction. then, one day, taking a walk down bond street with her son, after having been at lord's, she noticed edward suddenly turn his head round to take a second look at a well-dressed girl who had passed them. she wrote about that, too, to mrs powys, and expressed some alarm. it had been, on edward's part, the merest reflex action. he was so very abstracted at that time owing to the pressure his crammer was putting upon him that he certainly hadn't known what he was doing. it was this letter of mrs ashburnham's to mrs powys that had caused the letter from colonel powys to colonel ashburnham�a letter that was half- humorous, half longing. mrs ashburnham caused her husband to reply, with a letter a little more jocular�something to the effect that colonel powys ought to give them some idea of the goods that he was marketing. that was the cause of the photograph. i have seen it, the seven girls, all in white dresses, all very much alike in feature�all, except leonora, a little heavy about the chins and a little stupid about the eyes. i dare say it would have made leonora, too, look a little heavy and a little stupid, for it was not a good photograph. but the black shadow from one of the branches of the apple tree cut right across her face, which is all but invisible. there followed an extremely harassing time for colonel and mrs powys. mrs ashburnham had written to say that, quite sincerely, nothing would give greater ease to her maternal anxieties than to have her son marry one of mrs powys' daughters if only he showed some inclination to do so. for, she added, nothing but a love-match was to be thought of in her edward's case. but the poor powys couple had to run things so very fine that even the bringing together of the young people was a desperate hazard. the mere expenditure upon sending one of the girls over from ireland to branshaw was terrifying to them; and whichever girl they selected might not be the one to ring edward's bell. on the other hand, the expenditure upon mere food and extra sheets for a visit from the ashburnhams to them was terrifying, too. it would mean, mathematically, going short in so many meals themselves, afterwards. nevertheless, they chanced it, and all the three ashburnhams came on a visit to the lonely manor-house. they could give edward some rough shooting, some rough fishing and a whirl of femininity; but i should say the girls made really more impression upon mrs ashburnham than upon edward himself. they appeared to her to be so clean run and so safe. they were indeed so clean run that, in a faint sort of way, edward seems to have regarded them rather as boys than as girls. and then, one evening, mrs ashburnham had with her boy one of those conversations that english mothers have with english sons. it seems to have been a criminal sort of proceeding, though i don't know what took place at it. anyhow, next morning colonel ashburnham asked on behalf of his son for the hand of leonora. this caused some consternation to the powys couple, since leonora was the third daughter and edward ought to have married the eldest. mrs powys, with her rigid sense of the proprieties, almost wished to reject the proposal. but the colonel, her husband, pointed out that the visit would have cost them sixty pounds, what with the hire of an extra servant, of a horse and car, and with the purchase of beds and bedding and extra tablecloths. there was nothing else for it but the marriage. in that way edward and leonora became man and wife. i don't know that a very minute study of their progress towards complete disunion is necessary. perhaps it is. but there are many things that i cannot well make out, about which i cannot well question leonora, or about which edward did not tell me. i do not know that there was ever any question of love from edward to her. he regarded her, certainly, as desirable amongst her sisters. he was obstinate to the extent of saying that if he could not have her he would not have any of them. and, no doubt, before the marriage, he made her pretty speeches out of books that he had read. but, as far as he could describe his feelings at all, later, it seems that, calmly and without any quickening of the pulse, he just carried the girl off, there being no opposition. it had, however, been all so long ago that it seemed to him, at the end of his poor life, a dim and misty affair. he had the greatest admiration for leonora. he had the very greatest admiration. he admired her for her truthfulness, for her cleanness of mind, and the clean-run-ness of her limbs, for her efficiency, for the fairness of her skin, for the gold of her hair, for her religion, for her sense of duty. it was a satisfaction to take her about with him. but she had not for him a touch of magnetism. i suppose, really, he did not love her because she was never mournful; what really made him feel good in life was to comfort somebody who would be darkly and mysteriously mournful. that he had never had to do for leonora. perhaps, also, she was at first too obedient. i do not mean to say that she was submissive�that she deferred, in her judgements, to his. she did not. but she had been handed over to him, like some patient medieval virgin; she had been taught all her life that the first duty of a woman is to obey. and there she was. in her, at least, admiration for his qualities very soon became love of the deepest description. if his pulses never quickened she, so i have been told, became what is called an altered being when he approached her from the other side of a dancing-floor. her eyes followed him about full of trustfulness, of admiration, of gratitude, and of love. he was also, in a great sense, her pastor and guide�and he guided her into what, for a girl straight out of a convent, was almost heaven. i have not the least idea of what an english officer's wife's existence may be like. at any rate, there were feasts, and chatterings, and nice men who gave her the right sort of admiration, and nice women who treated her as if she had been a baby. and her confessor approved of her life, and edward let her give little treats to the girls of the convent she had left, and the reverend mother approved of him. there could not have been a happier girl for five or six years. for it was only at the end of that time that clouds began, as the saying is, to arise. she was then about twenty-three, and her purposeful efficiency made her perhaps have a desire for mastery. she began to perceive that edward was extravagant in his largesses. his parents died just about that time, and edward, though they both decided that he should continue his soldiering, gave a great deal of attention to the management of branshaw through a steward. aldershot was not very far away, and they spent all his leaves there. and, suddenly, she seemed to begin to perceive that his generosities were almost fantastic. he subscribed much too much to things connected with his mess, he pensioned off his father's servants, old or new, much too generously. they had a large income, but every now and then they would find themselves hard up. he began to talk of mortgaging a farm or two, though it never actually came to that. she made tentative efforts at remonstrating with him. her father, whom she saw now and then, said that edward was much too generous to his tenants; the wives of his brother officers remonstrated with her in private; his large subscriptions made it difficult for their husbands to keep up with them. ironically enough, the first real trouble between them came from his desire to build a roman catholic chapel at branshaw. he wanted to do it to honour leonora, and he proposed to do it very expensively. leonora did not want it; she could perfectly well drive from branshaw to the nearest catholic church as often as she liked. there were no roman catholic tenants and no roman catholic servants except her old nurse who could always drive with her. she had as many priests to stay with her as could be needed�and even the priests did not want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it would have merely seemed an invidious instance of ostentation. they were perfectly ready to celebrate mass for leonora and her nurse, when they stayed at branshaw, in a cleaned-up outhouse. but edward was as obstinate as a hog about it. he was truly grieved at his wife's want of sentiment�at her refusal to receive that amount of public homage from him. she appeared to him to be wanting in imagination�to be cold and hard. i don't exactly know what part her priests played in the tragedy that it all became; i dare say they behaved quite creditably but mistakenly. but then, who would not have been mistaken with edward? i believe he was even hurt that leonora's confessor did not make strenuous efforts to convert him. there was a period when he was quite ready to become an emotional catholic. i don't know why they did not take him on the hop; but they have queer sorts of wisdoms, those people, and queer sorts of tact. perhaps they thought that edward's too early conversion would frighten off other protestant desirables from marrying catholic girls. perhaps they saw deeper into edward than he saw himself and thought that he would make a not very creditable convert. at any rate they�and leonora�left him very much alone. it mortified him very considerably. he has told me that if leonora had then taken his aspirations seriously everything would have been different. but i dare say that was nonsense. at any rate, it was over the question of the chapel that they had their first and really disastrous quarrel. edward at that time was not well; he supposed himself to be overworked with his regimental affairs�he was managing the mess at the time. and leonora was not well�she was beginning to fear that their union might be sterile. and then her father came over from glasmoyle to stay with them. those were troublesome times in ireland, i understand. at any rate, colonel powys had tenants on the brain�his own tenants having shot at him with shot-guns. and, in conversation with edward's land-steward, he got it into his head that edward managed his estates with a mad generosity towards his tenants. i understand, also, that those years�the 'nineties�were very bad for farming. wheat was fetching only a few shillings the hundred; the price of meat was so low that cattle hardly paid for raising; whole english counties were ruined. and edward allowed his tenants very high rebates. to do both justice leonora has since acknowledged that she was in the wrong at that time and that edward was following out a more far-seeing policy in nursing his really very good tenants over a bad period. it was not as if the whole of his money came from the land; a good deal of it was in rails. but old colonel powys had that bee in his bonnet and, if he never directly approached edward himself on the subject, he preached unceasingly, whenever he had the opportunity, to leonora. his pet idea was that edward ought to sack all his own tenants and import a set of farmers from scotland. that was what they were doing in essex. he was of opinion that edward was riding hotfoot to ruin. that worried leonora very much�it worried her dreadfully; she lay awake nights; she had an anxious line round her mouth. and that, again, worried edward. i do not mean to say that leonora actually spoke to edward about his tenants�but he got to know that some one, probably her father, had been talking to her about the matter. he got to know it because it was the habit of his steward to look in on them every morning about breakfast-time to report any little happenings. and there was a farmer called mumford who had only paid half his rent for the last three years. one morning the land-steward reported that mumford would be unable to pay his rent at all that year. edward reflected for a moment and then he said something like: "oh well, he's an old fellow and his family have been our tenants for over two hundred years. let him off altogether." and then leonora�you must remember that she had reason for being very nervous and unhappy at that time�let out a sound that was very like a groan. it startled edward, who more than suspected what was passing in her mind�it startled him into a state of anger. he said sharply: "you wouldn't have me turn out people who've been earning money for us for centuries�people to whom we have responsibilities�and let in a pack of scotch farmers?" he looked at her, leonora said, with what was practically a glance of hatred and then, precipitately, he left the breakfast-table. leonora knew that it probably made it all the worse that he had been betrayed into a manifestation of anger before a third party. it was the first and last time that he ever was betrayed into such a manifestation of anger. the land-steward, a moderate and well-balanced man whose family also had been with the ashburnhams for over a century, took it upon himself to explain that he considered edward was pursuing a perfectly proper course with his tenants. he erred perhaps a little on the side of generosity, but hard times were hard times, and every one had to feel the pinch, landlord as well as tenants. the great thing was not to let the land get into a poor state of cultivation. scotch farmers just skinned your fields and let them go down and down. but edward had a very good set of tenants who did their best for him and for themselves. these arguments at that time carried very little conviction to leonora. she was, nevertheless, much concerned by edward's outburst of anger. the fact is that leonora had been practising economies in her department. two of the under-housemaids had gone and she had not replaced them; she had spent much less that year upon dress. the fare she had provided at the dinners they gave had been much less bountiful and not nearly so costly as had been the case in preceding years, and edward began to perceive a hardness and determination in his wife's character. he seemed to see a net closing round him�a net in which they would be forced to live like one of the comparatively poor county families of the neighbourhood. and, in the mysterious way in which two people, living together, get to know each other's thoughts without a word spoken, he had known, even before his outbreak, that leonora was worrying about his managing of the estates. this appeared to him to be intolerable. he had, too, a great feeling of self-contempt because he had been betrayed into speaking harshly to leonora before that land-steward. she imagined that his nerve must be deserting him, and there can have been few men more miserable than edward was at that period. you see, he was really a very simple soul�very simple. he imagined that no man can satisfactorily accomplish his life's work without loyal and whole-hearted cooperation of the woman he lives with. and he was beginning to perceive dimly that, whereas his own traditions were entirely collective, his wife was a sheer individualist. his own theory�the feudal theory of an over-lord doing his best by his dependents, the dependents meanwhile doing their best for the over- lord�this theory was entirely foreign to leonora's nature. she came of a family of small irish landlords�that hostile garrison in a plundered country. and she was thinking unceasingly of the children she wished to have. i don't know why they never had any children�not that i really believe that children would have made any difference. the dissimilarity of edward and leonora was too profound. it will give you some idea of the extraordinary naïveté of edward ashburnham that, at the time of his marriage and for perhaps a couple of years after, he did not really know how children are produced. neither did leonora. i don't mean to say that this state of things continued, but there it was. i dare say it had a good deal of influence on their mentalities. at any rate, they never had a child. it was the will of god. it certainly presented itself to leonora as being the will of god�as being a mysterious and awful chastisement of the almighty. for she had discovered shortly before this period that her parents had not exacted from edward's family the promise that any children she should bear should be brought up as catholics. she herself had never talked of the matter with either her father, her mother, or her husband. when at last her father had let drop some words leading her to believe that that was the fact, she tried desperately to extort the promise from edward. she encountered an unexpected obstinacy. edward was perfectly willing that the girls should be catholic; the boys must be anglican. i don't understand the bearing of these things in english society. indeed, englishmen seem to me to be a little mad in matters of politics or of religion. in edward it was particularly queer because he himself was perfectly ready to become a romanist. he seemed, however, to contemplate going over to rome himself and yet letting his boys be educated in the religion of their immediate ancestors. this may appear illogical, but i dare say it is not so illogical as it looks. edward, that is to say, regarded himself as having his own body and soul at his own disposal. but his loyalty to the traditions of his family would not permit him to bind any future inheritors of his name or beneficiaries by the death of his ancestors. about the girls it did not so much matter. they would know other homes and other circumstances. besides, it was the usual thing. but the boys must be given the opportunity of choosing�and they must have first of all the anglican teaching. he was perfectly unshakable about this. leonora was in an agony during all this time. you will have to remember she seriously believed that children who might be born to her went in danger, if not absolutely of damnation, at any rate of receiving false doctrine. it was an agony more terrible than she could describe. she didn't indeed attempt to describe it, but i could tell from her voice when she said, almost negligently, "i used to lie awake whole nights. it was no good my spiritual advisers trying to console me." i knew from her voice how terrible and how long those nights must have seemed and of how little avail were the consolations of her spiritual advisers. her spiritual advisers seemed to have taken the matter a little more calmly. they certainly told her that she must not consider herself in any way to have sinned. nay, they seem even to have extorted, to have threatened her, with a view to getting her out of what they considered to be a morbid frame of mind. she would just have to make the best of things, to influence the children when they came, not by propaganda, but by personality. and they warned her that she would be committing a sin if she continued to think that she had sinned. nevertheless, she continued to think that she had sinned. leonora could not be aware that the man whom she loved passionately and whom, nevertheless, she was beginning to try to rule with a rod of iron�that this man was becoming more and more estranged from her. he seemed to regard her as being not only physically and mentally cold, but even as being actually wicked and mean. there were times when he would almost shudder if she spoke to him. and she could not understand how he could consider her wicked or mean. it only seemed to her a sort of madness in him that he should try to take upon his own shoulders the burden of his troop, of his regiment, of his estate and of half of his country. she could not see that in trying to curb what she regarded as megalomania she was doing anything wicked. she was just trying to keep things together for the sake of the children who did not come. and, little by little, the whole of their intercourse became simply one of agonized discussion as to whether edward should subscribe to this or that institution or should try to reclaim this or that drunkard. she simply could not see it. into this really terrible position of strain, from which there appeared to be no issue, the kilsyte case came almost as a relief. it is part of the peculiar irony of things that edward would certainly never have kissed that nurse-maid if he had not been trying to please leonora. nurse-maids do not travel first-class, and, that day, edward travelled in a third-class carriage in order to prove to leonora that he was capable of economies. i have said that the kilsyte case came almost as a relief to the strained situation that then existed between them. it gave leonora an opportunity of backing him up in a whole-hearted and absolutely loyal manner. it gave her the opportunity of behaving to him as he considered a wife should behave to her husband. you see, edward found himself in a railway carriage with a quite pretty girl of about nineteen. and the quite pretty girl of about nineteen, with dark hair and red cheeks and blue eyes, was quietly weeping. edward had been sitting in his corner thinking about nothing at all. he had chanced to look at the nurse-maid; two large, pretty tears came out of her eyes and dropped into her lap. he immediately felt that he had got to do something to comfort her. that was his job in life. he was desperately unhappy himself and it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world that they should pool their sorrows. he was quite democratic; the idea of the difference in their station never seems to have occurred to him. he began to talk to her. he discovered that her young man had been seen walking out with annie of number . he moved over to her side of the carriage. he told her that the report probably wasn't true; that, after all, a young man might take a walk with annie from number without its denoting anything very serious. and he assured me that he felt at least quite half-fatherly when he put his arm around her waist and kissed her. the girl, however, had not forgotten the difference of her station. all her life, by her mother, by other girls, by schoolteachers, by the whole tradition of her class she had been warned against gentlemen. she was being kissed by a gentleman. she screamed, tore herself away; sprang up and pulled a communication cord. edward came fairly well out of the affair in the public estimation; but it did him, mentally, a good deal of harm. iv it is very difficult to give an all-round impression of a man. i wonder how far i have succeeded with edward ashburnham. i dare say i haven't succeeded at all. it is ever very difficult to see how such things matter. was it the important point about poor edward that he was very well built, carried himself well, was moderate at the table and led a regular life�that he had, in fact, all the virtues that are usually accounted english? or have i in the least succeeded in conveying that he was all those things and had all those virtues? he certainly was them and had them up to the last months of his life. they were the things that one would set upon his tombstone. they will, indeed, be set upon his tombstone by his widow. and have i, i wonder, given the due impression of how his life was portioned and his time laid out? because, until the very last, the amount of time taken up by his various passions was relatively small. i have been forced to write very much about his passions, but you have to consider�i should like to be able to make you consider�that he rose every morning at seven, took a cold bath, breakfasted at eight, was occupied with his regiment from nine until one; played polo or cricket with the men when it was the season for cricket, till tea-time. afterwards he would occupy himself with the letters from his land- steward or with the affairs of his mess, till dinner-time. he would dine and pass the evening playing cards, or playing billiards with leonora or at social functions of one kind or another. and the greater part of his life was taken up by that�by far the greater part of his life. his love- affairs, until the very end, were sandwiched in at odd moments or took place during the social evenings, the dances and dinners. but i guess i have made it hard for you, o silent listener, to get that impression. anyhow, i hope i have not given you the idea that edward ashburnham was a pathological case. he wasn't. he was just a normal man and very much of a sentimentalist. i dare say the quality of his youth, the nature of his mother's influence, his ignorances, the crammings that he received at the hands of army coaches�i dare say that all these excellent influences upon his adolescence were very bad for him. but we all have to put up with that sort of thing and no doubt it is very bad for all of us. nevertheless, the outline of edward's life was an outline perfectly normal of the life of a hard-working, sentimental and efficient professional man. that question of first impressions has always bothered me a good deal�but quite academically. i mean that, from time to time i have wondered whether it were or were not best to trust to one's first impressions in dealing with people. but i never had anybody to deal with except waiters and chambermaids and the ashburnhams, with whom i didn't know that i was having any dealings. and, as far as waiters and chambermaids were concerned, i have generally found that my first impressions were correct enough. if my first idea of a man was that he was civil, obliging, and attentive, he generally seemed to go on being all those things. once, however, at our paris flat we had a maid who appeared to be charming and transparently honest. she stole, nevertheless, one of florence's diamond rings. she did it, however, to save her young man from going to prison. so here, as somebody says somewhere, was a special case. and, even in my short incursion into american business life�an incursion that lasted during part of august and nearly the whole of september�i found that to rely upon first impressions was the best thing i could do. i found myself automatically docketing and labelling each man as he was introduced to me, by the run of his features and by the first words that he spoke. i can't, however, be regarded as really doing business during the time that i spent in the united states. i was just winding things up. if it hadn't been for my idea of marrying the girl i might possibly have looked for something to do in my own country. for my experiences there were vivid and amusing. it was exactly as if i had come out of a museum into a riotous fancy-dress ball. during my life with florence i had almost come to forget that there were such things as fashions or occupations or the greed of gain. i had, in fact, forgotten that there was such a thing as a dollar and that a dollar can be extremely desirable if you don't happen to possess one. and i had forgotten, too, that there was such a thing as gossip that mattered. in that particular, philadelphia was the most amazing place i have ever been in in my life. i was not in that city for more than a week or ten days and i didn't there transact anything much in the way of business; nevertheless, the number of times that i was warned by everybody against everybody else was simply amazing. a man i didn't know would come up behind my lounge chair in the hotel, and, whispering cautiously beside my ear, would warn me against some other man that i equally didn't know but who would be standing by the bar. i don't know what they thought i was there to do�perhaps to buy out the city's debt or get a controlling hold of some railway interest. or, perhaps, they imagined that i wanted to buy a newspaper, for they were either politicians or reporters, which, of course, comes to the same thing. as a matter of fact, my property in philadelphia was mostly real estate in the old-fashioned part of the city and all i wanted to do there was just to satisfy myself that the houses were in good repair and the doors kept properly painted. i wanted also to see my relations, of whom i had a few. these were mostly professional people and they were mostly rather hard up because of the big bank failure in or thereabouts. still, they were very nice. they would have been nicer still if they hadn't, all of them, had what appeared to me to be the mania that what they called influences were working against them. at any rate, the impression of that city was one of old-fashioned rooms, rather english than american in type, in which handsome but careworn ladies, cousins of my own, talked principally about mysterious movements that were going on against them. i never got to know what it was all about; perhaps they thought i knew or perhaps there weren't any movements at all. it was all very secret and subtle and subterranean. but there was a nice young fellow called carter who was a sort of second-nephew of mine, twice removed. he was handsome and dark and gentle and tall and modest. i understand also that he was a good cricketer. he was employed by the real-estate agents who collected my rents. it was he, therefore, who took me over my own property and i saw a good deal of him and of a nice girl called mary, to whom he was engaged. at that time i did, what i certainly shouldn't do now�i made some careful inquiries as to his character. i discovered from his employers that he was just all that he appeared, honest, industrious, high-spirited, friendly and ready to do anyone a good turn. his relatives, however, as they were mine, too�seemed to have something darkly mysterious against him. i imagined that he must have been mixed up in some case of graft or that he had at least betrayed several innocent and trusting maidens. i pushed, however, that particular mystery home and discovered it was only that he was a democrat. my own people were mostly republicans. it seemed to make it worse and more darkly mysterious to them that young carter was what they called a sort of a vermont democrat which was the whole ticket and no mistake. but i don't know what it means. anyhow, i suppose that my money will go to him when i die�i like the recollection of his friendly image and of the nice girl he was engaged to. may fate deal very kindly with them. i have said just now that, in my present frame of mind, nothing would ever make me make inquiries as to the character of any man that i liked at first sight. (the little digression as to my philadelphia experiences was really meant to lead around to this.) for who in this world can give anyone a character? who in this world knows anything of any other heart�or of his own? i don't mean to say that one cannot form an average estimate of the way a person will behave. but one cannot be certain of the way any man will behave in every case�and until one can do that a "character" is of no use to anyone. that, for instance, was the way with florence's maid in paris. we used to trust that girl with blank cheques for the payment of the tradesmen. for quite a time she was so trusted by us. then, suddenly, she stole a ring. we should not have believed her capable of it; she would not have believed herself capable of it. it was nothing in her character. so, perhaps, it was with edward ashburnham. or, perhaps, it wasn't. no, i rather think it wasn't. it is difficult to figure out. i have said that the kilsyte case eased the immediate tension for him and leonora. it let him see that she was capable of loyalty to him; it gave her her chance to show that she believed in him. she accepted without question his statement that, in kissing the girl, he wasn't trying to do more than administer fatherly comfort to a weeping child. and, indeed, his own world�including the magistrates�took that view of the case. whatever people say, one's world can be perfectly charitable at times... but, again, as i have said, it did edward a great deal of harm. that, at least, was his view of it. he assured me that, before that case came on and was wrangled about by counsel with all sorts of dirty- mindedness that counsel in that sort of case can impute, he had not had the least idea that he was capable of being unfaithful to leonora. but, in the midst of that tumult�he says that it came suddenly into his head whilst he was in the witness-box�in the midst of those august ceremonies of the law there came suddenly into his mind the recollection of the softness of the girl's body as he had pressed her to him. and, from that moment, that girl appeared desirable to him�and leonora completely unattractive. he began to indulge in day-dreams in which he approached the nurse-maid more tactfully and carried the matter much further. occasionally he thought of other women in terms of wary courtship�or, perhaps, it would be more exact to say that he thought of them in terms of tactful comforting, ending in absorption. that was his own view of the case. he saw himself as the victim of the law. i don't mean to say that he saw himself as a kind of dreyfus. the law, practically, was quite kind to him. it stated that in its view captain ashburnham had been misled by an ill-placed desire to comfort a member of the opposite sex, and it fined him five shilling for his want of tact, or of knowledge of the world. but edward maintained that it had put ideas into his head. i don't believe it, though he certainly did. he was twenty-seven then, and his wife was out of sympathy with him�some crash was inevitable. there was between them a momentary rapprochement; but it could not last. it made it, probably, all the worse that, in that particular matter, leonara had come so very well up to the scratch. for, whilst edward respected her more and was grateful to her, it made her seem by so much the more cold in other matters that were near his heart�his responsibilities, his career, his tradition. it brought his despair of her up to a point of exasperation�and it riveted on him the idea that he might find some other woman who would give him the moral support that he needed. he wanted to be looked upon as a sort of lohengrin. at that time, he says, he went about deliberately looking for some woman who could help him. he found several�for there were quite a number of ladies in his set who were capable of agreeing with this handsome and fine fellow that the duties of a feudal gentleman were feudal. he would have liked to pass his days talking to one or other of these ladies. but there was always an obstacle�if the lady were married there would be a husband who claimed the greater part of her time and attention. if, on the other hand, it were an unmarried girl, he could not see very much of her for fear of compromising her. at that date, you understand, he had not the least idea of seducing any one of these ladies. he wanted only moral support at the hands of some female, because he found men difficult to talk to about ideals. indeed, i do not believe that he had, at any time, any idea of making any one his mistress. that sounds queer; but i believe it is quite true as a statement of character. it was, i believe, one of leonora's priests�a man of the world�who suggested that she should take him to monte carlo. he had the idea that what edward needed, in order to fit him for the society of leonora, was a touch of irresponsibility. for edward, at that date, had much the aspect of a prig. i mean that, if he played polo and was an excellent dancer he did the one for the sake of keeping himself fit and the other because it was a social duty to show himself at dances, and, when there, to dance well. he did nothing for fun except what he considered to be his work in life. as the priest saw it, this must for ever estrange him from leonora�not because leonora set much store by the joy of life, but because she was out of sympathy with edward's work. on the other hand, leonora did like to have a good time, now and then, and, as the priest saw it, if edward could be got to like having a good time now and then, too, there would be a bond of sympathy between them. it was a good idea, but it worked out wrongly. it worked out, in fact, in the mistress of the grand duke. in anyone less sentimental than edward that would not have mattered. with edward it was fatal. for, such was his honourable nature, that for him to enjoy a woman's favours made him feel that she had a bond on him for life. that was the way it worked out in practice. psychologically it meant that he could not have a mistress without falling violently in love with her. he was a serious person�and in this particular case it was very expensive. the mistress of the grand duke�a spanish dancer of passionate appearance�singled out edward for her glances at a ball that was held in their common hotel. edward was tall, handsome, blond and very wealthy as she understood�and leonora went up to bed early. she did not care for public dances, but she was relieved to see that edward appeared to be having a good time with several amiable girls. and that was the end of edward�for the spanish dancer of passionate appearance wanted one night of him for his beaux yeux. he took her into the dark gardens and, remembering suddenly the girl of the kilsyte case, he kissed her. he kissed her passionately, violently, with a sudden explosion of the passion that had been bridled all his life�for leonora was cold, or at any rate, well behaved. la dolciquita liked this reversion, and he passed the night in her bed. when the palpitating creature was at last asleep in his arms he discovered that he was madly, was passionately, was overwhelmingly in love with her. it was a passion that had arisen like fire in dry corn. he could think of nothing else; he could live for nothing else. but la dolciquita was a reasonable creature without an ounce of passion in her. she wanted a certain satisfaction of her appetites and edward had appealed to her the night before. now that was done with, and, quite coldly, she said that she wanted money if he was to have any more of her. it was a perfectly reasonable commercial transaction. she did not care two buttons for edward or for any man and he was asking her to risk a very good situation with the grand duke. if edward could put up sufficient money to serve as a kind of insurance against accident she was ready to like edward for a time that would be covered, as it were, by the policy. she was getting fifty thousand dollars a year from her grand duke; edward would have to pay a premium of two years' hire for a month of her society. there would not be much risk of the grand duke's finding it out and it was not certain that he would give her the keys of the street if he did find out. but there was the risk�a twenty per cent risk, as she figured it out. she talked to edward as if she had been a solicitor with an estate to sell�perfectly quietly and perfectly coldly without any inflections in her voice. she did not want to be unkind to him; but she could see no reason for being kind to him. she was a virtuous business woman with a mother and two sisters and her own old age to be provided comfortably for. she did not expect more than a five years' further run. she was twenty-four and, as she said: "we spanish women are horrors at thirty." edward swore that he would provide for her for life if she would come to him and leave off talking so horribly; but she only shrugged one shoulder slowly and contemptuously. he tried to convince this woman, who, as he saw it, had surrendered to him her virtue, that he regarded it as in any case his duty to provide for her, and to cherish her and even to love her�for life. in return for her sacrifice he would do that. in return, again, for his honourable love she would listen for ever to the accounts of his estate. that was how he figured it out. she shrugged the same shoulder with the same gesture and held out her left hand with the elbow at her side: "enfin, mon ami," she said, "put in this hand the price of that tiara at forli's or..." and she turned her back on him. edward went mad; his world stood on its head; the palms in front of the blue sea danced grotesque dances. you see, he believed in the virtue, tenderness and moral support of women. he wanted more than anything to argue with la dolciquita; to retire with her to an island and point out to her the damnation of her point of view and how salvation can only be found in true love and the feudal system. she had once been his mistress, he reflected, and by all the moral laws she ought to have gone on being his mistress or at the very least his sympathetic confidante. but her rooms were closed to him; she did not appear in the hotel. nothing: blank silence. to break that down he had to have twenty thousand pounds. you have heard what happened. he spent a week of madness; he hungered; his eyes sank in; he shuddered at leonora's touch. i dare say that nine-tenths of what he took to be his passion for la dolciquita was really discomfort at the thought that he had been unfaithful to leonora. he felt uncommonly bad, that is to say�oh, unbearably bad, and he took it all to be love. poor devil, he was incredibly naïve. he drank like a fish after leonora was in bed and he spread himself over the tables, and this went on for about a fortnight. heaven knows what would have happened; he would have thrown away every penny that he possessed. on the night after he had lost about forty thousand pounds and whilst the whole hotel was whispering about it, la dolciquita walked composedly into his bedroom. he was too drunk to recognize her, and she sat in his arm-chair, knitting and holding smelling salts to her nose�for he was pretty far gone with alcoholic poisoning�and, as soon as he was able to understand her, she said: "look here, mon ami, do not go to the tables again. take a good sleep now and come and see me this afternoon." he slept till the lunch-hour. by that time leonora had heard the news. a mrs colonel whelan had told her. mrs colonel whelan seems to have been the only sensible person who was ever connected with the ashburnhams. she had argued it out that there must be a woman of the harpy variety connected with edward's incredible behaviour and mien; and she advised leonora to go straight off to town�which might have the effect of bringing edward to his senses�and to consult her solicitor and her spiritual adviser. she had better go that very morning; it was no good arguing with a man in edward's condition. edward, indeed, did not know that she had gone. as soon as he awoke he went straight to la dolciquita's room and she stood him his lunch in her own apartments. he fell on her neck and wept, and she put up with it for a time. she was quite a good-natured woman. and, when she had calmed him down with eau de mélisse, she said: "look here, my friend, how much money have you left? five thousand dollars? ten?" for the rumour went that edward had lost two kings' ransoms a night for fourteen nights and she imagined that he must be near the end of his resources. the eau de mélisse had calmed edward to such an extent that, for the moment, he really had a head on his shoulders. he did nothing more than grunt: "and then?" "why," she answered, "i may just as well have the ten thousand dollars as the tables. i will go with you to antibes for a week for that sum." edward grunted: "five." she tried to get seven thousand five hundred; but he stuck to his five thousand and the hotel expenses at antibes. the sedative carried him just as far as that and then he collapsed again. he had to leave for antibes at three; he could not do without it. he left a note for leonora saying that he had gone off for a week with the clinton morleys, yachting. he did not enjoy himself very much at antibes. la dolciquita could talk of nothing with any enthusiasm except money, and she tired him unceasingly, during every waking hour, for presents of the most expensive description. and, at the end of a week, she just quietly kicked him out. he hung about in antibes for three days. he was cured of the idea that he had any duties towards la dolciquita�feudal or otherwise. but his sentimentalism required of him an attitude of byronic gloom�as if his court had gone into half-mourning. then his appetite suddenly returned, and he remembered leonora. he found at his hotel at monte carlo a telegram from leonora, dispatched from london, saying; "please return as soon as convenient." he could not understand why leonora should have abandoned him so precipitately when she only thought that he had gone yachting with the clinton morleys. then he discovered that she had left the hotel before he had written the note. he had a pretty rocky journey back to town; he was frightened out of his life�and leonora had never seemed so desirable to him. v i call this the saddest story, rather than "the ashburnham tragedy", just because it is so sad, just because there was no current to draw things along to a swift and inevitable end. there is about it none of the elevation that accompanies tragedy; there is about it no nemesis, no destiny. here were two noble people�for i am convinced that both edward and leonora had noble natures�here, then, were two noble natures, drifting down life, like fireships afloat on a lagoon and causing miseries, heart-aches, agony of the mind and death. and they themselves steadily deteriorated. and why? for what purpose? to point what lesson? it is all a darkness. there is not even any villain in the story�for even major basil, the husband of the lady who next, and really, comforted the unfortunate edward�even major basil was not a villain in this piece. he was a slack, loose, shiftless sort of fellow�but he did not do anything to edward. whilst they were in the same station in burma he borrowed a good deal of money�though, really, since major basil had no particular vices, it was difficult to know why he wanted it. he collected�different types of horses' bits from the earliest times to the present day�but, since he did not prosecute even this occupation with any vigour, he cannot have needed much money for the acquirement, say, of the bit of genghis khan's charger�if genghis khan had a charger. and when i say that he borrowed a good deal of money from edward i do not mean to say that he had more than a thousand pounds from him during the five years that the connection lasted. edward, of course, did not have a great deal of money; leonora was seeing to that. still, he may have had five hundred pounds a year english, for his menus plaisirs�for his regimental subscriptions and for keeping his men smart. leonora hated that; she would have preferred to buy dresses for herself or to have devoted the money to paying off a mortgage. still, with her sense of justice, she saw that, since she was managing a property bringing in three thousand a year with a view to re-establishing it as a property of five thousand a year and since the property really, if not legally, belonged to edward, it was reasonable and just that edward should get a slice of his own. of course she had the devil of a job. i don't know that i have got the financial details exactly right. i am a pretty good head at figures, but my mind, still, sometimes mixes up pounds with dollars and i get a figure wrong. anyhow, the proposition was something like this: properly worked and without rebates to the tenants and keeping up schools and things, the branshaw estate should have brought in about five thousand a year when edward had it. it brought in actually about four. (i am talking in pounds, not dollars.) edward's excesses with the spanish lady had reduced its value to about three�as the maximum figure, without reductions. leonora wanted to get it back to five. she was, of course, very young to be faced with such a proposition�twenty-four is not a very advanced age. so she did things with a youthful vigour that she would, very likely, have made more merciful, if she had known more about life. she got edward remarkably on the hop. he had to face her in a london hotel, when he crept back from monte carlo with his poor tail between his poor legs. as far as i can make out she cut short his first mumblings and his first attempts at affectionate speech with words something like: "we're on the verge of ruin. do you intend to let me pull things together? if not i shall retire to hendon on my jointure." (hendon represented a convent to which she occasionally went for what is called a "retreat" in catholic circles.) and poor dear edward knew nothing�absolutely nothing. he did not know how much money he had, as he put it, "blued" at the tables. it might have been a quarter of a million for all he remembered. he did not know whether she knew about la dolciquita or whether she imagined that he had gone off yachting or had stayed at monte carlo. he was just dumb and he just wanted to get into a hole and not have to talk. leonora did not make him talk and she said nothing herself. i do not know much about english legal procedure�i cannot, i mean, give technical details of how they tied him up. but i know that, two days later, without her having said more than i have reported to you, leonora and her attorney had become the trustees, as i believe it is called, of all edward's property, and there was an end of edward as the good landlord and father of his people. he went out. leonora then had three thousand a year at her disposal. she occupied edward with getting himself transferred to a part of his regiment that was in burma�if that is the right way to put it. she herself had an interview, lasting a week or so�with edward's land-steward. she made him understand that the estate would have to yield up to its last penny. before they left for india she had let branshaw for seven years at a thousand a year. she sold two vandykes and a little silver for eleven thousand pounds and she raised, on mortgage, twenty-nine thousand. that went to edward's money-lending friends in monte carlo. so she had to get the twenty-nine thousand back, for she did not regard the vandykes and the silver as things she would have to replace. they were just frills to the ashburnham vanity. edward cried for two days over the disappearance of his ancestors and then she wished she had not done it; but it did not teach her anything and it lessened such esteem as she had for him. she did not also understand that to let branshaw affected him with a feeling of physical soiling�that it was almost as bad for him as if a woman belonging to him had become a prostitute. that was how it did affect him; but i dare say she felt just as bad about the spanish dancer. so she went at it. they were eight years in india, and during the whole of that time she insisted that they must be self-supporting�they had to live on his captain's pay, plus the extra allowance for being at the front. she gave him the five hundred a year for ashburnham frills, as she called it to herself�and she considered she was doing him very well. indeed, in a way, she did him very well�but it was not his way. she was always buying him expensive things which, as it were, she took off her own back. i have, for instance, spoken of edward's leather cases. well, they were not edward's at all; they were leonora's manifestations. he liked to be clean, but he preferred, as it were, to be threadbare. she never understood that, and all that pigskin was her idea of a reward to him for putting her up to a little speculation by which she made eleven hundred pounds. she did, herself, the threadbare business. when they went up to a place called simla, where, as i understand, it is cool in the summer and very social�when they went up to simla for their healths it was she who had him prancing around, as we should say in the united states, on a thousand-dollar horse with the gladdest of glad rags all over him. she herself used to go into "retreat". i believe that was very good for her health and it was also very inexpensive. it was probably also very good for edward's health, because he pranced about mostly with mrs basil, who was a nice woman and very, very kind to him. i suppose she was his mistress, but i never heard it from edward, of course. i seem to gather that they carried it on in a high romantic fashion, very proper to both of them�or, at any rate, for edward; she seems to have been a tender and gentle soul who did what he wanted. i do not mean to say that she was without character; that was her job, to do what edward wanted. so i figured it out, that for those five years, edward wanted long passages of deep affection kept up in long, long talks and that every now and then they "fell," which would give edward an opportunity for remorse and an excuse to lend the major another fifty. i don't think that mrs basil considered it to be "falling"; she just pitied him and loved him. you see, leonora and edward had to talk about something during all these years. you cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless you are an inhabitant of the north of england or the state of maine. so leonora imagined the cheerful device of letting him see the accounts of his estate and discussing them with him. he did not discuss them much; he was trying to behave prettily. but it was old mr mumford�the farmer who did not pay his rent�that threw edward into mrs basil's arms. mrs basil came upon edward in the dusk, in the burmese garden, with all sorts of flowers and things. and he was cutting up that crop�with his sword, not a walking-stick. he was also carrying on and cursing in a way you would not believe. she ascertained that an old gentleman called mumford had been ejected from his farm and had been given a little cottage rent-free, where he lived on ten shillings a week from a farmers' benevolent society, supplemented by seven that was being allowed him by the ashburnham trustees. edward had just discovered that fact from the estate accounts. leonora had left them in his dressing-room and he had begun to read them before taking off his marching-kit. that was how he came to have a sword. leonora considered that she had been unusually generous to old mr mumford in allowing him to inhabit a cottage, rent-free, and in giving him seven shillings a week. anyhow, mrs basil had never seen a man in such a state as edward was. she had been passionately in love with him for quite a time, and he had been longing for her sympathy and admiration with a passion as deep. that was how they came to speak about it, in the burmese garden, under the pale sky, with sheaves of severed vegetation, misty and odorous, in the night around their feet. i think they behaved themselves with decorum for quite a time after that, though mrs basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the ashburnham estate that she got the name of every field by heart. edward had a huge map of his lands in his harness-room and major basil did not seem to mind. i believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations. it might have lasted for ever if the major had not been made what is called a brevet-colonel during the shuffling of troops that went on just before the south african war. he was sent off somewhere else and, of course, mrs basil could not stay with edward. edward ought, i suppose, to have gone to the transvaal. it would have done him a great deal of good to get killed. but leonora would not let him; she had heard awful stories of the extravagance of the hussar regiment in war-time�how they left hundred-bottle cases of champagne, at five guineas a bottle, on the veldt and so on. besides, she preferred to see how edward was spending his five hundred a year. i don't mean to say that edward had any grievance in that. he was never a man of the deeds of heroism sort and it was just as good for him to be sniped at up in the hills of the north western frontier, as to be shot at by an old gentleman in a tophat at the bottom of some spruit. those are more or less his words about it. i believe he quite distinguished himself over there. at any rate, he had had his d.s.o. and was made a brevet-major. leonora, however, was not in the least keen on his soldiering. she hated also his deeds of heroism. one of their bitterest quarrels came after he had, for the second time, in the red sea, jumped overboard from the troopship and rescued a private soldier. she stood it the first time and even complimented him. but the red sea was awful, that trip, and the private soldiers seemed to develop a suicidal craze. it got on leonora's nerves; she figured edward, for the rest of that trip, jumping overboard every ten minutes. and the mere cry of "man overboard" is a disagreeable, alarming and disturbing thing. the ship gets stopped and there are all sorts of shouts. and edward would not promise not to do it again, though, fortunately, they struck a streak of cooler weather when they were in the persian gulf. leonora had got it into her head that edward was trying to commit suicide, so i guess it was pretty awful for her when he would not give the promise. leonora ought never to have been on that troopship; but she got there somehow, as an economy. major basil discovered his wife's relation with edward just before he was sent to his other station. i don't know whether that was a blackmailer's adroitness or just a trick of destiny. he may have known of it all the time or he may not. at any rate, he got hold of, just about then, some letters and things. it cost edward three hundred pounds immediately. i do not know how it was arranged; i cannot imagine how even a blackmailer can make his demands. i suppose there is some sort of way of saving your face. i figure the major as disclosing the letters to edward with furious oaths, then accepting his explanations that the letters were perfectly innocent if the wrong construction were not put upon them. then the major would say: "i say, old chap, i'm deuced hard up. couldn't you lend me three hundred or so?" i fancy that was how it was. and, year by year, after that there would come a letter from the major, saying that he was deuced hard up and couldn't edward lend him three hundred or so? edward was pretty hard hit when mrs basil had to go away. he really had been very fond of her, and he remained faithful to her memory for quite a long time. and mrs basil had loved him very much and continued to cherish a hope of reunion with him. three days ago there came a quite proper but very lamentable letter from her to leonora, asking to be given particulars as to edward's death. she had read the advertisement of it in an indian paper. i think she must have been a very nice woman.... and then the ashburnhams were moved somewhere up towards a place or a district called chitral. i am no good at geography of the indian empire. by that time they had settled down into a model couple and they never spoke in private to each other. leonora had given up even showing the accounts of the ashburnham estate to edward. he thought that that was because she had piled up such a lot of money that she did not want him to know how she was getting on any more. but, as a matter of fact, after five or six years it had penetrated to her mind that it was painful to edward to have to look on at the accounts of his estate and have no hand in the management of it. she was trying to do him a kindness. and, up in chitral, poor dear little maisie maidan came along.... that was the most unsettling to edward of all his affairs. it made him suspect that he was inconstant. the affair with the dolciquita he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. his relations with mrs basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a gross kind. the husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife to him. he thought that mrs basil had been his soul-mate, separated from him by an unkind fate�something sentimental of that sort. but he discovered that, whilst he was still writing long weekly letters to mrs basil, he was beginning to be furiously impatient if he missed seeing maisie maidan during the course of the day. he discovered himself watching the doorways with impatience; he discovered that he disliked her boy husband very much for hours at a time. he discovered that he was getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time, later in the morning, to go for a walk with maisie maidan. he discovered himself using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value to those words. these, you understand, were discoveries that came so late that he could do nothing but drift. he was losing weight; his eyes were beginning to fall in; he had touches of bad fever. he was, as he described it, pipped. and, one ghastly hot day, he suddenly heard himself say to leonora: "i say, couldn't we take mrs maidan with us to europe and drop her at nauheim?" he hadn't had the least idea of saying that to leonora. he had merely been standing, looking at an illustrated paper, waiting for dinner. dinner was twenty minutes late or the ashburnhams would not have been alone together. no, he hadn't had the least idea of framing that speech. he had just been standing in a silent agony of fear, of longing, of heat, of fever. he was thinking that they were going back to branshaw in a month and that maisie maidan was going to remain behind and die. and then, that had come out. the punkah swished in the darkened room; leonora lay exhausted and motionless in her cane lounge; neither of them stirred. they were both at that time very ill in indefinite ways. and then leonora said: "yes. i promised it to charlie maidan this afternoon. i have offered to pay her ex's myself." edward just saved himself from saying: "good god!" you see, he had not the least idea of what leonora knew�about maisie, about mrs basil, even about la dolciquita. it was a pretty enigmatic situation for him. it struck him that leonora must be intending to manage his loves as she managed his money affairs and it made her more hateful to him�and more worthy of respect. leonora, at any rate, had managed his money to some purpose. she had spoken to him, a week before, for the first time in several years�about money. she had made twenty-two thousand pounds out of the branshaw land and seven by the letting of branshaw furnished. by fortunate investments�in which edward had helped her�she had made another six or seven thousand that might well become more. the mortgages were all paid off, so that, except for the departure of the two vandykes and the silver, they were as well off as they had been before the dolciquita had acted the locust. it was leonora's great achievement. she laid the figures before edward, who maintained an unbroken silence. "i propose," she said, "that you should resign from the army and that we should go back to branshaw. we are both too ill to stay here any longer." edward said nothing at all. "this," leonora continued passionlessly, "is the great day of my life." edward said: "you have managed the job amazingly. you are a wonderful woman." he was thinking that if they went back to branshaw they would leave maisie maidan behind. that thought occupied him exclusively. they must, undoubtedly, return to branshaw; there could be no doubt that leonora was too ill to stay in that place. she said: "you understand that the management of the whole of the expenditure of the income will be in your hands. there will be five thousand a year." she thought that he cared very much about the expenditure of an income of five thousand a year and that the fact that she had done so much for him would rouse in him some affection for her. but he was thinking exclusively of maisie maidan�of maisie, thousands of miles away from him. he was seeing the mountains between them�blue mountains and the sea and sunlit plains. he said: "that is very generous of you." and she did not know whether that were praise or a sneer. that had been a week before. and all that week he had passed in an increasing agony at the thought that those mountains, that sea, and those sunlit plains would be between him and maisie maidan. that thought shook him in the burning nights: the sweat poured from him and he trembled with cold, in the burning noons�at that thought. he had no minute's rest; his bowels turned round and round within him: his tongue was perpetually dry and it seemed to him that the breath between his teeth was like air from a pest-house. he gave no thought to leonora at all; he had sent in his papers. they were to leave in a month. it seemed to him to be his duty to leave that place and to go away, to support leonora. he did his duty. it was horrible, in their relationship at that time, that whatever she did caused him to hate her. he hated her when he found that she proposed to set him up as the lord of branshaw again�as a sort of dummy lord, in swaddling clothes. he imagined that she had done this in order to separate him from maisie maidan. hatred hung in all the heavy nights and filled the shadowy corners of the room. so when he heard that she had offered to the maidan boy to take his wife to europe with him, automatically he hated her since he hated all that she did. it seemed to him, at that time, that she could never be other than cruel even if, by accident, an act of hers were kind.... yes, it was a horrible situation. but the cool breezes of the ocean seemed to clear up that hatred as if it had been a curtain. they seemed to give him back admiration for her, and respect. the agreeableness of having money lavishly at command, the fact that it had bought for him the companionship of maisie maidan�these things began to make him see that his wife might have been right in the starving and scraping upon which she had insisted. he was at ease; he was even radiantly happy when he carried cups of bouillon for maisie maidan along the deck. one night, when he was leaning beside leonora, over the ship's side, he said suddenly: "by jove, you're the finest woman in the world. i wish we could be better friends." she just turned away without a word and went to her cabin. still, she was very much better in health. and now, i suppose, i must give you leonora's side of the case.... that is very difficult. for leonora, if she preserved an unchanged front, changed very frequently her point of view. she had been drilled�in her tradition, in her upbringing�to keep her mouth shut. but there were times, she said, when she was so near yielding to the temptation of speaking that afterwards she shuddered to think of those times. you must postulate that what she desired above all things was to keep a shut mouth to the world; to edward and to the women that he loved. if she spoke she would despise herself. from the moment of his unfaithfulness with la dolciquita she never acted the part of wife to edward. it was not that she intended to keep herself from him as a principle, for ever. her spiritual advisers, i believe, forbade that. but she stipulated that he must, in some way, perhaps symbolical, come back to her. she was not very clear as to what she meant; probably she did not know herself. or perhaps she did. there were moments when he seemed to be coming back to her; there were moments when she was within a hair of yielding to her physical passion for him. in just the same way, at moments, she almost yielded to the temptation to denounce mrs basil to her husband or maisie maidan to hers. she desired then to cause the horrors and pains of public scandals. for, watching edward more intently and with more straining of ears than that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware of the progress of his passion for each of these ladies. she was aware of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she knew from his tranquillities when he had received satisfactions. at times she imagined herself to see more than was warranted. she imagined that edward was carrying on intrigues with other women�with two at once; with three. for whole periods she imagined him to be a monster of libertinage and she could not see that he could have anything against her. she left him his liberty; she was starving herself to build up his fortunes; she allowed herself none of the joys of femininity�no dresses, no jewels�hardly even friendships, for fear they should cost money. and yet, oddly, she could not but be aware that both mrs basil and maisie maidan were nice women. the curious, discounting eye which one woman can turn on another did not prevent her seeing that mrs basil was very good to edward and mrs maidan very good for him. that seemed her to be a monstrous and incomprehensible working of fate's. incomprehensible! why, she asked herself again and again, did none of the good deeds that she did for her husband ever come through to him, or appear to him as good deeds? by what trick of mania could not he let her be as good to him as mrs basil was? mrs basil was not so extraordinarily dissimilar to herself. she was, it was true, tall, dark, with soft mournful voice and a great kindness of manner for every created thing, from punkah men to flowers on the trees. but she was not so well read as leonora, at any rate in learned books. leonora could not stand novels. but, even with all her differences, mrs basil did not appear to leonora to differ so very much from herself. she was truthful, honest and, for the rest, just a woman. and leonora had a vague sort of idea that, to a man, all women are the same after three weeks of close intercourse. she thought that the kindness should no longer appeal, the soft and mournful voice no longer thrill, the tall darkness no longer give a man the illusion that he was going into the depths of an unexplored wood. she could not understand how edward could go on and on maundering over mrs basil. she could not see why he should continue to write her long letters after their separation. after that, indeed, she had a very bad time. she had at that period what i will call the "monstrous" theory of edward. she was always imagining him ogling at every woman that he came across. she did not, that year, go into "retreat" at simla because she was afraid that he would corrupt her maid in her absence. she imagined him carrying on intrigues with native women or eurasians. at dances she was in a fever of watchfulness. she persuaded herself that this was because she had a dread of scandals. edward might get himself mixed up with a marriageable daughter of some man who would make a row or some husband who would matter. but, really, she acknowledged afterwards to herself, she was hoping that, mrs basil being out of the way, the time might have come when edward should return to her. all that period she passed in an agony of jealousy and fear�the fear that edward might really become promiscuous in his habits. so that, in an odd way, she was glad when maisie maidan came along�and she realized that she had not, before, been afraid of husbands and of scandals, since, then, she did her best to keep maisie's husband unsuspicious. she wished to appear so trustful of edward that maidan could not possibly have any suspicions. it was an evil position for her. but edward was very ill and she wanted to see him smile again. she thought that if he could smile again through her agency he might return, through gratitude and satisfied love�to her. at that time she thought that edward was a person of light and fleeting passions. and she could understand edward's passion for maisie, since maisie was one of those women to whom other women will allow magnetism. she was very pretty; she was very young; in spite of her heart she was very gay and light on her feet. and leonora was really very fond of maisie, who was fond enough of leonora. leonora, indeed, imagined that she could manage this affair all right. she had no thought of maisie's being led into adultery; she imagined that if she could take maisie and edward to nauheim, edward would see enough of her to get tired of her pretty little chatterings, and of the pretty little motions of her hands and feet. and she thought she could trust edward. for there was not any doubt of maisie's passion for edward. she raved about him to leonora as leonora had heard girls rave about drawing masters in schools. she was perpetually asking her boy husband why he could not dress, ride, shoot, play polo, or even recite sentimental poems, like their major. and young maidan had the greatest admiration for edward, and he adored, was bewildered by and entirely trusted his wife. it appeared to him that edward was devoted to leonora. and leonora imagined that when poor maisie was cured of her heart and edward had seen enough of her, he would return to her. she had the vague, passionate idea that, when edward had exhausted a number of other types of women he must turn to her. why should not her type have its turn in his heart? she imagined that, by now, she understood him better, that she understood better his vanities and that, by making him happier, she could arouse his love. florence knocked all that on the head.... part iv i i have, i am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. i cannot help it. i have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes. and, when one discusses an affair�a long, sad affair�one goes back, one goes forward. one remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. i console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person telling a story would tell them. they will then seem most real. at any rate, i think i have brought my story up to the date of maisie maidan's death. i mean that i have explained everything that went before it from the several points of view that were necessary�from leonora's, from edward's and, to some extent, from my own. you have the facts for the trouble of finding them; you have the points of view as far as i could ascertain or put them. let me imagine myself back, then, at the day of maisie's death�or rather at the moment of florence's dissertation on the protest, up in the old castle of the town of m��. let us consider leonora's point of view with regard to florence; edward's, of course, i cannot give you, for edward naturally never spoke of his affair with my wife. (i may, in what follows, be a little hard on florence; but you must remember that i have been writing away at this story now for six months and reflecting longer and longer upon these affairs.) and the longer i think about them the more certain i become that florence was a contaminating influence�she depressed and deteriorated poor edward; she deteriorated, hopelessly, the miserable leonora. there is no doubt that she caused leonora's character to deteriorate. if there was a fine point about leonora it was that she was proud and that she was silent. but that pride and that silence broke when she made that extraordinary outburst, in the shadowy room that contained the protest, and in the little terrace looking over the river. i don't mean to say that she was doing a wrong thing. she was certainly doing right in trying to warn me that florence was making eyes at her husband. but, if she did the right thing, she was doing it in the wrong way. perhaps she should have reflected longer; she should have spoken, if she wanted to speak, only after reflection. or it would have been better if she had acted�if, for instance, she had so chaperoned florence that private communication between her and edward became impossible. she should have gone eavesdropping; she should have watched outside bedroom doors. it is odious; but that is the way the job is done. she should have taken edward away the moment maisie was dead. no, she acted wrongly.... and yet, poor thing, is it for me to condemn her�and what did it matter in the end? if it had not been florence, it would have been some other... still, it might have been a better woman than my wife. for florence was vulgar; florence was a common flirt who would not, at the last, lacher prise; and florence was an unstoppable talker. you could not stop her; nothing would stop her. edward and leonora were at least proud and reserved people. pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. but if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go. and leonora let them go. she let them go before poor edward did even. consider her position when she burst out over the luther-protest.... consider her agonies.... you are to remember that the main passion of her life was to get edward back; she had never, till that moment, despaired of getting him back. that may seem ignoble; but you have also to remember that her getting him back represented to her not only a victory for herself. it would, as it appeared to her, have been a victory for all wives and a victory for her church. that was how it presented itself to her. these things are a little inscrutable. i don't know why the getting back of edward should have represented to her a victory for all wives, for society and for her church. or, maybe, i have a glimmering of it. she saw life as a perpetual sex-battle between husbands who desire to be unfaithful to their wives, and wives who desire to recapture their husbands in the end. that was her sad and modest view of matrimony. man, for her, was a sort of brute who must have his divagations, his moments of excess, his nights out, his, let us say, rutting seasons. she had read few novels, so that the idea of a pure and constant love succeeding the sound of wedding bells had never been very much presented to her. she went, numbed and terrified, to the mother superior of her childhood's convent with the tale of edward's infidelities with the spanish dancer, and all that the old nun, who appeared to her to be infinitely wise, mystic and reverend, had done had been to shake her head sadly and to say: "men are like that. by the blessing of god it will all come right in the end." that was what was put before her by her spiritual advisers as her programme in life. or, at any rate, that was how their teachings came through to her�that was the lesson she told me she had learned of them. i don't know exactly what they taught her. the lot of women was patience and patience and again patience�ad majorem dei gloriam�until upon the appointed day, if god saw fit, she should have her reward. if then, in the end, she should have succeeded in getting edward back she would have kept her man within the limits that are all that wifehood has to expect. she was even taught that such excesses in men are natural, excusable�as if they had been children. and the great thing was that there should be no scandal before the congregation. so she had clung to the idea of getting edward back with a fierce passion that was like an agony. she had looked the other way; she had occupied herself solely with one idea. that was the idea of having edward appear, when she did get him back, wealthy, glorious as it were, on account of his lands, and upright. she would show, in fact, that in an unfaithful world one catholic woman had succeeded in retaining the fidelity of her husband. and she thought she had come near her desires. her plan with regard to maisie had appeared to be working admirably. edward had seemed to be cooling off towards the girl. he did not hunger to pass every minute of the time at nauheim beside the child's recumbent form; he went out to polo matches; he played auction bridge in the evenings; he was cheerful and bright. she was certain that he was not trying to seduce that poor child; she was beginning to think that he had never tried to do so. he seemed in fact to be dropping back into what he had been for maisie in the beginning�a kind, attentive, superior officer in the regiment, paying gallant attentions to a bride. they were as open in their little flirtations as the dayspring from on high. and maisie had not appeared to fret when he went off on excursions with us; she had to lie down for so many hours on her bed every afternoon, and she had not appeared to crave for the attentions of edward at those times. and edward was beginning to make little advances to leonora. once or twice, in private�for he often did it before people�he had said: "how nice you look!" or "what a pretty dress!" she had gone with florence to frankfurt, where they dress as well as in paris, and had got herself a gown or two. she could afford it, and florence was an excellent adviser as to dress. she seemed to have got hold of the clue to the riddle. yes, leonora seemed to have got hold of the clue to the riddle. she imagined herself to have been in the wrong to some extent in the past. she should not have kept edward on such a tight rein with regard to money. she thought she was on the right tack in letting him�as she had done only with fear and irresolution�have again the control of his income. he came even a step towards her and acknowledged, spontaneously, that she had been right in husbanding, for all those years, their resources. he said to her one day: "you've done right, old girl. there's nothing i like so much as to have a little to chuck away. and i can do it, thanks to you." that was really, she said, the happiest moment of her life. and he, seeming to realize it, had ventured to pat her on the shoulder. he had, ostensibly, come in to borrow a safety-pin of her. and the occasion of her boxing maisie's ears, had, after it was over, riveted in her mind the idea that there was no intrigue between edward and mrs maidan. she imagined that, from henceforward, all that she had to do was to keep him well supplied with money and his mind amused with pretty girls. she was convinced that he was coming back to her. for that month she no longer repelled his timid advances that never went very far. for he certainly made timid advances. he patted her on the shoulder; he whispered into her ear little jokes about the odd figures that they saw up at the casino. it was not much to make a little joke�but the whispering of it was a precious intimacy.... and then�smash�it all went. it went to pieces at the moment when florence laid her hand upon edward's wrist, as it lay on the glass sheltering the manuscript of the protest, up in the high tower with the shutters where the sunlight here and there streamed in. or, rather, it went when she noticed the look in edward's eyes as he gazed back into florence's. she knew that look. she had known�since the first moment of their meeting, since the moment of our all sitting down to dinner together�that florence was making eyes at edward. but she had seen so many women make eyes at edward�hundreds and hundreds of women, in railway trains, in hotels, aboard liners, at street corners. and she had arrived at thinking that edward took little stock in women that made eyes at him. she had formed what was, at that time, a fairly correct estimate of the methods of, the reasons for, edward's loves. she was certain that hitherto they had consisted of the short passion for the dolciquita, the real sort of love for mrs basil, and what she deemed the pretty courtship of maisie maidan. besides she despised florence so haughtily that she could not imagine edward's being attracted by her. and she and maisie were a sort of bulwark round him. she wanted, besides, to keep her eyes on florence�for florence knew that she had boxed maisie's ears. and leonora desperately desired that her union with edward should appear to be flawless. but all that went.... with the answering gaze of edward into florence's blue and uplifted eyes, she knew that it had all gone. she knew that that gaze meant that those two had had long conversations of an intimate kind�about their likes and dislikes, about their natures, about their views of marriage. she knew what it meant that she, when we all four walked out together, had always been with me ten yards ahead of florence and edward. she did not imagine that it had gone further than talks about their likes and dislikes, about their natures or about marriage as an institution. but, having watched edward all her life, she knew that that laying on of hands, that answering of gaze with gaze, meant that the thing was unavoidable. edward was such a serious person. she knew that any attempt on her part to separate those two would be to rivet on edward an irrevocable passion; that, as i have before told you, it was a trick of edward's nature to believe that the seducing of a woman gave her an irrevocable hold over him for life. and that touching of hands, she knew, would give that woman an irrevocable claim�to be seduced. and she so despised florence that she would have preferred it to be a parlour-maid. there are very decent parlour-maids. and, suddenly, there came into her mind the conviction that maisie maidan had a real passion for edward; that this would break her heart�and that she, leonora, would be responsible for that. she went, for the moment, mad. she clutched me by the wrist; she dragged me down those stairs and across that whispering rittersaal with the high painted pillars, the high painted chimney-piece. i guess she did not go mad enough. she ought to have said: "your wife is a harlot who is going to be my husband's mistress.. ." that might have done the trick. but, even in her madness, she was afraid to go as far as that. she was afraid that, if she did, edward and florence would make a bolt of it, and that, if they did that, she would lose forever all chance of getting him back in the end. she acted very badly to me. well, she was a tortured soul who put her church before the interests of a philadelphia quaker. that is all right�i daresay the church of rome is the more important of the two. a week after maisie maidan's death she was aware that florence had become edward's mistress. she waited outside florence's door and met edward as he came away. she said nothing and he only grunted. but i guess he had a bad time. yes, the mental deterioration that florence worked in leonora was extraordinary; it smashed up her whole life and all her chances. it made her, in the first place, hopeless�for she could not see how, after that, edward could return to her�after a vulgar intrigue with a vulgar woman. his affair with mrs basil, which was now all that she had to bring, in her heart, against him, she could not find it in her to call an intrigue. it was a love affair�a pure enough thing in its way. but this seemed to her to be a horror�a wantonness, all the more detestable to her, because she so detested florence. and florence talked.... that was what was terrible, because florence forced leonora herself to abandon her high reserve�florence and the situation. it appears that florence was in two minds whether to confess to me or to leonora. confess she had to. and she pitched at last on leonora, because if it had been me she would have had to confess a great deal more. or, at least, i might have guessed a great deal more, about her "heart", and about jimmy. so she went to leonora one day and began hinting and hinting. and she enraged leonora to such an extent that at last leonora said: "you want to tell me that you are edward's mistress. you can be. i have no use for him." that was really a calamity for leonora, because, once started, there was no stopping the talking. she tried to stop�but it was not to be done. she found it necessary to send edward messages through florence; for she would not speak to him. she had to give him, for instance, to understand that if i ever came to know of his intrigue she would ruin him beyond repair. and it complicated matters a good deal that edward, at about this time, was really a little in love with her. he thought that he had treated her so badly; that she was so fine. she was so mournful that he longed to comfort her, and he thought himself such a blackguard that there was nothing he would not have done to make amends. and florence communicated these items of information to leonora. i don't in the least blame leonora for her coarseness to florence; it must have done florence a world of good. but i do blame her for giving way to what was in the end a desire for communicativeness. you see that business cut her off from her church. she did not want to confess what she was doing because she was afraid that her spiritual advisers would blame her for deceiving me. i rather imagine that she would have preferred damnation to breaking my heart. that is what it works out at. she need not have troubled. but, having no priests to talk to, she had to talk to someone, and as florence insisted on talking to her, she talked back, in short, explosive sentences, like one of the damned. precisely like one of the damned. well, if a pretty period in hell on this earth can spare her any period of pain in eternity�where there are not any periods�i guess leonora will escape hell fire. her conversations with florence would be like this. florence would happen in on her, whilst she was doing her wonderful hair, with a proposition from edward, who seems about that time to have conceived the naïve idea that he might become a polygamist. i daresay it was florence who put it into his head. anyhow, i am not responsible for the oddities of the human psychology. but it certainly appears that at about that date edward cared more for leonora than he had ever done before�or, at any rate, for a long time. and, if leonora had been a person to play cards and if she had played her cards well, and if she had had no sense of shame and so on, she might then have shared edward with florence until the time came for jerking that poor cuckoo out of the nest. well, florence would come to leonora with some such proposition. i do not mean to say that she put it baldly, like that. she stood out that she was not edward's mistress until leonora said that she had seen edward coming out of her room at an advanced hour of the night. that checked florence a bit; but she fell back upon her "heart" and stuck out that she had merely been conversing with edward in order to bring him to a better frame of mind. florence had, of course, to stick to that story; for even florence would not have had the face to implore leonora to grant her favours to edward if she had admitted that she was edward's mistress. that could not be done. at the same time florence had such a pressing desire to talk about something. there would have been nothing else to talk about but a rapprochement between that estranged pair. so florence would go on babbling and leonora would go on brushing her hair. and then leonora would say suddenly something like: "i should think myself defiled if edward touched me now that he has touched you." that would discourage florence a bit; but after a week or so, on another morning she would have another try. and even in other things leonora deteriorated. she had promised edward to leave the spending of his own income in his own hands. and she had fully meant to do that. i daresay she would have done it too; though, no doubt, she would have spied upon his banking account in secret. she was not a roman catholic for nothing. but she took so serious a view of edward's unfaithfulness to the memory of poor little maisie that she could not trust him any more at all. so when she got back to branshaw she started, after less than a month, to worry him about the minutest items of his expenditure. she allowed him to draw his own cheques, but there was hardly a cheque that she did not scrutinize�except for a private account of about five hundred a year which, tacitly, she allowed him to keep for expenditure on his mistress or mistresses. he had to have his jaunts to paris; he had to send expensive cables in cipher to florence about twice a week. but she worried him about his expenditure on wines, on fruit trees, on harness, on gates, on the account at his blacksmith's for work done to a new patent army stirrup that he was trying to invent. she could not see why he should bother to invent a new army stirrup, and she was really enraged when, after the invention was mature, he made a present to the war office of the designs and the patent rights. it was a remarkably good stirrup. i have told you, i think, that edward spent a great deal of time, and about two hundred pounds for law fees on getting a poor girl, the daughter of one of his gardeners, acquitted of a charge of murdering her baby. that was positively the last act of edward's life. it came at a time when nancy rufford was on her way to india; when the most horrible gloom was over the household; when edward himself was in an agony and behaving as prettily as he knew how. yet even then leonora made him a terrible scene about this expenditure of time and trouble. she sort of had the vague idea that what had passed with the girl and the rest of it ought to have taught edward a lesson�the lesson of economy. she threatened to take his banking account away from him again. i guess that made him cut his throat. he might have stuck it out otherwise�but the thought that he had lost nancy and that, in addition, there was nothing left for him but a dreary, dreary succession of days in which he could be of no public service... well, it finished him. it was during those years that leonora tried to get up a love affair of her own with a fellow called bayham�a decent sort of fellow. a really nice man. but the affair was no sort of success. i have told you about it already... . ii well, that about brings me up to the date of my receiving, in waterbury, the laconic cable from edward to the effect that he wanted me to go to branshaw and have a chat. i was pretty busy at the time and i was half minded to send him a reply cable to the effect that i would start in a fortnight. but i was having a long interview with old mr hurlbird's attorneys and immediately afterwards i had to have a long interview with the misses hurlbird, so i delayed cabling. i had expected to find the misses hurlbird excessively old�in the nineties or thereabouts. the time had passed so slowly that i had the impression that it must have been thirty years since i had been in the united states. it was only twelve years. actually miss hurlbird was just sixty-one and miss florence hurlbird fifty-nine, and they were both, mentally and physically, as vigorous as could be desired. they were, indeed, more vigorous, mentally, than suited my purpose, which was to get away from the united states as quickly as i could. the hurlbirds were an exceedingly united family�exceedingly united except on one set of points. each of the three of them had a separate doctor, whom they trusted implicitly�and each had a separate attorney. and each of them distrusted the other's doctor and the other's attorney. and, naturally, the doctors and the attorneys warned one all the time�against each other. you cannot imagine how complicated it all became for me. of course i had an attorney of my own�recommended to me by young carter, my philadelphia nephew. i do not mean to say that there was any unpleasantness of a grasping kind. the problem was quite another one�a moral dilemma. you see, old mr hurlbird had left all his property to florence with the mere request that she would have erected to him in the city of waterbury, ill., a memorial that should take the form of some sort of institution for the relief of sufferers from the heart. florence's money had all come to me�and with it old mr hurlbird's. he had died just five days before florence. well, i was quite ready to spend a round million dollars on the relief of sufferers from the heart. the old gentleman had left about a million and a half; florence had been worth about eight hundred thousand�and as i figured it out, i should cut up at about a million myself. anyhow, there was ample money. but i naturally wanted to consult the wishes of his surviving relatives and then the trouble really began. you see, it had been discovered that mr hurlbird had had nothing whatever the matter with his heart. his lungs had been a little affected all through his life and he had died of bronchitis. it struck miss florence hurlbird that, since her brother had died of lungs and not of heart, his money ought to go to lung patients. that, she considered, was what her brother would have wished. on the other hand, by a kink, that i could not at the time understand, miss hurlbird insisted that i ought to keep the money all to myself. she said that she did not wish for any monuments to the hurlbird family. at the time i thought that that was because of a new england dislike for necrological ostentation. but i can figure out now, when i remember certain insistent and continued questions that she put to me, about edward ashburnham, that there was another idea in her mind. and leonora has told me that, on florence's dressing-table, beside her dead body, there had lain a letter to miss hurlbird�a letter which leonora posted without telling me. i don't know how florence had time to write to her aunt; but i can quite understand that she would not like to go out of the world without making some comments. so i guess florence had told miss hurlbird a good bit about edward ashburnham in a few scrawled words�and that that was why the old lady did not wish the name of hurlbird perpetuated. perhaps also she thought that i had earned the hurlbird money. it meant a pretty tidy lot of discussing, what with the doctors warning each other about the bad effects of discussions on the health of the old ladies, and warning me covertly against each other, and saying that old mr hurlbird might have died of heart, after all, in spite of the diagnosis of his doctor. and the solicitors all had separate methods of arranging about how the money should be invested and entrusted and bound. personally, i wanted to invest the money so that the interest could be used for the relief of sufferers from the heart. if old mr hurlbird had not died of any defects in that organ he had considered that it was defective. moreover, florence had certainly died of her heart, as i saw it. and when miss florence hurlbird stood out that the money ought to go to chest sufferers i was brought to thinking that there ought to be a chest institution too, and i advanced the sum that i was ready to provide to a million and a half of dollars. that would have given seven hundred and fifty thousand to each class of invalid. i did not want money at all badly. all i wanted it for was to be able to give nancy rufford a good time. i did not know much about housekeeping expenses in england where, i presumed, she would wish to live. i knew that her needs at that time were limited to good chocolates, and a good horse or two, and simple, pretty frocks. probably she would want more than that later on. but even if i gave a million and a half dollars to these institutions i should still have the equivalent of about twenty thousand a year english, and i considered that nancy could have a pretty good time on that or less. anyhow, we had a stiff set of arguments up at the hurlbird mansion which stands on a bluff over the town. it may strike you, silent listener, as being funny if you happen to be european. but moral problems of that description and the giving of millions to institutions are immensely serious matters in my country. indeed, they are the staple topics for consideration amongst the wealthy classes. we haven't got peerage and social climbing to occupy us much, and decent people do not take interest in politics or elderly people in sport. so that there were real tears shed by both miss hurlbird and miss florence before i left that city. i left it quite abruptly. four hours after edward's telegram came another from leonora, saying: "yes, do come. you could be so helpful." i simply told my attorney that there was the million and a half; that he could invest it as he liked, and that the purposes must be decided by the misses hurlbird. i was, anyhow, pretty well worn out by all the discussions. and, as i have never heard yet from the misses hurlbird, i rather think that miss hurlbird, either by revelations or by moral force, has persuaded miss florence that no memorial to their names shall be erected in the city of waterbury, conn. miss hurlbird wept dreadfully when she heard that i was going to stay with the ashburnhams, but she did not make any comments. i was aware, at that date, that her niece had been seduced by that fellow jimmy before i had married her�but i contrived to produce on her the impression that i thought florence had been a model wife. why, at that date i still believed that florence had been perfectly virtuous after her marriage to me. i had not figured it out that she could have played it so low down as to continue her intrigue with that fellow under my roof. well, i was a fool. but i did not think much about florence at that date. my mind was occupied with what was happening at branshaw. i had got it into my head that the telegrams had something to do with nancy. it struck me that she might have shown signs of forming an attachment for some undesirable fellow and that leonora wanted me to come back and marry her out of harm's way. that was what was pretty firmly in my mind. and it remained in my mind for nearly ten days after my arrival at that beautiful old place. neither edward nor leonora made any motion to talk to me about anything other than the weather and the crops. yet, although there were several young fellows about, i could not see that any one in particular was distinguished by the girl's preference. she certainly appeared illish and nervous, except when she woke up to talk gay nonsense to me. oh, the pretty thing that she was.... i imagined that what must have happened was that the undesirable young man had been forbidden the place and that nancy was fretting a little. what had happened was just hell. leonora had spoken to nancy; nancy had spoken to edward; edward had spoken to leonora�and they had talked and talked. and talked. you have to imagine horrible pictures of gloom and half lights, and emotions running through silent nights�through whole nights. you have to imagine my beautiful nancy appearing suddenly to edward, rising up at the foot of his bed, with her long hair falling, like a split cone of shadow, in the glimmer of a night-light that burned beside him. you have to imagine her, a silent, a no doubt agonized figure, like a spectre, suddenly offering herself to him�to save his reason! and you have to imagine his frantic refusal�and talk. and talk! my god! and yet, to me, living in the house, enveloped with the charm of the quiet and ordered living, with the silent, skilled servants whose mere laying out of my dress clothes was like a caress�to me who was hourly with them they appeared like tender, ordered and devoted people, smiling, absenting themselves at the proper intervals; driving me to meets�just good people! how the devil�how the devil do they do it? at dinner one evening leonora said�she had just opened a telegram: "nancy will be going to india, tomorrow, to be with her father." no one spoke. nancy looked at her plate; edward went on eating his pheasant. i felt very bad; i imagined that it would be up to me to propose to nancy that evening. it appeared to me to be queer that they had not given me any warning of nancy's departure�but i thought that that was only english manners�some sort of delicacy that i had not got the hang of. you must remember that at that moment i trusted in edward and leonora and in nancy rufford, and in the tranquility of ancient haunts of peace, as i had trusted in my mother's love. and that evening edward spoke to me. what in the interval had happened had been this: upon her return from nauheim leonora had completely broken down�because she knew she could trust edward. that seems odd but, if you know anything about breakdowns, you will know that by the ingenious torments that fate prepares for us, these things come as soon as, a strain having relaxed, there is nothing more to be done. it is after a husband's long illness and death that a widow goes to pieces; it is at the end of a long rowing contest that a crew collapses and lies forward upon its oars. and that was what happened to leonora. from certain tones in edward's voice; from the long, steady stare that he had given her from his bloodshot eyes on rising from the dinner table in the nauheim hotel, she knew that, in the affair of the poor girl, this was a case in which edward's moral scruples, or his social code, or his idea that it would be playing it too low down, rendered nancy perfectly safe. the girl, she felt sure, was in no danger at all from edward. and in that she was perfectly right. the smash was to come from herself. she relaxed; she broke; she drifted, at first quickly, then with an increasing momentum, down the stream of destiny. you may put it that, having been cut off from the restraints of her religion, for the first time in her life, she acted along the lines of her instinctive desires. i do not know whether to think that, in that she was no longer herself; or that, having let loose the bonds of her standards, her conventions and her traditions, she was being, for the first time, her own natural self. she was torn between her intense, maternal love for the girl and an intense jealousy of the woman who realizes that the man she loves has met what appears to be the final passion of his life. she was divided between an intense disgust for edward's weakness in conceiving this passion, an intense pity for the miseries that he was enduring, and a feeling equally intense, but one that she hid from herself�a feeling of respect for edward's determination to keep himself, in this particular affair, unspotted. and the human heart is a very mysterious thing. it is impossible to say that leonora, in acting as she then did, was not filled with a sort of hatred of edward's final virtue. she wanted, i think, to despise him. he was, she realized gone from her for good. then let him suffer, let him agonize; let him, if possible, break and go to that hell that is the abode of broken resolves. she might have taken a different line. it would have been so easy to send the girl away to stay with some friends; to have taken her away herself upon some pretext or other. that would not have cured things but it would have been the decent line,... but, at that date, poor leonora was incapable of taking any line whatever. she pitied edward frightfully at one time�and then she acted along the lines of pity; she loathed him at another and then she acted as her loathing dictated. she gasped, as a person dying of tuberculosis gasps for air. she craved madly for communication with some other human soul. and the human soul that she selected was that of the girl. perhaps nancy was the only person that she could have talked to. with her necessity for reticences, with her coldness of manner, leonora had singularly few intimates. she had none at all, with the exception of the mrs colonel whelen, who had advised her about the affair with la dolciquita, and the one or two religious, who had guided her through life. the colonel's wife was at that time in madeira; the religious she now avoided. her visitors' book had seven hundred names in it; there was not a soul that she could speak to. she was mrs ashburnham of branshaw teleragh. she was the great mrs ashburnham of branshaw and she lay all day upon her bed in her marvellous, light, airy bedroom with the chintzes and the chippendale and the portraits of deceased ashburnhams by zoffany and zucchero. when there was a meet she would struggle up�supposing it were within driving distance�and let edward drive her and the girl to the cross-roads or the country house. she would drive herself back alone; edward would ride off with the girl. ride leonora could not, that season�her head was too bad. each pace of her mare was an anguish. but she drove with efficiency and precision; she smiled at the gimmers and foulkes and the hedley seatons. she threw with exactitude pennies to the boys who opened gates for her; she sat upright on the seat of the high dog-cart; she waved her hands to edward and nancy as they rode off with the hounds, and every one could hear her clear, high voice, in the chilly weather, saying: "have a good time!" poor forlorn woman!... there was, however, one spark of consolation. it came from the fact that rodney bayham, of bayham, followed her always with his eyes. it had been three years since she had tried her abortive love-affair with him. yet still, on the winter mornings he would ride up to her shafts and just say: "good day," and look at her with eyes that were not imploring, but seemed to say: "you see, i am still, as the germans say, a. d.�at disposition." it was a great consolation, not because she proposed ever to take him up again, but because it showed her that there was in the world one faithful soul in riding-breeches. and it showed her that she was not losing her looks. and, indeed, she was not losing her looks. she was forty, but she was as clean run as on the day she had left the convent�as clear in outline, as clear coloured in the hair, as dark blue in the eyes. she thought that her looking-glass told her this; but there are always the doubts.... rodney bayham's eyes took them away. it is very singular that leonora should not have aged at all. i suppose that there are some types of beauty and even of youth made for the embellishments that come with enduring sorrow. that is too elaborately put. i mean that leonora, if everything had prospered, might have become too hard and, maybe, overbearing. as it was she was tuned down to appearing efficient�and yet sympathetic. that is the rarest of all blends. and yet i swear that leonora, in her restrained way, gave the impression of being intensely sympathetic. when she listened to you she appeared also to be listening to some sound that was going on in the distance. but still, she listened to you and took in what you said, which, since the record of humanity is a record of sorrows, was, as a rule, something sad. i think that she must have taken nancy through many terrors of the night and many bad places of the day. and that would account for the girl's passionate love for the elder woman. for nancy's love for leonora was an admiration that is awakened in catholics by their feeling for the virgin mary and for various of the saints. it is too little to say that the girl would have laid her life at leonora's feet. well, she laid there the offer of her virtue�and her reason. those were sufficient instalments of her life. it would today be much better for nancy rufford if she were dead. perhaps all these reflections are a nuisance; but they crowd on me. i will try to tell the story. you see�when she came back from nauheim leonora began to have her headaches�headaches lasting through whole days, during which she could speak no word and could bear to hear no sound. and, day after day, nancy would sit with her, silent and motionless for hours, steeping handkerchiefs in vinegar and water, and thinking her own thoughts. it must have been very bad for her�and her meals alone with edward must have been bad for her too�and beastly bad for edward. edward, of course, wavered in his demeanour, what else could he do? at times he would sit silent and dejected over his untouched food. he would utter nothing but monosyllables when nancy spoke to him. then he was simply afraid of the girl falling in love with him. at other times he would take a little wine; pull himself together; attempt to chaff nancy about a stake and binder hedge that her mare had checked at, or talk about the habits of the chitralis. that was when he was thinking that it was rough on the poor girl that he should have become a dull companion. he realized that his talking to her in the park at nauheim had done her no harm. but all that was doing a great deal of harm to nancy. it gradually opened her eyes to the fact that edward was a man with his ups and downs and not an invariably gay uncle like a nice dog, a trustworthy horse or a girl friend. she would find him in attitudes of frightful dejection, sunk into his armchair in the study that was half a gun-room. she would notice through the open door that his face was the face of an old, dead man, when he had no one to talk to. gradually it forced itself upon her attention that there were profound differences between the pair that she regarded as her uncle and her aunt. it was a conviction that came very slowly. it began with edward's giving an oldish horse to a young fellow called selmes. selmes' father had been ruined by a fraudulent solicitor and the selmes family had had to sell their hunters. it was a case that had excited a good deal of sympathy in that part of the county. and edward, meeting the young man one day, unmounted, and seeing him to be very unhappy, had offered to give him an old irish cob upon which he was riding. it was a silly sort of thing to do really. the horse was worth from thirty to forty pounds and edward might have known that the gift would upset his wife. but edward just had to comfort that unhappy young man whose father he had known all his life. and what made it all the worse was that young selmes could not afford to keep the horse even. edward recollected this, immediately after he had made the offer, and said quickly: "of course i mean that you should stable the horse at branshaw until you have time to turn round or want to sell him and get a better." nancy went straight home and told all this to leonora who was lying down. she regarded it as a splendid instance of edward's quick consideration for the feelings and the circumstances of the distressed. she thought it would cheer leonora up�because it ought to cheer any woman up to know that she had such a splendid husband. that was the last girlish thought she ever had. for leonora, whose headache had left her collected but miserably weak, turned upon her bed and uttered words that were amazing to the girl: "i wish to god," she said, "that he was your husband, and not mine. we shall be ruined. we shall be ruined. am i never to have a chance?" and suddenly leonora burst into a passion of tears. she pushed herself up from the pillows with one elbow and sat there�crying, crying, crying, with her face hidden in her hands and the tears falling through her fingers. the girl flushed, stammered and whimpered as if she had been personally insulted. "but if uncle edward..." she began. "that man," said leonora, with an extraordinary bitterness, "would give the shirt off his back and off mine�and off yours to any..." she could not finish the sentence. at that moment she had been feeling an extraordinary hatred and contempt for her husband. all the morning and all the afternoon she had been lying there thinking that edward and the girl were together�in the field and hacking it home at dusk. she had been digging her sharp nails into her palms. the house had been very silent in the drooping winter weather. and then, after an eternity of torture, there had invaded it the sound of opening doors, of the girl's gay voice saying: "well, it was only under the mistletoe."... and there was edward's gruff undertone. then nancy had come in, with feet that had hastened up the stairs and that tiptoed as they approached the open door of leonora's room. branshaw had a great big hall with oak floors and tiger skins. round this hall there ran a gallery upon which leonora's doorway gave. and even when she had the worst of her headaches she liked to have her door open�i suppose so that she might hear the approaching footsteps of ruin and disaster. at any rate she hated to be in a room with a shut door. at that moment leonora hated edward with a hatred that was like hell, and she would have liked to bring her riding-whip down across the girl's face. what right had nancy to be young and slender and dark, and gay at times, at times mournful? what right had she to be exactly the woman to make leonora's husband happy? for leonora knew that nancy would have made edward happy. yes, leonora wished to bring her riding-whip down on nancy's young face. she imagined the pleasure she would feel when the lash fell across those queer features; the pleasure she would feel at drawing the handle at the same moment toward her, so as to cut deep into the flesh and to leave a lasting wheal. well, she left a lasting wheal, and her words cut deeply into the girl's mind.... they neither of them spoke about that again. a fortnight went by�a fortnight of deep rains, of heavy fields, of bad scent. leonora's headaches seemed to have gone for good. she hunted once or twice, letting herself be piloted by bayham, whilst edward looked after the girl. then, one evening, when those three were dining alone, edward said, in the queer, deliberate, heavy tones that came out of him in those days (he was looking at the table): "i have been thinking that nancy ought to do more for her father. he is getting an old man. i have written to colonel rufford, suggesting that she should go to him." leonora called out: "how dare you? how dare you?" the girl put her hand over her heart and cried out: "oh, my sweet saviour, help me!" that was the queer way she thought within her mind, and the words forced themselves to her lips. edward said nothing. and that night, by a merciless trick of the devil that pays attention to this sweltering hell of ours, nancy rufford had a letter from her mother. it came whilst leonora was talking to edward, or leonora would have intercepted it as she had intercepted others. it was an amazing and a horrible letter.. .. i don't know what it contained. i just average out from its effects on nancy that her mother, having eloped with some worthless sort of fellow, had done what is called "sinking lower and lower". whether she was actually on the streets i do not know, but i rather think that she eked out a small allowance that she had from her husband by that means of livelihood. and i think that she stated as much in her letter to nancy and upbraided the girl with living in luxury whilst her mother starved. and it must have been horrible in tone, for mrs rufford was a cruel sort of woman at the best of times. it must have seemed to that poor girl, opening her letter, for distraction from another grief, up in her bedroom, like the laughter of a devil. i just cannot bear to think of my poor dear girl at that moment.... and, at the same time, leonora was lashing, like a cold fiend, into the unfortunate edward. or, perhaps, he was not so unfortunate; because he had done what he knew to be the right thing, he may be deemed happy. i leave it to you. at any rate, he was sitting in his deep chair, and leonora came into his room�for the first time in nine years. she said: "this is the most atrocious thing you have done in your atrocious life." he never moved and he never looked at her. god knows what was in leonora's mind exactly. i like to think that, uppermost in it was concern and horror at the thought of the poor girl's going back to a father whose voice made her shriek in the night. and, indeed, that motive was very strong with leonora. but i think there was also present the thought that she wanted to go on torturing edward with the girl's presence. she was, at that time, capable of that. edward was sunk in his chair; there were in the room two candles, hidden by green glass shades. the green shades were reflected in the glasses of the book-cases that contained not books but guns with gleaming brown barrels and fishing-rods in green baize over-covers. there was dimly to be seen, above a mantelpiece encumbered with spurs, hooves and bronze models of horses, a dark-brown picture of a white horse. "if you think," leonora said, "that i do not know that you are in love with the girl..." she began spiritedly, but she could not find any ending for the sentence. edward did not stir; he never spoke. and then leonora said: "if you want me to divorce you, i will. you can marry her then. she's in love with you." he groaned at that, a little, leonora said. then she went away. heaven knows what happened in leonora after that. she certainly does not herself know. she probably said a good deal more to edward than i have been able to report; but that is all that she has told me and i am not going to make up speeches. to follow her psychological development of that moment i think we must allow that she upbraided him for a great deal of their past life, whilst edward sat absolutely silent. and, indeed, in speaking of it afterwards, she has said several times: "i said a great deal more to him than i wanted to, just because he was so silent." she talked, in fact, in the endeavour to sting him into speech. she must have said so much that, with the expression of her grievance, her mood changed. she went back to her own room in the gallery, and sat there for a long time thinking. and she thought herself into a mood of absolute unselfishness, of absolute self-contempt, too. she said to herself that she was no good; that she had failed in all her efforts�in her efforts to get edward back as in her efforts to make him curb his expenditure. she imagined herself to be exhausted; she imagined herself to be done. then a great fear came over her. she thought that edward, after what she had said to him, must have committed suicide. she went out on to the gallery and listened; there was no sound in all the house except the regular beat of the great clock in the hall. but, even in her debased condition, she was not the person to hang about. she acted. she went straight to edward's room, opened the door, and looked in. he was oiling the breech action of a gun. it was an unusual thing for him to do, at that time of night, in his evening clothes. it never occurred to her, nevertheless, that he was going to shoot himself with that implement. she knew that he was doing it just for occupation�to keep himself from thinking. he looked up when she opened the door, his face illuminated by the light cast upwards from the round orifices in the green candle shades. she said: "i didn't imagine that i should find nancy here." she thought that she owed that to him. he answered then: "i don't imagine that you did imagine it." those were the only words he spoke that night. she went, like a lame duck, back through the long corridors; she stumbled over the familiar tiger skins in the dark hall. she could hardly drag one limb after the other. in the gallery she perceived that nancy's door was half open and that there was a light in the girl's room. a sudden madness possessed her, a desire for action, a thirst for self-explanation. their rooms all gave on to the gallery; leonora's to the east, the girl's next, then edward's. the sight of those three open doors, side by side, gaping to receive whom the chances of the black night might bring, made leonora shudder all over her body. she went into nancy's room. the girl was sitting perfectly still in an armchair, very upright, as she had been taught to sit at the convent. she appeared to be as calm as a church; her hair fell, black and like a pall, down over both her shoulders. the fire beside her was burning brightly; she must have just put coals on. she was in a white silk kimono that covered her to the feet. the clothes that she had taken off were exactly folded upon the proper seats. her long hands were one upon each arm of the chair that had a pink and white chintz back. leonora told me these things. she seemed to think it extraordinary that the girl could have done such orderly things as fold up the clothes she had taken off upon such a night�when edward had announced that he was going to send her to her father, and when, from her mother, she had received that letter. the letter, in its envelope, was in her right hand. leonora did not at first perceive it. she said: "what are you doing so late?" the girl answered: "just thinking." they seemed to think in whispers and to speak below their breaths. then leonora's eyes fell on the envelope, and she recognized mrs rufford's handwriting. it was one of those moments when thinking was impossible, leonora said. it was as if stones were being thrown at her from every direction and she could only run. she heard herself exclaim: "edward's dying�because of you. he's dying. he's worth more than either of us...." the girl looked past her at the panels of the half-closed door. "my poor father," she said, "my poor father." "you must stay here," leonora answered fiercely. "you must stay here. i tell you you must stay here." "i am going to glasgow," nancy answered. "i shall go to glasgow tomorrow morning. my mother is in glasgow." it appears that it was in glasgow that mrs rufford pursued her disorderly life. she had selected that city, not because it was more profitable but because it was the natal home of her husband to whom she desired to cause as much pain as possible. "you must stay here," leonora began, "to save edward. he's dying for love of you." the girl turned her calm eyes upon leonora. "i know it," she said. "and i am dying for love of him." leonora uttered an "ah," that, in spite of herself, was an "ah" of horror and of grief. "that is why," the girl continued, "i am going to glasgow�to take my mother away from there." she added, "to the ends of the earth," for, if the last months had made her nature that of a woman, her phrases were still romantically those of a schoolgirl. it was as if she had grown up so quickly that there had not been time to put her hair up. but she added: "we're no good�my mother and i." leonora said, with her fierce calmness: "no. no. you're not no good. it's i that am no good. you can't let that man go on to ruin for want of you. you must belong to him." the girl, she said, smiled at her with a queer, far-away smile�as if she were a thousand years old, as if leonora were a tiny child. "i knew you would come to that," she said, very slowly. "but we are not worth it�edward and i." iii nancy had, in fact, been thinking ever since leonora had made that comment over the giving of the horse to young selmes. she had been thinking and thinking, because she had had to sit for many days silent beside her aunt's bed. (she had always thought of leonora as her aunt.) and she had had to sit thinking during many silent meals with edward. and then, at times, with his bloodshot eyes and creased, heavy mouth, he would smile at her. and gradually the knowledge had come to her that edward did not love leonora and that leonora hated edward. several things contributed to form and to harden this conviction. she was allowed to read the papers in those days�or, rather, since leonora was always on her bed and edward breakfasted alone and went out early, over the estate, she was left alone with the papers. one day, in the papers, she saw the portrait of a woman she knew very well. beneath it she read the words: "the hon. mrs brand, plaintiff in the remarkable divorce case reported on p. ." nancy hardly knew what a divorce case was. she had been so remarkably well brought up, and roman catholics do not practise divorce. i don't know how leonora had done it exactly. i suppose she had always impressed it on nancy's mind that nice women did not read these things, and that would have been enough to make nancy skip those pages. she read, at any rate, the account of the brand divorce case�principally because she wanted to tell leonora about it. she imagined that leonora, when her headache left her, would like to know what was happening to mrs brand, who lived at christchurch, and whom they both liked very well. the case occupied three days, and the report that nancy first came upon was that of the third day. edward, however, kept the papers of the week, after his methodical fashion, in a rack in his gun-room, and when she had finished her breakfast nancy went to that quiet apartment and had what she would have called a good read. it seemed to her to be a queer affair. she could not understand why one counsel should be so anxious to know all about the movements of mr brand upon a certain day; she could not understand why a chart of the bedroom accommodation at christchurch old hall should be produced in court. she did not even see why they should want to know that, upon a certain occasion, the drawing-room door was locked. it made her laugh; it appeared to be all so senseless that grown people should occupy themselves with such matters. it struck her, nevertheless, as odd that one of the counsel should cross-question mr brand so insistently and so impertinently as to his feelings for miss lupton. nancy knew miss lupton of ringwood very well�a jolly girl, who rode a horse with two white fetlocks. mr brand persisted that he did not love miss lupton.... well, of course he did not love miss lupton; he was a married man. you might as well think of uncle edward loving... loving anybody but leonora. when people were married there was an end of loving. there were, no doubt, people who misbehaved�but they were poor people�or people not like those she knew. so these matters presented themselves to nancy's mind. but later on in the case she found that mr brand had to confess to a "guilty intimacy" with some one or other. nancy imagined that he must have been telling some one his wife's secrets; she could not understand why that was a serious offence. of course it was not very gentlemanly�it lessened her opinion of mrs brand. but since she found that mrs brand had condoned that offence, she imagined that they could not have been very serious secrets that mr brand had told. and then, suddenly, it was forced on her conviction that mr brand�the mild mr brand that she had seen a month or two before their departure to nauheim, playing "blind man's buff" with his children and kissing his wife when he caught her�mr brand and mrs brand had been on the worst possible terms. that was incredible. yet there it was�in black and white. mr brand drank; mr brand had struck mrs brand to the ground when he was drunk. mr brand was adjudged, in two or three abrupt words, at the end of columns and columns of paper, to have been guilty of cruelty to his wife and to have committed adultery with miss lupton. the last words conveyed nothing to nancy�nothing real, that is to say. she knew that one was commanded not to commit adultery�but why, she thought, should one? it was probably something like catching salmon out of season�a thing one did not do. she gathered it had something to do with kissing, or holding some one in your arms.. .. and yet the whole effect of that reading upon nancy was mysterious, terrifying and evil. she felt a sickness�a sickness that grew as she read. her heart beat painfully; she began to cry. she asked god how he could permit such things to be. and she was more certain that edward did not love leonora and that leonora hated edward. perhaps, then, edward loved some one else. it was unthinkable. if he could love some one else than leonora, her fierce unknown heart suddenly spoke in her side, why could it not be herself? and he did not love her.... this had occurred about a month before she got the letter from her mother. she let the matter rest until the sick feeling went off; it did that in a day or two. then, finding that leonora's headaches had gone, she suddenly told leonora that mrs brand had divorced her husband. she asked what, exactly, it all meant. leonora was lying on the sofa in the hall; she was feeling so weak that she could hardly find the words. she answered just: "it means that mr brand will be able to marry again." nancy said: "but... but..." and then: "he will be able to marry miss lupton." leonora just moved a hand in assent. her eyes were shut. "then..." nancy began. her blue eyes were full of horror: her brows were tight above them; the lines of pain about her mouth were very distinct. in her eyes the whole of that familiar, great hall had a changed aspect. the andirons with the brass flowers at the ends appeared unreal; the burning logs were just logs that were burning and not the comfortable symbols of an indestructible mode of life. the flame fluttered before the high fireback; the st bernard sighed in his sleep. outside the winter rain fell and fell. and suddenly she thought that edward might marry some one else; and she nearly screamed. leonora opened her eyes, lying sideways, with her face upon the black and gold pillow of the sofa that was drawn half across the great fireplace. "i thought," nancy said, "i never imagined.... aren't marriages sacraments? aren't they indissoluble? i thought you were married. .. and..." she was sobbing. "i thought you were married or not married as you are alive or dead." "that," leonora said, "is the law of the church. it is not the law of the land...." "oh yes," nancy said, "the brands are protestants." she felt a sudden safeness descend upon her, and for an hour or so her mind was at rest. it seemed to her idiotic not to have remembered henry viii and the basis upon which protestantism rests. she almost laughed at herself. the long afternoon wore on; the flames still fluttered when the maid made up the fire; the st bernard awoke and lolloped away towards the kitchen. and then leonora opened her eyes and said almost coldly: "and you? don't you think you will get married?" it was so unlike leonora that, for the moment, the girl was frightened in the dusk. but then, again, it seemed a perfectly reasonable question. "i don't know," she answered. "i don't know that anyone wants to marry me." "several people want to marry you," leonora said. "but i don't want to marry," nancy answered. "i should like to go on living with you and edward. i don't think i am in the way or that i am really an expense. if i went you would have to have a companion. or, perhaps, i ought to earn my living...." "i wasn't thinking of that," leonora answered in the same dull tone. "you will have money enough from your father. but most people want to be married." i believe that she then asked the girl if she would not like to marry me, and that nancy answered that she would marry me if she were told to; but that she wanted to go on living there. she added: "if i married anyone i should want him to be like edward." she was frightened out of her life. leonora writhed on her couch and called out: "oh, god!..." nancy ran for the maid; for tablets of aspirin; for wet handkerchiefs. it never occurred to her that leonora's expression of agony was for anything else than physical pain. you are to remember that all this happened a month before leonora went into the girl's room at night. i have been casting back again; but i cannot help it. it is so difficult to keep all these people going. i tell you about leonora and bring her up to date; then about edward, who has fallen behind. and then the girl gets hopelessly left behind. i wish i could put it down in diary form. thus: on the st of september they returned from nauheim. leonora at once took to her bed. by the st of october they were all going to meets together. nancy had already observed very fully that edward was strange in his manner. about the th of that month edward gave the horse to young selmes, and nancy had cause to believe that her aunt did not love her uncle. on the th she read the account of the divorce case, which is reported in the papers of the th and the two following days. on the rd she had the conversation with her aunt in the hall�about marriage in general and about her own possible marriage, her aunt's coming to her bedroom did not occur until the th of november.... thus she had three weeks for introspection�for introspection beneath gloomy skies, in that old house, rendered darker by the fact that it lay in a hollow crowned by fir trees with their black shadows. it was not a good situation for a girl. she began thinking about love, she who had never before considered it as anything other than a rather humorous, rather nonsensical matter. she remembered chance passages in chance books�things that had not really affected her at all at the time. she remembered someone's love for the princess badrulbadour; she remembered to have heard that love was a flame, a thirst, a withering up of the vitals�though she did not know what the vitals were. she had a vague recollection that love was said to render a hopeless lover's eyes hopeless; she remembered a character in a book who was said to have taken to drink through love; she remembered that lovers' existences were said to be punctuated with heavy sighs. once she went to the little cottage piano that was in the corner of the hall and began to play. it was a tinkly, reedy instrument, for none of that household had any turn for music. nancy herself could play a few simple songs, and she found herself playing. she had been sitting on the window seat, looking out on the fading day. leonora had gone to pay some calls; edward was looking after some planting up in the new spinney. thus she found herself playing on the old piano. she did not know how she came to be doing it. a silly lilting wavering tune came from before her in the dusk�a tune in which major notes with their cheerful insistence wavered and melted into minor sounds, as, beneath a bridge, the high lights on dark waters melt and waver and disappear into black depths. well, it was a silly old tune.... it goes with the words�they are about a willow tree, i think: thou art to all lost loves the best the only true plant found. �that sort of thing. it is herrick, i believe, and the music with the reedy, irregular, lilting sound that goes with herrick, and it was dusk; the heavy, hewn, dark pillars that supported the gallery were like mourning presences; the fire had sunk to nothing�a mere glow amongst white ashes.... it was a sentimental sort of place and light and hour.... and suddenly nancy found that she was crying. she was crying quietly; she went on to cry with long convulsive sobs. it seemed to her that everything gay, everything charming, all light, all sweetness, had gone out of life. unhappiness; unhappiness; unhappiness was all around her. she seemed to know no happy being and she herself was agonizing.... she remembered that edward's eyes were hopeless; she was certain that he was drinking too much; at times he sighed deeply. he appeared as a man who was burning with inward flame; drying up in the soul with thirst; withering up in the vitals. then, the torturing conviction came to her�the conviction that had visited her again and again�that edward must love some one other than leonora. with her little, pedagogic sectarianism she remembered that catholics do not do this thing. but edward was a protestant. then edward loved somebody.... and, after that thought, her eyes grew hopeless; she sighed as the old st bernard beside her did. at meals she would feel an intolerable desire to drink a glass of wine, and then another and then a third. then she would find herself grow gay.... but in half an hour the gaiety went; she felt like a person who is burning up with an inward flame; desiccating at the soul with thirst; withering up in the vitals. one evening she went into edward's gun-room�he had gone to a meeting of the national reserve committee. on the table beside his chair was a decanter of whisky. she poured out a wineglassful and drank it off. flame then really seemed to fill her body; her legs swelled; her face grew feverish. she dragged her tall height up to her room and lay in the dark. the bed reeled beneath her; she gave way to the thought that she was in edward's arms; that he was kissing her on her face that burned; on her shoulders that burned, and on her neck that was on fire. she never touched alcohol again. not once after that did she have such thoughts. they died out of her mind; they left only a feeling of shame so insupportable that her brain could not take it in and they vanished. she imagined that her anguish at the thought of edward's love for another person was solely sympathy for leonora; she determined that the rest of her life must be spent in acting as leonora's handmaiden�sweeping, tending, embroidering, like some deborah, some medieval saint�i am not, unfortunately, up in the catholic hagiology. but i know that she pictured herself as some personage with a depressed, earnest face and tightly closed lips, in a clear white room, watering flowers or tending an embroidery frame. or, she desired to go with edward to africa and to throw herself in the path of a charging lion so that edward might be saved for leonora at the cost of her life. well, along with her sad thoughts she had her childish ones. she knew nothing�nothing of life, except that one must live sadly. that she now knew. what happened to her on the night when she received at once the blow that edward wished her to go to her father in india and the blow of the letter from her mother was this. she called first upon her sweet saviour�and she thought of our lord as her sweet saviour!�that he might make it impossible that she should go to india. then she realized from edward's demeanour that he was determined that she should go to india. it must then be right that she should go. edward was always right in his determinations. he was the cid; he was lohengrin; he was the chevalier bayard. nevertheless her mind mutinied and revolted. she could not leave that house. she imagined that he wished her gone that she might not witness his amours with another girl. well, she was prepared to tell him that she was ready to witness his amours with another young girl. she would stay there�to comfort leonora. then came the desperate shock of the letter from her mother. her mother said, i believe, something like: "you have no right to go on living your life of prosperity and respect. you ought to be on the streets with me. how do you know that you are even colonel rufford's daughter?" she did not know what these words meant. she thought of her mother as sleeping beneath the arches whilst the snow fell. that was the impression conveyed to her mind by the words "on the streets". a platonic sense of duty gave her the idea that she ought to go to comfort her mother�the mother that bore her, though she hardly knew what the words meant. at the same time she knew that her mother had left her father with another man�therefore she pitied her father, and thought it terrible in herself that she trembled at the sound of her father's voice. if her mother was that sort of woman it was natural that her father should have had accesses of madness in which he had struck herself to the ground. and the voice of her conscience said to her that her first duty was to her parents. it was in accord with this awakened sense of duty that she undressed with great care and meticulously folded the clothes that she took off. sometimes, but not very often, she threw them helter-skelter about the room. and that sense of duty was her prevailing mood when leonora, tall, clean-run, golden-haired, all in black, appeared in her doorway, and told her that edward was dying of love for her. she knew then with her conscious mind what she had known within herself for months�that edward was dying�actually and physically dying�of love for her. it seemed to her that for one short moment her spirit could say: "domine, nunc dimittis,... lord, now, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." she imagined that she could cheerfully go away to glasgow and rescue her fallen mother. iv and it seemed to her to be in tune with the mood, with the hour, and with the woman in front of her to say that she knew edward was dying of love for her and that she was dying of love for edward. for that fact had suddenly slipped into place and become real for her as the niched marker on a whist tablet slips round with the pressure of your thumb. that rubber at least was made. and suddenly leonora seemed to have become different and she seemed to have become different in her attitude towards leonora. it was as if she, in her frail, white, silken kimono, sat beside her fire, but upon a throne. it was as if leonora, in her close dress of black lace, with the gleaming white shoulders and the coiled yellow hair that the girl had always considered the most beautiful thing in the world�it was as if leonora had become pinched, shrivelled, blue with cold, shivering, suppliant. yet leonora was commanding her. it was no good commanding her. she was going on the morrow to her mother who was in glasgow. leonora went on saying that she must stay there to save edward, who was dying of love for her. and, proud and happy in the thought that edward loved her, and that she loved him, she did not even listen to what leonora said. it appeared to her that it was leonora's business to save her husband's body; she, nancy, possessed his soul�a precious thing that she would shield and bear away up in her arms�as if leonora were a hungry dog, trying to spring up at a lamb that she was carrying. yes, she felt as if edward's love were a precious lamb that she were bearing away from a cruel and predatory beast. for, at that time, leonora appeared to her as a cruel and predatory beast. leonora, leonora with her hunger, with her cruelty had driven edward to madness. he must be sheltered by his love for her and by her love�her love from a great distance and unspoken, enveloping him, surrounding him, upholding him; by her voice speaking from glasgow, saying that she loved, that she adored, that she passed no moment without longing, loving, quivering at the thought of him. leonora said loudly, insistently, with a bitterly imperative tone: "you must stay here; you must belong to edward. i will divorce him." the girl answered: "the church does not allow of divorce. i cannot belong to your husband. i am going to glasgow to rescue my mother." the half-opened door opened noiselessly to the full. edward was there. his devouring, doomed eyes were fixed on the girl's face; his shoulders slouched forward; he was undoubtedly half drunk and he had the whisky decanter in one hand, a slanting candlestick in the other. he said, with a heavy ferocity, to nancy: "i forbid you to talk about these things. you are to stay here until i hear from your father. then you will go to your father." the two women, looking at each other, like beasts about to spring, hardly gave a glance to him. he leaned against the door-post. he said again: "nancy, i forbid you to talk about these things. i am the master of this house." and, at the sound of his voice, heavy, male, coming from a deep chest, in the night with the blackness behind him, nancy felt as if her spirit bowed before him, with folded hands. she felt that she would go to india, and that she desired never again to talk of these things. leonora said: "you see that it is your duty to belong to him. he must not be allowed to go on drinking." nancy did not answer. edward was gone; they heard him slipping and shambling on the polished oak of the stairs. nancy screamed when there came the sound of a heavy fall. leonora said again: "you see!" the sounds went on from the hall below; the light of the candle edward held flickered up between the hand rails of the gallery. then they heard his voice: "give me glasgow... glasgow, in scotland.. i want the number of a man called white, of simrock park, glasgow... edward white, simrock park, glasgow... ten minutes... at this time of night..." his voice was quite level, normal, and patient. alcohol took him in the legs, not the speech. "i can wait," his voice came again. "yes, i know they have a number. i have been in communication with them before." "he is going to telephone to your mother," leonora said. "he will make it all right for her." she got up and closed the door. she came back to the fire, and added bitterly: "he can always make it all right for everybody, except me�excepting me!" the girl said nothing. she sat there in a blissful dream. she seemed to see her lover sitting as he always sat, in a round-backed chair, in the dark hall�sitting low, with the receiver at his ear, talking in a gentle, slow voice, that he reserved for the telephone�and saving the world and her, in the black darkness. she moved her hand over the bareness of the base of her throat, to have the warmth of flesh upon it and upon her bosom. she said nothing; leonora went on talking.... god knows what leonora said. she repeated that the girl must belong to her husband. she said that she used that phrase because, though she might have a divorce, or even a dissolution of the marriage by the church, it would still be adultery that the girl and edward would be committing. but she said that that was necessary; it was the price that the girl must pay for the sin of having made edward love her, for the sin of loving her husband. she talked on and on, beside the fire. the girl must become an adulteress; she had wronged edward by being so beautiful, so gracious, so good. it was sinful to be so good. she must pay the price so as to save the man she had wronged. in between her pauses the girl could hear the voice of edward, droning on, indistinguishably, with jerky pauses for replies. it made her glow with pride; the man she loved was working for her. he at least was resolved; was malely determined; knew the right thing. leonora talked on with her eyes boring into nancy's. the girl hardly looked at her and hardly heard her. after a long time nancy said�after hours and hours: "i shall go to india as soon as edward hears from my father. i cannot talk about these things, because edward does not wish it." at that leonora screamed out and wavered swiftly towards the closed door. and nancy found that she was springing out of her chair with her white arms stretched wide. she was clasping the other woman to her breast; she was saying: "oh, my poor dear; oh, my poor dear." and they sat, crouching together in each other's arms, and crying and crying; and they lay down in the same bed, talking and talking, all through the night. and all through the night edward could hear their voices through the wall. that was how it went.... next morning they were all three as if nothing had happened. towards eleven edward came to nancy, who was arranging some christmas roses in a silver bowl. he put a telegram beside her on the table. "you can uncode it for yourself," he said. then, as he went out of the door, he said: "you can tell your aunt i have cabled to mr dowell to come over. he will make things easier till you leave." the telegram when it was uncoded, read, as far as i can remember: "will take mrs rufford to italy. undertake to do this for certain. am devotedly attached to mrs rufford. have no need of financial assistance. did not know there was a daughter, and am much obliged to you for pointing out my duty.�white." it was something like that. then that household resumed its wonted course of days until my arrival. v it is this part of the story that makes me saddest of all. for i ask myself unceasingly, my mind going round and round in a weary, baffled space of pain�what should these people have done? what, in the name of god, should they have done? the end was perfectly plain to each of them�it was perfectly manifest at this stage that, if the girl did not, in leonora's phrase, "belong to edward," edward must die, the girl must lose her reason because edward died�and, that after a time, leonora, who was the coldest and the strongest of the three, would console herself by marrying rodney bayham and have a quiet, comfortable, good time. that end, on that night, whilst leonora sat in the girl's bedroom and edward telephoned down below�that end was plainly manifest. the girl, plainly, was half-mad already; edward was half dead; only leonora, active, persistent, instinct with her cold passion of energy, was "doing things". what then, should they have done? worked out in the extinction of two very splendid personalities�for edward and the girl were splendid personalities, in order that a third personality, more normal, should have, after a long period of trouble, a quiet, comfortable, good time. i am writing this, now, i should say, a full eighteen months after the words that end my last chapter. since writing the words "until my arrival", which i see end that paragraph, i have seen again for a glimpse, from a swift train, beaucaire with the beautiful white tower, tarascon with the square castle, the great rhone, the immense stretches of the crau. i have rushed through all provence�and all provence no longer matters. it is no longer in the olive hills that i shall find my heaven; because there is only hell... . edward is dead; the girl is gone�oh, utterly gone; leonora is having a good time with rodney bayham, and i sit alone in branshaw teleragh. i have been through provence; i have seen africa; i have visited asia to see, in ceylon, in a darkened room, my poor girl, sitting motionless, with her wonderful hair about her, looking at me with eyes that did not see me, and saying distinctly: "credo in unum deum omnipotentem.... credo in unum deum omnipotentem." those are the only reasonable words she uttered; those are the only words, it appears, that she ever will utter. i suppose that they are reasonable words; it must be extraordinarily reasonable for her, if she can say that she believes in an omnipotent deity. well, there it is. i am very tired of it all.... for, i daresay, all this may sound romantic, but it is tiring, tiring, tiring to have been in the midst of it; to have taken the tickets; to have caught the trains; to have chosen the cabins; to have consulted the purser and the stewards as to diet for the quiescent patient who did nothing but announce her belief in an omnipotent deity. that may sound romantic�but it is just a record of fatigue. i don't know why i should always be selected to be serviceable. i don't resent it�but i have never been the least good. florence selected me for her own purposes, and i was no good to her; edward called me to come and have a chat with him, and i couldn't stop him cutting his throat. and then, one day eighteen months ago, i was quietly writing in my room at branshaw when leonora came to me with a letter. it was a very pathetic letter from colonel rufford about nancy. colonel rufford had left the army and had taken up an appointment at a tea-planting estate in ceylon. his letter was pathetic because it was so brief, so inarticulate, and so business-like. he had gone down to the boat to meet his daughter, and had found his daughter quite mad. it appears that at aden nancy had seen in a local paper the news of edward's suicide. in the red sea she had gone mad. she had remarked to mrs colonel luton, who was chaperoning her, that she believed in an omnipotent deity. she hadn't made any fuss; her eyes were quite dry and glassy. even when she was mad nancy could behave herself. colonel rufford said the doctor did not anticipate that there was any chance of his child's recovery. it was, nevertheless, possible that if she could see someone from branshaw it might soothe her and it might have a good effect. and he just simply wrote to leonora: "please come and see if you can do it." i seem to have lost all sense of the pathetic; but still, that simple, enormous request of the old colonel strikes me as pathetic. he was cursed by his atrocious temper; he had been cursed by a half-mad wife, who drank and went on the streets. his daughter was totally mad�and yet he believed in the goodness of human nature. he believed that leonora would take the trouble to go all the way to ceylon in order to soothe his daughter. leonora wouldn't. leonora didn't ever want to see nancy again. i daresay that that, in the circumstances, was natural enough. at the same time she agreed, as it were, on public grounds, that someone soothing ought to go from branshaw to ceylon. she sent me and her old nurse, who had looked after nancy from the time when the girl, a child of thirteen, had first come to branshaw. so off i go, rushing through provence, to catch the steamer at marseilles. and i wasn't the least good when i got to ceylon; and the nurse wasn't the least good. nothing has been the least good. the doctors said, at kandy, that if nancy could be brought to england, the sea air, the change of climate, the voyage, and all the usual sort of things, might restore her reason. of course, they haven't restored her reason. she is, i am aware, sitting in the hall, forty paces from where i am now writing. i don't want to be in the least romantic about it. she is very well dressed; she is quite quiet; she is very beautiful. the old nurse looks after her very efficiently. of course you have the makings of a situation here, but it is all very humdrum, as far as i am concerned. i should marry nancy if her reason were ever sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the anglican marriage service. but it is probable that her reason will never be sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the anglican marriage service. therefore i cannot marry her, according to the law of the land. so here i am very much where i started thirteen years ago. i am the attendant, not the husband, of a beautiful girl, who pays no attention to me. i am estranged from leonora, who married rodney bayham in my absence and went to live at bayham. leonora rather dislikes me, because she has got it into her head that i disapprove of her marriage with rodney bayham. well, i disapprove of her marriage. possibly i am jealous. yes, no doubt i am jealous. in my fainter sort of way i seem to perceive myself following the lines of edward ashburnham. i suppose that i should really like to be a polygamist; with nancy, and with leonora, and with maisie maidan and possibly even with florence. i am no doubt like every other man; only, probably because of my american origin i am fainter. at the same time i am able to assure you that i am a strictly respectable person. i have never done anything that the most anxious mother of a daughter or the most careful dean of a cathedral would object to. i have only followed, faintly, and in my unconscious desires, edward ashburnham. well, it is all over. not one of us has got what he really wanted. leonora wanted edward, and she has got rodney bayham, a pleasant enough sort of sheep. florence wanted branshaw, and it is i who have bought it from leonora. i didn't really want it; what i wanted mostly was to cease being a nurse-attendant. well, i am a nurse-attendant. edward wanted nancy rufford, and i have got her. only she is mad. it is a queer and fantastic world. why can't people have what they want? the things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me. is there any terrestial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people�like the lives of the ashburnhams, of the dowells, of the ruffords�broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic, lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? who the devil knows? for there was a great deal of imbecility about the closing scenes of the ashburnham tragedy. neither of those two women knew what they wanted. it was only edward who took a perfectly clear line, and he was drunk most of the time. but, drunk or sober, he stuck to what was demanded by convention and by the traditions of his house. nancy rufford had to be exported to india, and nancy rufford hadn't to hear a word of love from him. she was exported to india and she never heard a word from edward ashburnham. it was the conventional line; it was in tune with the tradition of edward's house. i daresay it worked out for the greatest good of the body politic. conventions and traditions, i suppose, work blindly but surely for the preservation of the normal type; for the extinction of proud, resolute and unusual individuals. edward was the normal man, but there was too much of the sentimentalist about him; and society does not need too many sentimentalists. nancy was a splendid creature, but she had about her a touch of madness. society does not need individuals with touches of madness about them. so edward and nancy found themselves steamrolled out and leonora survives, the perfectly normal type, married to a man who is rather like a rabbit. for rodney bayham is rather like a rabbit, and i hear that leonora is expected to have a baby in three months' time. so those splendid and tumultuous creatures with their magnetism and their passions�those two that i really loved�have gone from this earth. it is no doubt best for them. what would nancy have made of edward if she had succeeded in living with him; what would edward have made of her? for there was about nancy a touch of cruelty�a touch of definite actual cruelty that made her desire to see people suffer. yes, she desired to see edward suffer. and, by god, she gave him hell. she gave him an unimaginable hell. those two women pursued that poor devil and flayed the skin off him as if they had done it with whips. i tell you his mind bled almost visibly. i seem to see him stand, naked to the waist, his forearms shielding his eyes, and flesh hanging from him in rags. i tell you that is no exaggeration of what i feel. it was as if leonora and nancy banded themselves together to do execution, for the sake of humanity, upon the body of a man who was at their disposal. they were like a couple of sioux who had got hold of an apache and had him well tied to a stake. i tell you there was no end to the tortures they inflicted upon him. night after night he would hear them talking; talking; maddened, sweating, seeking oblivion in drink, he would lie there and hear the voices going on and on. and day after day leonora would come to him and would announce the results of their deliberations. they were like judges debating over the sentence upon a criminal; they were like ghouls with an immobile corpse in a tomb beside them. i don't think that leonora was any more to blame than the girl�though leonora was the more active of the two. leonora, as i have said, was the perfectly normal woman. i mean to say that in normal circumstances her desires were those of the woman who is needed by society. she desired children, decorum, an establishment; she desired to avoid waste, she desired to keep up appearances. she was utterly and entirely normal even in her utterly undeniable beauty. but i don't mean to say that she acted perfectly normally in this perfectly abnormal situation. all the world was mad around her and she herself, agonized, took on the complexion of a mad woman; of a woman very wicked; of the villain of the piece. what would you have? steel is a normal, hard, polished substance. but, if you put it in a hot fire it will become red, soft, and not to be handled. if you put it in a fire still more hot it will drip away. it was like that with leonora. she was made for normal circumstances�for mr rodney bayham, who will keep a separate establishment, secretly, in portsmouth, and make occasional trips to paris and to budapest. in the case of edward and the girl, leonora broke and simply went all over the place. she adopted unfamiliar and therefore extraordinary and ungraceful attitudes of mind. at one moment she was all for revenge. after haranguing the girl for hours through the night she harangued for hours of the day the silent edward. and edward just once tripped up, and that was his undoing. perhaps he had had too much whisky that afternoon. she asked him perpetually what he wanted. what did he want? what did he want? and all he ever answered was: "i have told you". he meant that he wanted the girl to go to her father in india as soon as her father should cable that he was ready to receive her. but just once he tripped up. to leonora's eternal question he answered that all he desired in life was that�that he could pick himself together again and go on with his daily occupations if�the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him. he wanted nothing more, he prayed his god for nothing more. well, he was a sentimentalist. and the moment that she heard that, leonora determined that the girl should not go five thousand miles away and that she should not continue to love edward. the way she worked it was this: she continued to tell the girl that she must belong to edward; she was going to get a divorce; she was going to get a dissolution of marriage from rome. but she considered it to be her duty to warn the girl of the sort of monster that edward was. she told the girl of la dolciquita, of mrs basil, of maisie maidan, of florence. she spoke of the agonies that she had endured during her life with the man, who was violent, overbearing, vain, drunken, arrogant, and monstrously a prey to his sexual necessities. and, at hearing of the miseries her aunt had suffered�for leonora once more had the aspect of an aunt to the girl�with the swift cruelty of youth and, with the swift solidarity that attaches woman to woman, the girl made her resolves. her aunt said incessantly: "you must save edward's life; you must save his life. all that he needs is a little period of satisfaction from you. then he will tire of you as he has of the others. but you must save his life." and, all the while, that wretched fellow knew�by a curious instinct that runs between human beings living together�exactly what was going on. and he remained dumb; he stretched out no finger to help himself. all that he required to keep himself a decent member of society was, that the girl, five thousand miles away, should continue to love him. they were putting a stopper upon that. i have told you that the girl came one night to his room. and that was the real hell for him. that was the picture that never left his imagination�the girl, in the dim light, rising up at the foot of his bed. he said that it seemed to have a greenish sort of effect as if there were a greenish tinge in the shadows of the tall bedposts that framed her body. and she looked at him with her straight eyes of an unflinching cruelty and she said: "i am ready to belong to you�to save your life." he answered: "i don't want it; i don't want it; i don't want it." and he says that he didn't want it; that he would have hated himself; that it was unthinkable. and all the while he had the immense temptation to do the unthinkable thing, not from the physical desire but because of a mental certitude. he was certain that if she had once submitted to him she would remain his for ever. he knew that. she was thinking that her aunt had said he had desired her to love him from a distance of five thousand miles. she said: "i can never love you now i know the kind of man you are. i will belong to you to save your life. but i can never love you." it was a fantastic display of cruelty. she didn't in the least know what it meant�to belong to a man. but, at that edward pulled himself together. he spoke in his normal tones; gruff, husky, overbearing, as he would have done to a servant or to a horse. "go back to your room," he said. "go back to your room and go to sleep. this is all nonsense." they were baffled, those two women. and then i came on the scene. vi my coming on the scene certainly calmed things down�for the whole fortnight that intervened between my arrival and the girl's departure. i don't mean to say that the endless talking did not go on at night or that leonora did not send me out with the girl and, in the interval, give edward a hell of a time. having discovered what he wanted�that the girl should go five thousand miles away and love him steadfastly as people do in sentimental novels, she was determined to smash that aspiration. and she repeated to edward in every possible tone that the girl did not love him; that the girl detested him for his brutality, his overbearingness, his drinking habits. she pointed out that edward in the girl's eyes, was already pledged three or four deep. he was pledged to leonora herself, to mrs basil, and to the memories of maisie maidan and to florence. edward never said anything. did the girl love edward, or didn't she? i don't know. at that time i daresay she didn't though she certainly had done so before leonora had got to work upon his reputation. she certainly had loved him for what i call the public side of his record�for his good soldiering, for his saving lives at sea, for the excellent landlord that he was and the good sportsman. but it is quite possible that all those things came to appear as nothing in her eyes when she discovered that he wasn't a good husband. for, though women, as i see them, have little or no feeling of responsibility towards a county or a country or a career�although they may be entirely lacking in any kind of communal solidarity�they have an immense and automatically working instinct that attaches them to the interest of womanhood. it is, of course, possible for any woman to cut out and to carry off any other woman's husband or lover. but i rather think that a woman will only do this if she has reason to believe that the other woman has given her husband a bad time. i am certain that if she thinks the man has been a brute to his wife she will, with her instinctive feeling for suffering femininity, "put him back", as the saying is. i don't attach any particular importance to these generalizations of mine. they may be right, they may be wrong; i am only an ageing american with very little knowledge of life. you may take my generalizations or leave them. but i am pretty certain that i am right in the case of nancy rufford�that she had loved edward ashburnham very deeply and tenderly. it is nothing to the point that she let him have it good and strong as soon as she discovered that he had been unfaithful to leonora and that his public services had cost more than leonora thought they ought to have cost. nancy would be bound to let him have it good and strong then. she would owe that to feminine public opinion; she would be driven to it by the instinct for self-preservation, since she might well imagine that if edward had been unfaithful to leonora, to mrs basil and to the memories of the other two, he might be unfaithful to herself. and, no doubt, she had her share of the sex instinct that makes women be intolerably cruel to the beloved person. anyhow, i don't know whether, at this point, nancy rufford loved edward ashburnham. i don't know whether she even loved him when, on getting, at aden, the news of his suicide she went mad. because that may just as well have been for the sake of leonora as for the sake of edward. or it may have been for the sake of both of them. i don't know. i know nothing. i am very tired. leonora held passionately the doctrine that the girl didn't love edward. she wanted desperately to believe that. it was a doctrine as necessary to her existence as a belief in the personal immortality of the soul. she said that it was impossible that nancy could have loved edward after she had given the girl her view of edward's career and character. edward, on the other hand, believed maunderingly that some essential attractiveness in himself must have made the girl continue to go on loving him�to go on loving him, as it were, in underneath her official aspect of hatred. he thought she only pretended to hate him in order to save her face and he thought that her quite atrocious telegram from brindisi was only another attempt to do that�to prove that she had feelings creditable to a member of the feminine commonweal. i don't know. i leave it to you. there is another point that worries me a good deal in the aspects of this sad affair. leonora says that, in desiring that the girl should go five thousand miles away and yet continue to love him, edward was a monster of selfishness. he was desiring the ruin of a young life. edward on the other hand put it to me that, supposing that the girl's love was a necessity to his existence, and, if he did nothing by word or by action to keep nancy's love alive, he couldn't be called selfish. leonora replied that showed he had an abominably selfish nature even though his actions might be perfectly correct. i can't make out which of them was right. i leave it to you. it is, at any rate, certain that edward's actions were perfectly�were monstrously, were cruelly�correct. he sat still and let leonora take away his character, and let leonora damn him to deepest hell, without stirring a finger. i daresay he was a fool; i don't see what object there was in letting the girl think worse of him than was necessary. still there it is. and there it is also that all those three presented to the world the spectacle of being the best of good people. i assure you that during my stay for that fortnight in that fine old house, i never so much as noticed a single thing that could have affected that good opinion. and even when i look back, knowing the circumstances, i can't remember a single thing any of them said that could have betrayed them. i can't remember, right up to the dinner, when leonora read out that telegram�not the tremor of an eyelash, not the shaking of a hand. it was just a pleasant country house-party. and leonora kept it up jolly well, for even longer than that�she kept it up as far as i was concerned until eight days after edward's funeral. immediately after that particular dinner�the dinner at which i received the announcement that nancy was going to leave for india on the following day�i asked leonora to let me have a word with her. she took me into her little sitting-room and i then said�i spare you the record of my emotions�that she was aware that i wished to marry nancy; that she had seemed to favour my suit and that it appeared to be rather a waste of money upon tickets and rather a waste of time upon travel to let the girl go to india if leonora thought that there was any chance of her marrying me. and leonora, i assure you, was the absolutely perfect british matron. she said that she quite favoured my suit; that she could not desire for the girl a better husband; but that she considered that the girl ought to see a little more of life before taking such an important step. yes, leonora used the words "taking such an important step". she was perfect. actually, i think she would have liked the girl to marry me enough but my programme included the buying of the kershaw's house about a mile away upon the fordingbridge road, and settling down there with the girl. that didn't at all suit leonora. she didn't want to have the girl within a mile and a half of edward for the rest of their lives. still, i think she might have managed to let me know, in some periphrasis or other, that i might have the girl if i would take her to philadelphia or timbuctoo. i loved nancy very much�and leonora knew it. however, i left it at that. i left it with the understanding that nancy was going away to india on probation. it seemed to me a perfectly reasonable arrangement and i am a reasonable sort of man. i simply said that i should follow nancy out to india after six months' time or so. or, perhaps, after a year. well, you see, i did follow nancy out to india after a year.... i must confess to having felt a little angry with leonora for not having warned me earlier that the girl would be going. i took it as one of the queer, not very straight methods that roman catholics seem to adopt in dealing with matters of this world. i took it that leonora had been afraid i should propose to the girl or, at any rate, have made considerably greater advances to her than i did, if i had known earlier that she was going away so soon. perhaps leonora was right; perhaps roman catholics, with their queer, shifty ways, are always right. they are dealing with the queer, shifty thing that is human nature. for it is quite possible that, if i had known nancy was going away so soon, i should have tried making love to her. and that would have produced another complication. it may have been just as well. it is queer the fantastic things that quite good people will do in order to keep up their appearance of calm pococurantism. for edward ashburnham and his wife called me half the world over in order to sit on the back seat of a dog-cart whilst edward drove the girl to the railway station from which she was to take her departure to india. they wanted, i suppose, to have a witness of the calmness of that function. the girl's luggage had been already packed and sent off before. her berth on the steamer had been taken. they had timed it all so exactly that it went like clockwork. they had known the date upon which colonel rufford would get edward's letter and they had known almost exactly the hour at which they would receive his telegram asking his daughter to come to him. it had all been quite beautifully and quite mercilessly arranged, by edward himself. they gave colonel rufford, as a reason for telegraphing, the fact that mrs colonel somebody or other would be travelling by that ship and that she would serve as an efficient chaperon for the girl. it was a most amazing business, and i think that it would have been better in the eyes of god if they had all attempted to gouge out each other's eyes with carving knives. but they were "good people". after my interview with leonora i went desultorily into edward's gun- room. i didn't know where the girl was and i thought i might find her there. i suppose i had a vague idea of proposing to her in spite of leonora. so, i presume, i don't come of quite such good people as the ashburnhams. edward was lounging in his chair smoking a cigar and he said nothing for quite five minutes. the candles glowed in the green shades; the reflections were green in the glasses of the book-cases that held guns and fishing-rods. over the mantelpiece was the brownish picture of the white horse. those were the quietest moments that i have ever known. then, suddenly, edward looked me straight in the eyes and said: "look here, old man, i wish you would drive with nancy and me to the station tomorrow." i said that of course i would drive with him and nancy to the station on the morrow. he lay there for a long time, looking along the line of his knees at the fluttering fire, and then suddenly, in a perfectly calm voice, and without lifting his eyes, he said: "i am so desperately in love with nancy rufford that i am dying of it." poor devil�he hadn't meant to speak of it. but i guess he just had to speak to somebody and i appeared to be like a woman or a solicitor. he talked all night. well, he carried out the programme to the last breath. it was a very clear winter morning, with a good deal of frost in it. the sun was quite bright, the winding road between the heather and the bracken was very hard. i sat on the back-seat of the dog-cart; nancy was beside edward. they talked about the way the cob went; edward pointed out with the whip a cluster of deer upon a coombe three-quarters of a mile away. we passed the hounds in the level bit of road beside the high trees going into fordingbridge and edward pulled up the dog-cart so that nancy might say good-bye to the huntsman and cap him a last sovereign. she had ridden with those hounds ever since she had been thirteen. the train was five minutes late and they imagined that that was because it was market-day at swindon or wherever the train came from. that was the sort of thing they talked about. the train came in; edward found her a first-class carriage with an elderly woman in it. the girl entered the carriage, edward closed the door and then she put out her hand to shake mine. there was upon those people's faces no expression of any kind whatever. the signal for the train's departure was a very bright red; that is about as passionate a statement as i can get into that scene. she was not looking her best; she had on a cap of brown fur that did not very well match her hair. she said: "so long," to edward. edward answered: "so long." he swung round on his heel and, large, slouching, and walking with a heavy deliberate pace, he went out of the station. i followed him and got up beside him in the high dog-cart. it was the most horrible performance i have ever seen. and, after that, a holy peace, like the peace of god which passes all understanding, descended upon branshaw teleragh. leonora went about her daily duties with a sort of triumphant smile�a very faint smile, but quite triumphant. i guess she had so long since given up any idea of getting her man back that it was enough for her to have got the girl out of the house and well cured of her infatuation. once, in the hall, when leonora was going out, edward said, beneath his breath�but i just caught the words: "thou hast conquered, o pale galilean." it was like his sentimentality to quote swinburne. but he was perfectly quiet and he had given up drinking. the only thing that he ever said to me after that drive to the station was: "it's very odd. i think i ought to tell you, dowell, that i haven't any feelings at all about the girl now it's all over. don't you worry about me. i'm all right." a long time afterwards he said: "i guess it was only a flash in the pan." he began to look after the estates again; he took all that trouble over getting off the gardener's daughter who had murdered her baby. he shook hands smilingly with every farmer in the market-place. he addressed two political meetings; he hunted twice. leonora made him a frightful scene about spending the two hundred pounds on getting the gardener's daughter acquitted. everything went on as if the girl had never existed. it was very still weather. well, that is the end of the story. and, when i come to look at it i see that it is a happy ending with wedding bells and all. the villains�for obviously edward and the girl were villains�have been punished by suicide and madness. the heroine�the perfectly normal, virtuous and slightly deceitful heroine�has become the happy wife of a perfectly normal, virtuous and slightly deceitful husband. she will shortly become a mother of a perfectly normal, virtuous slightly deceitful son or daughter. a happy ending, that is what it works out at. i cannot conceal from myself the fact that i now dislike leonora. without doubt i am jealous of rodney bayham. but i don't know whether it is merely a jealousy arising from the fact that i desired myself to possess leonora or whether it is because to her were sacrificed the only two persons that i have ever really loved�edward ashburnham and nancy rufford. in order to set her up in a modern mansion, replete with every convenience and dominated by a quite respectable and eminently economical master of the house, it was necessary that edward and nancy rufford should become, for me at least, no more than tragic shades. i seem to see poor edward, naked and reclining amidst darkness, upon cold rocks, like one of the ancient greek damned, in tartarus or wherever it was. and as for nancy... well, yesterday at lunch she said suddenly: "shuttlecocks!" and she repeated the word "shuttlecocks" three times. i know what was passing in her mind, if she can be said to have a mind, for leonora has told me that, once, the poor girl said she felt like a shuttlecock being tossed backwards and forwards between the violent personalities of edward and his wife. leonora, she said, was always trying to deliver her over to edward, and edward tacitly and silently forced her back again. and the odd thing was that edward himself considered that those two women used him like a shuttlecock. or, rather, he said that they sent him backwards and forwards like a blooming parcel that someone didn't want to pay the postage on. and leonora also imagined that edward and nancy picked her up and threw her down as suited their purely vagrant moods. so there you have the pretty picture. mind, i am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. i am not advocating free love in this or any other case. society must go on, i suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and to madness. but i guess that i myself, in my fainter way, come into the category of the passionate, of the headstrong, and the too-truthful. for i can't conceal from myself the fact that i loved edward ashburnham�and that i love him because he was just myself. if i had had the courage and virility and possibly also the physique of edward ashburnham i should, i fancy, have done much what he did. he seems to me like a large elder brother who took me out on several excursions and did many dashing things whilst i just watched him robbing the orchards, from a distance. and, you see, i am just as much of a sentimentalist as he was.. .. yes, society must go on; it must breed, like rabbits. that is what we are here for. but then, i don't like society�much. i am that absurd figure, an american millionaire, who has bought one of the ancient haunts of english peace. i sit here, in edward's gun-room, all day and all day in a house that is absolutely quiet. no one visits me, for i visit no one. no one is interested in me, for i have no interests. in twenty minutes or so i shall walk down to the village, beneath my own oaks, alongside my own clumps of gorse, to get the american mail. my tenants, the village boys and the tradesmen will touch their hats to me. so life peters out. i shall return to dine and nancy will sit opposite me with the old nurse standing behind her. enigmatic, silent, utterly well-behaved as far as her knife and fork go, nancy will stare in front of her with the blue eyes that have over them strained, stretched brows. once, or perhaps twice, during the meal her knife and fork will be suspended in mid-air as if she were trying to think of something that she had forgotten. then she will say that she believes in an omnipotent deity or she will utter the one word "shuttle-cocks", perhaps. it is very extraordinary to see the perfect flush of health on her cheeks, to see the lustre of her coiled black hair, the poise of the head upon the neck, the grace of the white hands�and to think that it all means nothing�that it is a picture without a meaning. yes, it is queer. but, at any rate, there is always leonora to cheer you up; i don't want to sadden you. her husband is quite an economical person of so normal a figure that he can get quite a large proportion of his clothes ready- made. that is the great desideratum of life, and that is the end of my story. the child is to be brought up as a romanist. it suddenly occurs to me that i have forgotten to say how edward met his death. you remember that peace had descended upon the house; that leonora was quietly triumphant and that edward said his love for the girl had been merely a passing phase. well, one afternoon we were in the stables together, looking at a new kind of flooring that edward was trying in a loose-box. edward was talking with a good deal of animation about the necessity of getting the numbers of the hampshire territorials up to the proper standard. he was quite sober, quite quiet, his skin was clear-coloured; his hair was golden and perfectly brushed; the level brick-dust red of his complexion went clean up to the rims of his eyelids; his eyes were porcelain blue and they regarded me frankly and directly. his face was perfectly expressionless; his voice was deep and rough. he stood well back upon his legs and said: "we ought to get them up to two thousand three hundred and fifty." a stable-boy brought him a telegram and went away. he opened it negligently, regarded it without emotion, and, in complete silence, handed it to me. on the pinkish paper in a sprawled handwriting i read: "safe brindisi. having rattling good time. nancy." well, edward was the english gentleman; but he was also, to the last, a sentimentalist, whose mind was compounded of indifferent poems and novels. he just looked up to the roof of the stable, as if he were looking to heaven, and whispered something that i did not catch. then he put two fingers into the waistcoat pocket of his grey, frieze suit; they came out with a little neat pen-knife�quite a small pen- knife. he said to me: "you might just take that wire to leonora." and he looked at me with a direct, challenging, brow-beating glare. i guess he could see in my eyes that i didn't intend to hinder him. why should i hinder him? i didn't think he was wanted in the world, let his confounded tenants, his rifle-associations, his drunkards, reclaimed and unreclaimed, get on as they liked. not all the hundreds and hundreds of them deserved that that poor devil should go on suffering for their sakes. when he saw that i did not intend to interfere with him his eyes became soft and almost affectionate. he remarked: "so long, old man, i must have a bit of a rest, you know." i didn't know what to say. i wanted to say, "god bless you", for i also am a sentimentalist. but i thought that perhaps that would not be quite english good form, so i trotted off with the telegram to leonora. she was quite pleased with it. none the shopkeeper turned gentleman. (le bourgeois gentilhomme.) by moliÈre, translated into english prose. _with short introductions and explanatory notes_. by charles heron wall. 'le bourgeois gentilhomme' was acted before the king for the first time at chambord, on october , , and on november at the palais royal. after the second representation, louis xiv. said to molière, "you have never written anything which amused me more, and your play is excellent." but it obtained a still greater success in paris, where the _bourgeois_ willingly and good-humouredly laughed at what they deemed their neighbours' weaknesses. the three first acts are the best; louis xiv. hurried molière so with the last that they degenerated into burlesque. molière acted the part of the bourgeois. persons represented. mr. jourdain. clÉonte, _in love with_ lucile. dorante, _a count, in love with_ dorimÈne. covielle, _servant to_ clÉonte. a music master, etc. a dancing master, etc. a fencing master. a professor of philosophy. a master tailor. assistant tailors. two lackeys. mrs. jourdain. lucile, _daughter to_ mr. jourdain. dorimÈne, _a marchioness_. nicole, _maid-servant to_ mr. jourdain. _the scene is in_ paris, _in_ mr. jourdain's _house_. the shopkeeper turned gentleman. act i. _the overture is played by a great many instruments; and in the middle of the stage the pupil of the music master is seated at a table composing a serenade which mr. jourdain has asked for_. scene i.--music master, dancing master, three singers, two violin players, four dancers. mus. mas. (_to the_ musicians). come into this room, and rest till he comes. dan. mas. (_to the_ dancers). come also, on this side. mus. mas. (_to his_ pupil). have you finished? pup. yes. mus. mas. let me see. very good. dan. mas. is it anything new? mus. mas. yes; it is an air for a serenade that i made him compose while we are waiting for our gentleman to wake up. dan. mas. will you allow me to see what it is? mus. mas. you shall hear it, as well as the dialogue, when he comes; he won't be long. dan. mas. we both have plenty to do now; have we not? mus. mas. indeed we have. we have found the very man we both wanted. he brings us in a comfortable little income, with his notions of gentility and gallantry which he has taken into his head; and it would be well for your dancing and my music if everybody were like him. dan. mas. no; not altogether. i wish, for his sake, that he would appreciate better than he does the things we give him. mus. mas. he certainly understands them but little; but he pays well, and that is nowadays what our arts require above all things. dan. mas. i must confess, for my part, that i rather hunger after glory. applause finds a very ready answer in my heart, and i think it mortifying enough that in the fine arts we should have to exhibit ourselves before fools, and submit our compositions to the vulgar taste of an ass. no! say what you will, there is a real pleasure in working for people who are able to appreciate the refinements of an art; who know how to yield a kind recognition to the beauties of a work, and who, by felicitous approbations, reward you for your labour. yes! the most charming recompense one can receive for the things which one does is to see them understood, and to have them received with the applause that honours. nothing, in my opinion, can repay us better than this for all our fatigues; and the praises of the enlightened are a true delight to me. mus. mas. i grant it; and i relish them as much as you do. there is certainly nothing more refreshing than the applause you speak of; still we cannot live on this flattering acknowledgment of our talent. undiluted praise does not give competence to a man; we must have something more solid to fall back upon, and the best praise is the praise of the pocket. our man, it is true, is a man of very limited capacity, who speaks at random upon all things, and only gives applause in the wrong place; but his money makes up for the errors of his judgment. he keeps his discernment in his purse, and his praises are golden. this ignorant, commonplace citizen is, as you see, better to us than that clever nobleman who introduced us here. dan. mas. there is some truth in what you say; still i think that you set a little too much value on money, and that it is in itself something so base that he who respects himself should never make a display of his love for it. mus. mas. yet you receive readily enough the money our man gives you. dan. mas. certainly; but my whole happiness does not depend upon it; and i can still wish that with all his wealth he had good taste. mus. mas. i wish it as much as you do; and we are both working as hard as we can towards that end. but at the same time he gives us the opportunity of making ourselves known. he shall pay for others, and others shall praise for him. dan. mas. here he comes. scene ii.--mr. jourdain (_in a dressing-gown and night-cap_), the music master, the dancing master, the pupil of the music master, a lady singer, two men singers, dancers, two servants. mr. jour. well, gentlemen! and what have you got there? are you ready to show me your little drollery? dan. mas. how? what little drollery? mr. jour. why, the ... what do you call it? your prologue or dialogue of songs and dancing. dan. mas. ah, ah! mus. mas. you see we are quite ready. mr. jour. i have kept you waiting a little, but it is because i am to be dressed to-day like a man of rank, and my tailor sent me a pair of silk stockings which i thought i should never be able to get on. mus. mas. we are here only to await your leisure. mr. jour. i hope you will both stop till they have brought me my clothes, so that you may see me. dan. mas. as you please. mr. jour. you will see me equipped fashionably from head to foot. mus. mas. we have no doubt of it. mr. jour. i have had this dressing gown made for me. dan. mas. it is very handsome, mr. jour. my tailor told me that people of quality are dressed like this in the morning. mus. mas. it becomes you wonderfully well. mr. jour. hullo! fellows! hullo! i say; my two lackeys, here! st lack. do you want anything, sir? mr. jour. no; it was only to see if you heard me readily. (_to the_ two masters) what do you think of my liveries? dan. mas. they are magnificent. mr. jour. (_opening his gown, and showing his tight breeches of scarlet velvet, and a green velvet morning jacket which he is wearing_). this is a kind of deshabille to go about early in the morning. mus. mas. it is charming. mr. jour. i say! lackey! st lack. sir. mr. jour. the other. nd lack. sir. mr. jour. (_taking off his dressing-gown_). hold my dressing-gown. (_to the_ two masters) do you think i look well so? dan. mas. perfectly well; nothing could be better. mr. jour. now let us see a little of this affair of yours. mus. mas. i should like, first of all, for you to hear an air which he (_pointing to his_ pupil) has just composed for the serenade you asked of me. he is one of my pupils, who has an admirable talent for this kind of thing. mr. jour. yes; but you should not have had it done by a pupil; you were not too good for the business yourself. mus. mas. you must not be deceived, sir, by the name of pupil. these kind of pupils know sometimes as much as the greatest masters; and the air is as beautiful as possible. only just listen to it. mr. jour. (_to his_ servants). hand me my dressing-gown, so that may hear better.... stay, i believe that i shall be better without.... no, give it me back again; that will be best. the pupil all night and day i languish on; the sick man none can save since those bright eyes have laid him low, to your stern laws a slave; if thus to those you love a meed of care you bring, what pain, fair iris, will you find your foemen's hearts to wring? mr. jour. this song seems to me rather dismal; it sends one to sleep; could you not enliven it a bit here and there? mus. mas. we must, sir, suit the air to the words. mr. jour. i was taught a very pretty one quite lately; stop a moment ... ahem ... what is it? how does it begin? dan. mas. upon my word, sir, i do not know. mr. jour. there is some lamb in it. dan. mas. lamb? mr. jour. yes, ah! i have it. (_he sings._) / when i had jenny seen, i thought her kind as fair, i thought she'd gentler been than lambkin on the green; but ah! but ah! she's far less mild, far sterner, i declare, than tigers are in forests wild. now, isn't it pretty? mus. mas. the prettiest thing in the world. dan. mas. and you sing it very well. mr. jour. do i? i have never learnt music. mus. mas. you ought to learn it, sir, as you do dancing. these are two arts which are closely bound together. dan. mas. and which open the human mind to the beauty of things. mr. jour. do people of rank learn music also? mus. mas. yes, sir. mr. jour. i will learn it, then; but i hardly know how i shall find time for it; for, besides the fencing master who teaches me, i have engaged a professor of philosophy, who is to begin this morning. mus. mas. philosophy is something, no doubt; but music, sir, music.... dan. mas. music and dancing, sir; in music and dancing we have all that we need. mus. mas. there is nothing so useful in a state as music. dan. mas. there is nothing so necessary to men as dancing. mus. mas. without music no kingdom can exist. dan. mas. without dancing a man can do nothing. mus. mas. all the disorders, all the wars that happen in the world, are caused by nothing but the want of music. dan. mas. all the sorrows and troubles of mankind, all the fatal misfortunes which fill the pages of history, the blunders of statesmen, the failures of great captains, all these come from the want of a knowledge of dancing. mr. jour. how is that? mus. mas. does not war arise from a want of concord between them? mr. jour. true. mus. mas. and if all men learnt music, would not this be the means of keeping them in better harmony, and of seeing universal peace reign in the world? mr. jour. you are quite right. dan. mas. when a man has committed some fault, either in the management of his family affairs, or in the government of a state, or in the command of an army, do we not say, "so-and-so has made a false step in such an affair"? mr. jour. yes, we do say so. dan. mas. and from whence can proceed the false step if it is not from ignorance of the art of dancing? mr. jour. this is true, and you are both right. dan. mas. this will give you an idea of the excellence and importance of dancing and music. mr. jour. i understand it now. mus. mas. will you look at our two compositions? mr. jour. yes. mus. mas. i have already told you that it is a short attempt which i made some time since to represent the different passions which can be expressed by music. mr. jour. very well. mus. mas. (_to the_ singers). come forward. (_to_ mr. jourdain) you must fancy that they are dressed like shepherds. mr. jour. why always shepherds? one sees nothing but that everywhere. dan. mas. when we make people speak to music, we must, for the sake of probability, adopt the pastoral. singing has always been affected by shepherds, and it is not very likely that our princes or citizens would sing their passions in dialogue. mr. jour. well! well! go on. lady singer. the realm of passion in a loving heart full many a care may vex, full many a smart; in vain we fondly languish, softly sigh; we learn too late, whatever friends may cry, to value liberty before it fly. st man singer. sweeter than liberty are love's bright fires, kindling in two fond hearts the same desires; happiness could never live by love unfed, pleasure itself would die if love were dead. nd man singer. love would be sweet if love could constant be, but ah! sad fate, no faithful loves we see! the fair are false; no prayers their heart can move, and who will love when they inconstant prove? st sing. ah! love, how sweet thou art! lady sing. ah! freedom is happier! nd sing. thou inconstant heart! st sing. to me how dear, how blest! lady sing. my soul enraptured see! nd sing. i shrink, i turn from thee! st sing. ah! leave this idle strife, and learn to love. lady sing. i will show thee one who'll constant prove. nd sing. alas! where seek her? lady sing. to defend our name, i offer you my heart, nor heed your blame. nd sing. but, lady, dare i trust that promise blest? lady sing. experience will decide who loves the best. nd sing. who fails in constancy or depth of love the gods from him their favour will remove. all three. such noble feelings should our souls inspire, and melt our heart beneath love's gentle fire. for love is sweet when hearts are true and pure, and love shall last while earth and heaven endure. mr. jour. is that all? mus. mas. yes. mr. jour. i think it very well turned out, and there are in it some pretty enough little sayings. dan. mas. you have here from me an essay of the most beautiful movements and most graceful attitudes with which a dance can be varied. mr. jour. are these shepherds also? dan. mas. they are what you please. (_to the_ dancers) ho! ho! here! _entry of the_ ballet. four dancers _execute the various movements and steps which the_ dancing master _orders them_. act ii. scene i.--mr. jourdain, dancing master, music master. mr. jour. this performance is not bad, and these fellows don't do it badly. mus. mas. when the dance is accompanied by the music, you will find it still more effective, and you will see something charming in the little ballet we have prepared for you. mr. jour. it is for this afternoon, mind; and the person for whom i have ordered all this is to do me the honour of coming to dine here. dan. mas. everything is ready. mus. mas. but, sir, this is not enough; a gentleman magnificent in all his ideas like you, and who has taste for doing things handsomely, should have a concert at his house every wednesday or thursday. mr. jour. but why should i? do people of quality have concerts? mus. mas. yes, sir. mr. jour. oh! very well! then i too must have some. it'll be fine? mus. mas. very. you must have three voices: a treble, a counter-tenor, and a bass; which must be accompanied by a bass-viol, a theorbo lute, and a harpsichord for the thorough-basses, with two violins to play the harmonics. mr. jour. you must also have a trumpet-marine. [footnote: an instrument with one thick string.] the trumpet-marine is an instrument that i like, and a very harmonious one. mus. mas. leave all the arrangements to us. mr. jour. be sure you don't forget to send me, by and by, some singers to sing at table. mus. mas. you shall have all that is necessary. mr. jour. but, above all, give us a nice ballet. mus. mas. you will be pleased with it, and particularly with certain minuets which you shall see in it. mr. jour. ah! minuets are my favourite dance, and you should see me dance one. come, my master. dan. mas. a hat, sir, if you please. (mr. jourdain _takes the hat from his_ servant, _and puts it on over his night-cap; his master takes him by both hands, and makes him dance to a minuet air which he hums._) la, la, la, la, la, la; la, la, la, la, la, la, la; la, la, la, la, la, la; la, la, la, la, la, la; la, la, la, la, la; in time, if you please; la, la, la, la, la; the right leg, la, la, la; do not shake your shoulders so much; la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la; your two arms are crippled; la, la, la, la, la; hold up your head; turn out your toes; la, la, la; your body erect. mr. jour. eh! eh! mus. mas. wonderfully well done. mr. jour. now i think of it! teach me to make a bow to a marchioness. i shall have need of it presently. dan. mas. a bow to a marchioness? mr. jour. yes; a marchioness, whose name is dorimène. dan. mas. give me your hand. mr. jour. no. you need only do it yourself. i shall be sure to remember. dan. mas. if you want to salute her with great respect, you must first of all bow whilst stepping backward, then, advancing towards her, make three bows, and at the last bow bend down to her very knees. mr. jour. do it a little for me to see. (_after the_ dancing master _has made three bows_) good. scene ii.--mr. jourdain, music master, dancing master, a servant. ser. sir, your fencing master is here. mr. jour. make him come in here for my lesson. (_to the_ music _and_ dancing masters) i wish you to see me perform. scene iii.--mr. jourdain, fencing master, music master, dancing master, a servant _holding two foils_. fen. mas. (_taking the two foils from the hands of the_ servant, _and giving one to_ mr. jourdain). now, sir, the salute. the body upright, resting slightly on the left thigh. the legs not so far apart; the feet in a line. the wrist in a line with the thigh. the point of the foil opposite the shoulder. the arm not quite so much extended. the left hand as high as the eye. the left shoulder more squared. the head erect; the look firm. advance; the body steady. engage my blade in quart, and retain the engagement. one, two. as you were. once more, with the foot firm. one, two; a step to the rear. when you make an attack, sir, the sword should move first, and the body be well held back. one, two. engage my blade in tierce, and retain the engagement. advance; the body steady. advance; one, two. recover. once more. one, two. a step to the rear. on guard, sir; on guard. (_the_ fencing master _delivers two or three attacks, calling out_, "on guard!") mr. jour. ah! mus. mas. you are doing wonders. fen. mas. as i have already told you, the whole art of fencing consists of one of two things--in giving and not receiving; and as i showed you the other day by demonstrative reason, it is impossible for you to receive if you know how to turn aside your adversary's weapon from the line of your body; and this again depends only on a slight movement of the wrist to the inside or the out. [footnote: kindly corrected by mr. maclaren, the gymnasium, oxford.] mr. jour. so that a man, without having any courage, is sure of killing his man, and of not being killed himself. fen. mas. exactly. did you not see plainly the demonstration of it? mr. jour. yes. fen. mas. and this shows you of what importance we must be in a state; and how much the science of arms is superior to all the other useless sciences, such as dancing, music.... dan. mas. gently, mr. fencing master; speak of dancing with respect, if you please. mus. mas. pray learn to treat more properly the excellence of music. fen. mas. you certainly are odd sort of people to try and compare your sciences to mine. mus. mas. just see the man of importance! dan. mas. a fine animal, to be sure, with his plastron. fen. mas. take care, my little dancing master, or i shall make you dance in fine style. and you, my little musician, i'll teach you to sing out. dan. mas. and you, my beater of iron, i'll teach you your trade. mr. jour. (_to the_ dancing master). are you mad to go and quarrel with a man, who understands tierce and quart, and knows how to kill another by demonstrative reason? dan. mas. i don't care a straw for his demonstrative reason, and his tierce and his quart. mr. jour. (_to the_ dancing master). gently, i tell you. fen. mas. (_to the_ dancing master). how! you little impudent fellow! mr. jour. ah! my fencing master! dan. mas. (_to the_ fencing master). how! you great cart-horse! mr. jour. stop! my dancing master! fen. mas. if i once begin with you.... mr. jour. (_to the_ fencing master). gently. dan. mar. if i lay my hand upon you.... mr. jour. softly. fen. mas. i will beat you after such a fashion.... mr. jour. (_to the_ fencing master). for goodness sake! dan. mas. i'll thrash you in such a style.... mr. jour. (_to the_ dancing master). i beg of you.... mus. mas. let us teach him a little how to behave himself. mr. jour. (_to the_ music master). gracious heavens! do stop. scene iv.--professor of philosophy, mr. jourdain, music master, dancing master, fencing master, a servant. mr. jour. oh! you are in the very nick of time with your philosophy. pray come here and restore peace among these people. prof. phil. what is going on? what is the matter, gentlemen? mr. jour. they have got themselves into such a rage about the importance that ought to be attached to their different professions that they have almost come to blows over it. prof. phil. for shame, gentlemen; how can you thus forget yourselves? have you not read the learned treatise which seneca composed on anger? is there anything more base and more shameful than the passion which changes a man into a savage beast, and ought not reason to govern all our actions? dan. mas. how, sir! he comes and insults us both in our professions; he despises dancing, which i teach, and music, which is his occupation. prof. phil. a wise man is above all the insults that can be offered him; and the best and noblest answer one can make to all kinds of provocation is moderation and patience. fen. mas. they have both the impertinence to compare their professions to mine! prof. phil. why should this offend you? it is not for vain glory and rank that men should strive among themselves. what distinguishes one man from another is wisdom and virtue. dan. mas. i maintain that dancing is a science which we cannot honour too much. [footnote: in fact, dancing was much more honoured in molière's time than it is now.] mus. mas. and i that music is a science which all ages have revered. fen. mas. and i, i maintain against them both that the science of attack and defence is the best and most necessary of all sciences. prof. phil. and for what, then, do you count philosophy? i think you are all three very bold fellows to dare to speak before me with this arrogance, and impudently to give the name of science to things which are not even to be honoured with the name of art, but which can only be classed with the trades of prize-fighter, street-singer, and mountebank. fen. mas. get out, you dog of a philosopher. mus. mas. get along with you, you beggarly pedant. dan. mas. begone, you empty-headed college scout. prof. phil. how, scoundrels that you are! (_the_ philosopher _rushes upon them, and they all three belabour him_.) mr. jour. mr. philosopher. prof. phil. infamous villains! mr. jour. mr. philosopher! fen. mas. plague take the animal! mr. jour. gentlemen! prof. phil. impudent cads! mr. jour. mr. philosopher! dan. mas. deuce take the saddled ass! mr. jour. gentlemen! prof. phil. scoundrels! mr. jour. mr. philosopher! mus. mas. devil take the insolent fellow! mr. jour. gentlemen! prof. phil. knaves, beggars, wretches, impostors! mr. jour. mr. philosopher! gentlemen! mr. philosopher! gentlemen! mr. philosopher! scene v.--mr. jourdain, a servant. mr. jour. well! fight as much as you like, i can't help it; but don't expect me to go and spoil my dressing-gown to separate you. i should be a fool indeed to thrust myself among them, and receive some blow or other that might hurt me. scene vi.--professor of philosophy, mr. jourdain, a servant. prof. phil. (_setting his collar in order_). now for our lesson. mr. jour. ah! sir, how sorry i am for the blows they have given you. prof. phil. it is of no consequence. a philosopher knows how to receive things calmly, and i shall compose against them a satire, in the style of juvenal, which will cut them up in proper fashion. let us drop this subject. what do you wish to learn? mr. jour. everything i can, for i have the greatest desire in the world to be learned; and it vexes me more than i can tell that my father and mother did not make me learn thoroughly all the sciences when i was young. prof. phil. this is a praiseworthy feeling. _nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago_. you understand this, and you have no doubt a knowledge of latin? mr. jour. yes; but act as if i had none. explain to me the meaning of it. prof. phil. the meaning of it is, that, _without science, life is an image of death_. mr. jour. that latin is quite right. prof. phil. have you any principles, any rudiments of science? mr. jour. oh yes; i can read and write. prof. phil. with what would you like to begin? shall i teach you logic? mr. jour. and what may this logic be? prof. phil. it is that which teaches us the three operations of the mind. mr. jour. what are they, these three operations of the mind? prof. phil. the first, the second, and the third. the first is to conceive well by means of universals; the second, to judge well by means of categories; and the third, to draw a conclusion aright by means of the figures _barbara, celarent, darii, ferio, baralipton_, &c. mr. jour. pooh! what repulsive words. this logic does not by any means suit me. teach me something more enlivening. prof. phil. will you learn moral philosophy? mr. jour. moral philosophy? prof. phil. yes. mr. jour. what does it say, this moral philosophy? prof. phil. it treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate their passions, and.... mr. jour. no, none of that. i am devilishly hot-tempered, and, morality or no morality, i like to give full vent to my anger whenever i have a mind to it. prof. phil. would you like to learn physics? mr. jour. and what have physics to say for themselves? prof. phil. physics are that science which explains the principles of natural things and the properties of bodies, which discourses of the nature of the elements, of metals, minerals, stones, plants, and animals; which teaches us the cause of all the meteors, the rainbow, the _ignis fatuus_, comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, wind, and whirlwinds. mr. jour. there is too much hullaballoo in all that; too much riot and rumpus. prof. phil. what would you have me teach you then? mr. jour. teach me spelling. prof. phil. very good. mr. jour. afterwards you will teach me the almanac, so that i may know when there is a moon, and when there isn't one. prof. phil. be it so. in order to give a right interpretation to your thought, and to treat this matter philosophically, we must begin, according to the order of things, with an exact knowledge of the nature of the letters, and the different way in which each is pronounced. and on this head i have to tell you that letters are divided into vowels, so called because they express the voice, and into consonants, so called because they are sounded with the vowels, and only mark the different articulations of the voice. there are five vowels or voices, _a, e, i, o, u_. [footnote: it is scarcely necessary to say that this description, such as it is, only applies to the french vowels as they are pronounced in _pâte, thé, ici, côté, du_ respectively.] mr. jour. i understand all that. prof. phil. the vowel _a_ is formed by opening the mouth very wide; _a_. mr. jour. _a, a_; yes. prof. phil. the vowel _e_ is formed by drawing the lower jaw a little nearer to the upper; _a, e_. mr. jour. _a, e; a, e;_ to be sure. ah! how beautiful that is! prof. phil. and the vowel _i_ by bringing the jaws still closer to one another, and stretching the two corners of the mouth towards the ears; _a, e, i_. mr. jour. _a, e, i, i, i, i_. quite true. long live science! prof. phil. the vowel _o_ is formed by opening the jaws, and drawing in the lips at the two corners, the upper and the lower;_ o_. mr. jour. _o, o_. nothing can be more correct; _a, e, i, o, i, o_. it is admirable! _i, o, i, o_. prof. phil. the opening of the mouth exactly makes a little circle, which resembles an _o_. mr. jour. _o, o, o_. you are right. _o_! ah! what a fine thing it is to know something! prof. phil. the vowel _u_ is formed by bringing the teeth near each other without entirely joining them, and thrusting out both the lips whilst also bringing them near together without quite joining them; _u_. mr. jour. _u, u_. there is nothing more true; _u_. prof. phil. your two lips lengthen as if you were pouting; so that, if you wish to make a grimace at anybody, and to laugh at him, you have only to _u_ him. mr. jour. _u, u_. it's true. oh! that i had studied when i was younger, so as to know all this. prof. phil. to-morrow we will speak of the other letters, which are the consonants. mr. jour. is there anything as curious in them as in these? prof. phil. certainly. for instance, the consonant _d_ is pronounced by striking the tip of the tongue above the upper teeth; _da_. mr. jour. _da, da_. [footnote: untranslatable. _dada_ equals "cock-horse" in nursery language] yes. ah! what beautiful things, what beautiful things! prof. phil. the _f_, by pressing the upper teeth upon the lower lip; _fa_. mr. jour. _fa, fa_. 'tis the truth. ah! my father and my mother, how angry i feel with you! prof. phil. and the _r_, by carrying the tip of the tongue up to the roof of the palate, so that, being grazed by the air which comes out with force, it yields to it, and, returning to the same place, causes a sort of tremour; _r, ra_. mr. jour. _r-r-ra; r-r-r-r-r-ra_. that's true. ah! what a clever man you are, and what time i have lost. _r-r-ra_. prof. phil. i will thoroughly explain all these curiosities to you. mr. jour. pray do. and now i want to entrust you with a great secret. i am in love with a lady of quality, and i should be glad if you would help me to write something to her in a short letter which i mean to drop at her feet. prof. phil. very well. mr. jour. that will be gallant; will it not? prof. phil. undoubtedly. is it verse you wish to write to her? mr. jour. oh no; not verse. prof. phil. you only wish for prose? mr. jour. no. i wish for neither verse nor prose. prof. phil. it must be one or the other. mr. jour. why? prof. phil. because, sir, there is nothing by which we can express ourselves except prose or verse. mr. jour. there is nothing but prose or verse? prof. phil. no, sir. whatever is not prose is verse; and whatever is not verse is prose. mr. jour. and when we speak, what is that, then? prof. phil. prose. mr. jour. what! when i say, "nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my night-cap," is that prose? prof. phil. yes, sir. mr. jour. upon my word, i have been speaking prose these forty years without being aware of it; and i am under the greatest obligation to you for informing me of it. well, then, i wish to write to her in a letter, _fair marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love_; but i would have this worded in a genteel manner, and turned prettily. prof. phil. say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your heart to ashes; that you suffer day and night for her tortures.... mr. jour. no, no, no; i don't want any of that. i simply wish for what i tell you. _fair marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love_. prof. phil. still, you might amplify the thing a little? mr. jour. no, i tell you, i will have nothing but those very words in the letter; but they must be put in a fashionable way, and arranged as they should be. pray show me a little, so that i may see the different ways in which they can be put. prof. phil. they may be put, first of all, as you have said, _fair marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love_; or else, _of love die make me, fair marchioness, your beautiful eyes_; or, _your beautiful eyes of love make me, fair marchioness, die_; or, _die of love your beautiful eyes, fair marchioness, make me_; or else, _me make your beautiful eyes die, fair marchioness, of love_. mr. jour. but of all these ways, which is the best? prof. phil. the one you said: _fair marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love_. mr. jour. yet i have never studied, and i did all that right off at the first shot. i thank you with all my heart, and i beg of you to come to-morrow morning early. prof. phil. i shall not fail. scene vii.--mr. jourdain, a servant. mr. jour. what? has my suit of clothes not come yet? ser. no, sir. mr. jour. that confounded tailor makes me wait a long time on a day like this, when i have so much business to attend to. i am furious. may the deuce fly away with the tailor! may the plague choke the tailor! may the ague shake that brute of a tailor! if i had him here now, that rascally tailor, that wretch of a tailor, i.... scene viii.--mr. jourdain, the master tailor, an assistant tailor (_bringing a suit of clothes for_ mr. jourdain), a servant. mr. jour. ha! here you are. i was just on the point of getting angry with you. tail. i could not come sooner, although i set twenty people to work at your coat. mr. jour. you have sent me such a small pair of silk stockings that i had no end of trouble to put them on, and two of the stitches are broken already. tail. they are pretty sure to become only too large. mr. jour. no doubt, if i keep on breaking the stitches. you also sent me a pair of shoes that hurt me horribly. tail. not at all, sir. mr. jour. how! not at all? tail. no; they do not hurt you at all. mr. jour. i tell you they do hurt me. tail. you fancy so. mr. jour. i fancy so because i feel it to be so. did any one ever hear such an argument! tail. see, we have the most beautiful and the best matched suit in the whole court. it is a work of art to have discovered a sober suit of clothes not black; and i bet that the most skilful tailors would not do as much after half a dozen trials. mr. jour. why, what does this mean? you have put all the flowers upside down. tail. you did not tell me you wished to have them the other way up. mr. jour. was it necessary to say that? tail. yes, certainly; for all the people of quality wear them in this way. mr. jour. all people of quality wear the flowers bottom upwards? tail. yes, sir. mr. jour. oh, then it's all right. tail. if you wish it, i will put them the other way up. mr. jour. no, no. tail. you have only to say so. mr. jour. no, no. i tell you that you have done right. do you think my clothes fit me well? tail. no doubt about it. i defy any painter with his pencil to draw you anything to fit more exactly. i have in my house a workman who to get up a rhinegrave is the greatest genius of our time, and another who in putting together a doublet is the hero of our age. mr. jour. are the wig and feathers as they should be? tail. everything is right. mr. jour. (_looking carefully at the tailor's coat_). oh! oh! mr. tailor, you have there some of the stuff of the last coat you made for me! i know it well. tail. i thought the stuff so beautiful that i could not help cutting a coat from it for myself. mr. jour. yes; but you should not have cut it from mine. tail. will you put on your coat? mr. jour. yes; give it me. tail. wait a moment. things are not done in that manner. i have brought my people with me to dress you to music; such coats as these are only put on with ceremony. hullo there! come in. scene ix.--mr. jourdain, master tailor, assistant tailors (_dancing_), a servant. tail. put this gentleman's suit on as you put on those of people of quality. (_the four tailors, dancing, come near_ mr. jourdain; _two of them pull off the breeches he has had on for his exercises; two others take off his waistcoat; then, still dancing, they dress him in his new suit_. mr. jourdain _walks round in the midst of them, and shows them his clothes for them to see whether they fit him_.) tails. my noble gentleman, give something, if you please, to the tailors to drink your health with. mr. jour. how do you call me? tails. my noble gentleman. mr. jour. see what it is to be dressed like a person of quality! go about all your life dressed like a citizen, and nobody will ever call you a "noble gentleman." (_giving some money_.) this is for "my noble gentleman." tails. we are greatly obliged to you, my lord. mr. jour. oh! oh! wait a minute, my friends. "my lord" deserves something; it is no small thing to be "my lord." here is what his lordship gives you. tails. my lord, we shall go and drink your grace's health. mr. jour. "your grace!" oh! oh! oh! stay, don't go yet. "your grace" to me! (_aside_) upon my word, if he goes as far as highness, he will have the whole purse. (_aloud_) take this for "your grace." tails. my lord, we most humbly thank you for your liberality. mr. jour. he did well to stop. i should have given him all. _second entry of the_ ballet. _the_ four assistants _rejoice, dancing, at the generosity of_ mr. jourdain. act iii. scene i.--mr. jourdain, two lackeys. mr. jour. follow me, that i may go and show my clothes about the town; and be very careful, both of you, to walk close to my heels, so that people may see that you belong to me. lack. yes, sir. mr. jour. just call nicole. i have some orders to give her. you need not move; here she comes. scene ii.--mr. jourdain, nicole, two lackeys. mr. jour. nicole! nic. what is it, sir? mr. jour. listen. nic. (_laughing_). hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. what are you laughing at? nic. hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. what does the hussy mean? nic. hi, hi, hi. what a figure you cut! hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. eh? what? nic. ah! ah! my goodness! hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. what an impertinent jade! are you laughing at me? nic. oh no, sir. i should be very sorry to do so. hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. i'll slap your face if you laugh again. nic. i can't help it, sir. hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. will you leave off? nic. sir; i beg your pardon, sir; but you are so very comical that i can't help laughing. hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. did you ever see such impudence? nic. you are so odd like that. hi, hi. mr. jour. i'll.... nic. i beg of you to excuse me. hi, hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. look here, if you laugh again ever so little, i swear i will give you a box on the ears such as you never had before in all your life. nic. well, sir, i have done. i won't laugh any more. mr. jour. mind you don't. you must for this afternoon clean.... nic. hi, hi. mr. jour. you must clean thoroughly.... nic. hi, hi. mr. jour. you must, i say, clean the drawing-room, and.... nic. hi, hi. mr. jour. again? nic. (_tumbling down with laughing_). there, sir, beat me rather, but let me laugh to my heart's content. i am sure it will be better for me. hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. i am boiling with rage. nic. for pity's sake, sir, let me laugh. hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. if i begin.... nic. si-r-r, i shall bur-r-st if i d-don't laugh. hi, hi, hi. mr. jour. but did you ever see such a hussy? she comes and laughs at me to my face, instead of attending to my orders. nic. what is it you wish me to do, sir. mr. jour. i want you to get this house ready for the company which is to come here by and by. nic. (_getting up_). ah, well! all my wish to laugh is gone now; your company brings such disorder here that what you say is quite sufficient to put me out of temper. mr. jour. i suppose that, to please you, i ought to shut my door against everybody? nic. anyhow, you would do just as well to shut it against certain people, sir. scene iii.--mrs. jourdain, mr. jourdain, nicole, two servants. mrs. jour. ah me! here is some new vexation! why, husband, what do you possibly mean by this strange get-up? have you lost your senses that you go and deck yourself out like this, and do you wish to be the laughing-stock of everybody wherever you go? mr. jour. let me tell you, my good wife, that no one but a fool will laugh at me. mrs. jour. no one has waited until to-day for that; and it is now some time since your ways of going on have been the amusement of everybody. mr. jour. and who may everybody be, please? mrs. jour. everybody is a body who is in the right, and who has more sense than you. for my part, i am quite shocked at the life you lead. i don't know our home again. one would think, by what goes on, that it was one everlasting carnival here; and as soon as day breaks, for fear we should have any rest in it, we have a regular din of fiddles and singers, that are a positive nuisance to all the neighbourhood. nic. what mistress says is quite right. there is no longer any chance of having the house clean with all that heap of people you bring in. their feet seem to have gone purposely to pick up the mud in the four quarters of the town in order to bring it in here afterwards; and poor françoise is almost off her legs with the constant scrubbing of the floors, which your masters come and dirty every day as regular as clockwork. mr. jour. i say there, our servant nicole; you have a pretty sharp tongue of your own for a country wench. mrs. jour. nicole is right, and she has more sense by far than you have. i should like to know, for instance, what you mean to do with a dancing master at your age? nic. and with that big fencing master, who comes here stamping enough to shake the whole house down and to tear up the floor tiles of our rooms. mr. jour. gently, my servant and my wife. mrs. jour. do you mean to learn dancing for the time when you can't stand on your legs any longer? nic. do you intend to kill anybody? mr. jour. hold your tongues, i say. you are only ignorant women, both of you, and understand nothing concerning the prerogative of all this. mrs. jour. you would do much better to think of seeing your daughter married, for she is now of an age to be provided for. mr. jour. i shall think of seeing my daughter married when a suitable match presents itself; but, in the meantime, i wish to think of acquiring fine learning. nic. i have heard say also, mistress, that, to go the whole hog, he has now taken a professor of philosophy. mr. jour. to be sure i have. i wish to be clever, and reason concerning things with people of quality. mrs. jour. had you not better go to school one of these days, and get the birch, at your age? mr. jour. why not? would to heaven i were flogged this very instant, before all the world, so that i might know all they learn at school. nic. yes, to be sure; that would much improve the shape of your leg. mr. jour. of course. mrs. jour. and all this is very necessary for the management of your house. mr. jour. certainly. you both speak like asses; and i am ashamed of your ignorance. (_to_ mrs. jourdain) let me see, for instance, if you know what you are speaking this very moment. mrs. jour. yes, i know that what i speak is rightly spoken; and that you should think of leading a different life. mr. jour. i do not mean that. i ask you what the words are which you are now speaking. mrs. jour. they are sensible words, i tell you, and that is more than your conduct is. mr. jour. i am not speaking of that. i ask you what it is that i am now saying to you. that which i am now speaking to you, what is it? mrs. jour. rubbish. mr. jour. no! no! i don't mean that. what we both speak; the language we are speaking this very moment. mrs. jour. well? mr. jour. how is it called? mrs. jour. it is called whatever you like to call it. mr. jour. it is prose, you ignorant woman. mrs. jour. prose? mr. jour. whatever is prose is not verse, and whatever is not verse is prose. there! you see what it is to study. (_to_ nicole) and you, do you even know what you must do to say _u_? nic. eh? what? mr. jour. yes; what do you do when you say _u_? nic. what i do? mr. jour. say _u_ a little to try. nic. well, _u_. mr. jour. what is it you do? nic. i say _u_. mr. jour. yes; but when you say _u_, what is it you do? nic. i do what you ask me to do. mr. jour. oh! what a strange thing it is to have to do with dunces! you pout your lips outwards, and bring your upper jaw near your lower jaw like this, _u_; i make a face; _u_. do you see? nic. yes, that's beautiful. mrs. jour. it's admirable! mr. jour. what would you say then if you had seen _o_, and _da, da_, and _fa, fa_? mrs. jour. what is all this absurd stuff? nic. and what are we the better for all this? mr. jour. i have no patience with such ignorant women. mrs. jour. believe me, pack off all those people with their ridiculous fooleries. nic. and particularly that great scraggy fencing master, who fills the whole place with dust. mr. jour. goodness me! the fencing master seems to set your teeth on edge. come here, and i will show you at once your senseless impertinence. (_he asks for two foils, and gives one to_ nicole.) here, reason demonstrative the line of the body. when you thrust in quart, you have only to do so; and, when you thrust in tierce, only to do so! that is the way never to be killed; and is it not a fine thing to be quite safe when one fights against anybody? there, thrust at me a little to try. nic. well, what? (nicole _gives him several thrusts_) mr. jour. gently! hold! oh! softly. deuce take the wench! nic: you tell me to thrust at you. mr. jour. yes; but you thrust in tierce before thrusting at me in quart, and you haven't the patience to wait till i parry. mrs. jour. you are crazy, husband, with all your fads; and this has come upon you since you have taken it into your head to frequent the gentlefolk. mr. jour. by frequenting the gentlefolk i show my judgment. it is surely better than keeping company with your citizens. mrs. jour. yes: there is much good to be got by frequenting your nobility, and you have done a noble stroke of business with that fine count with whom you are so wrapped up. mr. jour. peace. be careful what you say. let me tell you, wife, that you do not know of whom you are speaking when you speak of him! he is a man of more importance than you can imagine, a nobleman who is held in great honour at court, and who speaks to the king just as i speak to you. is it not a thing which does me great honour that such a person should be seen so often in my house, should call me his dear friend, and should treat me as if i were his equal? he has more kindness for me than you could ever guess, and he treats me before the world with such affection that i am perfectly ashamed. mrs. jour. yes; he is kind to you, and flatters you, but he borrows your money of you. mr. jour. well? is it not a great honour to lend money to a man of his position? and could i do less for a lord who calls me his dear friend? mrs. jour. and this lord, what does he do for you? mr. jour. things that would astound you if you only knew them. mrs. jour. but what? mr. jour. there! i can't explain myself. it is quite sufficient that, if i have lent him money, he will give it back to me, and that before long. mrs. jour. yes, trust him for that. mr. jour. certainly i will. has he not said so? mrs. jour. yes, yes; and he won't fail not to do it. mr. jour. he has given me his word as a gentleman. mrs. jour. mere stuff. mr. jour. dear me! you are very obstinate, wife! i tell you that he will keep his word; i am quite sure of it. mrs. jour. and i am quite sure that he won't; and that all the caresses he loads you with are only meant to deceive you. mr. jour. be silent; here he comes. mrs. jour. that's to finish up. he comes, no doubt, to borrow from you again; the very sight of him takes my appetite away. mr. jour. hold your tongue, i tell you. scene iv.--dorante, mr. jourdain, mrs. jourdain, nicole. dor. mr. jourdain, my dear friend, how do you do? mr. jour. very well, sir; at your service. dor. and mrs. jourdain, how does she do? mrs. jour. mrs. jourdain does as well as may be. dor. i declare, mr. jourdain, that you have the most genteel dress in the world. mr. jour. you see. dor. you look exceedingly well in this dress, and we have no young men at court better made than you. mr. jour. he! he! mrs. jour. (_aside_). he scratches him where it itches. dor. turn round. this is quite gallant. mrs. jour. (_aside_). yes, as fine a fool behind as before. dor. indeed, mr. jourdain, i was very impatient to see you. you are the man i esteem most in the world, and i was talking of you again this very morning at the king's levée. mr. jour. you do me too much honour, sir. (_to_ mrs. jourdain) at the king's levée. dor. come, put on your hat. mr. jour. sir, i know the respect i owe you; dor. pray, put on your hat. no ceremony between us, i beg. mr. jour. sir! dor. nay! nay! put on your hat, i tell you, mr. jourdain; you are my friend. mr. jour. sir, i am your humble servant. dor. i will not put mine on unless you do. mr. jour. (_putting on his hat_). i had rather be unmannerly than troublesome. dor. i am your debtor, as you know. mrs. jour. (_aside_). yes, we know it but too well. dor. on several occasions you have generously lent me some money, and you have obliged me, i must acknowledge, with the best grace in the world. mr. jour. sir, i beg of you. dor. but i know how to pay back what is lent to me, and how to acknowledge services rendered. mr. jour. i have no doubt about it, sir. dor. i want to acquit myself towards you, and i have come to settle my accounts. mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). well? do you see how wrong you were, wife? dor. i like to get out of debt as soon as i can. mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). did i not tell you so? dor. let us see how much i owe you. mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). there you are, with your absurd suspicions. dor. do you quite remember how much you have lent me? mr. jour. i believe so. i have made a little memorandum of it. here it is. at one time i gave you two hundred louis. dor. quite true. mr. jour. at another time, one hundred and twenty. dor. yes. mr. jour. at another time, one hundred and forty. dor. you are quite right. mr. jour. these three payments make four hundred and sixty louis, which comes to five thousand and sixty livres. dor. this account is quite correct; five thousand and sixty livres. mr. jour. one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two livres to your plume seller. dor. just so. mr. jour. two thousand seven hundred and eighty livres to your tailor. dor. it is true. mr. jour. four thousand three hundred and seventy-nine livres, twelve sous, eight deniers, to your tradesman. dor. twelve sous, eight deniers; the account is perfectly right. mr. jour. and one thousand seven hundred and forty-eight livres, seven sous, four deniers, to your saddler. dor. it is so. how much does all this come to? mr. jour. sum-total, fifteen thousand eight hundred livres. dor. the sum-total is exact; fifteen thousand eight hundred livres. add to this two hundred pistoles which you are going to lend me, and it will make exactly eighteen thousand francs, which i will pay you at the first opportunity. mrs. jour. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). well? did i not guess right? mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). peace! dor. will it be inconvenient to you to lend me what i say? mr. jour. oh dear! no. mrs. jour. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). that man makes a milch-cow of you. mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). be silent! dor. if i at all inconvenience you, i will get it elsewhere. mr. jour. no, sir. mrs. jour. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). he won't be satisfied until he has ruined you. mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). hold your tongue, i say. dor. you have only to tell me if this will embarrass you. mr. jour. not at all, sir. mrs. jour. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). he is a regular deceiver. mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). do hold your peace. mrs. jour. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). he will drain you to the last penny. mr. jour. (_aside to_ mrs. jourdain). will you hold your tongue? dor. there are a great many people who would advance me money with pleasure; but as i look upon you as my best friend, i was afraid of wronging you if i asked it of anyone else. mr. jour. you do me too much honour, sir. i will go and fetch what you want. mrs. jour. (_aside_ to mr. jourdain). what! are you going to give him that also? mr. jour. (_aside_ to mrs. jourdain). what can i do? how can i refuse a man of such rank, a man who spoke of me this morning at the king's levée. mrs. jour. (_aside_ to mr. jourdain). there, go; you are nothing but a dupe. scene v.--dorante, mrs. jourdain, nicole. dor. you appear to me quite low-spirited! what can be the matter with you, mrs. jourdain? mrs. jour. my head is bigger than my fist, and yet it isn't swollen. dor. where is your daughter, that i have not seen her? mrs. jour. my daughter is very well where she is. dor. how does she get on? mrs. jour. she gets on on her two legs. dor. would you not like one of these days to come with her to see the ballet and the play which are being acted at court? mrs. jour. ah! yes. we have a great fancy for laughing, a great fancy have we! dor. i think, mrs. jourdain, that you must have had plenty of lovers in your young days, so handsome, and so sweet-tempered as you must have been. mrs. jour. my goodness, sir! has mrs. jourdain grown decrepit, and does her head already shake on her shoulders? dor. oh! mrs jourdain, i really beg your pardon! i had forgotten that you are young, and i am very often absent. i beg of you to excuse my impertinence. scene vi.--mr. jourdain, mrs. jourdain, dorante, nicole. mr. jour. (_to_ dorante). here are two hundred louis in full. dor. i assure you, mr. jourdain, that you may dispose of me in any way you like, and that i long to render you some service at court. mr. jour. i am much obliged to you. dor. if mrs. jourdain wishes to see the royal entertainment, [footnote: 'the magnificent lovers.'] i will obtain the best places in the room for her. mrs. jour. mrs. jourdain is your humble servant. dor. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). our lovely marchioness, as i told you in my note, is coming here this afternoon for the ballet and the banquet, as i have at last prevailed on her to accept the entertainment you wish to give her. [footnote: _cadeau_ does not mean "present," as at first sight it seems to mean. compare also the next speech of dorante.] mr. jour. let us go a little further. i need not tell you the reason. dor. it is a whole week since i saw you; and i did not send you any news of the diamond which you placed in my hands to make her a present of from you; it is because i found it the most difficult thing in the world to make her accept it; and it is only to-day that she could conquer her scruples about it. mr. jour. how does she like it? dor. exceedingly; and, unless i am greatly mistaken, the beauty of that diamond will produce an admirable effect on her mind towards you. mr. jour. ah, may it be so! mrs. jour. (_to_ nicole). when once he is with him, he can't leave him. dor. i described to her in glowing colours the expense of such a present, and the greatness of your love. mr. jour. your kindness is too much for me, sir, and i feel perfectly ashamed to see a man of such high standing condescend to do for me the things you do. dor. nonsense! do friends stand upon such scruples? and would you not do for me the very same thing if the opportunity presented itself? mr. jour. oh, decidedly, and with all my heart! mrs. jour. (_aside to_ nicole). how hard for me to bear with his presence. dor. for my part, i hesitate at nothing when i want to serve a friend; and as soon as you told me of your admiration for this charming marchioness, with whom i was acquainted, you saw me at once put myself at your disposal to serve your love. mr. jour. it is perfectly true. such kindness confounds me. mrs. jour. (_to_ nicole). will he never go? nic. (_to_ mrs. jourdain). they are very thick together. dor. you went the right way to work to touch her heart. there is nothing women like more than the expenses one makes for them; and your frequent serenades, your numerous bouquets, the magnificent display of fireworks which she saw on the water, the diamond which she received from you, and the entertainment you are preparing for her, all this tells more in favour of your love than all the speeches you could make to her about it. mr. jour. there is no expense i would not make to find access to her heart. a woman of quality has for me the most dazzling charms, and it is an honour which i would purchase at any price. mrs. jour. (_aside to_ nicole). what on earth can they have to say together? go and listen! dor. you will enjoy to-day the pleasure of seeing her; and your eyes will have full leisure to satisfy themselves. mr. jour. in order to be free, i have arranged for my wife to go and dine with my sister, and she will spend the whole-afternoon there. dor. you have acted wisely, for your wife might be in the way. i have given the necessary orders to the cook, and for everything which may be necessary for the ballet. it is my own invention, and if the execution comes up to the conception, i am sure that it will be found.... mr. jour. (_seeing_ nicole _listening, and giving her a box on the ears_). ha! you rude, impertinent hussy! (_to_ dorante) let us go out, if you please. scene vii.--mrs. jourdain, nicole. nic. well, madam, my curiosity has cost me something; but all the same i believe that there is something in the wind, for they were speaking of an affair where they do not wish you to be present. mrs. jour. this is not the first time, nicole, that i have had some suspicions about my husband. either i am greatly mistaken or there is some love affair on foot; and i am doing my best to discover what it maybe. but, first of all, let us think of my daughter. you know that cléonte loves her; he is a man after my own heart, and i wish to help him, and give him to lucile if i can. nic. to tell you the truth, madam, i am delighted to find you think so; for if the master pleases you, the servant pleases me as well, and i wish our own marriage could take place at the same time as theirs. mrs. jour. go, then, and speak to him about what i told you; and tell him to come presently, that we may both together ask my husband to grant him my daughter. nic. i run with joy, madam, and i could not receive a more pleasant order. (_alone_.) how happy i am going to make certain people! scene viii.--nicole, clÉonte, covielle. nic. ah, what a lucky meeting! i am a messenger of joy, and i came.... cle. leave me, false woman, and don't think of deceiving me with your treacherous words. nic. do you receive me in that way? cle. leave me, i say, and go and tell your faithless mistress that she never shall again deceive the too credulous cléonte. nic. what a change? my poor covielle, tell me, i pray, what all this means. cov. your poor covielle, indeed, you wicked girl! go, minx! decamp; get out of my sight as fast as you can, and leave me alone! nic. what! and do you also...? cov. get out of my sight, i say; i will never speak to you any more, as long as i live. nic. (_aside_). mercy on us! what has happened to both of them? i must go and tell my mistress this pretty piece of news. scene ix.--clÉonte, covielle. cle. what! to treat a lover in that fashion, and the most faithful and affectionate of all lovers! cov. it is shameful what they have done to both of us! cle. i show her all possible ardour and tenderness; i love nothing in the world better, and have nothing in my thoughts but her; she is all my care, all my desire, all my joy; i speak of nothing but her, think of nothing but her, dream of nothing but her. i live but for her; my heart beats but for her; and, behold the reward of so much devotion! i am two whole days without seeing her, two days which seem to me centuries of frightful length; i meet her by accident, my heart at the sight of her feels transported; joy sparkles in my face. i fly to her with delight, and the faithless one turns away her eyes, and passes by me hastily, as if she had never seen me before in her life! cov. i can only repeat the same story. cle. can anything be compared, covielle, to the perfidy of the ungrateful lucile? cov. and to that, sir, of that hussy nicole? cle. after so many passionate sacrifices, sighs, and vows which i have paid to her charms! cov. after so many attentions, cares, and services i have rendered her in the kitchen! cle. so many tears that i have shed at her feet! cov. so many buckets of water that i have drawn for her from the well! cle. such warmth as i have shown in loving her more than myself! cov. such heat as i have endured in turning the spit for her! cle. she avoids me with contempt! cov. she rudely turns her back upon me! cle. this perfidy deserves the greatest chastisement. cov. this treachery deserves a thousand blows. cle. mind, you never speak to me of her any more. cov. i, sir? heaven forbid! cle. do not venture to palliate her wrongs before me. cov. never fear. cle. no; for all you would say in her defence would be lost upon me. cov. who dreams of such a thing? cle. i wish to nurse up my wrath against her, and to break off all intercourse with her. cov. i am quite willing. cle. this count who goes to her house has turned her head, no doubt; and rank, i see, dazzles her mind. but i must, for my own honour, prevent her triumphing in her inconstancy. i will do as much as she does towards a change which i plainly see she desires, and i will not let her have all the pleasure of having dismissed me. cov. you are in the right, and i enter into all your feelings. cle. help me in my resentment, and support my resolution against the remainder of my love that might still plead for her. tell me, i pray you, all the evil you can think of her. draw a description of her person which may bring her down in my estimation, and, in order to make me dislike her more surely, show me all the defects you can see in her. cov. she, indeed, sir! a fine specimen, a fine piece of affectation to be in love with! i see nothing in her but the most common attractions, and you will find a thousand girls more worthy of your love than she is. to begin with, her eyes are small... [footnote: it is molière's wife that is here described.] cle. yes, it is true, her eyes are small, covielle; but they are full of fire, the most sparkling, the most searching in the world, and the tenderest also that could be found. cov. her mouth is large.... cle. yes; but you find there charms that can be found in no other. the sight of that mouth inspires me with love; it is the most attractive and the most amorous mouth in the world! cov. as to her height, she is not tall. cle. no; but she is well shaped and graceful. cov. she affects great carelessness in her speech, and her movements.... cle. it is true; but she is graceful in all she does, and her manners are attractive, and possess a certain charm which at once takes possession of one's heart. cov. as for wit.... cle. ah, covielle! her wit is of the most refined, the most delicate kind. cov. her conversation.... cle. her conversation is charming. cov. it is always grave. cle. would you prefer an unrestrained gaiety, a perpetual liveliness? and can you find anything more unpleasant than those women who giggle at everything? cov. but, in short, she is as whimsical as any woman can be. cle. yes, she is, i agree with you there; but everything becomes those we love. we bear everything from them. cov. since you go on so, i see pretty well that you are determined to love her still. cle. i? i had rather die this moment, and i mean in future to hate her as much as i loved her before. cov. how can you if you think her so perfect? cle. in this way shall my revenge shine; in this way shall the strength of my decision to hate her be better displayed; if thinking her most beautiful, most charming, most amiable, i still part from her. here she is. scene x.--lucile, clÉonte, covielle, nicole. nic. (_to_ lucile). i was quite shocked at it. luc. it can only be what i tell you, nicole; but there he is. cle. (_to_ covielle). i will not condescend even to speak to her. cov. i will do like you. luc. what is it, cléonte? what can be the matter with you? nic. what ails you, covielle? luc. what trouble afflicts you? nic. what fit of bad temper has got hold of you? luc. are you dumb, cléonte? nic. have you lost your tongue, covielle? cle. how deceitful she is! cov. how judas-like! luc. i see that our meeting of this morning has troubled your mind. cle. (_to_ covielle). ah! ah! we are conscious of what we have done? nic. our reception of this morning has put you out. cov. (_to_ clÉonte). we know where the shoe pinches. luc. is it not true, cléonte; is not this the cause of your vexation? cle. yes, faithless girl, it is, since i am to speak; but i must inform you that you shall not have, as you fancy, all the glory of your faithlessness; i wish to be the first to break with you, and you shall not have the pleasure of driving me away. i shall find it hard, i know, to conquer the love i feel for you; it will bring grief to me; i am sure, to suffer for a while; but i will overcome it, and i had rather stab myself to the heart than be weak enough to return to you. cov. (_to_ nicole). as the master says, so says the man. luc. this is much ado about nothing, cléonte, and i wish to tell you what made me avoid you this morning. cle. (_trying to go away to avoid_ lucile). i will hear nothing. nic. (_to_ covielle). i want to tell you why we passed you so quickly. cov. (_trying also to go away to avoid_ nicole). i will hear nothing. luc. (_following_ clÉonte). know, then, that this morning.... cle. (_still walking away without looking at_ lucile). no, i tell you. nic. (_following_ covielle). let me tell you.... cov. (_still walking away without looking at_ nicole). no, you jilt! luc. listen. cle. don't trouble me. nic. let me tell you. cov. i am deaf. luc. cléonte! cle. no. nic. covielle! cov. no. luc. wait. cle. nonsense. nic. listen to me. cov. rubbish. luc. one moment. cle. not a bit. nic. a little patience. cov. fiddle-de-dee! luc. a couple of words. cle. no; all is over. nic. one word. cov. not one. luc. (_stopping_). very well! since you will not listen to me, keep your own thoughts to yourself, and do as you please. nic. (_stopping also_). since you act in that fashion, think what you like. cle. (_turning towards_ lucile). well, what was the reason for such a welcome? luc. (_going away in her turn_, _to avoid_ clÉonte). i don't choose to tell you now. cov. (_turning towards_ nicole). give us that story. nic. (_going away also_, _to avoid_ covielle). i don't wish to tell it you now. cle. (_following_ lucile). tell me.... luc. (_walking away without looking at_ clÉonte). no; i will tell you nothing. cov. (_following_ nicole). relate to me.... nic. (_walking away without looking at_ covielle). no; i shall relate nothing. cle. for mercy's sake! luc. no, i tell you. cov. for pity's sake! nic. no; not another word. cle. i beseech you. luc. leave me. cov. i entreat you. nic. get away from here. cle. lucile! luc. no. cov. nicole! nic. nothing. cle. for heaven's sake. luc. i will not. cov. speak to me. nic. i won't. cle. clear up my doubts. luc. no; i will do nothing of the kind. cov. ease my mind. nic. no; it is not my wish to do so. cle. very well! since you care so little to relieve my grief, and to justify yourself of the unworthy treatment my love has received from you, you see me for the last time; and i am going away from you to die of grief and love. cov. (_to_ nicole). and i will follow his steps. luc. (_to_ clÉonte, _who is going_). cléonte! nic. (_to_ covielle, _who is going_). covielle! cle. (_stopping_). hey? cov. (_stopping also_). what do you say? luc. where are you going? cle. where i have told you. cov. we are going to die. luc. you are going to die, cléonte? cle. yes, cruel one, since you wish it. luc. i! i wish you to die! cle. yes, you wish it. luc. who told you such a thing? cle. is it not wishing it, to refuse to clear up my suspicions? luc. is it my fault? if you had but listened to me, i would have told you at once that the treatment you complain of was caused by the presence of an old aunt, who persists in saying that the mere approach of a man is dishonour to a girl; she is always lecturing us about it, and depicts all men to us as so many scamps whom we ought always to avoid. nic. (_to_ covielle.) this is the whole secret of the affair. cle. (_to_ lucile). are you not deceiving me, lucile? cov. (_to_ nicole). are you not imposing upon me? luc. it is the exact truth. nic. that's how it is. cov. (_to_ clÉonte). shall we surrender after this? cle. ah! lucile! how you can with one word bring back peace to my heart; and how easily we suffer ourselves to be persuaded by those we love. cov. how easily these queer animals succeed in getting round us. scene xi.--mrs. jourdain, clÉonte, lucile, covielle, nicole. mrs. jour. i am very glad to see you, cléonte. you are just in time, for my husband will be here in a moment. seize that opportunity of asking him to give you lucile in marriage. cle. oh! how welcome these kind words are, and how well they correspond to the inmost wishes of my heart. could i ever receive an order more flattering, a favour more precious? scene xii.--clÉonte, mr. jourdain, mrs. jourdain, lucile, covielle, nicole. cle. sir, i would not ask anybody to come instead of me to make you a request which i have long wished to make. the matter interests me too much for me not to do it myself. allow me to tell you then, without further words, that the honour of becoming your son-in-law is a favour i earnestly solicit, and one which i beseech you to grant me. mr. jour. before i give you an answer, sir, i beg you to tell me if you are a nobleman. cle. sir, most people would answer that question without any hesitation whatever. the word is easily spoken; a title is generally adopted without scruple, and present custom seems to sanction the theft. for my part, however, i must confess that i look upon any kind of imposture as unworthy of an honest man. i think it base to hide what heaven has made us, to adorn ourselves before the world with a title, and to wish to pass for what we are not. i am the son of parents who have filled honourable offices. i have acquitted myself with honour in the army, where i served for six years, and i am rich enough to hold a tolerable position in the world; but for all this, i will not assume a name that others might think i could pretend to in my position, and i tell you openly that i cannot be reckoned a nobleman. mr. jour. shake hands, then, my daughter is no wife for you. cle. how! may i know...? mr. jour. you are not a nobleman, therefore you shall not have my daughter. mrs. jour. what is it you mean by your nobleman? are we ourselves descended from st. louis? mr. jour. be silent, wife; i see what you are driving at. mrs. jour. are we not both descended from good, simple tradesmen? mr. jour. is not that a wicked slander? mrs. jour. was not your father a tradesman as well as mine? mr. jour. plague take the woman! she has never done with that. if your father was a tradesman, so much the worse for him; as for mine, it is only ill-informed people who say so, and all i have to tell you is that i will have a gentleman for my son-in-law. mrs. jour. your daughter must have a husband who suits her; and it is better for her to marry an honest man, rich and handsome, than a deformed and beggarly gentleman. nic. that's quite true. we have the son of the squire in our village, who is the most awkwardly built and stupid noodle that i have ever seen in my life. mr. jour. (_to_ nicole). hold your tongue, will you? and mind your own business. i have wealth enough and to spare for my daughter. i only wish for honours, and i will have her a marchioness. mrs. jour. a marchioness? mr. jour. yes, a marchioness. mrs. jour. alas! god forbid. mr. jour. it's a thing that i'm determined upon. mrs. jour. i will never consent to it. marriages between people who are not of the same rank are always subject to the most serious inconveniences. i do not wish to have a son-in-law who would have it in his power to reproach my daughter with her parentage; nor that she should have children who would be ashamed to call me their grandmother. if she came to see me with the equipage of a grand lady, and failed through inadvertency to salute some of the neighbours, people would not fail to say a thousand ill-natured things. "just see," they would say, "our lady the marchioness, who is so puffed up now, she is mr. jourdain's daughter; she was only too pleased, when a child, to play at my lady with us. she has not always been so exalted as now, and her two grandfathers sold cloth near st. innocents' gate. they have laid a great deal of money by for their children, for which, may be, they are now paying dearly in the other world, for one does not generally become so rich by honest means." i do not wish to give occasion for such gossip, and i desire to meet with a man who, to cut it short, will be grateful to me for my daughter, and to whom i can say, "sit down there, son-in-law, and dine with me." mr. jour. how all these feelings show a narrow mind, satisfied to live for ever in a low condition of life. let me have no more replies; my daughter shall be a marchioness in spite of everybody, and if you provoke me too much, i will make her a duchess. scene xiii.--mrs. jourdain, lucile, clÉonte, nicole, covielle. mrs. jour. do not give up all hope, cléonte. follow me, lucile; come and tell your father with firmness and decision that, unless you have cléonte for a husband, you will never marry. scene xiv.--clÉonte, covielle. cov. well! you have done a fine piece of work, with your lofty sentiments. cle. what could i do? i have scruples on that subject which no precedent could overcome. cov. what nonsense to be serious with a man like that! do you not see that he is infatuated with one idea, and would it have cost you much to fall in with his gentility? cle. i am afraid you are right; but the fact is i had not thought before that it was necessary to show proofs of gentility in order to become mr. jourdain's son-in-law. cov. (_laughing_). ha! ha! ha! cle. what are you laughing at? cov. at the thought of something that has just come into my head; it will play off our man, and help you to succeed in what you want. cle. how so? cov. it is most amusing even to think of it. cle. what is it? cov. we have had lately a certain masquerade, which seems to me the very thing wanted, and which i mean to make use of to play a trick on our absurd old fellow. the whole affair seems rather silly, but with him we may risk many things; there is no need of much cunning, and he is one to play his part wonderfully well, and to swallow greedily all the nonsense we may venture to tell him. i have actors and costumes all ready; only leave it to me. cle. but tell me.... cov. yes, i must tell you all about it; but let us go away, for here he is coming back again. scene xv.--mr. jourdain (_alone_). what the deuce does it all mean? they do nothing but reproach me with my great lords, and i, for my part, see nothing so fine as to associate with great lords; we find only honour and civility with them; and i would give two fingers of my hand to have been born a count or a marquis. scene xvi.--mr. jourdain, a servant. ser. sir, here is the count, and a lady with him. mr. jour. bless me! and i have some orders to give. tell them i shall be here in a moment. scene xvii--dorimÈne, dorante, a servant. ser. my master says he will be here directly. dor. very well. scene xviii.--dorimÈne, dorante. dori. i am afraid, dorante, that i am doing a very strange thing in allowing myself to be brought by you into a house where i know nobody. dor. where then can i go to entertain you, madam, since, to avoid remarks being made, you will see me neither at your own house nor at mine? dori. yes; but you do not mention that i am little by little brought to accept too great proofs of your love. in vain do i refuse my acquiescence in all you do, you triumph over my resistance, and you have a kind of persevering civility which causes me by degrees to do all that you wish. you began with frequent visits; next came declarations, and they have drawn after them serenades and entertainments, followed by presents. i was opposed to all these things, but you are not to be discouraged, and step by step you have overcome all my resolutions. for my part, i dare answer for nothing now; and i believe that at last you will persuade me to marry you, although i had set my heart against it. dor. indeed, madam, you should have been persuaded before. you are a widow, and depend on nobody but yourself. i am my own master, and i love you more than my life. what is there to prevent you from making me supremely happy? dori. to say the truth, dorante, it requires many good qualities on both sides for people to live happily together, and the two most sensible people in the world will often find it difficult to make up a union with which they are satisfied. dor. you are wrong, madam, to fear so many drawbacks to the happiness of a married life, and your sad experience proves nothing. dori. in short, i still come back to this; the expenses which you run into for my sake make me anxious for two reasons: the first that they involve me more than i should wish, and the other that i feel certain--pray be not offended with me--that you cannot incur them without much inconvenience to yourself; and i do not wish such a state of things to go on. dor. ah, madam, these are trifles not worth mentioning, and it is not from that.... dori. i know what i am saying; and, among other things, the diamond you forced upon me is of a price.... dor. nay, madam, do not set such value upon a thing which my love thinks so unworthy of you; and allow me.... here is the master of the house. scene xix.--mr. jourdain, dorimÈne, dorante. mr. jour. (_after having made two bows, finds himself too near to_ dorimÈne). a little farther, madam. dori. what? mr. jour. one step more, if you please. dor. what then? mr. jour. fall back a little for the third. dor. mr. jourdain, madam, knows whom he is addressing. mr. jour. madam, it is a very great glory to me that i am fortunate enough to be so happy as to have the felicity that you should have had the goodness to do me the honour of honouring me with the favour of your presence, and had i also the merit to merit such merit as yours and that heaven ... envious of my good fortune ... had granted me ... the advantage of being worthy ... of the.... dor. mr. jourdain, this is quite enough; madam does not care for great compliments, and she knows that you are a clever and witty man. (_aside to_ dorimÈne) he is a harmless citizen, ridiculous enough, as you see, in his behaviour. dori. (_aside to_ dorante). it is not difficult to perceive that. dor. madam, this is one of my greatest friends. mr. jour. you do me too much honour. dor. a most excellent and polite man. dori. i feel the greatest esteem for him. mr. jour. i have done nothing as yet, madam, to deserve such a favour. dor. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). be very careful not to speak to her of the diamond you gave her. mr. jour (_aside to_ dorante). may i not just ask her how she likes it? dor. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). eh? be sure not to do that. it would be most vulgar of you; and to behave like a true gentleman, you should act in all things as if you had made no present at all. (_aloud_) mr. jourdain says, madam, that he is delighted to see you in his house. dori. he does me great honour. mr. jour. (_aside to_ dorante). how truly obliged i am to you, sir, for speaking of me to her as you do. dor. (_aside to_ mr. jourdain). i had all the trouble in the world to make her come here. mr. jour. (_as before_). i don't know how to thank you enough for it. dor. he says, madam, that he thinks you the most beautiful woman in the world. dori. it is a great favour he does me. mr. jour. madam, it is you who grant the favours, and.... dor. let us think of the dinner. scene xx.--mr. jourdain, dorimÈne, dorante, a servant. ser. (_to_ mr. jourdain). everything is ready, sir. dor. come, then, let us go and sit down. tell the musicians to come. scene xxi.--_entry of the_ ballet. _the_ cooks, _who have prepared the banquet, dance together, and make the third interlude; after which they bring in a table covered with various dishes_. act iv. scene i.--dorimÈne, mr. jourdain, dorante, three singers, a servant. dori. really, dorante, this is a magnificent dinner. mr. jour. you are pleased to say so, madam, but i only wish it were more worthy of your acceptance. (dorimÈne, mr. jourdain, dorante, _and the_ three singers _sit down_.) dor. mr. jourdain is right, madam, in what he says; and he obliges me by doing so well the honours of his house to you. i agree with him that the dinner is not worthy of you. as it was i who ordered it, and as i have not for this kind of thing the knowledge of some of our friends, you will not find here a well studied repast, but will meet with many incongruities of good eating and some barbarisms against good taste. if our good friend damis had ordered it, all would be according to rule; there would be elegance and erudition everywhere; and he would not fail to exaggerate to you the excellence of every dish, and to make you acknowledge his high capacity in the science of good eating. he would speak to you of a loaf with golden sides, crusty all over, and yielding tenderly under the teeth; of wine full-bodied and of not too perceptible an acidity; of a saddle of mutton stewed with parsley; of a loin of normandy veal, long, white, tender, and which is, as it were, an almond paste between the teeth; of partridges wonderful in flavour; and as his masterpiece, a pearl broth reinforced with a large turkey flanked with young pigeons, and crowned with white onions blended with endive. for my part i confess my ignorance; and as mr. jourdain has very well said, i wish the repast were more worthy of your acceptance. dori. well, i can only answer to this compliment by eating as i am doing. mr. jour. ah! what beautiful hands! dori. the hands have not much to boast of, mr. jourdain; it is the diamond which you wish to speak of; it is indeed very beautiful. mr. jour. i, madam? heaven forbid that i should speak of it. it would be ungentlemanly to do so, and the diamond is but a trifle. dor. you are difficult to please. mr. jour. you are too kind, and.... dor. (_after having made signs to_ mr. jourdain). come, come, give a little wine to mr. jourdain and to these gentlemen, who will do us the pleasure of singing us a drinking song. dori. it is a most charming thought to make good music accompany good food, and i find myself most kindly entertained here. mr. jour. madam, it is not.... dor. mr. jourdain, let us listen to the music; what these gentlemen will tell us is better than all you and i could say. st _and_ nd singers _together, each with a glass in his hand_. phyllis, deign to fill my glass; give the draught an added charm. which is fairer, wine or lass, love for both my heart doth arm?-- in this hour supernal, let us swear, while we can, for wine, woman, and man, a friendship eternal. ruby-red, the blushing wine, paints thy lips with brighter shade, while its colours softer shine where thy glances fall, fair maid!-- while our youth is vernal, let us swear, while we can, for wine, woman, and man, a friendship eternal. _drinking song_. fill your glass, fill your glass, my friends, let us drink, though time fly; we must live while we live, my friends, for time passes by. when we cross the waves of the river, wine and love say farewell we must leave them behind for ever, so value them well. what though fools spend their time in thinking of the true aim of life! our philosophy lies in drinking, not in wordy strife. and glory, wisdom, and wealth, do not ease life of ill, but we find our pleasure and health as the wine-cup we fill. dori. i never heard anything better sung, and all this is really beautiful. mr. jour. i see something still more beautiful here, madam. dori. why, mr. jourdain, you are a greater flatterer than i should have thought. dor. and for what, madam, do you take mr. jourdain? mr. jour. i wish she would take me for what i could name. dori. again! dor. (_to_ dorimÈne). you do not know him. mr. jour. but she will know me whenever it pleases her. dori. oh, i give up. dor. he is a man always ready with an answer. but do you not see, madam, that mr. jourdain eats all the pieces you have touched. dori. mr. jourdain is a man i am charmed with. mr. jour. if i could only charm your heart, i should be.... scene ii.--mrs. jourdain, mr. jourdain, dorimÈne, dorante, singers, servants. mrs. jour. ah! ah! i find charming company here, and i see clearly that i was not expected. it is for this fine piece of business, sir, that you showed such anxiety to pack me off to my sister; was it? i have just seen a theatre down below, and here i find a banquet worthy of a wedding. that is the way you spend your money, and thus it is that you feast ladies in my absence, and give them music and the comedy, whilst you send me, trotting. dor. what do you mean, mrs. jourdain, and what fancies are you taking into your head to go and imagine that your husband is spending his money and giving the dinner to this lady? i beg to tell you that he has only lent me his house, and that it is i who give this feast, and not he. you should be a little more cautious in what you say. mr. jour. yes, rude woman that you are, it is the count who gives all that to this lady, who is a lady of rank. he does me the honour of making use of my house, and of wishing me to be with him. mrs. jour. all this is rubbish; i know what i know. dor. put on better spectacles, mrs. jourdain. mrs. jour. i have no need of spectacles, sir, and i see clearly enough what is going on. it is some time since i have seen things as they are, and i am no fool. it is very wrong of you, a great lord, to encourage my husband in his delusion. and for you, madam, a great lady, it is neither handsome nor honest to sow dissension in a family, and to allow my husband to be in love with you. dori. what does all this mean? how very wrong of you, dorante, to expose me to the preposterous fancies of this foolish woman. dor. (_following_ dorimÈne, _who is going away_). madam, stop, i pray; where are you going? mr. jour. madam.... my lord the count, present my humblest apologies to her and try to bring her back. scene iii.--mrs. jourdain, mr. jourdain, a servant. mr. jour. ah! insolent woman that you are; these are your fine doings. you come and abuse me before everybody, and send away from my house persons of quality. mrs. jour. i don't care a pin for their quality. mr. jour. i don't know, accursed woman that you are, what prevents me from beating your skull in with what remains of the feast you have come and disturbed. mrs. jour. (_going away_). i despise your threats. i come here to defend my own rights, and all wives will be on my side. mr. jour. you do wisely to avoid my anger, i can tell you. scene iv.--mr. jourdain (_alone_). she came in at a most unlucky moment. i was in a mood to tell her very pretty things, and i never felt so full of wit. but what does this mean? scene v.--mr. jourdain, covielle (_disguised_). cov. sir, i am not sure if i have the honour of being known to you. mr. jour. no, sir. cov. (_putting his hand about a foot from the ground_). i saw you when you were not taller than that. mr. jour. me? cov. yes! you were the most beautiful child in the world, and all the ladies used to lift you up in their arms to kiss you. mr. jour. to kiss me? cov. yes. i was a great friend of the late nobleman your father. mr. jour. of the late nobleman my father? cov. yes, he was a most kind gentleman. mr. jour. what do you say? cov. i say that he was a most kind gentleman. mr. jour. my father? cov. your father. mr. jour. you knew him well? cov. very well indeed. mr. jour. and you know him to have been a nobleman? cov. undoubtedly. mr. jour. well, i don't understand what the world means. cov. what do you say? mr. jour. there are some stupid people who try to persuade me that he was a shopkeeper. cov. he a shopkeeper! it is sheer calumny. all he did was this: he was extremely kind and obliging, and understood different kinds of stuff very well; therefore he used to go everywhere and choose some; then, he had them brought to his house, and was in the habit of letting his friends have some for money if they chose. mr. jour. i am delighted to have made your acquaintance, so that you may testify that my father was a nobleman. cov. i will maintain it before the whole world. mr. jour. you will oblige me greatly; may i know what business brings you here? cov. since my acquaintance with your late father--a perfect gentleman, as i was telling you--i have travelled to the end of the world. mr. jour. to the end of the world? cov. yes. mr. jour. i suppose it is a very far-off country. cov. very far off. i only returned four days ago, and owing to the interest i take in all that concerns you, i have come to give you the best news possible. mr. jour. what can it be? cov. you know that the son of the grand turk is here. [footnote: there seems to have been a turkish envoy in paris at that time.] mr. jour. no, i didn't know. cov. you didn't know! he has a most magnificent retinue of attendants. everybody goes to see him, and he has been received in this country as a personage of the greatest importance. mr. jour. indeed? i have heard nothing of it. cov. what is of great concern to you is that he is in love with your daughter. mr. jour. the son of the grand turk? cov. yes, and that he wishes to, become your son-in-law. mr. jour. my son-in-law, the son of the grand turk! cov. the son of the grand turk your son-in-law when i went to see him, as i understand his language perfectly, we had a long chat together; and after having talked of different things, he told me, _acciam croc soler onch alla moustaph gidelum amanahem varahini oussere carbulath_? that is to say, "have you not seen a beautiful young girl who is the daughter of mr. jourdain, a nobleman of paris?" mr. jour. the son of the grand turk said that of me? cov. yes. then i answered him that i knew you perfectly well, and that i had seen your daughter. ah! said he, _marababa sahem_! which is to say, "ah! how much i love her!" mr. jour. _marababa sahem_! means, "ah! how i love her!" cov. yes. mr. jour. indeed, you do right to tell me; for i should never have known that _marababa sahem_! meant, "ah i how much i love her!" this turkish language is admirable. cov. more admirable than you would ever imagine. for instance, do you know what _cacaracamouchen_ means? mr. jour. _cacaracamouchen_? no. cov. it means, "my dear love." mr. jour. _cacaracamouchen_ means, "my dear love"? cov. yes. mr. jour. it is wonderful! _cacaracamouchen_, "my dear love." who would ever have thought it? i am perfectly astounded. cov. in short, in order to end my embassy, i must tell you that he is coming to ask your daughter in marriage; and in order to have a father-in-law worthy of him, he wants to make you a _mamamouchi_, which is a great dignity in his country. mr. jour. _mamamouchi_? cov. _mamamouchi_; that is to say in our own language, a paladin. paladin, you know those ancient paladins; in short, there is nothing more noble than that in the whole world, and you will take rank with the greatest lords upon the earth. mr. jour. the son of the grand turk honours me greatly, and i beg of you to take me to his house, that i may return him my thanks. cov. not at all; he is just coming here. mr. jour. he is coming here? cov. yes, and he is bringing with him everything necessary for the ceremony. mr. jour. it is doing things rather quickly. cov. yes, his love will suffer no delay. mr. jour. all that perplexes me in this affair is that my daughter is a very obstinate girl, who has taken it into her head to have a certain cléonte for her husband, and vows she will marry no other. cov. she is sure to change her mind when she sees the son of the grand turk; besides, wonderful to relate, the son of the grand turk has a strong likeness to that very cléonte. people showed him to me, and i have just seen him; the love she feels for the one is sure to pass to the other, and ... i hear him coming! lo, here he is. scene vi.--clÉonte (_dressed as a turk_), three pages (_carrying the vest of_ clÉonte), mr. jourdain, covielle. cle. _ambousahim oqui boraf, giourdina, salamatequi_. cov. (_to_ mr. jourdain). that is to say, "mr. jourdain, may your heart be all the year round a budding rose tree." it is a way of speaking they have in that country. mr. jour. i am your turkish highness's humble servant. cov. _carigar camboto oustin moraf_. cle. _oustin yoc catamalequi basum base alla moran_. cov. he says, "may heaven grant you the strength of the lion and the prudence of the serpent." mr. jour. his turkish highness does me too much honour, and i wish him all manner of prosperity. cov. _ossa binamen sadoc baballi oracaf ouram_. cle. _belmen_. cov. he says you must go quickly with him to prepare for the ceremony, in order afterwards to see your daughter and conclude the marriage. mr. jour. so many things comprised in two words? cov. yes, the turkish language is like that, it says a good deal in a few words. go quickly where he wishes you. scene vii.--covielle (_alone_). ah! ah! ah! upon my soul, this is most absurd. what a dupe! had he learnt his part by heart, he would not have played it better. ah! ah! ah! scene viii.--dorante, covielle. cov. i beg of you, sir, to help us here in a little affair we have in hand. dor. hallo! covielle, who would have known you again? what a get up! cov. as you see. ah! ah! ah! dor. what are you laughing at? cov. at a thing worth laughing at, i can tell you. dor. what is it? cov. you would never guess the stratagem we have invented to induce mr. jourdain to give my master his daughter in marriage. dor. i certainly can't guess what it is, but i can guess that it will succeed since you are at the head of affairs. cov. i know, sir, that the animal is appreciated by you. dor. tell me what you are about. cov. kindly go a little on one side to make room for what i see coming. you will be able to have a view of a part of the business whilst i explain the rest to you. scene ix.--the turkish ceremony. [footnote: lulli composed the music, and acted the part of the mufti.] the mufti, dervishes, turks (_assisting the_ mufti), singers and dancers. six turks _enter gravely, two and two at the sound of instruments. they carry three carpets which they lift very high as they dance several dances the_ turks _pass under the carpets, singing and range themselves on each side of the stage. the_ mufti, _accompanied by_ dervishes, _closes the march. the_ turks _then spread the carpets on the ground, and kneel down upon them. the_ mufti _and the_ dervishes _stand up in the middle of them; and while the_ mufti _invokes mahomet in dumb contortions and grimaces the_ turks _prostrate themselves to the ground, singing_ alli, _raising their hands to heaven, singing_ alla, _and continue so alternately to the end of the invocation; after which they all rise up, singing_, alla eckber, _and two_ dervishes _go and fetch_ mr. jourdain. scene x.--the mufti, dervish, turkish singers _and_ dancers. mr. jourdain, _dressed like a turk, his head shaved, without any turban or sword_. the mufti (_to_ mr. jourdain). [ ] se ti sabir, ti respondir; se non sabir, tazir, tazir. mi star muphti, ti qui star si? non intendir; tazir, tazir. [ ] [ ] _lingua franca,_ jargon composed of italian, spanish, &c., and spoken in the levant. [ ] if you understand, answer; if you do not understand, hold thy peace, hold thy peace. i am the mufti (two dervishes _retire with_ mr. jourdain.) scene xi.--the mufti, dervishes, turks, _singing and dancing_. muf. dice, turque, qui star quista? anabatista? anabatista? [say, turk, who is this? is he anabaptist? anabaptist?] tur. ioc. [no.] muf. zuinglista? [a zwinglian?] tur. ioc. [no.] muf. coffita? [a capht?] tur. ioc. [no.] muf. hussita? morista? fronista? [a hussite? a moor? a phronist?] tur. ioc, ioc; ioc. [no, no, no.] muf. ioc, ioc, ioc. star pagana? [no, no, no. is he a pagan?] tur. ioc. [no.] muf. luterana? [a lutheran?] tur. ioc. [no.] muf. puritana? [a puritan?] tur. ioc. [no.] muf. bramina? moffina? zurina? [a brahmin? a moffian? a zurian?] tur. ioc, ioc, ioc. [no, no, no.] muf. ioc, ioc, ioc. mahametana? mahametana? [no, no, no. a mahometan? a mahometan?] tur. hi valla. hi valla. [there you have it. there you have it.] muf. como chamara? como chamara? [how is he called? how is he called?] tur. giourdina, giourdina. [jourdain, jourdain.] muf. (_jumping_). giourdina, giourdina. [jourdain, jourdain.] tur. giourdina, giourdina. [jourdain, jourdain.] the mufti. [ ] mahameta, per giourdina, mi pregar sera e matina. voler far un paladina de giourdina, de giourdina; dar turbanta, e dar scarrina, con galera, e brigantina, per deffender palestina. mahameta, per giourdina, mi pregar sera e matina. (_to the_ turks.) star bon turca giourdina? [ ] to mahomet for jourdain, i pray night and day. i wish to make a paladin of jourdain, of jourdain. give him a turban, and give him a sword, with a galley and a brigantine, to defend palestine. to mahomet for jourdain i pray night and day. (_to the_ turks.). is jourdain a good turk? tur. hi valla. hi valla. [yes, by allah!] muf. (_singing and dancing_). ha la ba, ba la chou, ba la ba, ba la da. tur. ha la ba, ba la chou, ba la ba ba la da. [ ] [ ] thus separated, these words have no sense; but by joining and correcting them, we have: _allah baba, hou, allah hou_, which are really turkish, and which signify, "_god my father; god my father_." (_auger_.) scene xi.--turks, _singing and dancing_. _second entry of the_ ballet. scene xiii.--the mufti, dervishes, mr. jourdain, turks, _singing and dancing_. _the_ mufti _returns, wearing on his head the state turban, which is of enormous size, and adorned with lighted candles, four or five rows deep; he is accompanied by_ two dervishes _bearing the koran, and wearing cone-shaped caps also adorned with lighted candles_. _the two other_ dervishes _lead in_ mr. jourdain, _and make him kneel down, his two hands on the ground, so that his back, on which the koran is placed, serves for a desk for the_ mufti, _who makes a second burlesque invocation, knitting his eyebrows, striking from time to time on the koran, and turning over the pages with precipitation; after which, lifting up his hands, he cries with a loud voice_, "hou." _during this second invocation, the other_ turks, _bowing down and raising themselves alternately, sing likewise_, "hou, hou, hou." mr. jour. (_after they have taken the koran from off his back_). ouf! the mufti (_to_ mr. jourdain). ti non star furba? [thou wilt not be a knave?] the turks. no, no, no. the mufti. non star forfanta? [nor be a thief?] the turks. no, no, no. the mufti (_to the_ turks). donar turbanta. [give the turban.] the turks. ti non star furba? [thou wilt not be a knave?] no, no, no. non star forfanta? [nor be a thief?] no, no, no. donar turbanta. [give the turban.] third entry of the ballet. _the_ turks, _dancing, put the turban on_ mr. jourdain's _head at the sound of the instruments_. the mufti (_giving a sabre to_ mr. jourdain). ti star nobile, non star fabbola. [be brave, be no scoundrel] pigliar schiabbola [take the sword.] the turks (_drawing their sabres_). ti star nobile, non star fabbola. [be brave, be no scoundrel] pigliar schiabbola. [take the sword.] _fourth entry of the_ ballet. _the_ turks, _dancing, strike_ mr. jourdain _several times with their swords, keeping time with the music_. the mufti. dara, dara bastonnara. [give, give the bastonnade.] the turks. dara, dara bastonnara. [give, give the bastonnade.] _fifth entry of the_ ballet. _the_ turks, _dancing, give_ mr. jourdain _several blows with a stick, keeping time meanwhile_. the mufti. non tener honta; [think it not a shame;] questa star l'ultima affronta. [this is the last affront.] the turks. non tener honta; [think it not a shame;] questa star l'ultima affronta. [this is the last affront.] _the_ mufti _begins a third invocation. the_ dervishes _support him under the arms with great respect, after which the_ turks, _singing and dancing round the_ mufti, _retire with him, and lead off_ mr. jourdain. act v. scene i.--mrs. jourdain, mr. jourdain. mrs. jour. goodness gracious me! lord, have mercy on us! what can this be? what a figure! is it a _momon_ [footnote: apparently there is no english equivalent to _momon_ in this sense.] you have in hand, and is this carnival time? do speak! what does all this mean? who trussed you up in this manner? mr. jour. just see the impertinent woman, to speak after such a manner to a _mamamouchi_. mrs. jour. what do you say? mr. jour. yes, you must show me respect now; i have just been made a _mamamouchi_. mrs. jour. what can you possibly mean with your _mamamouchi_? mr. jour. _mamamouchi_, i tell you; i am a _mamamouchi_. mrs. jour. what kind of a beast is that? mr. jour. _mamamouchi_; which in our language means paladin. mrs. jour. ballet in? are you of an age to be dancing ballets? mr. jour. what an ignorant woman you are! i say "paladin," which is a dignity which has just been conferred upon me with all due ceremony. mrs. jour. what ceremony? mr. jour. _mahameta per jordina_. mrs. jour. what does that mean? mr. jour. _jordina, that is to say jourdain_. mrs. jour. well? what, jourdain? mr. jour. _voler far un paladina de jordina_. mrs. jour. what? mr. jour. _dar turbanta con galera_. mrs. jour. what does that mean? mr. jour. _per deffender palestina_. mrs. jour. tell me what you mean then. mr. jour. _dara, dara bastonnara_. mrs. jour. what is all this jargon? mr. jour. _non tener honta, questa star l'ultima affronta_. mrs. jour. whatever is all this? mr. jour. (_singing and dancing_). _hou la ba, ba la chow, ba la ba, ba la da_. (_falls to the ground_.) mrs. jour. alas, alas! my husband is gone out of his mind. mr. jour. (_getting up and walking off_). peace! show respect to the _mamamouchi_. mrs. jour. (_alone_). where can he have lost his senses? i must run after him and prevent him from going out! (_seeing_ dorimÈne _and_ dorante.) oh dear! oh dear! here's the last straw! i see nothing but trouble and disgrace everywhere! scene ii.--dorante, dorimÈne. dor. yes, madam, it is the most amusing thing that you ever saw, and i do not think that there is in the whole world a man as, crazy as this one. moreover, we must try to help cléonte and back up his masquerade. he is a most excellent fellow, and one who deserves all your interest. dori. i have the greatest esteem for him, and he is worthy of all success. dor. we also have here, madam, a ballet due to us. we must not miss it, for i should be glad to see if my idea succeeds. dori. i saw magnificent preparations yonder; and this is a state of things, dorante, with which i can bear no longer. yes, i must put an end to your profusion; and in order to cut short all the expenses i see you run into for me, i have decided upon marrying you as soon as possible. this is the real secret of my decision; all these things, as you know, end ever in matrimony. dor. ah, madam, is it possible that you should have come to such a kind determination in my favour? dori. it is only to prevent you from ruining yourself, for, if i am not quick, i clearly see that before long you will not have a penny left. dor. what thanks i owe you for your anxiety about my fortune! that and my heart are entirely yours, and you can dispose of both as shall seem good to you. dori. i will make a right use of both. but here is our man coming. what an admirable figure! scene iii.--mr. jourdain, dorimÈne, dorante. dor. sir, we have both come to do homage to your new dignity, and to rejoice with you over the marriage of your daughter with the son of the grand turk. mr. jour. (_after bowing in the turkish manner_). sir, i wish you the strength of the serpent, and the wisdom of the lion. dori. i am very glad to be one of the first, sir, to come and congratulate you on the high degree of glory to which you are raised. mr. jour. madam, may your rose-tree bloom all the year round. i am infinitely obliged to you for interesting yourself in the honour just bestowed upon me; and i am greatly rejoiced to see you back here, so that i may tender to you my most humble apologies for the extraordinary conduct of my wife. dori. don't speak about it. i excuse in her such a momentary impulse; your heart ought to be very precious to her; and it is not to be wondered at that the possession of such a man as you are may cause her some alarm. mr. jour. the possession of my heart is a thing you have altogether acquired. dor. you see, madam, that mr. jourdain is not one of those whom prosperity blinds, and that, even in his elevation, he knows how to recognise his friends. dori. it is the proof of a truly generous soul. dor. where can his turkish highness be? we should like, as your friends, to pay our homage to him. mr. jour. here he is coming, and i sent for my daughter to give him her hand. scene iv.--mr. jourdain, dorimÈne, dorante, clÉonte (_dressed as a turk_). dori. (_to_ clÉonte). sir, we come, as friends of your father-in-law, to salute your highness, and to assure you with all respect of our most humble services. mr. jour. where is the interpreter, to tell him who you are, and to make him understand what you say? you shall see that he will answer you, and he speaks turkish wonderfully well. holla, here! where the deuce is he gone? (_to_ clÉonte) _strouf strif, strof, straf_. this gentleman is a _grande segnore, grande segnore, grande segnore_; and this lady a _granda dama, granda dama. (seeing that he is not understood)_ ah! (_to_ clÉonte, _showing him_ dorante) this gentleman is a french _mamamouchi_, and the lady she is a french _mamamouchess_. i cannot explain myself more clearly. good! here is the interpreter. scene v.--mr. jourdain, dorimÈne, dorante, clÉonte (_dressed as a turk_); covielle (_disguised_). mr. jour. where are you going, then? you know that we can say nothing without you. (_showing_ clÉonte.) just tell him that this gentleman and this lady are people of very high rank, who have come to pay their homage to him, as friends of mine, and to assure him of their services. (_to_ dorimÈne _and_ dorante) you will see how he will answer. cov. _alabala crociam acci boram alabamen_. cle. _catalequi tubal ouria soter amalouchan_. mr. jour. (to dorimÈne and dorante). do you see? cov. he says, "may the rain of prosperity water at all times the garden of your family." mr. jour. i told you that he spoke turkish. dor. this is admirable. scene vi.--lucile, clÉonte, mr. jourdain, dorimÈne, dorante, covielle. mr. jour. come, my daughter; come near, and give your hand to this gentleman, who does you the honour of asking you in marriage. luc. why, father, how strangely dressed you are! are you acting a comedy? mr. jour. no, no; it is no comedy, but a very serious affair, and the most honourable for you that could ever be wished for. (_showing_ clÉonte.) here is the husband i bestow upon you. luc. bestow upon me, father? mr. jour. yes, upon you. there, give him your hand, and thank heaven for your good fortune. luc. i have no wish to marry. mr. jour. it is all very well, but i wish it; i who am your father. luc. i will do nothing of the kind. mr. jour. ah! what a noise! come, i say, give him your hand. luc. no, father; i told you already that no power upon earth will force me to marry any other but cléonte; and i would have recourse to any extremity rather than.... (_recognising_ clÉonte.) but it is true that you are my father, and that i owe you absolute obedience; dispose of me, then, according to your will. mr. jour. truly, i am delighted to see you return so quickly to a sense of your duty; and it is a pleasure to me to have such an obedient daughter. scene vii.--mrs. jourdain. clÉonte, mr. jourdain, lucile, dorante, dorimÈne, covielle. mrs jour. what is it? what is the meaning of all this? they say you want to give your daughter in marriage to a mummer. mr. jour. will you be silent? you always come and disturb everything with your follies; and there is no possibility of teaching you how to behave yourself. mrs. jour. it is because there is no possibility of making you wise; and you go from folly to folly. what are your intentions? and what do you mean to do with all this assembly of people? mr. jour. i wish to marry my daughter to the son of the grand turk. mrs. jour. to the son of the grand turk? mr. jour. (_showing_ covielle). yes; ask the interpreter to present your compliments to him from you. mrs. jour. i have no need of an interpreter, and i can tell him myself easily to his face that he shall not have my daughter. mr. jour. will you be silent? i ask once more. dor. what! mrs. jourdain, you oppose yourself to such an honour as this? you refuse his turkish highness for a son-in-law? mrs. jour. good gracious, sir! mind your own business, if you please. dori. it is an honour by no means to be rejected. mrs. jour. i pray you also not to trouble yourself with that which is no concern of yours. dor. it is the friendship we have for you which makes us interest ourselves in your welfare. mrs. jour. i can do very well without your friendship. dor. you see that your daughter yields to her father's will. mrs. jour. my daughter consents to marry a turk? dor. certainly. mrs. jour. she can forget cléonte? dor. what will not one do to be a grand lady? mrs. jour. i would strangle her with my own hands if she had done such a thing. mr. jour. too much prating by half! i tell you the marriage shall take place. mrs. jour. and i tell you that it shan't. mr. jour. ah! what a row! luc. mother! mrs. jour. leave me alone, you are a bad girl. mr. jour. (_to_ mrs. jourdain). what! you scold her because she is obedient to me? mrs. jour. certainly; she belongs to me as much as she belongs to you. cov. (_to_ mrs. jourdain). madam. mrs. jour. what business have you to speak to me, you? cov. one word. mrs. jour. i'll have nothing to do with your word. cov. (_to_ mr. jourdain). sir, if she will only listen to a word in private, i promise you to make her consent to all you want. mrs. jour. i will never consent to it. cov. only hear me. mrs. jour. no. mr. jour. (_to_ mrs. jourdain). hear him. mrs. jour. no; i will not hear him. mr. jour. he will tell you.... mrs. jour. i don't want him to tell me anything. mr. jour. did ever anybody see such obstinacy in a woman! would it hurt you to hear him? cov. only listen to me; you may do what you please afterwards. mrs. jour. well, what? cov. (_aside, to_ mrs. jourdain). we have made signs to you for the last hour. do you not see that all this is done to fit in with the fancies of your husband? that we are imposing upon him under this disguise, and that it is cléonte himself who is the son of the grand turk? mrs. jour. (_aside, to_ covielle). oh! oh! cov. (_aside, to_ mrs. jourdain). and that it is i, covielle, who am the interpreter? mrs. jour. (_aside, to _covielle). ah! if it is so, i give in. cov. (_aside, to_ mrs. jourdain). seem not to have any idea of what's going on. mrs. jour. (_aloud_). very well, let it be; i consent to the marriage. mr. jour. so, everyone is agreed. (_to_ mrs. jourdain) you would not listen to him. i knew he would explain to you what the son of the grand turk is. mrs. jour. he has explained it quite sufficiently, and i am satisfied with it. let us send for a notary. dor. the very thing! and mrs. jourdain, in order to set your mind at rest, and that you should lose to-day all feelings of jealousy which you may have felt about your husband, this lady and i will ask the same notary to marry us. mrs. jour. i consent to that also. mr. jour. (_aside_, to dorante). it is to deceive her, is it not? dor. (_aside_, to mr. jourdain). we must amuse her with this notion. mr. jour. good, good. (_aloud_) let somebody go at once for the notary. dor. whilst he draws up the contract, let us see our ballet, and give the entertainment to his turkish highness. mr. jour. it is well thought of. let us go to our places. mrs. jour. and nicole? mr. jour. i give her to the interpreter, and my wife to anyone who will have her. cov. sir, i thank you. (_aside_) if it is possible to find a greater fool than this one, i will go and publish it in rome. ballet and divertissement. http://www.freeliterature.org (images generously made available by the internet archive.) the road to the open by arthur schnitzler authorised translation by horace samuel london: howard latimer limited great queen street, kingsway i george von wergenthin sat at table quite alone to-day. his elder brother felician had chosen to dine out with friends for the first time after a longish interval. but george felt no particular inclination to renew his acquaintance with ralph skelton, count schönstein or any of the other young people, whose gossip usually afforded him so much pleasure; for the time being he did not feel in the mood for any kind of society. the servant cleared away and disappeared. george lit a cigarette and then in accordance with his habit walked up and down the big three-windowed rather low room, while he wondered how it was that this very room which had for many weeks seemed to him so gloomy was now gradually beginning to regain its former air of cheerfulness. he could not help letting his glance linger on the empty chair at the top end of the table, over which the september sun was streaming through the open window in the centre. he felt as though he had seen his father, who had died two months ago, sit there only an hour back, as he visualised with great clearness the very slightest mannerisms of the dead man, even down to his trick of pushing his coffee-cup away, adjusting his pince-nez or turning over the leaves of a pamphlet. george thought of one of his last conversations with his father which had occurred in the late spring before they had moved to the villa on the veldeser lake. george had just then come back from sicily, where he had spent april with grace on a melancholy and somewhat boring farewell tour before his mistress's final return to america. he had done no real work for six months or more, and had not even copied out the plaintive adagio which he had heard in the plashing of the waves on a windy morning in palermo as he walked along the beach. george had played over the theme to his father and improvised on it with an exaggerated wealth of harmonies which almost swamped the original melody, and when he had launched into a wildly modulated variation, his father had smilingly asked him from the other end of the piano--"whither away, whither away?" george had felt abashed and allowed the swell of the notes to subside, and his father had begun a discussion about his son's future with all his usual affection, but with rather more than his usual seriousness. this conversation ran through his mind to-day as though it had been pregnant with presage. he stood at the window and looked out. the park outside was fairly empty. an old woman wearing an old-fashioned cloak with glass beads sat on a seat. a nursemaid walked past holding one child by the hand while another, a little boy, in a hussar uniform, with a buckled-on sabre and a pistol in his belt, ran past, looked haughtily round and saluted a veteran who came down the path smoking. further down the grounds were a few people sitting round the kiosk, drinking coffee and reading the papers. the foliage was still fairly thick, and the park looked depressed and dusty and altogether far more summer-like than usual for late september. george rested his arms on the window-sill, leant forwards and looked at the sky. he had not left vienna since his father's death, though he had had many opportunities of so doing. he could have gone with felician to the schönstein estate; frau ehrenberg had written him a charming letter inviting him to come to auhof; he could easily have found a companion for that long-planned cycle-tour through carinthia and the tyrol, which he had not the energy to undertake alone. but he preferred to stay in vienna and occupy his time with perusing and putting in order the old family papers. he found archives which went as far back as his great-grandfather anastasius von wergenthin, who haled from the rhine district and had by his marriage with a fräulein recco become possessed of an old castle near bozen which had been uninhabitable for a long period. there were also documents dealing with the history of george's grandfather, a major of artillery who had fallen before chlum in the year . the major's son, the father of felician and himself, had devoted himself to scientific studies, principally botany, and had taken at innsbruck the degree of doctor of philosophy. at the age of twenty-four he had made the acquaintance of a young girl of an old family of austrian officials, who had brought her up to be a singer, more with a view to rendering her independent of the limited, not to say impoverished, resources of the household, than because she had any real vocation. baron von wergenthin saw and heard her for the first time at a concert-performance of the missa solemnis and in the following may she became his wife. three years later the health of the baroness began to fail, and she was ordered south by the doctors. she did not recover as soon as was anticipated, with the result that the house in vienna was given up, and the baron and his family lived for several years a kind of hotel-life, as they travelled from one place to another. his business and studies frequently summoned the baron to vienna, but the sons never left their mother. the family lived in sicily, rome, tunis, corfu, athens, malta, merano, the riviera, and finally in florence; never in very great style, but fairly well nevertheless, and without curtailing their expenditure sufficiently to prevent a substantial part of the baron's fortune being gradually eaten up. george was eighteen when his mother died. nine years had passed since then, but the memory of that spring evening was still as vivid as ever, when his father and brother had happened to be out, and he had stood alone and helpless by his mother's death-bed, while the talk and laughter of the passers-by had flowed in with the spring air through the hastily opened windows with all the jar of its unwelcome noise. the survivors took their mother's body back to vienna. the baron devoted himself to his studies with new and desperate zeal. he had formerly enjoyed the reputation of an aristocratic dilettante, but he now began to be taken quite seriously even in academic circles, and when he was elected honorary president of the botanical society he owed that distinction to something more than the accident of a noble name. felician and george entered themselves as law students. but after some time their father himself encouraged the boys to abandon their university studies, and go in for a more general education and one more in accordance with their musical tendencies. george felt thankful and relieved at this new departure. but even in this sphere which he had chosen himself, he was by no means industrious, and he would often occupy himself for weeks on end with all manner of things that had nothing at all to do with his musical career. it was this same trait of dilettantism which made him now go through the old family documents as seriously as though he were investigating some important secrets of the past. he spent many hours busying himself with letters which his parents had exchanged in years gone by, wistful letters and superficial letters, melancholy letters and placid letters, which brought back again to life not merely the departed ones themselves but other men and women half sunk in oblivion. his german tutor now appeared to him again with his sad pale forehead just as he used to declaim his horace to him on their long walks, there floated up in his mind the wild brown boyish face of prince alexander of macedon in whose company george had had his first riding lessons in rome; and then the pyramids of cestius limned as though in a dream with black lines on a pale blue horizon reared their peaks, just as george had seen them once in the twilight as he came home from his first ride in the campagna. and as he abandoned himself still more to his reverie there appeared sea-shores, gardens and streets, though he had no knowledge of the landscape or the town that had furnished them to his memory; images of human beings swept past him; some of these, whom he had met casually on some trivial occasion, were very clear, others again, with whom he might at some time or other have passed many days, were shadowy and distant. when george had finished inspecting the old letters and was putting his own papers in order, he found in an old green case some musical jottings of his boyhood, whose very existence had so completely vanished from his memory, that if they had been put before him as the records of some one else he would not have known the difference. some affected him with a kind of pleasant pain, for they seemed to him to contain promises which he was perhaps never to fulfil. and yet he had been feeling lately that something had been hatching within him. he saw his development as a mysterious but definite line which showed the way from those first promising notes in the green case to quite new ideas, and this much he knew--the two songs out of the "westöstliche divan" which he had set to music this summer on a sultry afternoon, while felician lay in his hammock and his father worked in his armchair on the cool terrace, could not have been composed by your ordinary person. george moved back a step from the window as though surprised by an absolutely unexpected thought. he had never before realised with such clearness that there had been an absolute break in his life since his father's death down to to-day. during the whole time he had not given a single thought to anna rosner to whom he had sent the songs in manuscript. and he felt pleasurably thrilled at the thought that he could hear her melodious melancholy voice again and accompany her singing on that somewhat heavy piano, as soon as he wished. and he remembered the old house in the paulanergasse, with its low door and badly lighted stairs which he had not been up more than three or four times, in the mood in which a man thinks of something which he has known very long and held very dear. a slight soughing traversed the leaves in the park outside. thin clouds appeared over the spire of the stephan tower, which stood directly opposite the window, on the other side of the park, and over a largish part of the town. george was faced with a long afternoon without any engagements. it seemed to him as though all his former friendships during the two months of mourning had dissolved or broken up. he thought of the past spring and winter with all their complications and mad whirl of gaiety, and all kinds of images came back into his memory--the ride with frau marianne in the closed fiacre through the snow-covered forest. the masked ball at ehrenberg's with else's subtly-naive remarks about "hedda gabler" with whom she insisted she felt a certain affinity, and with sissy's hasty kiss from under the black lace of her mask. a mountain expedition in the snow from edlach up to the rax with count schönstein and oskar ehrenberg, who, though very far from being a born mountaineer, had jumped at the opportunity of tacking himself on to two blue-blooded gentlemen. the evening at ronacher's with grace and young labinski, who had shot himself four days afterwards either on account of grace, debts, satiety, or as a sheer piece of affectation. the strange hot and cold conversation with grace in the cemetery in the melting february snow two days after labinski's funeral. the evening in the hot lofty fencing-room where felician's sword had crossed the dangerous blade of the italian master. the walk at night after the paderewski concert when his father had spoken to him more intimately than ever before of that long-past evening on which his dead mother had sung in the missa solemnis in the very hall which they had just come out of. and finally anna rosner's tall quiet figure appeared to him, leaning on the piano, with the score in her hand, and her smiling blue eyes turned towards the keys, and he even heard her voice reverberating in his soul. while he stood like this at the window and looked down at the park which was gradually becoming animated, he felt a certain consolation in the fact that he had no close ties with any human being, and that there were so many people to whom he could attach himself once more and whose set he could enter again as soon as the fancy took him. he felt at the same time wonderfully rested and more in the vein for work and happiness than he had ever been. he was full of great bold resolutions and joyfully conscious of his youth and independence. he no doubt felt a certain shame at the thought that at any rate at the present moment his grief for his dead father was much alleviated; but he found a relief for this indifference of his in the thought of his dear father's painless end. he had been walking up and down the garden chatting with his two sons, had suddenly looked round him as though he heard voices in the distance, had then looked up towards the sky and had suddenly dropped down dead on the sward, without a cry of pain or even a twitching of the lips. george went back into the room, got ready to go out and left the house. he intended to walk about for a couple of hours wherever chance might take him, and in the evening to work again at his quintette, for which he now felt in the right mood. he crossed the street and went into the park. the sultriness had passed. the old woman in the cloak still sat on the seat and stared in front of her. children were playing on the sandy playground round the trees. all the chairs round the kiosk were taken. a clean-shaven gentleman sat in the summer-house whom george knew by sight and who had impressed him by his likeness to the elder grillparzer. by the pond george met a governess with two well-dressed children and received a flashing glance. when he got out of the park into the ringstrasse he met willy eissler who was wearing a long autumn overcoat with dark stripes and began to speak to him. "good afternoon, baron, so you've come back to vienna again." "i've been back a long time," answered george. "i didn't leave vienna again after my father's death." "yes, yes, quite so.... allow me, once again...." and willy shook hands with george. "and what have you been doing this summer?" asked george. "all kinds of things. played tennis, and painted, rotted about, had some amusing times and a lot of boring ones...." willy spoke extremely quickly, with a deliberate though slight hoarseness, briskly and yet nonchalantly with a combination of the hungarian, french, viennese and jewish accents. "anyway, i came early to-day, just as you see me now, from przemysl," he continued. "drill?" "yes, the last one. i'm sorry to say so. though i'm nearly an old man, i've always found it a joke to trot about with my yellow epaulettes, clanking my spurs, dragging my sabre along, spreading an atmosphere of impending peril, and being taken by incompetent lavaters for a noble count." they walked along by the side of the railing of the stadtpark. "going to ehrenbergs' by any chance?" asked willy. "no, i never thought of it." "because this is the way. i say, have you heard, fräulein else is supposed to be engaged?" "really?" queried george slowly. "and whom to?" "guess, baron." "come, hofrat wilt?" "great heavens!" cried willy, "i'm sure it's never entered his head! becoming s. ehrenberg's son-in-law might result in prejudicing his government career--nowadays." george went on guessing. "rittmeister ladisc?" "oh no, fräulein else is far too clever to be taken in by him." george then remembered that willy had fought a duel with ladisc a few years back. willy felt george's look, twirled somewhat nervously his blonde moustache which drooped in the polish fashion and began to speak quickly and offhandedly. "the fact that rittmeister ladisc and myself once had a difference cannot prevent me from loyally recognising the fact that he is, and always has been, a drunken swine. i have an invincible repulsion, which even blood cannot wash out, against those people who gorge themselves sick at jewish houses and then start slanging the jews as soon as they get on the door-steps. they ought to be able to wait till they got to the café. but don't exert yourself any more by guessing. heinrich bermann is the lucky man." "impossible," said george. "why?" asked eissler. "it had to be some one sooner or later. bermann is no adonis, i agree, but he's a coming man, and else's official ideal of a mixture of gentleman-rider and athlete will never turn up. meanwhile she has reached twenty-four, and she must have had enough by now of salomon's tactless remarks and salomon's jokes." "salomon?--oh, yes--ehrenberg." "you only know him by the initial s? s of course stands for salomon ... and as for only s standing on the door, that is simply a concession he made to his family. if he could follow his own fancy he would prefer to turn up at the parties madame ehrenberg gives in a caftan and side-curls." "do you think so? he's not so very strict?" "strict?... really now! it's nothing at all to do with strictness. it is only cussedness, particularly against his son oskar with his feudal ideals." "really," said george with a smile, "wasn't oskar baptised long ago? why, he's a reserve officer in the dragoons." "that's why ... well, i've not been baptised and nevertheless ... yes ... there are always exceptions ... with good will...." he laughed and went on. "as for oskar, he would personally prefer to be a catholic. but he thought for the time being he would have to pay too dearly for the pleasure of being able to go to confession. there's sure to be a provision in the will to take care that oskar doesn't 'vert over." they had arrived in front of the café imperial. willy remained standing. "i've got an appointment here with demeter stanzides." "please remember me to him." "thanks very much. won't you come in and have an ice?" "thanks, i'll prowl about a little more." "you like solitude?" "it's hard to give an answer to so general a question," replied george. "of course," said willy, suddenly grew serious and lifted his hat. "good afternoon, baron." george held out his hand. he felt that willy was a man who was continually defending a position though there was no pressing necessity for him to do so. "au revoir," he said with real sincerity. he felt now as he had often done before, that it was almost extraordinary that willy should be a jew. why, old eissler, willy's father, who composed charming viennese waltzes and songs, was a connoisseur and collector, and sometimes a seller of antiquities, and objets d'art, and had passed in his day for the most celebrated boxer in vienna, was, what with his long grey beard and his monocle, far more like a hungarian magnate than a jewish patriarch. besides, willy's own temperament, his deliberate cultivation of it and his iron will had made him into the deceptive counterpart of a feudal gentleman bred and born. what, however, distinguished him from other young people of similar race and ambition was the fact that he was accustomed to admit his origin, to demand explanation or satisfaction for every ambiguous smile, and to make merry himself over all the prejudices and vanities of which he was so often the victim. george strode along, and willy's last question echoed in his ears. did he love solitude?... he remembered how he had walked about in palermo for whole mornings while grace, following her usual habit, lay in bed till noon.... where was she now...? since she had said goodbye to him in naples he had in accordance with their arrangement heard nothing from her. he thought of the deep blue night which had swept over the waters when he had travelled alone to genoa after that farewell, and of the soft strange fairy-like song of two children who, nestling closely up against each other and wrapped, the pair of them, in one rug, had sat on the deck by the side of their sleeping mother. with a growing sense of well-being he walked on among the people who passed by him with all the casual nonchalance of a sunday. many a glad glance from a woman's eye met his own, and seemed as though it would have liked to console him for strolling about alone and with all the external appearances of mourning on this beautiful holiday afternoon. and another picture floated up in his mind.--he saw himself on a hilly sward, after a hot june day, late in the evening. darkness all around. deep below him a clatter of men, laughter and noise, and glittering fairy-lamps. quite near, girls' voices came out of the darkness.... he lit the small pipe which he usually only smoked in the country; the flare of the vesta showed him two pretty young peasant wenches, still almost children. he chatted to them. they were frightened because it was so dark; they nestled up to him. suddenly a whizz, rockets in the air, a loud "ah!" from down below. bengal lights flaring violet and red over the invisible lake beneath. the girls rushed down the hill and vanished. then it became dark again and he lay alone and looked up into the darkness which swam down on him in all its sultriness. the night before the day on which his father died had been one such as this. and he thought of him for the first time to-day. he had left the ringstrasse and taken the direction of the wieden. would the rosners be at home on such a beautiful day? at all events the distance was so short that it was worth trying, and at any rate he fancied going there rather than to ehrenbergs'. he was not the least in love with else, and it was almost a matter of indifference to him whether or no she were really engaged to heinrich bermann. he had already known her for a long time. she had been eleven, he had been fourteen when they had played tennis with each other on the riviera. in those days she looked like a gipsy girl. black-blue tresses tossed round her cheeks and forehead, and she was as boisterous as a boy. her brother had already begun to play the lord, and even to-day george could not help smiling at the recollection of the fifteen-year old boy appearing on the promenade one day in a light grey coat with white black-braided gloves and a monocle in his eye. frau ehrenberg was then thirty-four, and had a dignified appearance though her figure was too large; she was still beautiful, had dim eyes, and was usually very tired. george never forgot the day on which her husband, the millionaire cartridge-manufacturer, had descended on his family and had by the very fact of his appearance made a speedy end of the ehrenbergian aristocracy. george still remembered in his mind's eye how he had sprung up during the breakfast on the hotel terrace; a small spare gentleman with a trimmed beard and moustache and japanese eyes, in badly-creased white flannels, a dark straw hat with a red-and-white striped ribbon on his round head and with dusty black shoes. he always spoke very slowly and in an as it were sarcastic manner even about the most unimportant matters, and whenever he opened his mouth a secret anxiety would always lurk beneath the apparent calm of his wife's face. she tried to revenge herself by making fun of him; but she could never do anything with his inconsiderate manners. oskar behaved whenever he had a chance as though he didn't belong to the family at all. a somewhat hesitating contempt would play over his features for that progenitor who was not quite worthy of him, and he would smile meaningly for sympathy at the young baron. only else in those days was really nice to her father. she was quite glad to hang on his arm on the promenade and she would often throw her arms round his neck before every one. george had seen else again in florence a year before his mother's death. she was then taking drawing lessons from an old grizzled german, about whom the legend was circulated that he had once been celebrated. he spread the rumour about himself that when he felt his genius on the wane he had discarded his former well-known name and had given up his calling, though what that was he never disclosed. if his own version was to be believed, his downfall was due to a diabolical female who had destroyed his most important picture in a fit of jealousy; and then ended her life by jumping out of the window. this man who had struck the seventeen-year-old george as a kind of fool and impostor was the object of else's first infatuation. she was then fourteen years old, and had all the wildness and naïveté of childhood. when she stood in front of the titian venus in the uffizi gallery her cheeks would flush with curiosity, yearning and admiration, and vague dreams of future experiences would play in her eyes. she often came with her mother to the house which the wergenthins had hired at lungarno, and while frau ehrenberg tried in her languid blasé way to amuse the ailing baroness, else would stand at the window with george, start precocious conversations about the art of the pre-raphaelites, and smile at her old childish games. felician too would come in sometimes, slim and handsome, cast his cold grey eyes over the objects and people in the room, murmur a few polite words, sit down by his mother's bedside, and tenderly stroke and kiss her hand. he would usually soon go away again, though not without leaving behind, so far as else was concerned, a very palpable atmosphere of old-time aristocracy, cold-blooded fascination and elegant contempt of death. she always had the impression that he was going to a gaming-table where hundreds of thousands were at stake, to a duel to the death or to a princess with red hair and a dagger on her dressing-table. george remembered that he had been somewhat jealous both of the erratic drawing-master and of his brother. the master was suddenly dismissed for reasons which were never specified, and soon afterwards felician left for vienna with baron von wergenthin. george now played to the ladies on the piano more frequently than before, both his own compositions and those of others, and else would sing from the score easy songs from schubert and schumann in her small, rather shrill voice. she visited the galleries and churches with her mother and george; when spring came there were excursion parties up the hill road or to fiesole, and george and else exchanged smiling glances which were eloquent of a deeper understanding than actually existed. their relations went on progressing in this somewhat disingenuous manner, when their acquaintance was renewed and continued in vienna. else seemed pleasurably thrilled all over again by the equable friendly manner with which george approached her, notwithstanding the fact that they had not seen each other for some months. she herself, on the other hand, grew outwardly more self-possessed and mentally more unsettled with each succeeding year. she had abandoned her artistic aspirations fairly early, and in the course of time she came to regard herself as destined to the most varied careers. she often saw herself in the future as a society woman, an organiser of battles of flowers, a patroness of great balls, taking part in aristocratic charity performances; more frequently she would believe herself called to sit enthroned as a great appreciator in an artistic salon of painters, musicians and poets. she would then dream again of a more adventurous life: a sensational marriage with an american millionaire, the elopement with a violin virtuoso or a spanish officer, a diabolical ruination of all the men who came near her. sometimes she would think a quiet life in the country by the side of a worthy landowner the most desirable consummation; and then she would imagine herself sitting with prematurely grey hair at a simply-laid table in a circle of numerous children while she stroked the wrinkles out of the forehead of her grave husband. but george always felt that her love of comfort, which was deeper than she guessed herself, would save her from any rash step. she would often confide in george without ever being quite honest with him; for the wish which she cherished most frequently and seriously of all was to become his wife. george was well aware of this, but that was not the only reason why the latest piece of intelligence about her engagement with heinrich bermann struck him as somewhat incredible--this bermann was a gaunt clean-shaven man with gloomy eyes and straight and rather too long hair, who had recently won a reputation as a writer and whose demeanour and appearance reminded george, though he could not tell why, of some fanatical jewish teacher from the provinces; there was nothing in him which could fascinate else particularly or even make a pleasurable appeal. this impression was no doubt dispelled by subsequent conversation. george had left the ehrenbergs' in company with him one evening last spring, and they had fallen into so thrilling a conversation about musical matters that they had gone on chatting till three o'clock in the morning on a seat in the ringstrasse. it is strange, thought george, what a lot of things are running through my mind to-day which i had scarcely thought of at all since they happened. and he felt as though he had on this autumn evening emerged out of the grievous dreary obscurity of so many weeks into the light of day at last. he was now standing in front of the house in the paulanergasse where the rosners lived. he looked up to the second story. a window was open, white tulle curtains pinned together in the centre fluttered in the light breeze. the rosners were at home. the housemaid showed george in. anna was sitting opposite the door, she held a coffee-cup in her hand and her eyes were turned towards the newcomer. on her right her father was reading a paper and smoking a pipe. he was clean-shaven except for a pair of narrow grizzled whiskers on his cheeks. his thin hair of a strange greenish-grey hue was parted at the temples in front and looked like a badly-made wig. his eyes were watery and red-lidded. the stoutish mother, around whose forehead the memory of fairer years seemed as it were to hover, looked straight in front of her; her hands were contemplatively intertwined and rested on the table. anna slowly put down her cup, nodded and smiled in silence. the two old people began to get up when george came in. "please, don't trouble, please don't," said george. then there was a noise from the wall at the side of the room. josef, the son of the house, got up from the sofa on which he had been lying. "charmed to see you, herr baron," he said in a very deep voice, and adjusted the turned-up collar of his yellow-check rather shabby lounge jacket. "and how have you been all this time, herr baron?" inquired the old man. he remained standing a gaunt and somewhat bowed figure, and refused to resume his seat until george had sat down. josef pushed a chair between his father and sister, anna held out her hand to the visitor. "we haven't seen one another for a long time," she said, and drank some of her coffee. "you've been going through a sad time," remarked frau rosner sympathetically. "yes," added herr rosner. "we were extremely sorry to read of your great loss--and so far as we knew your father always enjoyed the best of health." he spoke very slowly all the time, as if he had still something more to say, stroking his head several times with his left hand, and nodded while he listened to the answer. "yes, it came very unexpectedly," said george gently, and looked at the faded dark-red carpet at his feet. "a sudden death then, so to speak," remarked herr rosner and there was a general silence. george took a cigarette out of his case and offered one to josef. "much obliged," said josef as he took the cigarette and bowed while he clicked his heels together without any apparent reason; while he was giving the baron a light he thought the latter was looking at him, and said apologetically, with an even deeper voice than usual, "office jacket." "office jacket straight from the office," said anna simply without looking at her brother. "the lady fancies she has the ironic gift," answered josef merrily, but his manifest restraint indicated that under other conditions he would have expressed himself less agreeably. "sympathy was universally felt," old rosner began again. "i read an obituary in the _neuen freie presse_ on your good father by herr hoffrat kerner, if i remember rightly; it was highly laudatory. science too has suffered a sad loss." george nodded in embarrassment, and looked at his hands. anna began to speak about her past summer-outing. "it was awfully pretty in weissenfeld," she said. "the forest was just behind our house with good level roads, wasn't it, papa? one could walk there for hours and hours without meeting a soul." "and did you have a piano out there?" asked george. "oh yes." "an awful affair," observed herr rosner, "a thing fit to wake up the stones and drive men mad." "it wasn't so bad," said anna. "good enough for the little graubinger girl," added frau rosner. "the little graubinger girl, you see, is the daughter of the local shopkeeper," explained anna: "and i taught her the elements of pianoforte, a pretty little girl with long blonde pig-tails." "just a favour to the shopkeeper," said frau rosner. "quite so, but i should like to remind you," supplemented anna, "that apart from that i gave real lessons, i mean paid-for ones." "what, also in weissenfeld?" asked george. "children on a holiday. anyway, it's a pity, herr baron, that you never paid us a visit in the country. i am sure you would have liked it." george then remembered for the first time that he had promised anna that he would try to pay her a visit some time in the summer on a cycling tour. "i am sure the baron would not have found a place like that really to his liking," began herr rosner. "why not?" asked george. "they don't cater there for the requirements of a spoilt viennese." "oh, i'm not spoilt," said george. "weren't you at auhof either?" anna turned to george. "oh no," he answered quickly. "no, i wasn't there," he added less sharply. "i was invited though.... frau ehrenberg was so kind as to ... i had various invitations for the summer. but i preferred to stay in vienna by myself." "i am really sorry," said anna, "not to see anything more of else. you know of course that we went to the same boarding-school. of course it's a long time ago. i really liked her. a pity that one gets so out of touch as time goes on." "how is that?" asked george. "well, i suppose the reason is that i'm not particularly keen on the whole set." "nor am i," said josef, who was blowing rings into the air.... "i haven't been there for years. putting it quite frankly ... i've no idea, baron, of your views on this question ... i'm not very gone on israelites." herr rosner looked up at his son. "my dear josef, the baron visits the house and it will strike him as rather strange...." "i?" said george courteously. "i'm not at all on intimate terms with the ehrenberg family, however much i enjoy talking to the two ladies." and then he added interrogatively, "but didn't you give singing lessons to else last year, fräulein anna?" "yes. or rather ... i just accompanied her...." "i suppose you'll do so again this year?" "i don't know. she hasn't shown any signs of life, so far." "perhaps she's giving it all up." "you think so? it would be almost better if she did," replied anna softly, "for as a matter of fact, it was more like squeaking than singing. but anyway," and she threw george a look which, as it were, welcomed him afresh, "the songs you sent me are very nice. shall i sing them to you?" "you've had a look at the things already? that is nice of you." anna had got up. she put both her hands on her temples and stroked her wavy hair gently, as though making it tidy. it was done fairly high, so that her figure seemed even taller than it actually was. a narrow golden watch-chain was twined twice round her bare neck, fell down over her bosom, and vanished in her grey leather belt. with an almost imperceptible nod of her head she asked george to accompany her. he got up and said, "if you don't mind...." "not at all, not at all, of course not," said herr rosner. "very kind of you, baron, to do a little music with my daughter. very nice, very nice." anna had stepped into the next room. george followed her and left the door open. the white tulle curtains were pinned together in front of the open window and fluttered slightly. george sat down at the cottage-piano and struck a few chords. meanwhile, anna knelt down in front of an old black partly gilded whatnot, and got out the music. george modulated the first chords of his song. anna joined in and sang to george's song the goethean words, deinem blick mich zu bequemen, deinem munde, deiner brust, deine stimme zu vernehmen, war mir erst' und letzte lust. she stood behind him and looked over his shoulder at the music. at times she bent a little forward, and he then felt the breath of her lips upon his temples. her voice was much more beautiful than he remembered its having ever been before. they were speaking rather too loudly in the next room. without stopping singing anna shut the door. it had been josef who had been unable to control his voice any longer. "i'll just pop in to the café for a jiffy," he said. there was no answer. herr rosner drummed gently on the table and his wife nodded with apparent indifference. "goodbye then." josef turned round again at the door and said fairly resolutely: "oh, mamma, if you've got a minute to spare by any chance----" "i'm listening," said frau rosner. "it's not a secret, i suppose." "no. it's only that i've got a running account with you already." "is it necessary to go to the café?" asked old rosner simply, without looking up. "it's not a question of the café. the fact is ... you can take it from me that i'd prefer myself not to have to borrow from you. but what is a man to do?" "a man should work," said old rosner gently, painfully, and his eyes reddened. his wife threw a sad and reproachful look at her son. "well," said josef, unbuttoning his office coat, and then buttoning it up again--"that really is ... for every single gulden-note----" "pst," said frau rosner with a glance towards the door, which was ajar, and through which, now that anna had finished her song, came the muffled sound of george's piano-playing. josef answered his mother's glance with a deprecatory wave of his hand. "papa says i ought to work. as though i hadn't already proved that i can work." he saw two pairs of questioning eyes turned towards him. "yes of course i proved it, and if it had only depended on me i'd have managed to get along all right. but i haven't got the temperament to put up with things, i'm not the kind to let myself be bullied by any chief if i happen to come in a quarter of an hour late--or anything like that." "we know all about that," interrupted herr rosner wearily. "but after all, as we're already on the subject, you really must start looking round for something." "look round ... good ..." answered josef. "but no one will persuade me to go into any business run by a jew. it would make me the laughing-stock of all my acquaintances ... of my whole set in fact." "your set ..." said frau rosner. "what is your set? café cronies?" "well if you don't mind, now that we are on the subject," said josef--"it's connected with that gulden-note, too. i've got an appointment at the café now with young jalaudek. i'd have preferred to have told you when the thing had gone quite through ... but i see now that i'd better show my hand straight away. well, jalaudek is the son of councillor jalaudek the celebrated paper-merchant. and old jalaudek is well-known as a very influential personage in the party ... very intimate with the publisher of the _christliche volksbote_: his name is zelltinkel. and they're looking out on the _volksbote_ for young men with good manners--christians of course, for the advertisement business. and so i've got an appointment to-day with jalaudek at the café, because he promised me his governor would recommend me to zelltinkel. that would be ripping ... it would get me out of my mess. then it wouldn't be long before i was earning a hundred or a hundred and fifty gulders a month." "o dear!" sighed old rosner. the bell rang outside. rosner looked up. "that must be young doctor stauber," said frau rosner and cast an anxious glance at the door, through which the sound of george's piano-playing came in even softer tones than before. "well, mamma, what's the matter?" said josef. frau rosner took out her purse and with a sigh gave her son a silver gulden. "much obliged," said josef and turned to go. "josef," cried herr rosner, "it's really rather rude--at the very minute when we have a visitor----" "oh thank you, but i mustn't have all the treats." there was a knock, doctor berthold stauber came in. "i apologise profusely, herr doctor," said josef, "i'm just going out." "not at all," replied doctor stauber coldly, and josef vanished. frau rosner invited the young doctor to sit down. he took a seat on the ottoman and turned towards the quarter from which the piano-playing could be heard. "baron wergenthin, the composer. anna has just been singing," explained frau rosner, somewhat embarrassed. and she started to call her daughter in. doctor berthold gripped her arm lightly but firmly, and said amiably: "no, please don't disturb fräulein anna, please don't. i'm not in the least hurry. besides, this is a farewell visit." the latter words seemed jerked out of his throat; but berthold nevertheless smiled courteously, leant back comfortably in his corner and stroked his short beard with his right hand. frau rosner looked at him as if she were positively shocked. "a farewell visit?" herr rosner asked. "has the party allowed you to take a holiday, herr stauber? parliament has only been assembled a short time, as one sees in the papers." "i have resigned my seat," said berthold. "what?" exclaimed herr rosner. "yes, resigned," repeated berthold, and smiled nervously. the piano-playing had suddenly stopped, the door which had been ajar was now opened. george and anna appeared. "oh, doctor berthold," said anna, and held out her hand to the doctor, who had immediately got up. "have you been here long? perhaps you heard me singing?" "no, fräulein, i'm sorry i was too late for that. i only caught a few notes on the piano." "baron wergenthin," said anna, as though she were introducing. "but of course you know each other?" "oh yes," answered george, and held out his hand to berthold. "the doctor has come to pay us a farewell visit," said frau rosner. "what?" exclaimed anna in astonishment. "i'm going on a journey, you see," said berthold, and looked anna in the face with a serious, impenetrable expression. "i'm giving up my political career ... or rather," he added jestingly, "i'm interrupting it for a while." george leant on the window with his arms crossed over his breast and looked sideways at anna. she had sat down and was looking quietly at berthold, who was standing up with his hand resting on the back of the sofa, as though he were going to make a speech. "and where are you going?" asked anna. "paris. i'm going to work in the pasteur institute. i'm going back to my old love, bacteriology. it's a cleaner life than politics." it had grown darker. the faces became vague, only berthold's forehead, which was directly opposite the window, was still bathed in light. his brows were twitching. he really has his peculiar kind of beauty, thought george, who was leaning motionless in the window-niche and felt himself bathed in a pleasant sense of peace. the housemaid brought in the burning lamp and hung it over the table. "but the papers," said herr rosner, "have no announcement at all so far of your resigning your seat, doctor stauber." "that would be premature," answered berthold. "my colleagues and the party know my intention all right, but the thing isn't official yet." "the news is bound to create a great sensation in the circles affected by it," said herr rosner--"particularly after the lively debate the other day in which you showed such spirit and determination. i suppose you've read about it, baron?" he turned to george. "i must confess," answered george, "that i don't follow the parliamentary reports as regularly as i really ought to." "ought to," repeated berthold meditatively. "there's no question of 'ought' about it really, although the session has not been uninteresting during the last few days--at any rate as a proof of how low a level a public body can sink to." "the debate was very heated," said herr rosner. "heated?... well, yes, what we call heated here in austria. people were inwardly indifferent and outwardly offensive." "what was it all about then?" inquired george. "it was the debate arising out of the questions on the golowski case.... therese golowski." "therese golowski ..." repeated george. "i seem to know the name." "of course you know it," said anna. "you know therese herself. she was just leaving the house when you called the last time." "oh yes," said george, "one of your friends." "i wouldn't go so far as to call her a friend; that seems to imply a certain mental sympathy that doesn't quite exist." "you certainly don't mean to repudiate therese," said doctor berthold smiling, but dryly. "oh no," answered anna quickly. "i really never thought of doing that. i even admire her; as a matter of fact i admire all people who are able to risk so much for something that doesn't really concern them at all. and when a young girl does that, a pretty young girl like therese"--she was addressing herself to george who was listening attentively--"i am all the more impressed. you know of course that therese is one of the leaders of the social democratic party?" "and do you know what i took her for?" said george. "for a budding actress." "you're quite a judge of character, herr baron," said berthold. "she really did mean to go on the stage once," corroborated frau rosner coldly. "but just consider, frau rosner," said berthold. "what young girl is there with any imagination, especially if she lives in cramped surroundings into the bargain, who has not at some time or other in her life at any rate coquetted with such an idea." "your forgiving her is good," said anna, smiling. it struck berthold too late that this remark of his had probably touched a still sensitive spot in anna's mind. but he continued with all the greater deliberation. "i assure you, fräulein anna, it would be a great pity if therese were to go on the stage, for there's no getting away from the fact that she can still do her party a tremendous lot of good if she isn't torn away from her career." "do you regard that as possible?" asked anna. "certainly," replied berthold. "therese is between two dangers, she will either talk her head off one fine day...." "or?" inquired george, who had grown inquisitive. "or she'll marry a baron," finished berthold curtly. "i don't quite understand," said george deprecatingly. "i only said 'baron' for a joke, of course. substitute prince for baron and i make my meaning clearer." "i see ... i can now get some idea of what you mean, doctor.... but how did parliament come to bother about her?" "well, it's like this, last year--at the time of the great coal-strike--therese golowski made a speech in some bohemian hole, which contained an expression which was alleged to be offensive to a member of the imperial family. she was prosecuted and acquitted. one might perhaps draw the conclusion from this that there was no particular substance in the prosecution. anyway the state prosecutor gave notice of appeal, there was an order for a new trial, and therese was sentenced to two months' imprisonment, which she is now serving, and as if that wasn't enough the judge who had discharged her in the court of first instance was transferred ... to somewhere on the russian frontier, from where no one ever comes back. well, we put a question over this business, which in my view was extremely tame. the minister answered somewhat disingenuously amid the cheers of the so-called constitutional parties. i ventured to reply in possibly somewhat more drastic terms than members are accustomed to use, and as the benches on the other side had no facts with which to answer me they tried to overwhelm me by shouts and abuse. and of course you can imagine what the strongest argument was, which a certain type of conservatives used against my points." "well?" queried george. "hold your jaw, jew," answered berthold with tightly compressed lips. "oh," said george with embarrassment, and shook his head. "be quiet, jew! hold your jaw! jew! jew! shut up!" continued berthold, who seemed somewhat to revel in the recollection. anna looked straight in front of her. george thought that this was quite enough. there was a short, painful silence. "so that was why?" inquired anna slowly. "what do you mean?" asked berthold. "that's why you're resigning your seat." berthold shook his head and smiled. "no, not because of that." "you are, of course, above such coarse insults, doctor," said herr rosner. "i won't go quite so far as that," answered berthold, "but one always has to be prepared for things like that all the same. i'm resigning my seat for a different reason." "may one ask what it is?" queried george. berthold looked at him with an air which was penetrating and yet distrait. he then answered courteously: "of course you may. i went into the buffet after my speech. i met there, among others, one of the silliest and cheekiest of our democratic popular representatives, who, as he usually does, had made more row than any one else while i was speaking ... jalaudek the paper-merchant. of course i didn't pay any attention to him. he was just putting down his empty glass. when he saw me he smiled, nodded and hailed me as cheerily as though nothing had taken place at all. 'hallo, doctor, won't you have a drink with me?'" "incredible!" exclaimed george. "incredible?... no, austrian. our indignation is as little genuine as our enthusiasm. the only things genuine with us are our malice and our hate of talent." "well, and what did you answer the man?" asked anna. "what did i answer? nothing, of course." "and you resigned your seat," added anna with gentle raillery. berthold smiled. but at the same time his eye-brows twitched, as was his habit when he was painfully or disagreeably affected. it was too late to tell her that as a matter of fact he had come to ask her for her advice, as he used to do in the old days. and at any rate he felt sure of this, he had done wisely in cutting off all retreat as soon as he entered the room by announcing the resignation of his seat as an already accomplished fact, and his journey to paris as directly imminent. for he now knew for certain that anna had again escaped him, perhaps for a long time. he did not believe for a minute that any man was capable of winning her really and permanently, and it never entered his head for a minute to be jealous of that elegant young artist who was standing so quietly by the window with his crossed arms. it had happened many times before that anna had fluttered away for a time, as though fascinated by the magic of an element which was strange to her. why only two years ago, when she was thinking seriously of going on the stage, and had already begun to learn her parts, he had given her up for a short time as completely lost. subsequently when she had been compelled to relinquish her artistic projects, owing to the unreliability of her voice, she seemed as if she wanted to come back to him again. but he had deliberately refused to exploit the opportunities of that period. for he wanted before he made her his wife to have won some triumph, either in science or in politics, and to have obtained her genuine admiration. he had been well on the way to it. in the very seat where she was now sitting as she looked him straight in the face with those clear but alas! cold eyes, she had looked at the proofs of his latest medico-philosophical work which bore the title _preliminary observations on the physiognomical diagnosis of diseases_. and then, when he finally left science for politics, at the time when he made speeches at election meetings and equipped himself for his new career by serious studies in history and political economy, she had sincerely rejoiced in his energy and his versatility. all this was now over. she had grown to eye more and more severely those faults of his of which he was quite aware himself, and particularly his tendency to be swept away by the intoxication of his own words, with the result that he came to lose more and more of his self-confidence in his attitude towards her. he was never quite himself when he spoke to her, or in her presence. he was not satisfied with himself to-day either. he was conscious, with an irritation which struck even himself as petty, that he had not given sufficient force to his encounter with jalaudek in the buffet, and that he ought to have made his detestation of politics ring far more plausibly. "you are probably quite right, fräulein anna," he said, "if you smile at my resigning my seat on account of that silly incident. a parliamentary life without its share of comedy is an absolute impossibility. i should have realised it, played up to it and taken every opportunity of drinking with the fellow who had publicly insulted me. it would have been convenient, austrian--and possibly even the most correct course to have taken." he felt himself in full swing again and continued with animation. "what it comes to in the end is that there are two methods of doing anything worth doing in politics. the one is a magnificent flippancy which looks on the whole of public life as an amusing game, has no true enthusiasm for anything, and no true indignation against anything, and which regards the people whose misery or happiness are ultimately at stake with consummate indifference. i have not progressed so far, and i don't know that i should ever have succeeded in doing so. quite frankly, i have often wished i could have. the other method is this: to be ready every single minute to sacrifice one's whole existence, one's life, in the truest sense of the word, for what one believes to be right----" berthold suddenly stopped. his father, old doctor stauber, had come in and been heartily welcomed. he shook hands with george, who had been introduced to him by frau rosner, and looked at him so kindly that george felt himself immediately drawn towards him. he looked younger than he was. his long reddish-yellow beard was only streaked by a few grey hairs, and his smoothly combed long hair fell in thick locks on to his broad neck. the strikingly high forehead gave a kind of majesty to the somewhat thick-set figure with its high shoulders. when his eyes were not making a special point of looking kind or shrewd they seemed to be resting behind the tired lids as though to gather the energy for the next look. "i knew your mother, herr baron," he said to george rather gently. "my mother, herr doctor...?" "you will scarcely remember it, you were only a little boy of three or four at the time." "you attended her?" asked george. "i visited her sometimes as deputy for professor duchegg, whose assistant i was. you used to live then in the habsburgergasse, in an old house that has been pulled down long ago. i could describe to you even to-day the furniture of the room in which i was received by your father ... whose premature death i deeply regret.... there was a bronze figure on the secretary, a knight in armour to be sure with a flag, and a copy of a vandyck from the liechtenstein gallery hung on the wall." "yes, quite right," said george, amazed at the doctor's good memory. "but i have interrupted your conversation," continued doctor stauber in that droning slightly melancholy and yet superior tone which was peculiar to him, and sat down in the corner of the sofa. "doctor berthold has just been telling us, to our great astonishment," said herr rosner, "that he has decided to resign his seat." old stauber directed a quiet look towards his son, which the latter answered with equal quietness. george, who had watched this play of the eyes, had the impression that there prevailed between these two a tacit understanding which did not need any words. "yes," said doctor stauber. "i wasn't at all surprised. i've always felt as though berthold were never really quite at home in parliament, and i am really glad that he has now begun to pine as it were to go back to his real calling. yes, yes, your real calling, berthold," he repeated, as though to answer his son's furrowed brow. "you have not prejudiced your future by it, in the least. nothing makes life so difficult as our frequent belief in consistency ... and our wasting our time in being ashamed of a mistake, instead of owning up to it and simply starting life again on a fresh basis." berthold explained that he meant to leave in eight days at the outside. there would be no point in postponing his journey beyond that time, it would be possible too that he might not remain in paris. his studies might necessitate travelling further afield. further, he had decided not to make any farewell visits. he had, he added by way of explanation, completely given up all association with certain bourgeois sets, among whom his father had an extensive practice. "didn't we meet each other once this winter at ehrenbergs'?" asked george with a certain amount of satisfaction. "that's right," answered berthold. "we are distantly related to the ehrenbergs you know. the golowski family is curiously enough the connecting link between us. it would be no good, herr baron, if i were to make any attempt to explain it to you in greater detail. i should have to take you on a journey through the registry offices and congregations of temesvar tarnopol and similar pleasant localities--and that you mightn't quite fancy." "anyway," added old doctor stauber in a resigned tone, "the baron is bound to know that all jews are related to one another." george smiled amiably. as a matter of fact it rather jarred on his nerves. there was no necessity at all, in his view, for doctor stauber as well officially to communicate to him his membership of the jewish community. he already knew it and bore him no grudge for it. he bore him no grudge at all for it; but why do they always begin to talk about it themselves? wherever he went, he only met jews who were ashamed of being jews, or the type who were proud of it and were frightened of people thinking they were ashamed of it. "i had a chat with old frau golowski yesterday," continued doctor stauber. "poor woman," said herr rosner. "how is she?" asked anna. "how is she ... you can imagine ... her daughter in prison, her son a conscript--he is living in the barracks at the expense of the state ... just imagine leo golowski as a patriot ... and the old man sits in the café and watches the other people playing chess. he himself can't even run nowadays to the ten kreuzers for the chess money." "therese's imprisonment must soon be over anyway," said berthold. "it still lasts another twelve, fourteen days," replied his father.... "come, annerl"--he turned towards the young girl--"it would be really nice of you if you were to show yourself once more in rembrandtstrasse; the old lady has taken an almost pathetic fancy to you. i really can't understand why," he added with a smile, while he looked at anna almost tenderly. she looked straight in front of her and made no answer. the clock on the wall struck seven. george got up as though he had simply been waiting for the signal. "going so soon, herr baron?" said herr rosner, getting up. george requested the company not to disturb themselves, and shook hands all round. "it is strange," said old stauber, "how your voice reminds one of your poor father." "yes, many people have said so," replied george. "i, personally, can't see any trace of it." "there isn't a man in the world who knows his own voice," remarked old stauber, and it sounded like the beginning of a popular lecture. but george took his leave. anna accompanied him, in spite of his slight remonstrance, into the hall and left the door half open--almost on purpose, so it struck george. "it's a pity we couldn't go on with our music any longer," she said. "i'm sorry too, fräulein anna." "i liked the song to-day even better than the first time, when i had to accompany myself, only it falls off a bit at the end.... i don't know how to express myself." "oh, i know what you mean, the end is conventional. i felt so too. i hope soon to be able to bring you something better than that, fräulein anna." "but don't keep me waiting for it too long." "i certainly won't. goodbye, fräulein anna." they shook hands with each other and both smiled. "why didn't you come to weissenfeld?" asked anna lightly. "i am really sorry, but just consider, fräulein anna, i could scarcely get in the mood for society of any kind this year, you can quite appreciate that." anna looked at him seriously. "don't you think," she said, "that perhaps one might have been some help to you in bearing it?" "there's a draught, anna," called out frau rosner from inside. "i'm coming in a minute," answered anna with a touch of impatience. but frau rosner had already shut the door. "when can i come back?" asked george. "whenever you like. at any rate ... i really ought to give you a written time-table, so that you may know when i'm at home, but that wouldn't be much good either. i often go for walks or go shopping in town or go to picture galleries or exhibitions----" "we might do that together one day," said george. "oh, yes," answered anna, took her purse out of her pocket and then took out a tiny note-book. "what have you got there?" asked george. anna smiled and turned over the leaves of a little book. "just wait.... i meant to go and see the exhibition of miniatures in the royal library at eleven on thursday. if you too are interested in miniatures, we might meet there." "delighted, i'm sure." "right you are then, we can then arrange the next time for you to accompany my singing." "done," said george and shook hands with her. it struck him that while anna was chatting with him here outside, young doctor stauber would doubtless be getting irritated or offended inside, and he was surprised that he should be more disturbed by this circumstance than anna, who struck him as on the whole a perfectly good-natured person. he freed his hand from hers, said good-bye and went. it was quite dark when george got into the streets. he strolled slowly over the elizabeth bridge to the opera, past the centre of the town and undisturbed by the hubbub and traffic around him, listened mentally to the tune of his song. he thought it strange that anna's voice which had so pure and sound a tone in a small room, should have no future whatsoever before it on the stage and concert platform, and even stranger that anna scarcely seemed to mind this tragic fact. but of course he was not quite clear in his mind whether anna's calmness really reflected her true character. he had known her more or less casually for some years, but an evening in the previous spring had been the first occasion when they had become rather more intimate. a large party had been got up on that occasion in the waldsteingarten. they took their meal in the open air under the high chestnut-trees, and they all experienced the pleasure, excitement and fascination of the first warm may evening of the year. george conjured up in his mind all the people who had come: frau ehrenberg, the organiser of the party, dressed in an intentionally matronly style, in a dark loose-fitting foulard dress; hofrat wilt, wearing as it were the mask of an english statesman with all the sloppy aristocracy of his nonchalant demeanour, and his chronic and somewhat cheap superior manner towards everything and everybody; frau oberberger who looked like a rococo marquise with her grey powdered hair, her flashing eyes and her beauty spot on her chin; demeter stanzides with his white gleaming teeth and that pale forehead that showed all the weariness of an old race of heroes; oskar ehrenberg dressed with a smartness that smacked a great deal of the head clerk in a dressmaking establishment, a great deal of a young music-hall comedian and something, too, of a young society man; sissy wyner who kept switching her dark laughing eyes from one man to another, as though she had a merry secret understanding with every single member of the party; willy eissler who related in his hoarse jovial voice all kinds of jolly anecdotes of his soldier days and jewish stories as well; else ehrenberg in a white english cloth dress with all the delicate melancholy of the spring flowing around her, while her _grande dame_ movements combined with her baby-face and delicate figure to invest her with an almost pathetic grace; felician, cold and courteous, with haughty eyes which gazed between the members of the party to the other tables, and from the other tables beyond into the distance; sissy's mother, young, red-cheeked and a positive chatter-box, who wanted to talk about everything at the same time and to listen to everything at the same time; edmund nürnberger with his piercing eyes and his thin mouth curving into that smile of contempt (which had almost become a chronic mask) for that whirligig of life, which he thoroughly saw through, though to his own amazement he frequently discovered that he was playing in the game himself; and then finally heinrich bermann in a summer suit that was too loose, with a straw hat that was too cheap and a tie that was too light, who one moment spoke louder than the others and at the next moment was more noticeably silent. last of all anna rosner had appeared, self-possessed and without any escort, greeted the party with a slight nod and composedly sat down between frau ehrenberg and george. "i have asked her for you," said frau ehrenberg softly to george, who prior to this evening had scarcely given anna a single thought. these words, which perhaps only originated in a stray idea of frau ehrenberg's, became true in the course of the evening. from the moment when the party got up and started on their merry expedition through the volksprater george and anna had remained together everywhere, in the side-shows and also on the journey home to town, which for the fun of the thing was done on foot, and surrounded though they were by all that buzz of jollity and foolishness they had finished by starting a perfectly rational conversation. a few days later he called and brought her as he had promised the piano score of "eugen onegin" and some of his songs; on his next visit she sang these songs over to him as well as many of schubert's, and he was very pleased with her voice. shortly afterwards they said goodbye to each other for the summer without a single trace of sentimentalism or tenderness. george had regarded anna's invitation to weissenfeld as a mere piece of politeness, just in the same way as he had thought his promise to come had been understood; and the atmosphere of to-day's visit when compared with the innocence of their previous acquaintance was bound to strike george as extremely strange. at the stephansplatz george saw that he was being saluted by some one standing on the platform of a horse-omnibus. george, who was somewhat short-sighted, did not immediately recognise the man who was saluting him. "it's me," said the gentleman on the platform. "oh, herr bermann, good evening." george shook hands with him. "which way are you going?" "i'm going into the prater. i'm going to dine down there. have you anything special on, baron?" "nothing at all." "well, come along with me then." george swung himself on to the omnibus, which had just begun to move on. they told each other cursorily how they had spent the summer. heinrich had been in the salzkammergut and subsequently in germany, from which he had only come back a few days ago. "oh, in berlin?" hazarded george. "no." "i thought perhaps in connection with a new piece----" "i haven't written a new piece," interrupted heinrich somewhat rudely. "i was in the taunus and on the rhine in several places." "what's he got to do on the rhine?" thought george, although the topic did not interest him any further. it struck him that bermann was looking in front of him in a manner that was not only absent-minded but really almost melancholy. "and how's your work getting on, my dear baron?" asked heinrich with sudden animation, while he drew closer round him the dark grey overcoat which hung over his shoulders.[ ] "have you finished your quintette?" "my quintette?" repeated george in astonishment. "have i spoken to you about my quintette, then?" "no, not you, but fräulein else told me that you were working at a quintette." "i see, fräulein else. no, i haven't got much further with it. i didn't feel quite in the mood, as you can imagine." "quite," said heinrich, and was silent for a while. "and your father was still so young," he added slowly. george nodded in silence. "how is your brother?" asked heinrich suddenly. "quite well, thanks," answered george somewhat coldly. heinrich threw his cigarette over the rail and immediately proceeded to light another. then he said: "you must be surprised at my inquiring after your brother when i have scarcely ever spoken to him. but he interests me. he represents in my view a type which is absolutely perfect of its kind, and i regard him as one of the happiest men going." "that may well be," answered george hesitatingly. "but how do you come to think so seeing that you scarcely know him?" "in the first place his name is felician freiherr von wergenthin-recco," said heinrich very seriously, and blew the smoke into the air. george looked at him with some astonishment. "of course your name is wergenthin-recco, too," continued heinrich, "but only george--and that's not the same by a long way, is it? besides, your brother is very handsome. of course you haven't got at all a bad appearance. but people whose real point is that they're handsome have really a much better time of it than others whose real point is that they're clever. if you are handsome you are handsome for always, while clever people, or at any rate nine-tenths of them, spend their life without showing a single trace of talent. yes, that's certainly the case. the line of life is clearer so to speak when one is handsome than when one is a genius. of course all this could be expressed far better." george was disagreeably affected. what's the matter with him? he thought. can he perhaps be jealous of felician ... on account of else ehrenberg? they got out at the praterstern. the great stream of the sunday crowd was flowing towards them. they went towards the hauptallee, where there was no longer any crush, and strolled slowly on. it had grown cool. george made remarks about the autumnal atmosphere of the evening, the people sitting in the restaurants, the military bands playing in the kiosks. at first heinrich answered offhandedly, and subsequently not at all, and finally seemed scarcely to be paying any attention. george thought this rude. he was almost sorry that he had joined heinrich, all the more so as he made it an almost invariable practice not to respond straight away to casual invitations. the excuse he gave to himself was that it was simply out of absent-mindedness that he had done it on this occasion. heinrich was walking close to him or even going a few steps in front, as if he were completely oblivious of george's presence. he still held tightly in both hands the overcoat which was swung round him, wore his dark grey felt hat pressed down over his forehead and looked extremely uncouth. his appearance suddenly began to jar keenly on george's nerves. heinrich bermann's previous remarks about felician now struck him as in bad taste, and as quite devoid of tact, and it occurred to him at the psychological moment that practically all he knew of heinrich's literary productions had gone against the grain. he had seen two pieces of his: one where the scene was laid in the lower strata of society, among artizans or factory workers, and which finished up with murder and fatal blows; the other a kind of satirical society comedy whose first production had occasioned a scandal and which had soon been taken out of the repertoire of the theatre. anyway george did not then know the author personally, and had taken no further interest in the whole thing. he only remembered that felician had thought the piece absolutely ridiculous, and that count schönstein had expressed the opinion that if he had anything to do with it pieces written by jews should only be allowed to be performed by the buda-pesth orpheum company.[ ] but doctor von breitner in particular, a baptised jew with a philosophical mind, had given vent to his indignation that such an adventurer of a young man should have dared to have put a world on to the stage that was obviously closed to him, and which it was consequently impossible for him to know anything about. while george was remembering all this his irritation at the rude conduct and stubborn silence of his companion rose to a genuine sense of enmity, and quite unconsciously he began to think that all the insults which had been previously directed against bermann had been in fact justified. he now remembered too that heinrich had been personally antipathetic to him from the beginning, and that he had indulged in some ironic remark to frau ehrenberg about her cleverness in having lost no time in adding that young celebrity to the tame lions in her drawing-room. else, of course, had immediately taken heinrich's part, and explained that he was an interesting man, was in many respects positively charming, and had prophesied to george that sooner or later he would become good friends with him. and as a matter of fact george had preserved, as the result of that nocturnal conversation on the seat in the ringstrasse in the spring of this year, a certain sympathy for bermann which had survived down to the present evening. they had passed the last inns some time ago. the white high road ran by their side out into the night on a straight and lonely track between the trees, and the very distant music only reached them in more or less broken snatches. "but where are you going to?" heinrich exclaimed suddenly, as though he had been dragged there against his will, and stood still. "i really can't help it," remarked george simply. "excuse me," said heinrich. "you were so deep in thought," retorted george coolly. "i wouldn't quite like to say 'deep.' but it often happens that one loses oneself in one's thoughts like this." "i know," said george, somewhat reconciled. "they were expecting you in august at auhof," said heinrich suddenly. "expected? frau ehrenberg was certainly kind enough to invite me, but i never accepted. did you stay there a fairly long time, herr bermann?" "a fairly long time? no. i was up there a few times, but only for an hour or so." "i thought you stayed there." "not a bit of it. i stayed down at the hotel. i only occasionally went up to auhof. there was too much noise and bustle there for me.... the house was positively packed with visitors. and i can't stand most of the people who go there." an open fiacre in which a gentleman and lady were sitting passed by. "why, that was oskar ehrenberg," said heinrich. "and the lady?" queried george, looking towards something bright that gleamed through the darkness. "don't know her." they turned their steps through a dark side-avenue. the conversation stuck again. finally heinrich began: "fräulein else sang a few of your songs to me at auhof. i'd heard some of them already too, sung by the bellini, i think." "yes, bellini sang them last winter at a concert." "well, fräulein else sang those songs and some others of yours as well." "who accompanied her, then?" "i myself, as well as i could. i must tell you, my dear baron, that as a matter of fact those songs impressed me even more than when i heard them the first time at the concert, in spite of the fact that fräulein else has considerably less voice and technique than fräulein bellini. of course one must take into consideration on the other hand that it was a magnificent summer afternoon when fräulein else sang your songs. the window was open, there was a view of the mountains and the deep-blue sky opposite ... but anyway, you came in for a more than sufficient share of the credit." "very flattering," said george, who felt pained by heinrich's sarcastic tone. "you know," continued heinrich, speaking as he frequently did with clenched teeth and unnecessary emphasis, "you know it is not generally my habit to invite people whom i happen to see in the street to join me in an omnibus, and i prefer to tell you at once that i regarded it as--what does one say?--a sign of fate when i suddenly caught sight of you on the stephansplatz." george listened to him in amazement. "you perhaps don't remember as well as i do," continued heinrich, "our last conversation on that seat in the ringstrasse." george now remembered for the first time that heinrich had then made a quite casual allusion to the libretto of an opera on which he was busy, and that he had offered himself as the composer of the music with equal casualness and more as a joke than anything else. he answered with deliberate coldness: "oh yes, i remember." "well, that binds you to nothing," answered heinrich, even more coldly than the other. "all the less so since, to tell you the truth, i've not given my opera libretto a single thought till that beautiful summer afternoon when fräulein else sang your song. anyway, what do you say to our stopping here?" the restaurant garden which they entered was fairly empty. heinrich and george sat down in a little arbour next to the green wooden railing and ordered their dinner. heinrich leant back, stretched out his legs, looked with probing almost cynical eyes at george, who maintained an obstinate silence, and said suddenly: "i don't think i am making a mistake if i venture to presume that you've not been exactly keen on the things i have done so far." "oh," answered george, blushing a little, "what makes you think that?" "well, i know my pieces ... and i know you." "me!" queried george, feeling almost insulted. "certainly," replied heinrich in a superior manner. "besides, i have the same feeling with regard to most men, and i regard this faculty as the only indisputable one i've really got. all my others, i think, are fairly problematical. my so-called art in particular is more or less mediocre, and a good deal too could be said against my character. the only thing which gives me a certain amount of confidence is simply the consciousness of being able to see right into people's souls ... right deep down, every one, rogues and honest people, men, women and children, heathens, jews and protestants, yes, even catholics, aristocrats and germans, although i have heard that that is supposed to be infinitely difficult, not to say impossible, for people like myself." george gave a slight start. he knew that heinrich had been subjected to the most violent personal attacks by the clerical and conservative press, particularly with reference to his last piece. "but what's that got to do with me?" thought george. there was another one of them who had been insulted! it was really absolutely impossible to associate with these people on a neutral footing. he said politely, though coldly, with a semi-conscious recollection of old herr rosner's retort to young dr. stauber: "i really thought that people like you were above attacks of the kind to which you're obviously alluding." "really ... you thought that?" queried heinrich, in that cold almost repulsive manner which was peculiar to him on many occasions. "well," he went on more gently, "that is the case sometimes. but unfortunately not always. it doesn't need much to wake up that self-contempt which is always lying dormant within us; and once that takes place there isn't a single rogue or a single scoundrel with whom we don't join forces, and quite sincerely too, in attacking our own selves. excuse me if i say 'we.'" "oh, i've frequently felt something of the same kind myself. of course i have not yet had the opportunity of being exposed to the public as often as you and in the same way." "well, supposing you did ... you would never have to go through quite what i did." "why not?" queried george, slightly hurt. heinrich looked him sharply in the face. "you are the baron von wergenthin-recco." "so that's your reason! but you must remember that there are a whole lot of people going about to-day who are prejudiced against one for that very reason--and manage to cast in one's teeth the fact of one's being a baron whenever they get a chance." "yes, yes, but i think you will agree with me that being ragged for being a baron is a very different matter than being ragged for being a 'jew,' although the latter--you'll forgive me of course--may at times denote the better aristocracy. well, you needn't look at me so pitifully," he added with abrupt rudeness. "i am not always so sensitive. i have other moods in which nothing can affect me in any way nor any person either. then i feel simply this--what do you all know--what do you know about me...." he stopped, proudly, with a scornful look that seemed to pierce through the foliage of the arbour into the darkness. he then turned his head, looked round and said simply to george in quite a new tone: "just look, we shall soon be the only ones left." "it is getting quite cold, too," said george. "i think we might still stroll a bit through the prater." "charmed." they got up and went. a fine grey cloud hung over a meadow which they passed. "the fraud of summer doesn't last after nightfall. it'll soon all be over," said heinrich in a tone of unmitigated melancholy, while he added, as though to console himself: "well, one will be able to work." they came into the wurstelprater. the sound of music rang out from the restaurants, and some of the exuberant gaiety communicated itself to george. he felt suddenly swung out of the dismalness of an inn garden at autumn time and a somewhat painful conversation into a new world. a tout, in front of a merry-go-round, from which a gigantic hurdy-gurdy sent into the open air the pot-pourri cut of the "troubadour" with all the effect of some fantastic organ, invited people to take a journey to london, atzgersdorf and australia. george remembered again the excursion in the spring with the ehrenberg party. it was on this narrow seat inside the room that frau oberberger had sat with demeter stanzides, the lion of the evening, by her side, and had probably told him one of her incredible stories: that her mother had been the mistress of a russian grand prince; that she herself had spent a night with an admirer in the hallstadt cemetery, of course without anything happening; or that her husband, the celebrated traveller, had made conquests of seventeen women in one week in one harem at smyrna. it was in this carriage upholstered in red velvet, with hofrat wilt as her _vis-à-vis_, that else had lounged with lady-like grace, just as though she were in a carriage on derby day, while she yet managed to show by her manner and demeanour that, if it came to the point, she herself could be quite as childish as other persons of happier and less complex temperaments. anna rosner with the reins nonchalantly in her hand, looking dignified, but with a somewhat sly face, rode a white arab; sissy rocked about on a black horse that not only turned round in a circle with the other animals and carriages, but swung up and down as well. the boldest eyes imaginable flashed and laughed beneath the audacious _coiffure_ with its gigantic black feather hat, while her white skirt fluttered and flew over her low-cut patent leather shoes and open-work stockings. sissy's appearance had produced so strange an effect on a couple of strangers that they called out to her a quite unambiguous invitation. there had then ensued a short mysterious interview between willy, who immediately came on the spot, and the two somewhat embarrassed gentlemen, who first tried to save their faces by lighting fresh cigarettes with deliberate nonchalance and then suddenly vanished in the crowd. even the side-show with its "illusions" and "illuminated pictures" had special memories for george. it was here, while daphne was turning into a tree, that sissy had whispered into his ear a gentle "remember" and thus called to his memory that masked ball at ehrenberg's at which she had lifted up her lace veil for a fleeting kiss, though presumably he had not been the only one. then there was the hut where the whole party had had themselves photographed: the three young girls, anna, else and sissy in the pose of classical goddesses and the men at their feet with ecstatic eyes, so that the whole thing looked like the climax of a transformation scene. and while george was thinking of these little episodes there floated up through his memory the way in which he and anna had said goodbye to-day, and it seemed full of the most pleasant promise. a striking number of people stood in front of an open shooting gallery. now the drummer was hit in the heart and beat quick strokes upon his drum, now the glass ball which was dancing to and fro upon a jet of water broke with a slight click, now a _vivandière_ hastily put her trumpet to her mouth and blew a menacing blast, now a little railway thundered out of a door which had sprung open, whizzed over a flying bridge and was swallowed up by another door. when the crowd began to thin, george and heinrich made their way to the front and recognised that the good shots were oskar ehrenberg and his lady friend. oskar was just aiming his gun at an eagle which was moving up and down near the ceiling with outstretched wings, and missed for the first time. he laid his weapon down in indignation, gazed round him, saw the two gentlemen behind him and saluted them. the young lady with her cheek resting on her gun threw a fleeting glance at the new arrivals, then aimed again with great keenness, and pressed the trigger. the eagle drooped its hit wings and did not move any more. "bravo," shouted oskar. the lady laid the weapon before her on the table. "that's my little lot," she said to the boy who wanted to load again. "i've won." "how many shots were there?" asked oskar. "forty," answered the boy, "that's eighty kreuzers." oskar put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, threw a silver gulden down and received with condescension the thanks of the loading boy. "allow me," he then said, while he placed both his hands on his hips, moved the top of his body slightly in front and put his left foot forward, "allow me, amy, to introduce the gentlemen who witnessed your triumph, baron wergenthin, herr von bermann ... fräulein amelie reiter." the gentlemen lifted their hats, amelie returned the greeting by nodding a few times with her head. she wore a simple foulard dress designed in white, and over it a light cloak of bright yellow bordered with lace and a black but extremely lively hat. "i know herr von bermann already," she said. she turned towards him. "i saw you at the first night of your play last winter, when you came on the stage to bow your acknowledgments. i enjoyed myself very much. don't think i am saying this as a mere compliment." heinrich thanked her sincerely. they walked on further between side-shows which were growing quieter and quieter, past inn gardens which were gradually becoming empty. oskar thrust his right arm through his companion's left and then turned to george. "why didn't you come to auhof this year? we were all very sorry." "unfortunately i didn't feel much in the mood for society." "of course, i can quite understand," said oskar with all proper seriousness. "i was only there myself for a few weeks. in august i strengthened my tired limbs in the waves of the north sea; i was in the isle of wight, you know." "that must be very nice," said george. "who is it that always goes there?" "you're thinking of the wyners," replied oskar. "when they used to live in london they went there regularly, but now they only go there every two or three years." "but they've kept the y for austrian consumption as well," said george with a smile. oskar was serious. "old herr wyner," he answered, "honestly earned his right to the y. he went to england in his thirteenth year, became naturalised there and was made a partner when quite a young man in the great steel manufacturing concern which is still called black & wyner." "at any rate he got his wife from vienna." "yes, and when he died seven or eight years ago she came over here with her two children, but james will never get acclimatised here.... lord antinous, you know, that's what frau oberberger calls him. he is now back at cambridge again where strangely enough he is studying greek scholarship. demeter was a few days in ventnor, too." "stanzides?" added george. "do you know herr von stanzides, herr baron?" asked amy. "oh yes." "then he does really exist?" she exclaimed. "yes, but just you listen," said oskar. "she put a lot of money on him this spring at freudenau, and won a lot of money, and now she inquires if he really exists." "what makes you have doubts about stanzides' existence, fräulein?" asked george. "well, you know, whenever i don't know where he is--oskar, i mean--it's always a case of 'i've an appointment with stanzides' or 'i'm riding with stanzides in the prater.' stanzides this and stanzides that, why it sounds more like an excuse than a name." "you be quiet now, will you?" said oskar gently. "not only does stanzides exist," explained george, "but he has the most beautiful black moustache and the most fiery black eyes that are to be found anywhere." "that's quite possible, but when i saw him he looked more like a jack-in-the-box, yellow jacket, green cap, violet sleeves." "and she won forty gulden on him," added oskar facetiously. "and where are the forty gulden?" sighed fräulein amelie.... then she suddenly stood still and exclaimed: "but i've never yet been on it." "well, that can be remedied," said oskar simply. the great wheel was turning slowly and majestically in front of them with its lighted carriages. the young people passed the turnstile, climbed into an empty compartment and swept upwards. "do you know, george, whom i got to know this summer?" said oskar. "the prince of guastalla." "which one?" asked george. "the youngest, of course, karl friedrich. he was there incognito. he's very thick with stanzides, an extraordinary man. you take my word for it," he added softly, "if people like us said one hundredth part of the things the prince says, we'd never get out of prison our whole life long." "look, oskar," cried amy, "at the tables and the people down there. it looks just like a little box, doesn't it? and that mass of lights over there, far off. i'm sure that's going to prague, don't you think so, herr bermann?" "possibly," answered heinrich, knitting his forehead as he stared through the glass wall out into the night. when they left the compartment and got out into the open air the sunday hubbub was subsiding. "poor little girl," said oskar ehrenberg to george, while amy went on in front with heinrich, "she has no idea that this is the last time we are going out together in the prater." "but why the last time?" asked george, not feeling particularly interested. "it's got to be," replied oskar. "things like this oughtn't to last longer than a year at the outside. any way, you might buy your gloves from her after december," he added brightly, though with a certain touch of melancholy. "i am setting her up, you know, in a little business. i more or less owe her that, for i took her away from a fairly safe situation." "a safe one?" "yes, she was engaged, to a case-maker. did you know that there were such people?" in the meanwhile amy and heinrich were standing in front of a narrow moving staircase that went boldly up to a platform and waited for the others. all agreed that they ought not to leave the prater before going for a ride on the switchback. they whizzed through the darkness down and up again in the groaning coach under the black tree-tops; and george managed to discover a grotesque motif in / time in the heavy rhythmic noise. while he was going down the moving staircase with the others, he knew that the melody should be introduced by an oboe and clarionet and accompanied by a cello and contra bass. it was clearly a _scherzo_ probably for a symphony. "if i were a capitalist," expounded heinrich with emphasis, "i would have a switchback built four miles long to go over fields and hills, through forests and dancing-halls; i would also see that there were surprises on the way." anyway, he thought that the time had come to develop more elaborately the fantastic element in the wurstelprater. he himself, he informed them, had a rough idea for a merry-go-round that by means of some marvellous machinery was to revolve spiral-fashion above the ground, winding higher and higher till eventually it reached the top of a kind of tower. unfortunately he lacked the necessary technical knowledge to explain it in greater detail. as they went on he invented burlesque figures and groups for the shooting galleries, and finally declared that there was a pressing need for a magnificent punch and judy show for which original authors should write pieces at once profound and frivolous. in this way they came to the end of the prater where oskar's carriage was waiting. squashed, but none the less good-tempered, they drove to a wine-restaurant in the town. oskar ordered champagne in a private room, george sat down by the piano and improvised the theme that had occurred to him on the switchback. amy lounged back in the corner of the sofa, while oskar kept whispering things into her ears which made her laugh. heinrich had grown silent again and twirled his glass slowly between his fingers. suddenly george stopped playing and let his hands lie on the keys. a feeling of the dreamlike and purposeless character of existence came over him, as it frequently did when he had drunk wine. ages seemed to have passed since he had come down a badly-lighted staircase in the paulanergasse, and his walk with heinrich in the dark autumn avenue lay far away in the distant past. on the other hand he suddenly remembered, as vividly as though the whole thing had happened yesterday, a very young and very depraved individual, with whom he had spent many years ago a few weeks of that happy-go-lucky life which oskar ehrenberg was now leading with amy. she had kept him waiting too long one evening in the street, he had gone away impatiently and had neither heard nor seen anything of her again. how easy life was sometimes.... he heard amy's soft laugh and turned round. his look encountered that of oskar, who seemed to be trying to catch his eye over amy's blonde head. he felt irritated by that look and deliberately avoided it and struck a few chords again in a melancholy ballad-style. he felt a desire to describe all that had happened to him to-day, and looked at the clock over the door. it was past one. he caught heinrich's eye and they both got up. oskar pointed to amy, who had gone to sleep on his shoulder, and intimated by a smile and a shrug of his shoulders that under such circumstances he could not think of going for the present. the two others shook hands with him, whispered good-night and slipped away. "do you know what i've done?" said heinrich. "while you were improvising so extraordinarily finely on that ghastly piano i tried to get the real hang of that libretto that i spoke to you about in the spring." "oh, the opera libretto! that _is_ interesting. won't you tell me?" heinrich shook his head. "i should like to, but the unfortunate thing is, as you've already seen, that it's really not yet finished--like most of my other so-called plots." george looked at him interrogatively. "you had a whole lot of things on hand last spring, when we saw each other last." "yes, i have made a lot of notes, but to-day i've done nothing more than sentences ... no words, no, just letters on white paper. it's just as if a dead hand had touched everything. i'm frightened the next time i tackle the thing that it will all fall to pieces like tinder. yes, i've been going through a bad time, and who knows if there's a better one in store for me?" george was silent. then he suddenly remembered the notice in the papers which he had read somewhere or other about heinrich's father, the former deputy, doctor bermann. he suspected that that might be the reason. "your father is ill, isn't he?" he asked. heinrich answered without looking at him. "yes, my father has been in a mental home since june." george shook his head sympathetically. heinrich continued: "yes, it's an awful business, even though i wasn't on very intimate terms with him during the last months it is indescribably awful, and goes on being so." "i can quite understand," said george, "not making any headway with one's work under circumstances like that." "yes," answered heinrich hesitatingly. "but it's not that alone. to be quite frank that business plays a comparatively subordinate part in my present mental condition. i don't want to make myself out better than i am. better...! should i be better...!" he gave a short laugh and then went on speaking. "look here, yesterday i still thought that it was the accumulation of every possible misfortune that depressed me so. but to-day i've had an infallible proof that things of no importance at all, positively silly things in fact, affect me more deeply than very real things like my father's illness. disgusting, isn't it?" george looked in front of him. why do i still go on walking with him, he thought, and why does he take it quite for granted that i should? heinrich went on speaking with clenched teeth and unnecessary vehemence of tone. "i received two letters this afternoon. two letters, yes ... one from my mother, who had visited my father yesterday in the home. this letter contained the news that he is bad--very bad; to come to the point he won't last much longer"--he gave a deep breath--"and as you can imagine that involves all kinds of troubles, responsibilities for my mother and my sister and for myself. but just think of it, another letter came at the same time as that one; it contained nothing of importance so to speak--a letter from a person with whom i have been intimate for two years--and there was a passage in that letter which struck me as a little suspicious--one isolated passage ... otherwise the letter was very affectionate and very nice, like all her other letters ... and now, just imagine, the memory of that one suspicious passage, which another man wouldn't have noticed at all, has been haunting me and torturing me the whole day. i've not been thinking about my father in the lunatic asylum, nor about my mother and sister who are in despair, but only about that unimportant passage in that silly letter from a really by no means brilliant female. it eats up all my strength, it makes me incapable of feeling like a son, like a human being ... isn't it ghastly?" george listened coldly. it struck him as strange that this taciturn melancholy man should suddenly confide in so casual an acquaintance as himself, and he could not help feeling a painful sense of embarrassment when confronted with this unexpected revelation. he did not have the impression either that any particular sympathy for him on heinrich's part was the real reason for all these confessions. he rather felt inclined to put it down to a want of tact, a certain natural lack of self-control, something which seemed very well described by the expression "bad breeding," which he had once heard applied to heinrich--wasn't it by hofrat wilt? they went as far as the burg gate. a starless sky lay over the silent town, there was a slight rustle in the trees of the park, they could hear somewhere or other the noise of a rolling carriage as it drove away into the distance. as heinrich was silent again, george stood still and said in as kind a tone as he could: "i must now really say good-bye, dear herr bermann." "oh," exclaimed heinrich, "i now see that you've come with me quite a long way--and i've been tactless enough to tell you, or rather myself in your presence, a lot of things which can't interest you in the least.... forgive me!" "what is there to forgive?" answered george gently. he felt a little moved by this self-reproach of heinrich's and held out his hand. heinrich took it, said "good-bye, my dear baron," and rushed off in a hurry, as though he had suddenly decided that any further word would be bound to be importunate. george looked after him with a mixture of sympathy and repulsion, and suddenly a free and almost happy mood came over him. he felt young, devoid of care and destined for the most brilliant future. he rejoiced at the winter which was coming, there were all kinds of possibilities: work, amusement, sentiment, while he was absolutely indifferent as to who it was from whom these joys might come. he lingered a moment by the opera-house. if he went home through the paulanergasse it would not be appreciably out of his way. he smiled at the memory of the serenades of his earlier years. not far from here lay the street where he had looked up many a night at a window behind whose curtains marianne had been accustomed to show herself when her husband had gone to sleep. this woman who was always playing with dangers in whose seriousness she herself did not believe had never really been worthy of george.... another memory more distant than this one was much more gracious. when he was a boy of seventeen in florence he had walked to and fro many a night before the window of a beautiful girl, the first creature of the other sex who had given her virgin self to him as yet untouched. and he thought of the hour when he had seen his beloved step on the arm of her bridegroom up to the altar, where the priest was to consecrate the marriage, of the look of eternal farewell which she had sent to him from under her white veil.... he had now arrived at his goal. the lamps were still burning at both ends of the short street, so that it was quite dark where he stood opposite the house. the window of anna's room was open, and the pinned curtains fluttered lightly in the wind, just as in the afternoon. it was quite dark below. a soft tenderness began to stir in george's heart. of all the beings who had ever refrained from hiding their inclination for him he thought anna the best and the purest. she was also the first who brought the gift of sympathy for his artistic aspirations. she was certainly more genuine than marianne, whose tears would roll over her cheeks whatever he happened to play on the piano; she was deeper too than else ehrenberg, who no doubt only wanted to confirm herself in the proud consciousness of having been the first to recognise his talent. and if any person was positively cut out to counteract his tendency to dilettantism and nonchalance and to keep him working energetically, profitably and with a conscious object that person was anna. he had thought only last winter of looking out for a post as a conductor or accompanist at some german opera; at ehrenbergs' he had casually spoken of his intentions, which had not been taken very seriously. frau ehrenberg, woman of the world that she was, had given him the motherly advice rather to undertake a tour through the united states as a composer and conductor, whereupon else had cut in, "and an american heiress shouldn't be sniffed at either." as he remembered this conversation he was very pleased with the idea of knocking about the world a bit, he wished to get to know foreign towns and foreign men, to win love and fame somewhere out in the wide world, and finally came to the conclusion that his life was slipping away from him on the whole in far too quiet and monotonous a fashion. he had long ago left the paulanergasse, without having taken mentally any farewell of anna, and was soon home. as he stepped into the dining-room he saw a light shining from felician's room. "good evening, felician," he cried out. the door was opened and felician came out still fully dressed. the brothers shook hands with each other. "only just got home?" said felician. "i thought you had been asleep quite a long time." as he spoke he looked past him, as his manner was, and nodded his head towards the right. "what have you been doing, then?" "i've been in the prater," answered george. "alone?" "no, i met people. oskar ehrenberg with his girl and bermann the author. we shot and went on the switchback. it was quite jolly.... what have you got in your hand?" he said, interrupting his narrative. "have you been out for a walk like that?" he added jestingly. felician let the sword which he held in his right hand shine in the light of the lamp. "i've just taken it down from the wall, i begin to-morrow again in earnest. the tournament is in the middle of november, and i want to try what i can do this year against forestier." "by jove!" cried george. "a piece of cheek, you think, what? but it's still a long time before the middle of november. and the strange thing is i've got the feeling as though i had learnt something fresh in the very six weeks of this summer when i didn't have the thing in my hand at all. it's as though my arm had got new ideas in the meanwhile. i can't explain it properly." "i follow what you mean." felician held the sword stretched out in front of him and looked at it affectionately. he then said: "ralph inquired after you, so did guido ... a pity you weren't there." "you spent the whole day with them?" "oh no, i remained at home after dinner. you must have gone out straight away. i've been studying." "studying?" "yes, i must really do something serious now. i want to pass my diplomatic exam, by may at the outside." "so you've quite made up your mind?" "absolutely. there's no point in my remaining on any more in the stadthalterei. the longer i stay there the clearer it becomes. anyway, the time won't have been wasted. they don't mind at all if one has spent a year or two in home service." "so you'll probably be leaving vienna in the autumn." "presumably." "and where will they send you?" "if one only knew." george looked in front of him. "so the parting is as near as that?" but why did it affect him so much all of a sudden?... why, he himself had determined to go away, and had quite recently spoken to his brother about his plans for next year. was he still as sceptical as ever of his seriousness? if only they could have a good frank brotherly heart-to-heart talk as they had had on that evening after their father's funeral. as a matter of fact, it was only when life revealed its gloomy side to them that they felt absolutely in touch. otherwise there was always this strange constraint between them both. there was obviously no help for it. they just had to talk more or less discreetly to each other like fairly intimate friends. and as though resigned to the situation george went on with his questions. "what did you do in the evening?" "i had supper with guido and an interesting young lady." "really?" "he's in silken dalliance again, you know." "who is it, then?" "conservatoire, jewess, violin. but she didn't bring it with her. not particularly pretty, but clever. she improves him and he respects her; he wants her to be baptised. a humorous affair i can tell you. you would have had quite a good time." george turned his eyes towards the sword which felician still held in his hand. "would you like to fence a bit?" he asked. "why not?" answered felician and fetched a second foil out of his room. meanwhile george had moved the big table in the middle up against the wall. "i haven't had a thing in my hand since may," he said as he took hold of his sword. they took off their coats and crossed blades. george cried _touché_ the next second. "come on," cried george, and thought himself lucky that it was his brother whom he had to face as he stood in an awkward position with the slender flashing weapon in his hand. felician hit him as often as he wanted to without himself being touched a single time. he then lowered his sword and said: "you're too tired to-day, there's no point in it. but you should come more often to the club. i assure you it's a pity, with your talent." george was pleased by his brotherly praise. he laid his sword down on the table, took a deep breath and went to the wide centre window which was open. "what wonderful air," he said. a lonely lamp was shining from the park, there was absolute silence. felician came up to george, and while the latter leant with both hands on the sill the elder brother remained upright and swept over street, park and town with one of his proud quiet glances. they were both silent for a long time. and they knew they were each thinking of the same thing: a may night of last spring when they had gone home together through the park and their father had greeted them with a silent nod of his head from the very same window by which they were now standing. and both felt a little shocked at the thought that they had enjoyed the whole day with such full gusto, without any painful memories of the beloved man who now lay beneath the ground. "well, good-night," said felician in a softer tone than usual as he held out his hand to george. he pressed it in silence and each went into his own room. george arranged the table lamp, took out some music paper and began to write. it was not the scherzo which had occurred to him when he had whizzed through the night with the others under the black tree-tops a few hours ago; and it was not the melancholy folk-ballad of the restaurant either; but a quite new _motif_ that swam up slowly and continuously as though from secret depths. george felt as though he had to allow some mysterious element to take its course. he wrote down the melody, which he thought should be sung by an _alto_ voice or played on the viola, and at the same time a strange accompaniment rang in his ears, which he knew would never vanish from his memory. it was four o'clock in the morning when he went to bed with the calmness of a man to whom nothing evil can ever come in all his life and for whom neither solitude nor poverty nor death possess any terror. [ ] a special way of wearing a coat affected in viennese artistic circles. [ ] a company celebrated for its risqué plays. ii frau ehrenberg sat with her knitting on the green velvet sofa in the raised bow-window. opposite her else was reading a book. the white head of the marble isis gleamed from out the far dark part of the room behind the piano, while a streak of light from the next room played through the open door over the grey carpet. else looked up from her book through the window to the high tops of the trees in the schwarzenberg park which were waving in the autumn wind and said casually: "we might perhaps ring up george wergenthin, to know if he's coming this evening." frau ehrenberg let her knitting fall on her lap. "i don't know," she said. "you remember what a really charming condolence letter i wrote him and what a pressing invitation i gave him to come to auhof. he didn't come and the coldness of his answer was quite marked. i wouldn't ring him up." "one shouldn't treat him like other people," answered else. "he belongs to the people whom one has occasionally to remind that one is still alive. when he has been reminded he is extremely glad." frau ehrenberg went on with her knitting. "it really won't come to anything," she said quietly. "it's not meant to come to anything," retorted else. "i thought you knew that by this time, mamma. we're good friends, nothing more--and even that only at intervals; or do you really think that i'm in love with him, mamma? yes, when i was a little girl i was, in nice, when we played tennis together, but that is long past." "well--and florence?" "in florence--i was more in love with felician." "and now?" asked frau ehrenberg slowly. "now ... you're probably thinking of heinrich bermann ... but you're making a mistake, mother." "i prefer to be making a mistake. but this summer i really quite had the impression that----" "i tell you," interrupted else a little impatiently, "it isn't anything and never was anything. on one solitary occasion, when we went out boating on a sultry afternoon, you saw us from your balcony with your opera-glasses, no doubt--it was only then that it became a little dangerous. and even supposing we had fallen on each other's neck--which as a matter of fact we never did--it wouldn't have meant anything. it was simply a summer flirtation." "and besides, he's supposed to be involved in a very serious love-affair," said frau ehrenberg. "you mean ... with that actress, mamma?" frau ehrenberg looked up. "did he tell you anything about her?" "tell...? not in so many words, but when we went for walks together in the park or went out in the evening on the lake, why, he practically spoke of nothing but her--of course without mentioning her name ... and the better he liked me--men really are such awfully funny people--the more jealous he became about the other woman.... but if it were only that? what young man isn't involved in a serious love affair? do you think by any chance, mamma, that george wergenthin is not?" "in a serious one ... no, that will never happen to him. he's too cold, too superior for that ... he hasn't got enough temperament." "that's exactly why," explained else, airing her knowledge of human nature. "he'll slip into some whirlpool or other and get taken out of his depth without his having noticed it, and some fine day he'll get married ... out of sheer indolence ... to some person or other who'll probably be absolutely indifferent to him." "you must have a definite suspicion," said frau ehrenberg. "i have." "marianne?" "marianne! but that's been over a long time, mamma. and that was never anything particularly serious, either." "well, who is it then?" "well whom do you think, mamma?" "i have no idea." "it's anna," said else curtly. "which anna?" "anna rosner, of course." "but...." "you can say 'but' as much as you like--it's a fact." "else, you don't seriously think that anna with her reserved character could so far forget herself as to----" "so far forget herself...? really, mamma, the number of expressions you keep on using--anyway, i don't think that's quite a case of one's forgetting oneself." frau ehrenberg smiled, not without a certain pride. the bell rang outside. "it's he at last," said else. "it might quite as well be demeter stanzides," observed frau ehrenberg. "stanzides was to bring the prince along sometime," said else casually. "do you think that will come off?" inquired frau ehrenberg, letting her knitting fall into her lap. "why shouldn't it come off?" said else. "they are so intimate." the door opened. as a matter of fact it was none of the expected visitors who came in, but edmund nürnberger. he was dressed, as always, with the greatest care, though not after the latest fashion. his tail coat was a little too short and an emerald pin was stuck in his voluminous satin tie. he bowed as soon as he had got to the door, though his demeanour expressed at the same time a certain irony at his own politeness. "am i the first?" he inquired. "no one here yet? not a hofrat--nor a count--nor an author--nor a diabolical female?" "only a woman who never was one, i'm sorry to say," answered frau ehrenberg as she shook hands with him. "and one ... who will perhaps become one sometime." "oh, i am convinced," said nürnberger, "that if she only takes it seriously, fräulein else will succeed in that." he stroked his smooth black somewhat glossy hair slowly with his left hand. frau ehrenberg expressed her regret that their expectation of his coming to auhof had not been realised. had he really spent the whole summer in vienna? "why do you wonder so much, my dear madam? whether i am walking up and down among mountain scenery or by the shore of the sea or in my own room, it doesn't really matter much in the end." "but you must have felt quite lonely," said frau ehrenberg. "you certainly realise solitude more clearly when there's no one in the neighbourhood who shows any desire of talking to you.... but let's talk of more interesting and promising men than i am. how are all the numerous friends of your popular family?" "friends!" repeated else. "i should like first to know what you mean by the word?" "well, all the people who say something agreeable to you from whatever motive, and whom you believe in when they say it." the door of the bedroom opened, herr ehrenberg appeared and greeted nürnberger. "are you ready packed?" asked else. "packed and ready," answered ehrenberg, who had on a grey suit that was far too loose and was biting a fat cigar between his teeth. he turned to nürnberger to explain.... "i'm off to-day, just as i am, to corfu ... for the time being; the season is beginning and the ehrenberg 'at homes' make me feel sick." "no one asks you," replied frau ehrenberg gently, "to honour them with your presence." "cute answer, eh," said ehrenberg, puffing at his cigar. "i don't mind, of course, staying away from your real 'at homes.' but when i'd like to dine quietly at home on a thursday and there's an attaché sitting in one corner and a hussar in the other, and some one over there is playing his own compositions and some one else on the sofa is being funny, while by the window frau oberberger is fixing up an assignation with any one who happens to come along ... well, it really gets on my nerves. one can stand it once, but not a second time." "do you think you'll remain away all the winter?" asked nürnberger. "it's possible. i intend, you know, to go further, to egypt, to syria, probably to palestine as well. yes, it's perhaps only because one's getting older, perhaps because one reads so much about zionism and so forth, but i can't help it, i should like to see jerusalem before i die." frau ehrenberg shrugged her shoulders. "those are matters," said ehrenberg, "which my wife don't understand--and my children even less so. what do you know about it, else? no, you don't know anything either. but when one reads what's going on in the world it often makes one inclined to think that there's no other way out for us." "for us?" repeated nürnberger. "i've not observed up to the present that anti-semitism has done you any particular harm." "you mean because i've grown a rich man? well if i were to tell you that i don't give any shakes for money, you would, of course, not believe me, and quite right too. but as sure as you see me here, i swear to you that i would give half my fortune to see the worst of our enemies on the gallows." "i'm only afraid," remarked nürnberger, "that you would have the wrong ones hanged." "there's not much danger," replied ehrenberg. "even if you don't catch the man you're after, the man you do catch is bound to be one of them, too, right enough." "this is not the first time, my dear herr ehrenberg, that i observe that your standpoint towards this question is not ideally objective." ehrenberg suddenly bit through his cigar and with fingers shaking with rage put it on the ash-tray. "if any one here's to tell me ... and even ... excuse me ... or perhaps you're baptised...? one can really never tell nowadays." "i'm not baptised," replied nürnberger quietly. "but on the other hand i am certainly not a jew either. i've ceased to belong to the congregation for a long time, for the simple reason that i never felt myself to be a jew." "if some one were to bash in your top hat in the ringstrasse because, if you will allow me to say so, you have a somewhat jewish nose, you'd realise pretty quick that you were insulted because you were a yiddisher fellow. you take my word for it." "but, papa, how excited you are getting," said else, and stroked him on his bald reddish shiny head. old ehrenberg took her hand, stroked it and asked, apparently without any connection with what he had been saying before: "by-the-bye, shall i have the pleasure of seeing my son and heir before i leave?" frau ehrenberg answered: "oskar's bound to be home soon." ehrenberg turned to nürnberger. "you will doubtless be glad to know that my son oskar is an anti-semite as well." frau ehrenberg sighed gently. "it's a fixed idea of his," she said to nürnberger. "he sees anti-semites everywhere, even in his own family." "that is the latest jewish national disease," said nürnberger. "i myself have only succeeded up to the present in making the acquaintance of one genuine anti-semite. i'm afraid i am bound to admit, dear herr ehrenberg, that it was a well-known zionist leader." ehrenberg could only make an eloquent gesture. demeter stanzides and willy eissler came in and immediately spread an atmosphere of vivid brilliancy around them. demeter wore his uniform lightly and magnificently, as though it were a fancy costume rather than a military dress; willy stood there in a dinner jacket looking tall and pale and as if he had been keeping late hours, and then immediately gathered up the reins of the conversation, while his pleasantly hoarse voice rasped through the air with amiable imperiousness. he gave an account of the preparations for an aristocratic theatrical performance in which he was adviser, producer and actor, just as he had been last year, and described a meeting of the young lords, where, if his account was to be believed, every one had behaved as though they were in a lunatic asylum, and then went on to treat them to a humorous dialogue between two countesses whose mannerisms he managed to take off in a most delightful way. ehrenberg was always very amused by willy eissler. the vague feeling that this hungarian jew managed somehow or other to outwit and make a fool of that whole feudal set, whom personally he hated so much, filled him with respect for the young man. else sat at the little table in the corner with demeter and made him tell her about the _isle of wight_. "you were there with your friend?" she inquired, "weren't you, prince karl friedrich?" "my friend the prince?... that's not quite right, fräulein else. the prince has no friends, nor have i. we're neither of us the type to have friends." "he must be an interesting man according to all one hears." "interesting--i don't know about that. at any rate he's thought over a lot of things which people in his position are not usually accustomed to bother their heads about very much. perhaps he'd have managed to do all kinds of things too, if he'd been left to himself. well, who knows, it was perhaps better for him that they kept a tight hold on him, for him and for the country too in the long run. one man alone can do nothing--never in this life. that's why it's best to let matters slide and get out of things, as he did." else looked at him somewhat coldly. "you're so philosophical to-day, what is it? it seems to me that willy eissler has spoilt you." "willy spoilt me?" "yes, you know you shouldn't associate with such clever people." "why not?" "you should simply be young, shine, live, and then when there's nothing more to do, do whatever you like ... but without bothering about yourself and the world." "you should have told me that before, fräulein else; once a man's started getting clever...." else shook her head. "but perhaps in your case it might have been avoided," she said quite seriously. and then they both had to laugh. the chandelier was lighted up. george wergenthin and heinrich bermann had come in. invited by a smile george sat down by else's side. "i knew that you would come," she said disingenuously but warmly as she pressed his hand; she was more glad than she thought she would have been that he should sit opposite to her after so long an interval, that she could see again his proud gracious face and hear again his somewhat gentle yet warm voice. frau wyner appeared, a little woman with a high colour, jolly and awkward. her daughter sissy was with her. the groups got broken up in the "general post" of mutual greetings. "well, have you composed that song for me yet?" sissy asked george with laughing eyes and laughing lips, as she played with one of her gloves and moved about like a snake in her dark-green shimmering dress. "a song?" asked george. he really didn't remember. "or waltz or something. but you promised me to dedicate something to me." while she spoke her looks were wandering round. they glowed into the eyes of willy, passed caressingly by demeter and addressed a sphinx-like question to heinrich bermann. it seemed as though will-o'-the-wisps were dancing through the drawing-room. frau wyner suddenly came up to her daughter. she flushed deeply. "sissy is really so silly.... what are you thinking of, sissy? baron george has had more important things to do this year than to compose things for you." "oh not at all," said george politely. "you buried your father, that's no trifle." george looked straight in front of him. but frau wyner went on speaking quite unperturbed. "and your father wasn't old, was he? and such a handsome man.... is it true that he was a chemist?" "no," answered george calmly. "he was president of the botanical society." heinrich with one arm on the shut piano-top was speaking to else. "so you've been in germany?" she asked. "yes," replied heinrich. "i've been back a fairly long time, four or five weeks." "and when are you going back again?" "i don't know, perhaps never." "come, you don't believe that yourself--what are you working at?" she added quickly. "all kinds of things," he answered. "i'm going through a rather restless time. i sketch out a lot but i finish nothing. i'm very rarely keen on completing things, obviously i lose all my interest in things too quickly." "and people too," added else. "possibly. only unhappily one's emotions remain attached to people after one's reason has long ago decided to have nothing more to do with them. a poet--if you will allow me to use the expression--must go away from every one who no longer presents any riddle to him ... particularly from any one whom he loves." "they say," suggested else, "that it is just those whom we know least that we love." "that's what nürnberger makes out, but it's not quite right. if it were really so, my dear else, then life would probably be much more beautiful than it is. no, we know those whom we love much better than we do other people--but we know them with a feeling of shame, bitterness and with the fear that others may know them as well as we do. love means this--being afraid that the faults which we have discovered in the person we love may be revealed to others. love means this--being able to look into the future and curse this very gift.... love means this--knowing some one so that it smashes one." else leant on the piano in her childish lady-like way and listened to him curiously. how much she liked him in moments like this! she would have liked to have stroked his hair again consolingly, as she had done before on the lake when he had been torn by his love for that other woman, but when he suddenly retired into his shell, coldly and drily, and looked as though all his fire had been extinguished she felt that she could never live with him, and she would be bound to run away after a few weeks ... with a spanish officer or a violin _virtuoso_. "it is a good thing," she said somewhat condescendingly, "that you see something of george wergenthin. he'll have a sound influence on you. he is quieter than you are. i don't think that he is so gifted as you are, and i am sure that he is not so clever." "what do you know about his gifts?" interrupted heinrich almost rudely. george came up and asked else if they couldn't have the pleasure to-night of hearing one of her songs. she didn't want to. besides she was principally studying opera parts nowadays. that interested her more. as a matter of fact she was far from having a lyrical temperament. george asked her jokingly if she didn't have perhaps the secret intention of going on the stage? "with my little bit of a voice!" said else. nürnberger was standing near them. "that wouldn't be an obstacle," he observed. "why, i feel quite positive that a modern critic would soon turn up who would boom you as an important singer for the very reason that you have no voice, but who would discover some other gift in you by way of compensation, as, for instance, your gift for characterisation, just as we have to-day certain painters who have no sense of colour but only intellect; and celebrated authors who never have the vaguest ideas but who succeed in discovering the most unsuitable epithets for every noun they use." else noticed that nürnberger's manner of speaking got on george's nerves. she turned to him. "i should like to show you something," she said, and took a few steps towards the music-case. george followed her. "here is a collection of old italian folksongs. i should like you to show me the best. i myself don't know enough about it." "i can't understand," said george gently, "how you can stand any one like that man nürnberger near you. he spreads around him an absolute atmosphere of distrust and malice." "as i've often told you, george, you're no judge of character. after all, what do you know about him? he's different from what you think he is; just ask your friend heinrich bermann." "oh, i know well enough that he raves about him, too," replied george. "you're speaking about nürnberger?" asked frau ehrenberg, who had just joined them. "george can't stand him," said else in her casual way. "well, you're doing him a great injustice, if that's the case. have you ever read anything of his?" george shook his head. "not even his novel which made so great a sensation fifteen or sixteen years ago? that is really a shame. we've just lent it to hofrat wilt. i tell you he was quite flabbergasted at the way in which the whole of present-day austria is anticipated in that book, written all that time ago." "really, is that so?" said george, without conviction. "you have no idea," continued frau ehrenberg, "of the applause with which nürnberger was then hailed; one could go so far as to say that all doors sprang open before him." "perhaps he found that enough," observed else, with an air of meditative wisdom. heinrich was standing by the piano engaged in conversation with nürnberger, and was making an effort, as he frequently did, to persuade him to undertake a new work or to bring out an edition of previous writings. nürnberger would not agree. he was filled with positive horror at the thought of seeing his name a prey to publicity again, of plunging again into a literary vortex which seemed to him as repulsive as it was fatuous. he had no desire to enter the competition. what was the point? intriguing cliques that no longer made any attempt at concealment were at work everywhere. did there remain a single man of sound talent and honest aspirations who did not have to face every minute the prospect of being dragged down into the dirt? was there a blockhead in the country who could not boast of having been hailed as a genius in some rag or other? had celebrity in these days anything at all to do with honour, and was being ignored and forgotten worth even a single shrug of regret? and who could know after all what verdicts would pass as the correct ones in the future? were not the fools really the geniuses and the geniuses really the fools? it would be ridiculous to allow himself to be tempted to stake his peace of mind and even his self-respect on a game where even the greatest possible win held out no promise of any satisfaction. "none at all?" queried heinrich. "i'll grant you as much as you like about fame, wealth, world-wide influence--but for a man, simply because all these things are of dubious advantage, to relinquish something so absolutely indubitable as the moments of inner consciousness of one's own power----" "inner consciousness of power? why don't you say straight away the happiness of creating?" "it does exist, nürnberger." "it may be so; why, i even think i remember that i felt something like that myself now and then, a very long time ago ... only, as you no doubt know, as the years went by i completely lost the faculty of deceiving myself." "perhaps you only think so," replied heinrich. "who knows if it is not that very faculty of self-deception which you have developed more strongly than any other as the years went by?" nürnberger laughed. "do you know how i feel when i hear you talk like that? just like a fencing-master feels who gets a thrust in the heart from one of his own pupils." "and not even one of his best," said heinrich. herr ehrenberg suddenly appeared in the doorway, to the astonishment of his wife, who had presumed that he would be by now on his way to the station. he led a young lady by the hand. she was dressed simply in black, and had her hair done extraordinarily high after a fashion that was now out of date. her lips were full and red, the eyes in the pale vivid face had a clear hard gaze. "come along," said ehrenberg with some malice in his small eyes, and led the visitor straight up to else, who was chatting with stanzides. "i've brought a visitor for you." else held out her hand. "but this is nice." she introduced them--"herr demeter stanzides--fräulein therese golowski." therese bowed slightly and let her gaze rest on him for a while with a little embarrassment as though she were scrutinising a beautiful beast, then she turned to else: "if i had known that you had such a lot of visitors." "do you know what she looks like?" said stanzides softly to george. "like a russian student, don't you think?" george nodded. "that's about it. i know her. she is a school-friend of fräulein else's, and now she's playing a leading part among the socialists. just think of it! she's just been in prison for _lèse-majesté_, i believe." "yes, i think i've read something about it," replied demeter. "one should really get to know a person of that type more intimately. she's pretty. her face might be made of ivory." "and her features show a lot of energy," added george. "her brother too is an extraordinary fellow, a pianist and a mathematician, and the father's supposed to be a ruined jewish skin-dealer." "it's really a strange race," observed demeter. in the meanwhile frau ehrenberg had come up to therese. she considered it correct not to show any surprise. "sit down, therese," she said. "and how have you been getting on all this time? since you've devoted yourself to political life you don't bother about your old friends any more." "yes, i'm afraid my work gives me very little time to pay private visits," replied therese, thrusting out her chin, in a way that made her face look masculine and almost ugly. frau ehrenberg vacillated as to whether she should or should not make any reference to the term of imprisonment which therese had just served. it was certainly to be borne in mind there was scarcely another house in vienna where ladies who had been locked up a short time ago, were allowed to call. "and how is your brother?" asked else. "he's doing his service this year," answered therese. "you can imagine pretty well how he's getting on." and she looked ironically at demeter's hussar uniform. "i suppose he doesn't get much opportunity there for playing the piano," said frau ehrenberg. "oh, he's given up all thoughts of being a pianist," replied therese. "he's all for politics now." and turning with a smile to demeter she added: "of course you won't give him away, herr oberlieutenant?" stanzides laughed somewhat awkwardly. "what do you mean by politics?" asked herr ehrenberg. "does he want to get into the cabinet?" "not in austria at any rate," replied therese. "he is a zionist, you know." "what?" exclaimed ehrenberg, and his visage beamed. "that's certainly a subject on which we don't quite agree," added therese. "my dear therese ..." began ehrenberg. "you'll miss your train, my dear," interrupted his wife. "i'm not going to miss my train, and anyway, another one goes to-morrow. my dear therese, this is the only thing i want to say--each person should find happiness in his own way. but in this case your brother and not you is the cleverer of you two. excuse me, i'm perhaps a layman in politics, but i assure you, therese, exactly the same thing will happen to you jewish social democrats as happened to the jewish liberals and german nationalists." "how do you mean?" asked therese haughtily. "in what way will the same thing happen to us?" "in what way...? i'll tell you soon enough. who created the liberal movement in austria?... the jews. by whom have the jews been betrayed and deserted? by the liberals. who created the national-german movement in austria? the jews. by whom were the jews left in the lurch?... what--left in the lurch!... spat upon like dogs!... by the national-germans, and precisely the same thing will happen in the case of socialism and communism. as soon as you've drawn the chestnuts out of the fire they'll start driving you away from the table. it always has been so and always will be so." "we will wait and see," therese replied quietly. george and demeter looked at each other like two friends marooned together on a desert island. oskar, who had come in during the middle of his father's speech, compressed his lips and was very embarrassed. but they all felt a kind of deliverance when ehrenberg suddenly looked at his watch and took his leave. "we certainly shan't agree to-day," he said to therese. therese smiled. "scarcely. hope you will enjoy your journey and i want once more to ... to thank you in the name of...." "hush!" said ehrenberg and vanished. "what are you thanking papa for?" said else. "for a gift of money for which i came to ask him in the most shameless manner. apart from him there is not a single rich man in the circle of my acquaintances. i am not in a position to speak of the purpose for which it is wanted." frau ehrenberg came up to bermann and nürnberger, who were continuing their conversation over the top of the piano, and said softly: "of course you know that she"--then she looked at therese--"has just been released from prison." "i read about it," said heinrich. nürnberger half shut his eyes and cast a glance at the group in the corner where the three girls were talking to stanzides and willy eissler and shook his head. "what cynicism are you suppressing?" said frau ehrenberg. "i was just thinking how easily it might have come about for fräulein else to have languished two months in prison and for fräulein therese to have held receptions in a stylish drawing-room as daughter of the house." "easily come about?" "herr ehrenberg has had good luck, herr golowski bad luck.... perhaps that is the only difference." "look here, now, nürnberger," said heinrich, "you're not going to deny that such a thing as individuality exists in the world.... else and therese are rather different characters you know." "i think so too," observed frau ehrenberg. nürnberger shrugged his shoulders. "they are both young girls, quite gifted, quite pretty ... everything else is more or less of an accidental appanage, just as it is with most young women--most people, in fact." heinrich shook his head energetically. "no, no," he said, "life is really not as simple as all that." "that doesn't make it simpler, my dear heinrich." frau ehrenberg turned her eyes towards the door and beamed. felician had just come in. with all the sureness of a sleep-walker he walked up to the hostess and kissed her hand. "i have just had the pleasure of meeting herr ehrenberg on the steps; he told me he was going off to corfu. it must be awfully beautiful out there." "you know corfu?" "yes, a memory of my childhood." he greeted nürnberger and bermann, and they all talked about the south for which bermann longed and in which nürnberger did not believe. george gave his brother a hand-shake which meant a salutation and a goodbye at the same time. as he unobtrusively disappeared through the open door of the dining-room he looked round again, noticed marianne sitting in the furthest corner of the drawing-room and looking at him ironically through her lorgnette. this woman had always had the mysterious gift of suddenly being present without one realising where she came from. and then a veiled lady came up to him on the steps. "don't be in such a hurry, you can surely wait another moment," she said. "one really shouldn't spoil women so.... i wonder if you'd be in such a hurry, you know, if you were going to keep an appointment with me...? but you prefer to be non-committal. probably because you're afraid that my husband will shoot you when he comes back from stockholm. i mean he's probably got as far as copenhagen to-day. but he places absolute confidence in me. and he's quite right too. for i'm able to swear to you that no one has managed to get any further than a kiss on my hand.... no, to tell the full truth, on my neck, here. of course, you believe, too, that i have had an affair with stanzides? no, he wouldn't be at all in my line! i positively loathe handsome men. i couldn't find anything in your brother felician either...." one could form no idea when the veiled lady would leave off speaking, for it was frau oberberger. similar conduct in other women would have betokened a specific overture, but that was not so in her case. in spite of the dubious impression created by her whole manner the world had never been able to fix her so far with a single lover. she lived in a strange, but apparently happy, childless marriage. her brilliant handsome husband, a geologist by profession, had undertaken scientific expeditions in days gone by, when, so hofrat wilt used to assert, he had set more store by the good travelling and facilities and unimpeachable cooking of the districts in question than on their being actually unexplored. but for some years past he had given up travelling in favour of lecturing and ladykilling. when he was at home he lived with his wife in the best _camaraderie_. george had frequently, though never seriously, considered the possibility of a liaison with frau oberberger. he was even one of those who had kissed her neck, a fact which she probably did not remember herself. and as she threw back her veil now george again surrendered himself with pleasure to the fascination of this face, which though no longer in its first flush of youth was yet both charming and animated. he wanted to take up the conversation, but she went on speaking. "do you know you're very pale? a nice life you must be leading. what kind of a woman is it who is responsible for taking you away from me this time?" hofrat wilt, with his usual silent step, suddenly stood by them. with a casual air of gallantry and superiority he threw them a "good-day, beauteous lady, hullo, baron," and started to go on. but frau oberberger thought it fitting to inform him first that baron george was just going to one of his usual orgies--she then followed hofrat up to the second story at the risk, as she remarked, of his being taken for her ninety-fifth lover if he presented himself at ehrenberg's at the same time as she did. it was seven o'clock before george could settle himself in a fly and drive to mariahilf. he felt quite exhausted by the two hours at ehrenberg's and he was even more than usually glad at the meeting with anna which was before him. since that morning at the miniature exhibition they had seen each other nearly every day; in parks, picture-galleries, at her house. they usually talked about the little incidents of their life or gossiped about books or music. they did not often talk of the past, but when they did it was without doubts or misgivings. for so far as anna was concerned the adventures from which george had just come were far from being surrounded with the uncanny atmosphere of mystery; while george gathered from her own jesting allusions that she herself had already experienced more than one infatuation, though that did not cause him to lose the serenity of his good spirits or even to ask her any further questions. he had kissed her for the first time eight days ago, in an empty room in the liechtentein gallery, and from that moment anna had employed the familiar 'du,' as though a less intimate appellation would have rung somewhat false. the fly stopped at a street corner. george got out, lit a cigarette and walked up and down opposite the house out of which anna was due to come. after a few minutes she came out of the door, he rushed across the street to meet her and kissed her hand ecstatically. following her habit, for she was in the habit of reading on her journeys, she carried a book with her in a pressed leather cover. "it is quite cool, anna," said george, took the book out of her hand and helped her into the jacket which she had been carrying over her arm. "i was a little bit late you see," she said, "and i was very impatient to see you. yes," she added with a smile, "one's temperament will break out now and again. what do you think of my new dress?" she added as they walked on. "it suits you very well." "they thought at my lesson that i looked like a lady-in-waiting." "who thought so?" "frau bittner herself and her two daughters whom i am teaching." "i should rather say, like an arch-duchess." anna nodded with satisfaction. "and now tell me, anna, all that's happened to you since yesterday." she began quite seriously: "twelve o'clock, after i left you at the door of our house, dinner in the family circle. rested a little in the afternoon, and thought about you. pupils from four to six-thirty, then read 'grüner heinrich,' and the evening paper. too lazy to go out again, messed about at home. supper. the usual domestic scene." "your brother?" queried george. she answered with a "yes" that ruled out all further questions. "a little music after supper.... even tried to sing." "were you satisfied?" "it was quite good enough for me, anyway," she said, and george thought he detected a slight note of melancholy in her tone. she quickly went on with her report. "went to bed at half-past ten, slept well, got up early at eight ... one can't lie in bed any longer in our house ... dressed till half-past nine, was about the house till eleven...." "... messing about," added george. "right. then went on to weils, gave the boy a lesson." "how old is he?" asked george. "thirteen," replied anna. "well, after all that is not so young." "quite so," said anna. "but you can set your mind at rest when i inform you that he loves his aunt adele, a sentimental blonde of thirty-three, and is not thinking for the time being of breaking his troth to her.... well, to continue the record. got home at one-thirty, had my meal alone, thank heaven! father already at the office, mamma in a state of sleep. rested again from three to four, thought even more about you, and more seriously too, than yesterday, then went shopping in town, gloves, safety pins and something for mamma, and then drove on the tram, reading all the way to mariahilf, to the two bittner kiddies.... so now you know all. satisfied?" "except for the boy of thirteen." "well, i agree that that might be a bit upsetting. but now we should like to know if you haven't got even more sinister confessions to make to me." they were in a narrow silent street, which seemed quite strange to george, and anna took his arm. "i have just come from ehrenbergs'," he began. "well?" queried anna. "did they try very much to inveigle you?" "no, i can't go so far as that. of course they seemed a little hurt that i did not go to auhof this summer," he added. "did dear little else perform?" anna asked. "no; of course i don't know what happened after i left." "it won't be worth the trouble now," said anna with exuberant mirth. "you are wrong, anna. there are people there for whom it is quite worth while singing." "who?" "heinrich bermann, willy eissler, demeter stanzides...." "oh, stanzides!" exclaimed anna. "now i am really sorry that i wasn't there too." "it seems to me," said george, "that that is a true word spoken in jest." "quite so," replied anna. "i think demeter is really desperately handsome." george was silent for a few seconds and suddenly asked, with more emotion than he usually manifested: "is it he then...?" "what 'he' do you mean?" "the one you ... loved more than me." she smiled, nestled closer up to him and answered simply, though a little ironically: "am i really supposed to have been fonder of any one else than of you?" "you confessed it to me yourself," replied george. "but i also confess to you that i should love you in time more than i have loved or ever could love any one else." "are you quite sure about that, anna?" "yes, george, i am quite certain of it." they had now come again into a more lively street and reluctantly let go of each other's arms. they remained standing in front of various shops. they discovered a photographer's show-case by a house-door and were very much amused by the laboriously-natural poses in which golden and silver wedding couples, cadets, cooks in their sunday best and ladies in masked fancy dress were taken. george asked again in a lighter tone: "so it was stanzides?" "what an idea! i have never spoken a hundred words to him in my life." they went on walking. "leo golowski, then?" asked george. she shook her head and smiled. "that was calf-love," she replied. "that really doesn't count. i should like to know the girl of sixteen who wouldn't have fallen in love in the country with a handsome youth who fights a duel with a real count and then goes about for eight days with his arm in a sling." "but he didn't do it on your account, but for his sister's honour, as it were." "for therese's honour? what makes you think that?" "you told me that the young man had spoken to therese in the forest while she was studying '_emilia galotti_.'" "yes, that is quite true. anyway, she was quite glad to be spoken to. the only thing leo objected to was that the young count belonged to a club of young men who really behaved rather cheekily, and i think showed a touch of anti-semitism. so when therese once went with her brother for a walk by the lake, and the count came up and spoke to therese as though he had known her for ages, while he mumbled his name off-handedly, for the benefit of leo, leo made a bow and introduced himself like this: 'leo golowski, cracow jew.' i don't know exactly what happened further; there was an exchange of words and the duel took place next day in the cavalry barracks at klagenfurt." "so i am quite right," persisted george humorously. "he did fight for his sister's honour." "no, i tell you. i was there when he once discussed the matter with therese, and said to her: 'so far as i am concerned you can do whatever amuses you. you can flirt with any one you like'...." "only it's got to be a jew, i suppose...." added george. anna shook her head. "he's really not like that." "i know," replied george gently. "we have become quite good friends lately, your leo and i. "why, only yesterday evening we met at the café again and he was really quite condescending to me. i think he really forgives me my lineage. besides, i haven't told you that therese was at ehrenbergs', too." and he described the appearance of the young girl in the ehrenberg drawing-room and the impression she had made on demeter. anna smiled with pleasure. later on, when they were again walking arm-in-arm in a quieter street, george began again. "but i still don't know who your great passion was." anna was silent and looked straight in front of her. "come, anna, you promised me, didn't you?" without looking at him she replied: "if you only had an idea how strange the whole thing seems to me to-day." "why strange?" "because the man you're trying to find out was quite an old man." "thirty-five," said george jestingly; "isn't that so?" she shook her head seriously. "he was fifty-eight or sixty." "and you?" asked george slowly. "it is two years ago last summer. i was then twenty-one." george suddenly stood still. "i know now, it was your singing-master. wasn't it?" anna did not answer. "so it was he, then?" said george, without being really surprised, for he was aware that all the celebrated master's pupils fell in love with him in spite of his grey hairs. "and did you love him most," asked george, "of all the men you had come across?" "strange, isn't it? but it's a fact all the same." "did he know it?" "i think so." they had arrived at an open space with a small garden ... that was only scantily lighted. at the back there towered a church with a reddish glow. as though drawn to a quieter place they wandered on under dark softly-waving branches. "and what actually was there between you, if it is not a rude question?" anna was silent, and that moment george felt that everything was possible--even that anna should have been that man's mistress. but underneath the disquiet which he felt at that thought the desire arose gently and unconsciously to hear his fear confirmed. for if anna had already belonged to some one else before she became his, the adventure could proceed as lightly and irresponsibly as possible. "i will tell you the whole story," said anna at last. "it is really not so awful." "well?" asked george, strangely excited. "once, after the lesson," anna began hesitatingly, "he gallantly helped me into my jacket. and then suddenly he drew me to him, took me in his arms and kissed me." "and you...?" "i ... i was quite intoxicated." "intoxicated?..." "yes, it was something indescribable. he kissed me on the forehead and the hair, and then he took my hand and murmured all sorts of things that i didn't hear properly...." "and...." "and then ... then voices came near, he let go my hand and it was all over." "all over?" "yes, over ... of course it was all over." "i certainly don't think it such a matter of course. you saw him again, no doubt." "of course, i still went on learning with him." "and...?" "i tell you it was over ... absolutely ... as though it had never happened." george was surprised that he should feel reassured. "and he never tried again?" he asked. "never. it would have been so ridiculous, and as he was very clever he knew that quite well himself. it is quite true that up to then i had been very much in love with him, but after this episode he was nothing more to me than my old teacher. in some way he seemed even older than he really was. i don't know if you can really understand what i mean. it was as though he had spent all the remains of his youth in that moment." "i quite understand," said george. he believed her and loved her more than before. they went into the church. it was almost dark within the large building. there were only some dim candles burning in front of a side altar, and opposite, behind the small statue of a saint, there shone a feeble light. a broad stream of incense flowed between the dome and the flagstones. the verger was walking, jangling his keys softly. motionless figures appeared vaguely on the seats at the back. george slowly walked forward with anna and felt like a young husband on his honeymoon going sight-seeing in a church with his young wife. he said so to anna. she only nodded. "but it would be very much nicer," whispered george, as they stood nestling close together in front of the chancel, "if we really were together somewhere abroad...." she looked at him ecstatically and yet interrogatively: and he was frightened at his own words. supposing anna had taken it as a serious declaration or as a kind of wooing? was he not obliged to enlighten her that he had not meant it in that way?... he remembered the conversation which they had had a short time ago, when they had gone out hanging on to one umbrella on a rainy windy day in the direction of schönbrunn. he had suggested to her she should drive into the town with him and dine with him in a private room in some restaurant; she had answered with that iciness in which her whole being was sometimes frozen: "i don't do that kind of thing." he had not pressed her further. and yet a quarter of an hour later she had said to him, apropos no doubt of a conversation about george's mode of life, but yet with a smile of many possibilities: "you have no initiative, george." and he had suddenly felt at that moment as though depths in her soul were revealing themselves, undreamt-of and dangerous depths, which it would be a good thing to beware of. he could not help now thinking of this again. what was passing within her mind?... what did she want and what was she ready for?... and what did he desire, what did he feel himself? life was so incalculable. was it not perfectly possible that he should go travelling about the world with her, live with her a period of happiness and finally part from her just as he had parted from many another?... yet when he thought of the end that was inevitably bound to come, whether death brought it or life itself, he felt a gentle grief in his heart.... she still remained silent. did she think again that he was lacking in initiative?... or did she think perhaps "i am really going to succeed, i shall be his wife?..." he then felt her hand stroke his very gently, with a kind of new tenderness that did him great good. "george," she said. "what is it?" he asked. "if i were religious," she replied, "i should like to pray for something now." "what for?" said george, feeling almost nervous. "for you to do something, george--something that really counted. for you to become a genuine artist, a great artist." he could not help looking at the floor, as though for very shame that her thoughts had travelled on paths that were so much cleaner than his own. a beggar held open the thick green curtain. george gave the man a coin; they were in the open air. the street lights shone up, the noise of vehicles and closing shutters suddenly grew near. george felt as if a fine veil which the twilight of the church had woven around him and her had now been torn, and in a tone of relief he suggested a little ride. anna agreed with alacrity. they got into an open fiacre, had the top pulled down over them, drove through the streets, then drove round the ring, without seeing much of the buildings and gardens, spoke not a word and nestled closer and closer to each other. they were both conscious of each other's impatience and their own, and they knew it was no longer possible to go back. when they were near anna's home george said: "what a pity that you have got to go home now." she shrugged her shoulders and smiled strangely. the depths, thought george again, but without fear and almost gaily. before the vehicle stopped at the corner they arranged an appointment for the following morning in the schwarzenberggarten and then got out. anna rushed home and george slowly strolled towards the town. he considered whether he should go into the café. he did not really feel keen on it. bermann would probably stay to supper at the ehrenbergs' to-day, one could rarely count on leo golowski coming: and george was not much attracted by the other young people, most of them jewish writers, with whom he had recently struck up a casual acquaintance, even though he had thought many of them not at all uninteresting. speaking broadly, he found their tone to each other now too familiar, now too formal, now too facetious, now too sentimental: not one of them seemed really free and unembarrassed with the others, scarcely indeed with himself. heinrich too had declared only the other day that he didn't want to have anything more to do with the whole set, who had become thoroughly antagonistic to him since his successes. george regarded it as perfectly possible that heinrich, with his characteristic vanity and hypochondria, was scenting enmity and persecution where it was perhaps merely a case of indifference or antipathy. he for his part knew that it was not so much friendship that attracted him to the young author, as the curiosity to get to know a strange man more intimately. perhaps also the interest of looking into a world which up to the present had been more or less foreign to him. for while he himself had remained somewhat reserved and had specially avoided any reference to his own relations with women, heinrich had not only told him of his distant mistress, for whom he asserted he suffered pangs of jealousy, but also of a blonde and pretty young person with whom he had recently got into the habit of spending his evenings--merely to deaden his feelings as he ironically added; he not only told him of his life as a student and journalist in vienna, which did not lie so far back, but also of his childhood and boyhood in that little provincial town in bohemia where he had come into the world thirty years ago. the half-affectionate and half-disgusted tone, with its mixture of attachment and detachment, in which heinrich spoke of his family and especially of his suffering father, who had been an advocate in that little town and a member of parliament for a considerable period, struck george as strange and at times as almost painful. why, he seemed to be even a little proud of the fact that when he was only twenty years old he had prophesied his blissfully confident parent's fate to the old man himself, exactly as it had subsequently fulfilled itself. after a short period of popularity and success the growth of the anti-semitic movement had driven him out of the german liberal party, most of his friends had deserted and betrayed him, and a dissipated 'corps' student, who described at public meetings the tschechs and jews as the most dangerous enemies of germanism, propriety and morality, while at home he thrashed his wife and had children by his servants, was his successor in the confidence of the electors and in parliament. heinrich, who had always felt a certain amount of irritation at his father's phrases, honest though they were, about pan-germanism, liberty and progress, had at first gloated over the spectacle of the old man's downfall. and it was only when the lawyer who had once been so much in demand began to lose his practice into the bargain, and the financial position of the family got worse from day to day, that the son began to experience a somewhat belated sympathy. he had given up his legal studies early enough, and had been compelled to come to the help of his family with his daily journalistic work. his first literary successes raised no echo in the melancholy household. there were sinister signs that madness was looming over his father, while now that the latter was falling into mental darkness his mother, for whom state and fatherland had ceased to exist, when her husband was not elected to parliament, lost her grip of life and of the world. heinrich's only sister, once a buxom clever girl, had developed melancholia after an unhappy passion for a kind of provincial don juan, and with morbid perverseness she put the blame for the family misfortune on the shoulders of her brother, though she had always got on with him perfectly well in her youth. heinrich also told george about other relations whom he remembered in his early days, and a half-grotesque, half-pathetic series of strict bigoted old-fashioned jews and jewesses swept by george like shadows from another world. he eventually realised that heinrich did not feel himself any homesickness for that small town with its miserable petty squabbles, or any call to return to the gloomy narrowness of his almost ruined family, and saw that heinrich's egoism was at once his salvation and his deliverance. it was striking nine from the tower of the church of st. michael when george stood in front of the café. he saw rapp the critic sitting by a window not completely covered by the curtain, with a pile of papers in front of him on the table. he had just taken his glasses off his nose and was polishing them, and the dull eyes brought a look of absolute deadness into a face that was usually so alive with clever malice. opposite him with gestures that swept over vacancy sat gleissner the poet in all the brilliancy of his false elegance, with a colossal black cravat in which a red stone scintillated. when george, without hearing their voices, saw the lips of these two men move, while their glances wandered to and fro, he could scarcely understand how they could stand sitting opposite each other for a quarter of an hour in that cloud of hate. it flashed across him at once that this was the atmosphere in which the life of the whole set played its comedy, and through which there darted many a redeeming flash of wit and self-analysis. what had he in common with these people? a kind of horror seized on him, he turned away and decided to look up his club once again instead of going into the café, the rooms of which he had not been in for months past. it was only a few steps away. george was soon walking up the broad marble staircase, went into the little dining-room with the light green curtain and was greeted as a long-lost friend by ralph skelton, the attaché of the english embassy, and doctor von breitner. they talked about the tournament which was going to take place and about the banquet that was going to be organised in honour of the foreign fencing-masters; they gossiped about the new operetta at the wiedner theatre where fräulein lovan as a bayadère had come on to the stage almost naked, and about the duel between the manufacturer heidenfeld and lieutenant novotny, in which the injured husband had fallen. george had a game of billiards with skelton after the meal and won. he felt in better spirits and resolved henceforth to pay more frequent visits to these airy prettily-furnished rooms frequented by pleasant well-bred young men with whom one could converse lightly and pleasantly. felician appeared, told his brother that it had been very amusing at the ehrenbergs' and that frau marianne sent her regards. breitner, with one of his celebrated huge cigars in his mouth, joined the brothers, and began to speak about the hanging of the portraits of some of those members of the club who had conferred services on it, mentioning particularly the one of young labinski who had ended all by suicide in the previous year. and george could not help thinking of grace, of that strange hot-and-cold conversation with her in the cemetery in the melting february snow and of that wonderful night on the moonlit deck of the steamer that had brought them both from palermo to naples. he scarcely knew which woman he longed for the most at this particular moment: for marianne whom he had deserted, for grace who had vanished, or for the fair young creature with whom he had walked about in a dusky church a few hours ago like a honeymoon couple in a foreign town, and who had wanted to pray to heaven for him to become a great artist. the memory stirred a gentler emotion. was it not almost as though she set more store by his artistic future than by him himself?... no.... not more. she had only just spoken out what had lain slumbering all the time at the bottom of her soul. it was simply that he forgot as it were only too frequently that he was an artist. but all that must be changed. he had begun and prepared so much. just a little industry and success was assured. and next year he would go out into the world. he would soon get a post as conductor and with a sudden leap he would find himself launched in a profession that brought both money and prestige. he would get to know new people, a different sky would shine above him and white unknown arms stretched towards him mysteriously as though from distant clouds. and while the young people at his side were weighing very seriously the chances of the champions at the approaching tournament, george went on dreaming in his corner of a future full of work, fame and love. at the same time anna was lying in her dark room. she was not asleep and her wide-open eyes were turned towards the ceiling. she had for the first time in her life the infallible feeling that there was a man in the world who could do anything he liked with her. her mind was firmly made up to take all the happiness or all the sorrow that might lie in front of her, and she had a gentle hope, more beautiful than all her dreams of the past, of a serene and abiding happiness. iii george and heinrich dismounted from their cycles. the last villas lay behind them and the broad road with its gradual upward incline led into the forest. the foliage still hung fairly thickly on the trees, but every slight puff of wind brought away some leaves which slowly fluttered down. the shimmer of autumn floated over the yellow-reddish hills. the road ascended higher past an imposing restaurant garden approached by a flight of stone steps. only a few people sat in the open air, most of them were in the glass verandah, as though they did not quite trust themselves to the faltering warmth of this late october day, through which a dangerous and chilly draught kept on penetrating. george thought of the melancholy memory of the winter evening on which he and frau marianne had paid a visit here, and had had the place to themselves. he had been bored as he had sat by her side and listened impatiently to her prattle about yesterday's concert in which fräulein bellini had sung songs; and when he had been obliged to get out of the carriage in a suburban street on his way back on account of marianne's nervousness, he had taken a deep breath of deliverance. a similar feeling of release, of course, almost invariably came over him whenever he left a mistress, even after some more or less beautiful hours. even when he had left anna on her doorstep a few days ago, after the first evening of complete happiness, the first emotion of which he was conscious was the joy of being alone again. and immediately in its train, even before the feeling of gratitude and the dim realisation of a genuine affinity with this gentle creature who enveloped his whole being with such intimate tenderness had managed to penetrate his soul, there fluttered through it a wistful dream of voyages over a shimmering sea, of coasts which approached seductively, of walks along shores which would vanish again on the next day, of blue distances, freedom from responsibility and solitude. the next morning, when the atmosphere of the previous evening, pregnant as it was with memory and with presage, enveloped him as he woke up, the journey was of course put off to a later but not so distant though of course more convenient time. for george knew at this very hour, though without any touch of horror, that this adventure was predestined to have an end however sincerely and picturesquely it had begun. anna had given herself to him without indicating by a word, a look or gesture that so far as she was concerned, what was practically a new chapter in her life was now beginning. and in the same way george felt quite convinced that the farewell to her, too, would be devoid of melancholy or of difficulty; a pressure of the hand, a smile and a quiet "it was very beautiful"; and he felt still easier in his mind when she came to him at their next meeting with a simple intimate greeting, quite free from that uneasy tone of nestling sorrow or accomplished fate which he had heard thrilling in the voice of many another woman, who had woken up to such a morning, though not for the first time in her life. a faintly-defined line of mountains appeared in the distance and then vanished again as the road mounted through thick-wooded country up to the heights. pine-wood and leaf-bearing wood grew peacefully next to each other, and the foliage of beeches and birch-trees shimmered with its autumn tints through the quieter tints of the firs. ramblers could be seen, some with knapsack, alpine-stock and nailed shoes, as though equipped for serious mountaineering; now and again cyclists would come whizzing down the road in a feverish rush. heinrich told his companion of a cycle-tour which he had made along the rhine at the beginning of september. "isn't it strange," said george, "i have knocked about the world a fair bit, but i do not yet know the district where my ancestors' home was." "really?" queried heinrich, "and you feel no emotion when you hear the word rhine spoken?" george smiled. "after all it is nearly a hundred years since my great-grandparents left biebrich." "why do you smile, george? it's a much longer time since my ancestors wandered out of palestine, and yet many otherwise quite rational people insist on my heart throbbing with homesickness for that country." george shook his head irritably. "why do you always keep bothering about those people? it will really soon become a positive obsession with you." "oh, you think i mean the anti-semites? not a bit of it. i am not touchy any more about them, not usually, at any rate. but you just go and ask our friend leo what his views are on this question." "oh, you mean him, do you? well, he doesn't take it so literally but more or less symbolically ... or from the political standpoint," he added uncertainly. heinrich nodded. "both these ideas are very intimately connected in brains of that character." he sank into meditation for a while, thrust his cycle forward with slight impatient spurts and was soon a few paces in front again. he then began to talk again about his september tour. he thought of it again with what was almost emotion. solitude, change of scene, movement: had he not enjoyed a threefold happiness? "i can scarcely describe to you," he said, "the feeling of inner freedom which thrilled through me. do you know those moods in which all one's memories near or distant lose, as it were, their oppressive reality? all the people who have meant anything in one's life, whether it be grief, care or tenderness, seem to sweep by more like shadows, or, to put it more precisely, like forms which one has imagined oneself? and the creations of one's own imagination also come on the scene, of course, and are certainly quite as vivid as the people whom one remembers as having been real; and then one gets the most extraordinary complications between the figures of reality and of one's imagination. i could describe to you a conversation which took place between my great-uncle who is a rabbi and the duke heliodorus, the character you know who is the centre of my opera plot--a conversation which was amusing and profound to a degree which, speaking generally, neither life nor any opera libretto scarcely ever reaches.... yes, such journeys are really wonderful, and so one goes on through towns which one has never seen before, and perhaps will never see again, past absolutely unknown faces which speedily vanish again for all eternity.... then one whizzes again into the street between the rivers and the vineyards. such moods really cleanse the soul. a pity that they are so rarely vouchsafed to one." george always felt a certain embarrassment whenever heinrich became tragic. "perhaps we might go on a bit," he said, and they jumped on to their machines. a narrow bumpy byroad between the forest and fields soon led them to a bare unimpressive two-storied house, which they recognised to be an inn by its brown surly signboard. on the green, which was separated from the house by the street, stood a large number of tables, many covered with cloths which had once been white, others with cloths which were embroidered. ten or twelve young men who were members of a cycling club sat at some pushed-back tables. several of them had taken off their coats, others with an affectation of smartness wore them with their sleeves hanging down. designs in magnificent red and green knitting blazed on the sky-blue sweaters with their yellow edges. a chorus rang out to the sky with more power than purity: "der gott der eisen wachsen liess, der wollte keine knechte." heinrich surveyed the company with a quick glance, half shut his eyes and said to george with clenched teeth and vehement emphasis: "i don't know if these youths are staunch, true and courageous, which they certainly think they are; but there is no doubt that they smell of wool and perspiration, and so i am all for our sitting down at a reasonable distance from them." what _does_ he want? thought george. would he find it more congenial if a party of polish jews were to sit here and sing psalms? both pushed their machines to a distant table and sat down. a waiter appeared in black evening dress sprinkled with the relics of grease and vegetables, cleared the table energetically with a dirty napkin, took their orders and went off. "isn't it lamentable," said heinrich, "that in the immediate outskirts of vienna nearly all the inns should be in such a state of neglect? it makes one positively depressed." george thought that this exaggerated regret was out of place. "oh well, in the country," he said, "you have got to take things as you find them. it is almost part of the whole thing." heinrich would not admit the soundness of this point of view. he began to develop a plan for the erection of seven hotels on the borders of the wienerwald, and was calculating that one would need at the outside three or four millions, when leo golowski suddenly appeared. he was in _mufti_, which, as was frequently the case with him, was not without a certain element of bizarreness. he wore to-day, in addition to a light-grey lounge suit, a blue velvet waistcoat and a yellow silk cravat with a smooth steel tie-ring. both the others greeted him with delight and expressed their astonishment. leo sat down by them. "i heard you fixing up your excursion yesterday evening, and when we were discharged from the barracks at nine o'clock to-day, i at once thought how nice it would be to have a chat for an hour or so in the open air with a couple of keen and congenial men. so i went home, threw myself into mufti and started off." he spoke in his usual tone, which always fascinated george with its charm and semi-naïveté, though when he thought of it afterwards it always seemed to possess a certain touch of irony, of insincerity in fact. he had a knack of conducting serious conversations with a cut-and-dried definiteness that really impressed george. he had recently had an opportunity of listening to discussions in the café between leo and heinrich on questions dealing with the theory of art, especially the relation between the laws of music and mathematics. leo thought he was on the track of the fundamental cause of major and minor keys affecting the human soul in such different ways. george took pleasure in following the chain of his acute and lucid analysis, even though he was instinctively on his guard against the audacious attempt to ascribe all the magic and mystery of sound to the rule of laws, which were as inexorable as those in accordance with which the earth and the planets revolved, and must necessarily spring from the same origin as those eternal principles. it was only when heinrich tried to carry leo's theories still further, and to apply them for instance to the products of literary style, that george became impatient and immediately felt himself tacit ally of leo who invariably smiled gently at heinrich's tangled and fantastic expositions. the meal was served and the young men ate with appetite; heinrich not less than the others, in spite of the fact that he expressed his opinion of the inferiority of the cooking in the most disparaging terms, and was inclined to regard the conduct of the proprietor, not merely as a sign of his personally low mind, but as characteristic of the decay of austria in many other spheres. the conversation turned on the military position of the country, and leo gave a satirical description of his comrades and superiors, with which both the others were very much amused. much merriment, especially, was occasioned by a first-lieutenant who had introduced himself to the volunteer contingent with the ominous words: "i shan't give you anything to laugh about, i am a fiend in human form." while they were still eating a gentleman came up to the table, clicked his heels together, put his hand to his cycle cap by way of salutation, addressed them with a facetious "all hail," added a friendly "hallo" for the benefit of leo, and introduced himself to heinrich. "my name is josef rosner." he then cheerily began the conversation with these words: "i suppose you gentlemen are also on a cycling expedition...." as no one answered him he continued: "one must make the best of the last fine days, the splendid weather won't last much longer." "won't you sit down, herr rosner?" asked george politely. "much obliged but...." he pointed to his party.... "we have only just started out, we have still got a lot in front of us; going to ride down to tull and then via stockerau to vienna. excuse me, gentlemen." he took a wooden vesta from the table and lighted his cigarette with dignity. "what kind of a club are you in then, old chap?" asked leo, and george was surprised at the "old chap," till it occurred to him that they had both known each other from boyhood. "this is the sechshauser cycle club," replied josef. in spite of the fact that no astonishment was expressed, he added: "of course you are surprised, gentlemen, at a real viennese like myself belonging to this suburban club, but it is only because a great friend of mine is the captain there. you see that fat chap there, just slipping into his coat. that is jalaudek, the son of the town councillor and member of parliament." "jalaudek ..." repeated heinrich with obvious loathing in his voice, and said nothing more. "oh yes," said leo, "that's the man, you know, who in a recent debate about the popular education board gave this magnificent definition of science. didn't you read it?" he turned to the others. they did not remember. "'science,'" quoted leo, "'science is what one jew copies from another.'" all laughed. even josef, who, however, immediately started explaining: "he is really not that sort at all--i know him quite well--only he is so crude in political life ... simply because the opposing parties scratch each other's eyes out in our beloved austria. but in ordinary life he is a very affable gentleman. the boy is much more radical." "is your club christian socialist or national german?" asked leo courteously. "oh, we don't make any distinction. only of course as things are going nowadays...." he stopped with sudden embarrassment. "come, come," said leo encouragingly. "it is perfectly obvious that your club is not tainted by a single jew. why, one notices that a mile off." josef thought it was best form to laugh. he then said: "excuse me, no politics in the mountains! anyway, as we are on this topic you are labouring under a delusion, gentlemen. for instance, we have a man in the club who is engaged to a jewish girl. but they are beckoning to me already. goodbye, gentlemen; so long, leo; goodbye, all." he saluted again and swaggered off. the others, smiling in spite of themselves, followed him with their eyes. then leo suddenly turned to george and asked: "and how is his sister getting on with her singing?" "what?" said george, startled and blushing slightly. "therese has been telling me," went on leo quietly, "that you and anna do music together sometimes. is her voice all right now?" "yes," replied george, hesitating, "i believe so; at any rate i think it is very pleasant, very melodious, especially in the deeper registers. it is a pity in my view that it is not big enough for larger rooms." "not big enough?" repeated leo meditatively. "how would you describe it?" leo shrugged his shoulders and looked quietly at george. "it is like this," he said. "i personally like the voice very much, but even when anna had the idea of going on the stage ... to speak quite frankly, i never thought anything would come of it." "you probably knew," replied george with deliberate casualness, "that fräulein anna suffers from a peculiar weakness of the vocal chords." "yes, of course i knew that, but if she were cut out for an artistic career, really had it in her, i mean, she would certainly have overcome that weakness." "you think so?" "yes, i do. that is my decided opinion. that's why i think that expressions like 'peculiar weakness' or 'her voice is not big enough' are more or less euphemisms for something more fundamental, more psychological. it's quite clear that her fate line says nothing about her being an artist, that's a fact. she was, so to speak, predestined from the beginning to end her days in respectable domesticity." heinrich enthusiastically caught up the theory of the fate line, and led their thoughts in his own erratic way from the sphere of cleverness to the sphere of sophistry, and from the sphere of sophistry to the sphere of the nonsensical. he then suggested that they should bask for half an hour in the meadow in the sun. "it will probably not shine so warm again during this year." the others agreed. a hundred yards from the inn george and leo stretched themselves out on their cloaks. heinrich sat down on the grass, crossed his arms over his knees, and looked in front of him. at his feet the sward sloped down to the forest. still deeper down rested the villas of neuwaldegg, buried in loose foliage. the spire-crosses and dazzling windows of the town shone out from the bluish-grey clouds, and far away, as though lifted up by a moving haze, the plain swept away to a gradual darkness. pedestrians were walking over the fields towards the inn. some gave them a greeting as they passed, and one of them, a slim young man who led a child by the hand, remarked to heinrich: "this is a really fine day, just like may." heinrich felt at first his heart go out as it were involuntarily, as it often did towards casual and unexpected friendliness of this description. but he immediately pulled himself together, for of course he realised that the young man was only intoxicated, as it were, with the mildness of the day and the peace of the landscape; that at the bottom of his soul he too felt hostile to him, just like all the others who had strolled past him so harmlessly, and he himself found difficulty in understanding why the view of these gently sloping hills and the town merging into twilight should affect him with so sweet a melancholy, in view of the fact that the men who lived there meant so little good by him, and meant him even that little but rarely. the cycling club whizzed along the street which was quite close to them. the jauntily-worn coats fluttered, the badges gleamed and crude laughter rang out over the fields. "awful people," said leo casually without changing his place. heinrich motioned down below with a vague movement of his head. "and fellows like that," he said with set teeth, "imagine that they are more at home here than we are." "oh, well," answered leo quietly, "they aren't so far out in that, those fellows there." heinrich turned scornfully towards him: "excuse me, leo, i forgot for a moment that you yourself wish to count as only here on sufferance." "i don't wish that for a minute," replied leo with a smile, "and you need not misunderstand me so perversely. one really can't bear a grudge against these people if they regard themselves as the natives and you and me as the foreigners. after all, it is only the expression of their healthy instinct for an anthropological fact which is confirmed by history. neither jewish nor christian sentimentalism can do anything against that and all the consequences which follow from it." and turning to george he asked him in a tone which was only too courteous: "don't you think so too?" george reddened and cleared his throat, but had no opportunity of answering, for heinrich, on whose forehead two deep furrows now appeared, immediately began to speak with considerable bitterness. "my own instinct is at any rate quite as much a rule of conduct for me as the instinct of herren jalaudek junior and senior, and that instinct tells me infallibly that my home is here, just here, and not in some land which i don't know, the description of which doesn't appeal to me the least bit and which certain people now want to persuade me is my fatherland on the strength of the argument that that was the place from which my ancestors some thousand years ago were scattered into the world. one might further observe on that point that the ancestors of the herren jalaudek and even of our friend baron von wergenthin were quite as little at home here as mine and yours." "you mustn't be angry with me," retorted leo, "but your standpoint in these matters is really somewhat limited. you are always thinking about yourself and the really quite irrelevant circumstance ... excuse my saying irrelevant circumstance, that you are an author who happens to write in the german language because he was born in a german country, and happens to write about austrian people and austrian conditions because he lives in austria. but the primary question is not about you, or about me either, or even about the few jewish officials who do not get promoted, the few jewish volunteers who do not get made officers, the jewish lecturers who either get their professorship too late or not at all--those are sheer secondary inconveniences so to speak; we have to deal, in considering this question, with quite another class of men whom you know either imperfectly or not at all. we have to deal with destinies to which, i assure you, my dear heinrich, that in spite of your real duty to do so, i am sure you have not yet given sufficient thorough thought. i am sure you haven't.... otherwise you wouldn't be able to discuss all these matters in the superficial and the ... egoistic way you are now doing." he then told them of his experiences at the bâle zionist congress in which he had taken part in the previous year, and where he had obtained a deeper insight into the character and psychological condition of the jewish people than he had ever done before. with these people, whom he saw at close quarters for the first time, the yearning for palestine, he knew it for a fact, was no artificial pose. a genuine feeling was at work within them, a feeling that had never become extinguished and was now flaming up afresh under the stress of necessity. no one could doubt that who had seen, as he had, the holy scorn shine out in their looks when a speaker exclaimed that they must give up the hope of palestine for the time being and content themselves with settlements in africa and the argentine. why, he had seen old men, not uneducated men either, no, learned and wise old men, weeping because they must needs fear that that land of their fathers, which they themselves would never be able to tread, even in the event of the realisation of the boldest zionist plans, would perhaps never be open to their children and their children's children. george listened with surprise, and was even somewhat moved. but heinrich, who had been walking up and down the field during leo's narrative, exclaimed that he regarded zionism as the worst affliction that had ever burst upon the jews, and that leo's own words had convinced him of it more profoundly than any previous argument or experience. national feeling and religion, those had always been the words which had embittered him with their wanton, yes malignant, ambiguity. fatherland.... why, that was nothing more than a fiction, a political idea floating in the air, changeable, intangible. it was only the home, not the fatherland which had any real significance ... and so the feeling of home was synonymous with the right to a home. and so far as religions were concerned, he liked christian and jewish mythology quite as much as greek and indian; but as soon as they began to force their dogmas upon him, he found them all equally intolerable and repulsive. and he felt himself akin with no one, no, not with any one in the whole world: with the weeping jews in ble as little as with the bawling pan-germans in the austrian parliament; with jewish usurers as little as with noble robber-knights; with a zionist bar-keeper as little as with a christian socialist grocer. and least of all would the consciousness of a persecution which they had all suffered, and of a hatred whose burden fell upon them all, make him feel linked to men from whom he felt himself so far distant in temperament. he did not mind recognising zionism as a moral principle and a social movement, if it could honestly be regarded in that light, but the idea of the foundation of a jewish state on a religious and national basis struck him as a nonsensical defiance of the whole spirit of historical evolution. "and you too, at the bottom of your heart," he explained, standing still in front of leo, "you don't think either that this goal will ever prove attainable; why, you don't even wish it, although you fancy yourself in your element trying to get there. what is your home-country, palestine? a geographical idea. what does the faith of your father mean to you? a collection of customs which you have now ceased to observe and some of which seem as ridiculous and in as bad taste to you, as they do to me." they went on talking for a long time, now vehemently and almost offensively, then calmly, and in the honest endeavour to convince each other. frequently they were surprised to find themselves holding the same opinion, only again to lose touch with each other the next moment in a new contradiction. george, stretched on his cloak, listened to them. his mind soon took the side of leo, whose words seemed to thrill with an ardent pity for the unfortunate members of his race, and who would turn proudly away from people who would not treat him as their equal. soon he felt nearer again in spirit to heinrich, who treated with anger and scorn the attempt, as wild as it was short-sighted, to collect from all the corners of the world the members of a race whose best men had always merged in the culture of the land of their adoption, or had at any rate contributed to it, and to send them all together to a foreign land, a land to which no homesickness called them. and george gradually appreciated how difficult those same picked men about whom heinrich had been speaking, the men who were hatching in their souls the future of humanity, would find it to come to a decision. how dazed must be their consciousness of their existence, their value and their rights, tossed to and fro as they were between defiance and exhaustion, between the fear of appearing importunate and their bitter resentment at the demand that they must needs yield to an insolent majority, between the inner consciousness of being at home in the country where they lived and worked, and their indignation at finding themselves persecuted and insulted in that very place. he saw for the first time the designation jew, which he himself had often used flippantly, jestingly and contemptuously, in a quite new and at the same time melancholy light. there dawned within him some idea of this people's mysterious destiny, which always expressed itself in every one who sprang from the race, not less in those who tried to escape from that origin of theirs, as though it were a disgrace, a pain or a fairy tale that did not concern them at all, than in those who obstinately pointed back to it as though to a piece of destiny, an honour or an historical fact based on an immovable foundation. and as he lost himself in the contemplation of the two speakers, and looked at their figures, which stood out in relief against the reddish-violet sky in sharply-drawn, violently-moving lines, it occurred to him, and not for the first time, that heinrich who insisted on being at home here, resembled both in figure and gesture some fanatical jewish preacher, while leo, who wanted to go back to palestine with his people, reminded him in feature and in bearing of the statue of a greek youth which he had once seen in the vatican or the naples museum. and he understood again quite well, as his eye followed with pleasure leo's lively aristocratic gestures, how anna could have experienced a mad fancy for her friend's brother years ago in that summer by the seaside. heinrich and leo were still standing opposite each other on the grass, while their conversation became lost in a maze of words. their sentences rushed violently against each other, wrestled convulsively, shot past each other and vanished into nothingness, and george noticed at some moment or other that he was only listening to the sound of the speeches, without being able to follow their meaning. a cool breeze came up from the plain, and george got up from the sward with a slight shiver. the others, who had almost forgotten his presence, were thus called back again to actualities, and they decided to leave. full daylight still shone over the landscape, but the sun was couched faint and dark on the long strip of an evening cloud. "conversations like this," said heinrich, as he strapped his cloak on to his cycle, "always leave me with a sense of dissatisfaction, which even goes as far as a painful feeling in the neighbourhood of the stomach. yes really. they just lead absolutely nowhere. and after all, what do political views matter to men who don't make politics their career or their business? do they exert the slightest influence on the policy and moulding of existence? you, leo, are just like myself; neither of us will ever do anything else, can ever do anything else, than just accomplish that which, in view of our character and our capacities, we are able to accomplish. you will never migrate to palestine all your life long, even if jewish states were founded and you were offered a position as prime-minister, or at any rate official pianist----" "oh, you can't know that," interrupted leo. "i know it for a certainty," said heinrich. "that's why i'll admit, into the bargain, that in spite of my complete indifference to every single form of religion i would positively never allow myself to be baptised, even if it were possible--though that is less the case to-day than ever it was--of escaping once and for all anti-semitic bigotry and villainy by a dodge like that." "hum," said leo, "but supposing the mediæval stake were to be lighted again." "in that case," retorted heinrich, "i hereby solemnly bind myself to take your advice implicitly." "oh," objected george, "those times will certainly not come again." both the others were unable to help laughing at george being kind enough to reassure them in that way about their future, in the name, as heinrich observed, of the whole of christendom. in the meanwhile they had crossed the field. george and heinrich pushed their cycles forward up the bumpy by-road, while leo at their side walked on the turf with his cloak fluttering in the wind. they were all silent for quite a time, as though exhausted. at the place where the bad path turned off towards the broad high road, leo remained stationary and said: "we will have to leave each other here, i am afraid." he shook hands with george and smiled. "you must have been pretty well bored to-day," he said. george blushed. "i say now, you must take me for a...." leo held george's hand in a firm grip. "i take you for a very shrewd man and also for a very good sort. do you believe me?" george was silent. "i should like to know," continued leo, "whether you believe me, george. i am keen on knowing." his voice assumed a tone of genuine sincerity. "why, of course i believe you," replied george, still, however, with a certain amount of impatience. "i am glad," said leo, "for i really feel a sympathy between us, george." he looked straight into his eyes, then shook hands once more with him and heinrich and turned to go. but george suddenly had the feeling that this young man who with his fluttering cloak and his head slightly bent forward was striding down-hill in the middle of the broad street was not waiting to any "home," but to some foreign sphere somewhere, where no one could follow him. he found this feeling all the more incomprehensible since he had not only spent many hours recently with leo in conversation at the café, but had also received all possible information from anna about him, his family and his position in life. he knew that that summer at the seaside, which now lay six years back, as did anna's youthful infatuation, had marked the last summer which the golowski family had enjoyed free from trouble, and that the business of the old man had been completely ruined in the subsequent winter. it had been extraordinary, according to anna's account, how all the members of the family had adapted themselves to the altered conditions, as though they had been long prepared for this revolution. the family removed from their comfortable house in the rathaus quarter to a dismal street in the neighbourhood of the augarten. herr golowski undertook all kinds of commission business while frau golowski did needlework for sale. therese gave lessons in french and english and at first continued to attend the dramatic school. it was a young violin player belonging to an impoverished noble russian family who awakened her interest in political questions. she soon abandoned her art, for which, as a matter of fact, she had always shown more inclination than real talent, and in a short time she was in the full swing of the social democratic movement as a speaker and agitator. leo, without agreeing with her views, enjoyed her fresh and audacious character. he often attended meetings with her, but as he was not keen on being impressed by magniloquence, whether it took the form of promises which were never fulfilled or of threats which disappeared into thin air, he found it good fun to point out to her, on the way home, with an irresistible acuteness, the inconsistencies in her own speeches and those of the members of her party. but he always made a particular point of trying to convince her that she would never have been able to forget so completely her great mission for days and weeks on end, if her pity for the poor and the suffering were really as deep an emotion as she imagined. leo's own life, moreover, had no definite object. he attended technical science lectures, gave piano lessons, sometimes went so far as to plan out a musical career, and practised five or six hours a day for weeks on end. but it was still impossible to forecast what he would finally decide on. inasmuch it was his way to wait almost unconsciously for a miracle to save him from anything disagreeable, he had put off his year of service till he was face to face with the final time-limit, and now in his twenty-fifth year he was serving for the first time. their parents allowed leo and therese to go their own way, and in spite of their manifold differences of opinion there seemed to be no serious discord in the golowski family. the mother usually sat at home, sewed, knitted and crocheted, while the father went about his business with increasing apathy, and liked best of all to watch the chess-players in the café, a pleasure which enabled him to forget the ruin of his life. since the collapse of his business he seemed unable to shake off a certain feeling of embarrassment towards his children, so that he was almost proud when therese would give him now and again an article which she had written to read, or when leo was good enough to play a game on sundays with him on the board he loved so well. it always seemed to george as though his own sympathy for leo were fundamentally connected with anna's long-past fancy for him. he felt, and not for the first time, curiously attracted to a man to whom a soul which now belonged to him, had flown in years gone by. george and heinrich had mounted their cycles, and were riding along a narrow road through the thick forest that loomed darker and darker. a little later, as the forest retreated behind them again on both sides, they had the setting sun at their back, while the long shadows of their bodies kept running along in front of their cycles. the slope of the road became more and more pronounced and soon led them between low houses which were overhung with reddish foliage. a very old man sat in a seat in front of the door, a pale child looked out of an open window. otherwise not a single human being was to be seen. "like an enchanted village," said george. heinrich nodded. he knew the place. he had been here with his love on a wonderful summer day this year. he thought of it and burning longing throbbed through his heart. and he remembered the last hours that he had spent with her in vienna in his cool room with the drawn-down blinds, through whose interstices the hot august morning had glittered in: he remembered their last walk through the sunday quiet of the cool stone streets and through the old empty courtyards--and the complete absence of any idea that all this was for the last time. for it was only the next day that the letter had come, the ghastly letter in which she had written that she had wished to spare him the pain of farewell, and that when he read these words, she would already be quite a long way over the frontier on her journey to the new foreign town. the road became more animated. charming villas appeared encircled with cosy little gardens, wooded hills sloped gently upwards behind the houses. they saw once again the expanse of the valley as the waning day rested over meadows and fields. the lamps had been lit in a great empty restaurant garden. a hasty darkness seemed to be stealing down from every quarter simultaneously. they were now at the cross-roads. george and heinrich got off and lit cigarettes. "right or left?" asked heinrich. george looked at his watch. "six,... and i've got to be in town by eight." "so i suppose we can't dine together?" said heinrich. "i am afraid not." "it's a pity. well, we'll take the short cut then through sievering." they lit their lamps and pushed their cycles through the forest in a long serpentine. one tree after another in succession sprang out of the darkness into the radiance of the globes of light and retreated again into the night. the wind soughed through the foliage with increased force and the leaves rustled underneath. heinrich felt a quite gentle fear, such as frequently came over him when it was dark in the open country. he felt, as it were, disillusioned at the thought of having to spend the evening alone. he was in a bad temper with george, and was irritated into the bargain at the latter's reserve towards himself. he resolved also, and not for the first time, not to discuss his own personal affairs with george any more. it was better so. he did not need to confide in anybody or obtain anybody's sympathy. he had always felt at his best when he had gone his own way alone. he had found that out often enough. why then reveal his soul to another? he needed acquaintances to go walks and excursions with, and to discuss all the manifold problems of life and art in cold shrewd fashion--he needed women for a fleeting embrace; but he needed no friend and no mistress. in that way his life would pass with greater dignity and serenity. he revelled in these resolutions, and felt a growing consciousness of toughness and superiority. the darkness of the forest lost its terror, and he walked through the gently rustling night as though through a kindred element. the height was soon reached. the dark sky lay starless over the grey road and the haze-breathing fields that stretched on both sides towards the deceptive distance of the wooded hills. a light was shining from a toll-house quite near them. they mounted their cycles again and rode back as quickly as the darkness permitted. george wished to be soon at the journey's end. it struck him as strangely unreal that he was to see again in an hour and a half that quiet room which no one else knew of besides anna and himself; that dark room with the oil-prints on the wall, the blue velvet sofa, the cottage piano, on which stood the photographs of unknown people and a bust of schiller in white plaster; with its high narrow windows, opposite which the old dark grey church towered aloft. lamps were burning all the way along. the roads again became more open and they were given a last view of the heights. then they went at top speed, first between well-kept villas, finally through a populous noisy main road until they got deeper into the town. they got off at the votive church. "good-bye," said george, "and i hope to see you again in the café to-morrow." "i don't know ..." replied heinrich, and as george looked at him questioningly he added: "it is possible that i shall go away." "i say, that is a sudden decision." "yes, one gets caught sometimes by...." "lovesickness," filled in george with a smile. "or fear," said heinrich with a short laugh. "you certainly have no cause for that," said george. "do you know for certain?" asked heinrich. "you told us so yourself." "what!" "that you have news every day." "yes, that is quite true, every day. i get tender ardent letters. every day by the same post. but what does that prove? why, i write letters which are yet more ardent and even more tender and yet...." "yes," said george, who understood him. and he hazarded the question: "why don't you stay with her?" heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "tell me yourself, george, wouldn't it strike you as slightly humorous for a man to burn his boats on account of a love affair like that and trot about the world with a little actress...." "personally, i should regret it very much ... but humorous ... where does the humour come in?" "no, i have no desire to do it," said heinrich in a hard voice. "but if you ... but if you were to take it very seriously ... if you asked her point blank ... mightn't the young lady perhaps give up her career?" "possibly, but i am not going to ask her, i don't want to ask her. no, better pain than responsibility." "would it be such a great responsibility?" asked george. "what i mean is ... is the girl's talent so pronounced, is she really so keen on her art, that it would be really a sacrifice for her to give the thing up." "has she got talent?" said heinrich. "why, i don't know myself. why, i even think she is the one creature in the world about whose talent i would not trust myself to give an opinion. every time i have seen her on the stage her voice has rung in my ears like the voice of an unknown person, and as though, too, it came from a greater distance than all the other voices. it is really quite remarkable.... but you are bound to have seen her act, george. what's your impression? tell me quite frankly." "well, quite frankly ... i don't remember her properly. you'll excuse me, i didn't know then, you see.... when you talk of her i always see in my mind's eye a head of reddish-blonde hair that falls a little over the forehead--and very big black roving eyes with a small pale face." "yes, roving eyes," repeated heinrich, bit his lips and was silent for a while. "good-bye," he said suddenly. "you'll be sure to write to me?" asked george. "yes, of course. any way i am bound to be coming back again," he added, and smiled stiffly. "_bon voyage_," said george, and shook hands with him with unusual affection. this did heinrich good. this warm pressure of the hand not only made him suddenly certain that george did not think him ridiculous, but also, strangely enough, that his distant mistress was faithful to him and that he himself was a man who could take more liberties with life than many others. george looked after him as he hurried off on his cycle. he felt again as he had felt a few hours before, on leo's departure, that some one was vanishing into an unknown land; and he realised at this moment that in spite of all the sympathy he felt for both of them he would never attain with either that unrestrained sense of intimacy which had united him last year with guido schönstein and previously with poor labinski. he reflected whether perhaps the fundamental reason for this was not perhaps the difference of race between him and them, and he asked himself whether leaving out of account the conversation between the two of them, he would of his own initiative have realised so clearly this feeling of aloofness. he doubted it. did he not as a matter of fact feel himself nearer, yes even more akin, to these two and to many others of their race than to many men who came from the same stock as his own? why, did he not feel quite distinctly that deep down somewhere there were many stronger threads of sympathy running between him and those two men, than between him and guido or perhaps even his own brother? but if that was so, would he not have been bound to have taken some opportunity this afternoon to have said as much to those two men? to have appealed to them? "just trust me, don't shut me out. just try to treat me as a friend...." and as he asked himself why he had not done it, and why he had scarcely taken any part in their conversation, he realised with astonishment that during the whole time he had not been able to shake off a kind of guilty consciousness of having not been free during his whole life from a certain hostility towards the foreigners, as leo called them himself, a kind of wanton hostility which was certainly not justified by his own personal experience, and had thus contributed his own share to that distrust and defiance with which so many persons, whom he himself might have been glad to take an opportunity to approach, had shut themselves off from him. this thought roused an increasing _malaise_ within him which he could not properly analyse, and which was simply the dull realisation that clean relations could not flourish even between clean men in an atmosphere of folly, injustice and disingenuousness. he rode homewards faster and faster, as though that would make him escape this feeling of depression. arrived home, he changed quickly, so as not to keep anna waiting too long. he longed for her as he had never done before. he felt as though he had come home from a far journey to the one being who wholly belonged to him. iv george stood by the window. the stone backs of the bearded giants who bore on their powerful arms the battered armorial bearings of a long-past race were arched just beneath him. straight opposite, out of the darkness of ancient houses the steps crept up to the door of the old grey church which loomed amid the falling flakes of snow as though behind a moving curtain. the light of a street lamp on the square shone palely through the waning daylight. the snowy street beneath, which, though centrally situated, was remote from all bustle, was even quieter than usual on this holiday afternoon, and george felt once more, as indeed he always did when he ascended the broad staircase of the old palace that had been transformed into an apartment house, and stepped into the spacious room with its low-arched ceiling, that he was escaping from his usual world and had entered the other half of his wonderful double life. he heard a key grating in the door and turned round. anna came in. george clasped her ecstatically in his arms, and kissed her on the forehead and mouth. her dark-blue jacket, her broad-rimmed hat, her fur boa were all covered with snow. "you have been working then," said anna, as she took off her things and pointed to the table where music paper with writing on it lay close to the green-shaded lamp. "i have just looked through the quintette, the first movement, there is still a lot to do to it." "but it will be extraordinarily fine then." "we'll hope so. do you come from home, anna?" "no, from bittner's." "what, to-day, sunday?" "yes, the two girls have got a lot behind-hand through the measles, and that has to be made up. i am very pleased too, for money reasons for one thing." "making your fortune!" "and then one escapes for an hour or two at any rate from the happy home." "yes," said george, put anna's boa over the back of a chair and stroked the fur nervously with his fingers. anna's remark, in which he could detect a gentle reproach, as it were, a reproach too which he had heard before, gave him an unpleasant feeling. she sat down on the sofa, put her hands on her temples, stroked her dark blonde wavy hair backwards and looked at george with a smile. he stood leaning on the chest of drawers, with both hands in his jacket pocket, and began to tell her of the previous evening, which he had spent with guido and his violinist. the young lady had, at the count's wish, been for some weeks taking instruction in the catholic religion with the confessor of an arch-duchess; she, on her side, made guido read nietzsche and ibsen. but according to george's account the only result of this course of study which one could report so far was that the count had developed the habit of nicknaming his mistress "the rattenmamsell," after that wonderful character out of _little eyolf_. anna had nothing very bright to communicate about her last evening. they had had visitors. "first," anna told him, "my mother's two cousins, then an office friend of my father's to play tarok. even josef was domesticated for once and lay on the sofa from three to five. then his latest pal, herr jalaudek, who paid me quite a lot of attention." "really, really." "he _was_ fascinating. i'll just tell you: a violet cravat with yellow spots which puts yours quite into the shade. he paid me the honour too of suggesting that i should help him in a so-called charity-performance at the 'wild man,' for the benefit of the wahringer church building society." "of course you accepted?" "i excused myself on account of my lack of voice and want of religious feeling." "so far as the voice is concerned...." she interrupted him. "no, george," she said lightly, "i have given up that hope at last." he looked at her and tried to read her glance, but it remained clear and free. the organ from the church sounded softly and dully. "right," said george, "i have brought you the ticket for to-morrow's 'carmen.'" "thanks very much," she answered, and took the card. "are you going too, dear?" "yes, i have a box in the third tier, and i have asked bermann to come. i am taking the music with me, as i did the other day at lohengrin, and i shall practise conducting again. at the back, of course. you can have no idea what you learn that way. i should like to make a suggestion," he added hesitatingly. "won't you come and have supper somewhere with me and bermann after the theatre?" she was silent. he continued: "i should really like it if you got to know him better. with all his faults he is an interesting fellow and...." "i am not a rattenmamsell," she interrupted sharply, while her face immediately assumed its stiff conventional expression. george compressed the corners of his mouth. "that doesn't apply to me, my dear child. there are many points of difference between guido and me. but as you like." he walked up and down the room. she remained sitting on the ottoman. "so you are going to ehrenbergs' this evening?" she asked. "you know i am. i have already refused twice recently, and i couldn't very well do so this time." "you needn't make any excuses, george, i am invited too." "where to?" "i am going to ehrenbergs' too." "really?" he exclaimed involuntarily. "why are you so surprised?" she asked sharply; "it is clear that they don't yet know that i am not fit to be associated with any more." "my dear anna, what is the matter with you to-day? why are you so touchy? supposing they did know ... do you think that would prevent people from inviting you? quite the contrary. i am convinced that you would really go up in frau ehrenberg's respect." "and the sweet else, i suppose, would positively envy me. don't you think so? anyway, she wrote me quite a nice letter. here it is. won't you read it?" george ran his eye over it, thought its kindness was somewhat deliberate, made no further remark and gave it back to anna. "here is another one too, if it interests you." "from doctor stauber. indeed? would he mind if he knew that you gave it to me to read?" "why are you so considerate all of a sudden?" and as though to punish him she added, "there are probably a great many things that he would mind." george read the letter quickly through to himself. berthold described in his dry way, with an occasional tinge of humour, the progress of his work at the pasteur institute, his walks, his excursions and the theatres he had visited, and quite a lot of remarks also of a general character. but in spite of his eight pages the letter did not contain the slightest allusion to either past or future. george asked casually "how long is he staying in paris?" "as you see he doesn't write a single word about his return." "your friend therese was recently of opinion that his colleagues in the party would like to have him back again." "oh, has she been in the café again?" "yes. i spoke to her there two or three days ago. she really amuses me a great deal." "really?" "she starts off, of course, by always being very superior, even with me. presumably because i am one of those who rot away their life with art and silly things like that, while there are so many more important things to do in the world. but when she warms up a bit it turns out that she is every bit as interested as we ordinary people in all kinds of silly things." "she easily gets warmed up," said anna imperturbably. george walked up and down and went on speaking. "she was really magnificent the other day at the fencing tournament in the musikverein rooms. by-the-bye, who was the gentleman who was up there in the gallery with her?" anna shrugged her shoulders. "i did not have the privilege of being at the tournament, and besides, i don't know all therese's cavaliers." "i presume," said george, "it was a comrade, in every sense of the term. at any rate he was very glum and was pretty badly dressed. when therese clapped felician's victory he positively collapsed with jealousy." "what did therese really tell you about doctor berthold?" asked anna. "ho, ho!" said george jestingly, "the lady still appears to be keenly interested." anna did not answer. "well," reported george, "i can give you the information that they want to make him stand in the autumn for the landtag. i can quite understand it too, in view of his brilliant gifts as a speaker." "what do you know about it? have you ever heard him speak?" "of course i have; don't you remember? at your place." "there is really no occasion for you to make fun of him." "i assure you i'd no idea of doing so." "i noticed at once that he struck you at the time as somewhat funny. he and his father, too. why, you immediately ran away from them." "not at all, anna. you are doing me a great injustice in making such insinuations." "they may have their weaknesses, both of them, but at any rate they belong to the people whom one can count on. and that is something." "have i disputed that, anna? upon my word, i have never heard you talk so illogically. what do you want me to do then? did you want me by any chance to be jealous about that letter?" "jealous? that would be the finishing touch. you with your past." george shrugged his shoulders. memories swam up in his mind of similar wrangles in the course of previous relationships, memories of those mysterious sudden discords and estrangements which usually simply meant the beginning of the end. had he really got as far as all that already with his good sensible anna? he walked up and down the room moodily and almost depressed. at times he threw a fleeting glance towards his love who sat silent in her corner of the sofa, rubbing her hands lightly as though she were cold. the organ rang out more heavily than before in the silence of the room that had suddenly become so melancholy; the voices of singing men became audible and the window-panes rattled softly. george's glance fell on the little christmas-tree which stood on the sideboard and whose candles had burnt the evening before last for the benefit of anna and himself. half-bored, half-nervous, he took a wooden vesta out of his pocket and began to light the little candles one after another. then anna's voice suddenly rang out to him. "there is no one i should prefer to old doctor stauber to confide in about anything serious." george turned coldly towards her and blew out a burning vesta which he still held in his hand. he knew immediately what anna meant, and felt surprised that he had never given it another thought since their last meeting. he went up to her and took hold of her hand. now for the first time she looked up. her expression was impenetrable, her features immobile. "i say, anna...." he sat down by her side on the ottoman with both her hands in his. she was silent. "why don't you speak?" she shrugged her shoulders. "there is nothing new to tell you," she explained simply. "i see," he said slowly. it passed through his mind that her strange sensitiveness to-day was to be regarded as symptomatic of the condition to which she was alluding, and the uneasiness in his soul increased. "but you can't tell definitely for a good time yet," he said in a somewhat cooler tone than he really meant. "and ... even supposing ..." he added with artificial cheerfulness. "so you would forgive me?" she asked with a smile. he pressed her to him and suddenly felt quite transported. a vivid and almost pathetic feeling of love flamed up in him for the soft good creature whom he held in his arms, and who could never occasion him, he felt deeply convinced, any serious suffering. "it really wouldn't be so bad," he said cheerily, "you would just leave vienna for a time, that's all." "well, it certainly wouldn't be as simple as you seem all of a sudden to think it would." "why not? you can soon find an excuse; besides, whom does it concern? us two. no one else. but as far as i am concerned. i can get away any day as you know; can stay away too as long as i want to. i have not yet signed any contract for next year," he added with a smile. he then got up to put out the christmas candles, whose tiny flames had almost burnt down to the end, and went on speaking with increasing liveliness. "it would be positively delightful; just think of it, anna! we should go away at the end of february or the beginning of march. south, of course, italy, or perhaps the sea. we would stay at some quiet place where no one knows us, in a beautiful hotel with enormous grounds. and wouldn't one be able to work there, by jove?" "so that's why!" she said, as though she suddenly understood him. he laughed, held her more tightly in his arms and she pressed herself against his breast. there was no longer any noise from outside. the last sounds of the organ and the men's voices had died away. the snow curtains swept down in front of the window.... george and anna were happy as they had never been before. while they were at peace in the darkness he spoke about his musical plans for the near future, and told her, so far as he was able, about heinrich's opera plot. the room became filled with shimmering shadows. the clatter of a wedding-feast swept through the fantastic hall of an ancient king. a passionate youth stole in and thrust his dagger into the prince. a dark sentence was pronounced more sinister than death itself. a sluggish ship sailed on a darkling flood towards an unknown goal. at the youth's feet there rested a princess, who had once been the betrothed of a duke. an unknown man approached the shining boat with strange tidings; fools, star-gazers, dancers, courtiers swept past. anna had listened in silence. when he had finished george was curious to learn what impression the fleeting pictures had made upon her. "i can't say properly," she replied. "i certainly feel quite puzzled to-day, how you are going to make anything real out of this more or less fantastic stuff." "of course you can't realise it yet to-day--particularly after just hearing me describe it.... but you do feel, don't you? the musical atmosphere. i have already noted down a few _motifs_--and i should be really very glad if bermann would soon get to work seriously." "if i were you, george ... may i tell you something?" "of course, fire ahead." "well, if i were you, i'd first get the quintette really finished. it can't want much doing to it now." "not much, and yet ... besides, you mustn't forget that i've started all kinds of other things lately. the two pianoforte pieces, then the orchestra _scherzo_--i've already got pretty far with that. but it certainly ought to be made part of a symphony." anna made no answer. george noticed that her thoughts were roving, and he asked her where she had run away to this time. "not so far," she replied; "it only just passed through my mind what a lot of things can happen before the opera is really ready." "yes," said george slowly, with a slight trace of embarrassment. "if one could just look into the future." she sighed quite softly and he pressed her nearer to him, almost as though he pitied her. "don't worry, my darling, don't worry," he said. "i am here all right, and i always shall be here." he thought he felt what she was thinking; can't he say anything better than that?... anything stronger? anything to take away all my fear--take it away from me for ever? and he asked her disingenuously, as though conscious of running a risk: "what are you thinking of?" and as she was obstinately silent he said once more: "anna, what are you thinking of?" "something very strange," she answered gently. "what is it?" "that the house is already built, where it will come into the world--that we have no idea where ... that is what i couldn't help thinking of." "thinking of that!" he said, strangely moved. and pressing her to his heart with a love that flamed up afresh, "i will never desert you, you two...." when the room was lighted again they were in very good spirits, plucked the last forgotten sweets from the branches of the little christmas-tree and looked forward to their next meeting among people who were absolutely indifferent to them, as though it were quite a jolly adventure, laughed and talked exuberant nonsense. as soon as anna had gone away george locked his music manuscript up in a drawer, put out the lamp and opened the window. the snow was falling lightly and thinly. an old man was coming up the steps and his laboured breathing sounded through the still air. opposite the silent church towered aloft ... george remained awhile standing at the window. he felt almost convinced at this moment that anna was mistaken in her surmise. he felt almost reassured as there came into his mind that remark of leo golowski's that anna was destined to end her days in respectable middle-class life. having a child by a lover really could not be part of her fate line. it was not part of his fate line either to carry the burden of serious obligation, to be tied fast from to-day and perhaps for all time to a person of the other sex; to become a father when he was still so young, a father ... the word sank into his soul, oppressive, almost sinister. he went into the ehrenbergs' drawing-room at eight o'clock in the evening. he was met by the sound of waltz music. old eissler sat at the piano with his long grey beard almost drooping on to the keys. george remained at the entrance in order not to disturb him, and met welcoming glances from every quarter. old eissler was playing his celebrated viennese dances and songs with a soft touch and powerful rhythm, and george enjoyed, as he always did, the sweet crooning melodies. "splendid," said frau ehrenberg, when the old man got up. "keep your big words for great occasions, leonie," answered eissler, whose time-honoured privilege it was to call all women and girls by their christian names. and it seemed to do everybody good to hear themselves spoken to by this handsome old man with his deep ringing voice, in which there quivered frequently, as it were, a sentimental echo of the vivid days of his youth. george asked him if all his compositions had appeared in print. "very few, dear baron. unfortunately i can scarcely write a single note." "it would certainly be an awful pity if these charming melodies were to be absolutely lost." "yes, i have often told him that," put in frau ehrenberg, "but unfortunately he is one of those men who have never taken themselves quite seriously." "no, that is a mistake, leonie. you know how i began my artistic career: i wanted to compose a great opera. of course i was seventeen years old at the time and madly in love with a great singer." frau oberberger's voice rang out from the table towards the corner: "i am sure it was a chorus girl." "you are making a mistake, katerina," answered eissler. "chorus girls were never my line. it was, as a matter of fact, a platonic love, like most of the great passions of my life." "were you so clumsy?" queried frau oberberger. "i was often that as well," replied eissler, in his sonorous voice and with dignity. "for as far as i can see i could have had as much luck as a hussar riding-master, but i don't regret having been clumsy." frau ehrenberger nodded appreciatively. "then one would not be making a mistake, herr eissler," remarked nürnberger, "if one attributed the chief part in your life to melancholy memories?" frau ehrenberger nodded again. she was delighted whenever any one was witty in her drawing-room. "why did you say," she inquired, "that you could have had as much happiness as a hussar riding-master? it is not true for a minute that officers have any particular luck with women, even though my sister-in-law once had an affair with a first-lieutenant...." "i don't believe in platonic love," said sissy, and beamed through the room. frau wyner gave a slight shriek. "fräulein sissy is probably right," said nürnberger; "at any rate i am convinced that most women take platonic love either as an insult or an excuse." "there are young girls here," frau ehrenberg reminded him gently. "one sees that already," said nürnberger, "from the fact of their joining in the conversation." "all the same, i would like to take the liberty of adding a little anecdote to the chapter of platonic love," said heinrich. "but not a jewish one," put in else. "of course not. a blonde little girl...." "that proves nothing," interrupted else. "please let him finish his story," remonstrated frau ehrenberg. "well then, a blonde little girl," began heinrich again, "once expressed her conviction to me, quite different, you see, from fräulein sissy, that platonic love did, as a matter of fact, exist, and do you know what she suggested as a proof of it? giving ... an experience out of her own life. she had, you know, once spent a whole hour in a room with a lieutenant and...." "that is enough!" cried frau ehrenberg nervously. "and," finished heinrich, quite unperturbed and in a reassuring voice, "nothing at all happened in that hour." "so the blonde girl says," added else. the door opened. george saw a strange lady enter in a clear blue square-cut dress, pale, simple and dignified. it was only when she smiled that he realised that the lady was anna rosner, and he felt something like pride in her. when he shook hands with his love he felt else's look turn towards him. they went into the next room, where the table was laid with a moderate show of festivity. the son of the house was not there. he was at neuhaus at his father's factory. but herr ehrenberg suddenly turned up at the table when the supper was served. he had just come back from his travels, which as a matter of fact had taken him to palestine. when he was asked by hofrat wilt about his experiences he was at first reluctant to let himself go; finally it turned out that he had been disappointed in the scenery, annoyed by the fatigue of the journey, and had practically seen nothing of the jewish settlements which, according to reliable information, were in process of springing up. "so we have some ground to hope," remarked nürnberger, "that we may keep you here even in the event of a jewish state being founded in the imminent future?" ehrenberg answered brusquely: "did i ever tell you that i intended to emigrate? i am too old for that." "really," said nürnberger, "i didn't know that you had only visited the district for the benefit of fräulein else and herr oskar." "i am not going to quarrel with you, my dear nürnberger. zionism is really too good to serve as small talk at meals." "we'll take it for granted," said hofrat wilt, "that it is too good, but it is certainly too complicated, if only for the reason that everybody understands something different by it." "or wants to understand," added nürnberger, "as is usually the case with most catchwords, not only in politics either--that's why there is so much twaddle talked in the world." heinrich explained that of all human creatures the politician represented in his eyes the most enigmatic phenomenon. "i can understand," he said, "pickpockets, acrobats, bank--directors, hotel--proprietors, kings ... i mean i can manage without any particular trouble to put myself into the souls of all these people. of course the logical result is that i should only need certain alterations in degree, though no doubt enormous ones, to qualify myself to play in the world the rôle of acrobat, king or bank-director. on the other hand i have an infallible feeling that even if i could raise myself to the _n_th power i could never become what one calls a politician, a leader of a party, a member, a minister." nürnberger smiled at heinrich's theory of the politician representing a particular type of humanity, inasmuch as it was only one of the superficial and by no means essential attributes of his profession to pose as a special human type, and to hide his greatness or his insignificance, his feats or his idleness behind labels, abstractions and symbols. what the nonentities or charlatans among them represented, why, that was obvious: they were simply business people or swindlers or glib speakers, but the people who really counted, the people who did things--the real geniuses of course, they at the bottom of their souls were simply artists. they too tried to create a work, and one, too, that raised in the sphere of ideas quite as much claim to immortality and permanent value as any other work of art. the only difference was that the material in which they worked was one that was not rigid or relatively stable, like tones or words, but that, like living men, it was in a continual state of flux and movement. willy eissler appeared, apologised to his hostess for being late, sat down between sissy and frau oberberger and greeted his father like a friend long lost. it turned out that though they both lived together they had not seen each other for several days. willy was complimented all round on his success in the aristocratic amateur performance where he had played the part of a marquis with the countess liebenburg-rathony in a french one-act play. frau oberberger asked him, in a voice sufficiently loud for her neighbours to catch it, where his assignations with the countess took place and if he received her in the same _pied-à-terre_ quarter as his more middle-class flames. the conversation became more lively, dialogues were exchanged and became intertwined all over the room. but george caught isolated snatches, including part of a conversation between anna and heinrich which dealt with therese golowski. he noticed at the same time that anna would occasionally throw a dark inquisitive look at demeter stanzides, who had appeared to-night in evening dress with a gardenia in his buttonhole; and though he had no actual consciousness of jealousy he felt strangely affected. he wondered if at this moment she was really thinking that she was perhaps bearing a child by him under her bosom. the idea of "the depths ..." came to him again. she suddenly looked over to him with a smile, as though she were coming home from a journey. he felt an inner sense of relief and appreciated with a slight shock how much he loved her. then he raised his glass to his lips and drank to her. else, who up to this time had been chatting with her other neighbour demeter, now turned to george. with her deliberately casual manner and with a look towards anna she remarked: "she does look pretty, so womanly. but that's always been her line. do you still do music together?" "frequently," replied george coolly. "perhaps i'll ask you to start accompanying me again at the beginning of the new year. i don't know why we have not done so before." george was silent. "and how are you getting on"--she threw a look at heinrich--"with your opera?" "nothing is done so far. who knows if anything will come of it?" "of course nothing will come of it." george smiled. "why are you so stern with me to-day?" "i am very angry with you." "with me! why?" "that you always go on giving people occasion to regard you as a dilettante." this was a home thrust. george actually felt a slight sense of malice against else, then quickly pulled himself together and answered: "that perhaps is just what i am. and if one isn't a genius it is much better to be an honest dilettante than ... than an artist with a swollen head." "nobody wants you to do great things all at once, but all the same one really should not let oneself go in the way you do in both your inner and your outward life." "i really don't understand you, else. how can one contend.... do you know that i am going to germany in the autumn as a conductor?" "your career will be ruined by your not turning up to the rehearsals at ten o'clock sharp." the taunt was still gnawing at george. "and who called me a dilettante, if i may ask?" "who did? good gracious, why it has already been in the papers." "really," said george feeling reassured, for he now remembered that after the concert in which fräulein bellini had sung his songs a critic had described him as an aristocratic dilettante. george's friends had explained at the time that the reason for this malicious critique was that he had omitted to call on the gentleman in question, who was notoriously vain. so that was it once again. there were always extrinsic reasons for people criticising one unfavourably, and else's touchiness to-day, what was it at bottom but sheer jealousy.... the table was cleared. they went into the drawing-room. george went up to anna, who was leaning on the piano, and said gently to her: "you do look beautiful, dear." she nodded with satisfaction. he then went on to ask: "did you have a pleasant talk with heinrich? what did you speak about? therese, isn't that so?" she did not answer, and george noticed with surprise that her eyelids suddenly drooped and that she began to totter. "what is the matter?" he asked, frightened. she did not hear him, and would have fallen down if he had not quickly caught hold of her by the wrists. at the same moment frau ehrenberg and else came up to her. "did they notice us?" thought george. anna had already opened her eyes again, gave a forced smile and whispered: "oh, it is nothing. i often stand the heat so badly." "come along!" said frau ehrenberg in a motherly tone. "perhaps you will lie down for a moment." anna, who seemed dazed, made no answer and the ladies of the house escorted her into an adjoining room. george looked round. the guests did not seem to have noticed anything. coffee was handed round. george took a cup and played nervously with his spoon. "so after all," he thought, "she will not finish up in middle-class life." but at the same time he felt as far away from her psychologically, as though the matter had no personal interest for him. frau oberberger came up to him. "well, what do you really think about platonic love? you are an expert, you know." he answered absent-mindedly. she went on talking, as was her way, without bothering whether he was listening or answering. suddenly else returned. george inquired how anna was, with polite sympathy. "i am certain it is not anything serious," said else and looked him strangely in the face. demeter stanzides came in and asked her to sing. "will you accompany me?" she turned to george. he bowed and sat down at the piano. "what shall it be?" asked else. "anything you like," replied wilt, "but nothing modern." after supper he liked to play the reactionary at any rate in artistic matters. "right you are," said else, and gave george a piece of music. she sang the _das alte bild_ of hugo wolf in her small well-trained and somewhat pathetic voice. george played a refined accompaniment, though he felt somewhat _distrait_. in spite of his efforts he could not help feeling a little annoyed about anna. after all no one seemed to have really noticed the incident except frau ehrenberg and else. after all, what did it really come to?... supposing they did all know?... whom did it concern? yes, who bothered about it? why, they are all listening to else now, he continued mentally, and appreciating the beauty of this song. even frau oberberger, though she is not a bit musical, is forgetting that she is a woman for a few minutes and her face is quiet and sexless. even heinrich is listening spell-bound and perhaps for the moment is neither thinking of his work, nor of the fate of the jews, nor of his distant mistress. is perhaps not even giving a single thought to his present mistress, the little blonde girl, to please whom he has recently begun to dress smartly. as a matter of fact he does not look at all bad in evening dress, and his tie is not a ready-made one, such as he usually wears, but is carefully tied.... who is standing so close behind me? thought george, so that i can feel her breath over my hair.... perhaps sissy.... if the world were to be destroyed to-morrow morning it would be sissy whom i should choose for to-night. yes, i am sure of it. and there goes anna with frau ehrenberg; it seems i am the only one who notices it, although i have got to attend simultaneously to both my own playing and else's singing. i welcome her with my eyes. yes, i welcome you, mother of my child.... how strange life is!... the song was at an end. the company applauded and asked for more. george played else's accompaniment to some other songs by schumann, by brahms; and finally, by general request, two of his own, which had become distasteful to him personally, since somebody or other had suggested that they were reminiscent of mendelssohn. while he was accompanying he felt that he was losing all touch with else and therefore made a special effort in his playing to win back again her sense of sympathy. he played with exaggerated sensibility, he specifically wooed her and felt that it was in vain. for the first time in his life he was her unhappy lover. the applause after george's songs was great. "that was your best period," said else gently to him while she put the music away, "two or three years ago." the others made kind remarks to him without going into distinctions about the periods of his artistic development. nürnberger declared that he had been most agreeably disillusioned by george's songs. "i will not conceal the fact from you," he remarked, "that going by the views i have frequently heard you express, my dear baron, i should have imagined them considerably less intelligible." "quite charming, really," said wilt, "all so simple and melodious without bombast or affectation." "and he is the man," thought george grimly, "who dubbed me a dilettante." willy came up to him. "now you just say, herr hofrat, that you can manage to whistle them, and if i know anything about physiognomy the baron will send two gentlemen to see you in the morning." "oh no," said george, pulling himself together and smiling; "fortunately, the songs were written in a period which i have long since got over, so i don't feel wounded by any blame or by any praise." a servant brought in ices, the groups broke up and anna stood alone with george by the pianoforte. he asked her quickly "what does it really mean?" "i don't know," she replied, and looked at him in astonishment. "do you feel quite all right now?" "absolutely," she answered. "and is to-day the first time you have had anything like it?" asked george, somewhat hesitatingly. she answered: "i had something like it yesterday evening at home. it was a kind of faintness. it lasted some time longer, while we were sitting at supper, but nobody noticed it." "but why did you tell me nothing about it?" she shrugged her shoulders lightly. "i say, anna dear," he said, and smiled guiltily, "i would like to have a word with you at any rate. give me a signal when you want to go away. i will clear out a few minutes before you, and will wait by the schwarzenbergplatz till you come along in a fly. i'll get in and we will go for a little drive. does that suit you?" she nodded. he said: "good-bye, darling," and went into the smoking-room. old ehrenberg, nürnberger and wilt had sat down at a green card-table to play tarok. old eissler and his son were sitting opposite each other in two enormous green leather arm-chairs and were utilising the opportunity to have a good chat with one another after all this time. george took a cigarette out of a box, lighted it and looked at the pictures on the wall with particular interest. he saw willy's name written in pale red letters down below in the corner on the green field in a water-colour painted in the grotesque style, that represented a hurdle race ridden by gentlemen in red hunting-coats. he turned involuntarily to the young man and said: "i never knew that one before." "it is fairly new," remarked willy lightly. "smart picture, eh?" said old eissler. "oh, something more than that," replied george. "yes, i hope to be able to look forward to doing something better than that," said willy. "he is going to africa, lion hunting," explained old eissler, "with prince wangenheim. felician is also supposed to be of the party, but he has not yet decided." "why not?" asked willy. "he wants to pass his diplomatic examination in the spring." "but that could be put off," said willy; "lions are dying out, but unfortunately one can't say the same thing of professors." "book me for a picture, willy," called out ehrenberg from the card-table. "you play the mæcenas later on, father ehrenberg?" said willy. "as i've said, i'll take you two on."[ ] "raise you," replied ehrenberg, and continued: "if i can order anything for myself, willy, please paint me a desert landscape showing prince wangenheim being gobbled up by the lions ... but as realistic as possible." "you are making a mistake about the person, herr ehrenberg," said willy; "the celebrated anti-semite you are referring to is the cousin of my wangenheim." "for all i care," replied ehrenberg, "the lions, too, may be making a mistake. every anti-semite, you know, isn't bound to be celebrated." "you will ruin the party if you don't look out," admonished nürnberger. "you should have bought an estate and settled in palestine," said hofrat wilt. "god save me from that," replied ehrenberg. "well, since he has done that in everything up to the present," said nürnberger, and put down his hand. "it seems to me, nürnberger, that you are reproaching me again for not goin' about peddlin' ole clo'." "then you would certainly have the right to complain of anti-semitism," said nürnberger, "for who feels anything of it in austria except the peddlars ... only they, one might almost say." "and some people with a sense of self-respect," retorted ehrenberg. "twenty-seven ... thirty-one ... thirty-eight.... well, who's won the game?" willy had gone back into the drawing-room again. george sat smoking on the arm of an easy-chair. he suddenly noticed old eissler's look directed towards him in a strange benevolent manner and felt himself reminded of something without knowing what. "i had a few words the other day," said the old gentleman, "with your brother felician at schönstein's; it is striking how you resemble your poor father, especially to one like me, who knew your father as a young man." it flashed across george at once what old eissler's look reminded him of. old doctor stauber's eyes had rested on him at rosner's with the same fatherly expression. "these old jews!" he thought sarcastically, but in a remote corner of his soul he felt somewhat moved. it came into his mind that his father had often gone for morning walks in the prater with eissler, for whose knowledge of art he had had a great respect. old eissler went on speaking. "you, george, take after your mother more, i think." "many say so. it is very hard to judge, oneself." "they say your mother had such a beautiful voice." "yes, in her early youth. i myself never really heard her sing. of course she tried now and again. two or three years before her death a doctor in meran even advised her to practise singing. the idea was that it should be a good exercise for her lungs, but unfortunately it wasn't much of a success." old eissler nodded and looked in front of him. "i suppose you probably won't be able to remember that my poor wife was in meran at the same time as your late mother?" george racked his memory. it had escaped him. "i once travelled in the same compartment as your father," said old eissler, "at night time. we were both unable to sleep. he told me a great deal about you two--you and felician i mean." "really...." "for instance, that when you were a boy you had played one of your own compositions to some italian _virtuoso_, and that he had foretold a great future for you." "great future.... great heavens, but it wasn't a virtuoso, herr eissler. it was a clergyman, from whom, as a matter of fact, i learned to play the organ." eissler continued: "and in the evening, when your mother had gone to bed, you would often improvise for hours on end in the room." george nodded and sighed quietly. it seemed as though he had had much more talent at that time. "work!" he thought ardently, "work!..." he looked up again. "yes," he said humorously, "that is always the trouble, infant prodigies so seldom come to anything." "i hear you want to be a conductor, baron." "yes," replied george resolutely, "i am going to germany next autumn. perhaps as an accompanist first in the municipal theatre of some little town, just as it comes along." "but you would not have any objection to a court theatre?" "of course not. what makes you say that, herr eissler? if it is not a rude question." "i know quite well," said eissler with a smile, as he dropped his monocle, "that you have not sought out my help, but i can quite appreciate on the other hand that you would not mind perhaps being able to get on without the intermediaryship of agents and others of that kind.... i don't mean because of the commissions." george remained cold. "when one has once decided to take up a theatrical career one knows at the same time all that one's bargaining for." "do you know count malnitz by any chance?" inquired eissler, quite unconcerned by george's air of worldly wisdom. "malnitz! do you mean count eberhard malnitz, who had a suite performed a few years ago?" "yes, i mean him." "i don't know him personally, and as for the suite...." with a wave of the hand eissler dismissed the composer malnitz. "he has been manager at detmold since the beginning of this season," he then said. "that is why i asked you if you knew him. he is a great friend of mine of long standing. he used to live in vienna. for the last ten or twelve years we have been meeting every year in carlsbad or ischl. this year we want to make a little mediterranean trip at easter. will you allow me, my dear baron, to take an opportunity of mentioning your name to him, and telling him something about your plans to be a conductor?" george hesitated to answer, and smiled politely. "oh please don't regard my suggestion as officious, my dear baron. if you don't wish it, of course i will sit tight." "you misunderstand my silence," replied george amiably, but not without _hauteur_; "but i really don't know...." "i think a little court theatre like that," continued eissler, "is just the right place for you for the beginning. the fact of your belonging to the nobility won't hurt you at all, not even with my friend malnitz, however much he likes to play the democrat, or even at times the anarchist ... with the exception of bombs, of course; but he is a charming man and really awfully musical.... even though he isn't exactly a composer." "well," replied george, somewhat embarrassed, "if you would have the kindness to speak to him.... i can't afford to let any chance slip. at any rate, i thank you very much." "not at all, i don't guarantee success, it is just a chance, like any other." frau oberberger and sissy came in, escorted by demeter. "what interesting conversation are we interrupting?" said frau oberberger. "the experienced platonic lover and the inexperienced rake? one should really have been there." "don't upset yourself, katerina," said eissler, and his voice had again its deep vibrating ring. "one sometimes talks about other things, such as the future of the human race." sissy put a cigarette between her lips, allowed george to give her a light and sat down in the corner of the green leather sofa. "you are not bothering about me at all to-day," she began with that english accent of hers which george liked so well. "as though i positively didn't exist. yes, that's what it is. i am really a more constant nature than you are, am i not?" "you constant, sissy?"... he pushed an arm-chair quite near to her. they spoke of the past summer and the one that was coming. "last year," said sissy, "you gave me your word you would come wherever i was, and you didn't do it. this year you must keep your word." "are you going into the isle of wight again?" "no, i am going into the mountains this time, to the tyrol or the salzkammergut. i will let you know soon. will you come?" "but you are bound to have a large following anywhere." "i won't trouble about any one except you, george." "even supposing willy eissler happens to stay in your vicinity?" "oh," she said, with a wanton smile and put out her cigarette by pressing it violently upon the glass ash-tray. they went on talking. it was just like one of those conversations they had had so often during the last few years. it began lightly and flippantly, and eventually finished in a blaze of tender lies which were true for just one moment. george was once again fascinated by sissy. "i would really prefer to go travelling with you," he whispered quite near her. she just nodded. her left arm rested on the broad back of the ottoman. "if one could only do as one wanted," she said, with a look that dreamt of a hundred men. he bent down over her trembling arm, went on speaking and became intoxicated with his own words. "somewhere where nobody knows us, where nobody bothers about any one, that is where i should like to be with you, sissy, many days and nights." sissy shuddered. the word "nights" made her shudder with fear. anna appeared in the doorway, signalled to george with a look and then disappeared again. he felt an inward sense of reluctance, and yet he felt that this was just the psychological moment to leave sissy. in the doorway of the drawing-room he met heinrich, who accosted him. "if you are going you might tell me, i should like to speak to you." "delighted! but i must ... promised to see fräulein rosner home, you see. i'll come straight to the café, so till then...." a few minutes later he was standing on the schwarzenberg bridge. the sky was full of stars, the streets stretched out wide and silent. george turned up his coat collar, although it was no longer cold, and walked up and down. will anything come of the detmold business? he thought. oh well, if it is not in detmold it will be in some town or other. at any rate i mean real business now, and a great deal, a great deal will then lie behind me. he tried to consider the matter quietly. how will it all turn out? we are now at the end of december. we must go away in march--at the latest. we shall be taken for a honeymoon couple. i shall go walking with her arm-in-arm in rome and posilippo, in venice.... there are women who grow very ugly in that condition ... but not she, no, not she.... there was always a certain touch of the mother in her appearance.... she must stay the summer in some quiet neighbourhood where no one knows her ... in the thuringian forest perhaps, or by the rhine.... how strangely she said that to-day. the house in which the child will come into the world is already in existence. yes.... somewhere in the distance, or perhaps quite near here, that house is standing.... and people are living there whom we have never seen. how strange.... when will it come into the world? at the end of the summer, about the beginning of september. by that time, too, i am bound to have gone away. how shall i manage it?... and a year from to-day the little creature will be already four months old. it will grow up ... become big. there will be a young man there one fine day, my son, or a young girl; a beautiful little girl of seven, my daughter.... i shall be forty-four then.... when i am sixty-four i can be a grandfather ... perhaps a director of an opera or two and a celebrated composer in spite of else's prophecies; but one has got to work for that, that is quite true. more than i have done so far. else is right, i let myself go too much, i must be different ... i shall too. i feel a change taking place within me. yes, something new is taking place within me also. a fly came out of the heugasse, some one bent out of the window. george recognised anna's face under the white shawl. he was very glad, got in and kissed her hand. they enjoyed their talk, joked a little about the party from which she had just come and found it really ridiculous to spend an evening in so inept a fashion. he held her hands in his and was affected by her presence. he got out in front of her house and rung. he then came to the open door of the carriage and they arranged an appointment for the following day. "i think we have got a lot to talk about," said anna. he simply nodded. the door of the house was open. she got out of the fly, gave george a long look full of emotion and disappeared into the hall. my love! thought george, with a feeling of happiness and pride. life lay before him like something serious and mysterious, full of gifts and full of miracles. when he went into the café, heinrich was sitting in a window niche. next to him was a pale young beardless man whom george had casually spoken to several times, in a dinner-jacket with a velvet collar but with a shirt-front of doubtful cleanliness. when george came in the young man looked up with ardent eyes from a paper that he was holding in his restless and not very well-kept hands. "am i disturbing you?" said george. "oh, not a bit of it," replied the young man, with a crazy laugh, "the larger the audience the better." "herr winternitz," explained heinrich, as he shook hands with george, "was just reading me a series of his poems, but we will break off now." slightly touched by the disappointed expression of the young man george assured him that he would be delighted to hear the poems if he might be permitted to do so. "it won't last much longer," explained winternitz gratefully. "it is only a pity that you missed the beginning. i could----" "what! does it all hang together?" said heinrich in astonishment. "what, didn't you notice?" exclaimed winternitz, and laughed again crazily. "i see," said heinrich. "so it's always the same woman character whom your poems deal with. i thought it was always a different one." "of course it is always the same one, but her special characteristic is that she always seems to be a fresh person." herr winternitz read softly but insistently, as though inwardly consumed. it appeared from his series that he had been loved as never a man had been loved before, but also deceived as never a man had been deceived before, a circumstance which was to be attributed to certain metaphysical causes and not at all to any deficiencies in his own personality. he showed himself, however, in his last poem completely freed of his passion, and declared that he was now ready to enjoy all the pleasures, which the world could offer him. this poem had four stanzas; the last verse of every stanza began with a "hei," and it concluded with the exclamation: "hei, so career i through the world." george could not help recognising that the recitation had to a certain extent impressed him, and when winternitz put the book down and looked around him with dilated pupils, george nodded appreciatively and said: "very beautiful!" winternitz looked expectantly at heinrich, who was silent for a few seconds and finally remarked: "it is fairly interesting on the whole ... but why do you say 'hei,' if it isn't a rude question? positively, no one will believe it." "what do you mean?" exclaimed winternitz. "rather ask your own conscience, if you honestly mean that 'hei.' i believe all the rest which you read to me, i mean i believe it in the highest sense of the term, although not a single word is true. i believe you when you tell me that you have been seducing a girl of fifteen, that you have been behaving like a hardened don juan, that you have been corrupting the poor creature in the most dreadful way. that she deceived you with ... what was it now?..." "a clown, of course," exclaimed winternitz, with a mad laugh. "that a clown was the man she deceived you with, that on account of that creature you had adventures which grew more and more sinister, that you wanted to kill your mistress and yourself as well, and that finally you get fed up with the whole business and go travelling about the world, or even careering as far as australia for all i care: yes, i can believe all that, but that you are the kind of man to cry out 'hei,' that, my dear winternitz, is a rank swindle." winternitz defended himself. he swore that this 'hei' had come from his most inward being, or at any rate from a certain element in his most inward being. when heinrich made further objections, he gradually became more and more reserved, and finally declared that some time or other he hoped to win his way to that inward freedom where he would be allowed to cry out "hei." "that time will never come," replied heinrich positively. "you may perhaps get some time to the epic or the dramatic 'hei,' but the lyrical or subjective 'hei' will remain, my dear winternitz, a closed book to people like you and me for all eternity." winternitz promised to alter the last poem, to make a point of continuing his development and to work at his inward purification. he stood up, a proceeding which caused his starched shirt front to crack and a stud to break, held out his somewhat clammy hand to heinrich and george, and went off to the literary men's table at the back. george expressed discreet appreciation of the poems which he had heard. "i like him the best of the whole set, at any rate personally," said heinrich. "he at least has the good sense to maintain with me a certain mutual reserve in really intimate matters. yes, you need not look at me again as though you were catching me in an attack of megalomania, but i can assure you, george, i have had nearly enough of the sort of people" (he swept the further table with a cursory glance) "who have always got an 'ä soi' on their lips." "what is always on their lips?" heinrich smiled. "you must know the story of the polish jew who was sitting in a railway compartment with an unknown man and behaved very conventionally--until he realised by some remark of the other's that he was a jew too, and on the strength of it immediately proceeded to stretch out his legs on the seat opposite with an 'ä soi' of relief." "quite good," said george. "it is more than that," explained heinrich sternly, "it is deep; like so many other jewish stories it gives a bird's-eye view into the tragi-comedy of present-day judaism. it expresses the eternal truth that no jew has any real respect for his fellow jew, never. as little as prisoners in a hostile country have any real respect for each other, particularly when they are hopeless. envy, hate, yes frequently, admiration, even love; all that there can be between them, but never respect, for the play of all their emotional life takes place in an atmosphere of familiarity, so to speak, in which respect cannot help being stifled." "do you know what i think?" remarked george. "that you are a more bitter anti-semite than most of the christians i know." "do you think so?" he laughed; "but not a real one. only the man who is really angry at the bottom of his heart at the jews' good qualities and does everything he can to bring about the further development of their bad ones is a real anti-semite. but you are right up to a certain point, but i must finish by confessing that i am also an anti-aryan. every race as such is naturally repulsive, only the individual manages at times to reconcile himself to the repulsive elements in his race by reason of his own personal qualities. but i will not deny that i am particularly sensitive to the faults of jews. probably the only reason is that i, like all others--we jews, i mean--have been systematically educated up to this sensitiveness. we have been egged on from our youth to look upon jewish peculiarities as particularly grotesque or repulsive, though we have not been so with regard to the equally grotesque and repulsive peculiarities of other people. i will not disguise it--if a jew shows bad form in my presence, or behaves in a ridiculous manner, i have often so painful a sensation that i should like to sink into the earth. it is like a kind of shame that perhaps is akin to the shame of a brother who sees his sister undressing. perhaps the whole thing is egoism too. one gets embittered at being always made responsible for other people's faults, and always being made to pay the penalty for every crime, for every lapse from good taste, for every indiscretion for which every jew is responsible throughout the whole world. that of course easily makes one unjust, but those are touches of nervousness and sensitiveness, nothing more. then one pulls oneself together again. that cannot be called anti-semitism. but there are jews whom i really hate, hate as jews. those are the people who act before others, and often before themselves, as though they did not belong to the rest at all. the men who try to offer themselves to their enemies and despisers in the most cowardly and cringing fashion, and think that in that way they can escape from the eternal curse whose burden is upon them, or from what they feel is equivalent to a curse. there are of course always jews like that who go about with the consciousness of their extreme personal meanness, and consequently, consciously or unconsciously, would like to make their race responsible. of course that does not help them the least bit. what has ever helped the jews? the good ones and the bad ones. i mean, of course," he hastily added, "those who need something in the way of material or moral help." and then he broke off in a deliberately flippant tone: "yes, my dear george, the situation is somewhat complicated and it is quite natural that every one who is not directly concerned with the question should not be able to understand it properly." "no, you really should not...." heinrich interrupted him quickly. "yes, i should, my dear george, that is just how it is. you don't understand us, you see. many perhaps get an inkling, but understand? no. at any rate we understand you much better than you do us. although you shake your head! do we not deserve to? we have found it more necessary, you see, to learn to understand you than you did to learn to understand us. this gift of understanding was forced to develop itself in the course of time ... according to the laws of the struggle for existence if you like. just consider, if one is going to find one's way about in a foreign country, or, as i said before, in an enemy's country, to be ready for all the dangers and ambushes which lurk there, it is obvious that the primary essential is to get to know one's enemies as well as possible--both their good qualities and their bad." "so you live among enemies? among foreigners! you would not admit as much to leo golowski. i don't agree with him either, not a bit of it. but how strangely inconsistent you are when you----" heinrich interrupted him, genuinely pained. "i have already told you the problem is far too complicated to be really solved. to find a subjective solution is almost impossible. a verbal solution even more so. why, at times one might believe that things are not so bad. sometimes one really is at home in spite of everything, feels one is as much at home here--yes, even more at home--than any of your so-called natives can ever feel. it is quite clear that the feeling of strangeness is to some extent cured by the consciousness of understanding. why, it becomes, as it were, steeped in pride, condescension, tenderness; becomes dissolved--sometimes, of course, in sentimentalism, which is again a bad business." he sat there with deep furrows in his forehead and looked in front of him. "does he really understand me better?" thought george, "than i do him, or is it simply another piece of megalomania...?" heinrich suddenly started as though emerging from a dream. he looked at his watch. "half-past two! and my train goes at eight to-morrow." "what, you are going away?" "yes, that is what i wanted to speak to you about so much. i shall have to say goodbye to you for a goodish time, i'm sorry to say. i am going to prague. i am taking my father away, out of the asylum home to our own house." "is he better, then?" "no, but he is in that stage when he is not dangerous to those near him.... yes, that came quite quickly too." "and about when do you think you will be back?" heinrich shook his shoulders. "i can't tell to-day, but however the thing develops, i certainly cannot leave my mother and sisters alone now." george felt a genuine regret at being deprived of heinrich's society in the near future. "it's possible that you won't find me in vienna again when you come back. i shall probably go away this spring, you see." and he almost felt a desire to take heinrich into his confidence. "i suppose you are travelling south?" asked heinrich. "yes, i think so. to enjoy my freedom once again, just for a few months. serious life begins next autumn, you see. i am looking out for a position in germany at some theatre or other." "really?" the waiter came to the table. they paid and went. they met rapp and gleissner together in the doorway. they exchanged a few words of greeting. "and what have you been doing all this time, herr rapp?" asked george courteously. rapp took off his pince-nez. "oh, my melancholy old job all the time. i am engaged in demonstrating the vanity of vanities." "you might make a change, rapp," said heinrich. "try your luck for once and praise the splendour of splendours." "what is the point?" said rapp, and put on his glasses. "that will prove itself in the course of time. but as a rule rotten work only keeps alive during its good fortune and its fame, and when the world at last realises the swindle, it has either been in the grave for a long time or has taken refuge in its presumable immortality." they were now in the street and all turned up their coat collars, since it had begun again to snow violently. gleissner, who had had his first great dramatic success a few weeks ago, quickly told them that the seventh performance of his work, which had taken place to-day, had also been sold out. rapp used that as a peg on which to hang malicious observations on the stupidity of the public. gleissner answered with gibes at the impotence of the critic when confronted with true genius--and so they walked away through the snow with turned-up collar, quite enveloped in the steaming hate of their old friendship. "that rapp has no luck," said heinrich to george. "he'll never forgive gleissner for not disappointing him." "do you consider him so jealous?" "i wouldn't go as far as that. matters are rarely sufficiently simple to be disposed of in a single word. but just think what a fate it is to go about the world in the belief that you carry with you as deep a knowledge of it as shakespeare had, and to feel at the same time that you aren't able to express as much of it as, for instance, herr gleissner, although perhaps one is quite as much good as he is--or even more." they walked on together for a time in silence. the trees in the ring were standing motionless with their white branches. it struck three from the tower of the rathaus. they walked over the empty streets and took the way through the silent park. all around them the continuous fall of snow made everything shine almost brightly. "by the way, i have not told you the latest news," started heinrich suddenly, looking in front of him and speaking in a dry tone. "what is it?" "that i have been receiving anonymous letters for some time." "anonymous letters? what are the contents?" "oh, you can guess." "i see." it was clear to george that it could only be something about the actress. heinrich had returned in greater anguish than ever from the foreign town, where he had seen his mistress act the part of a depraved creature in a new play, with a truth and realism which he found positively intolerable. george knew that he and she had since then been exchanging letters full of tenderness and scorn, full of anger and forgiveness, full of broken anguish and laboured confidence. "the delightful messages," explained heinrich, "have been coming along every morning for eight days. not very pleasant, i can assure you." "good gracious, what do they matter to you? you know yourself anonymous letters never contain the truth." "on the contrary, my dear george, they always do, but letters like that always contain a kind of higher truth, the great truth of possibilities. men haven't usually got sufficient imagination to create things out of nothing." "that is a charming way of looking at things. where should we all get to, then? it makes things a bit too easy for libellers of all kinds." "why do you say libellers? i regard it as highly improbable that there are any libels contained in the anonymous letters which i have been receiving. no doubt exaggerations, embellishments, inaccuracies...." "lies." "no, i am sure they are not lies; some, no doubt, but in a case like this how is one to separate the truth from the lies?" "there is a very simple way of dealing with that. you go there." "me go there?" "yes, of course that is what you ought to do. when you are on the spot you are bound to get at once to the real truth." "it would certainly be possible." they were walking under arcades on the wet stone. their voices and steps echoed. george began again. "instead of going on being demoralised with all this annoyance, i should try and convince myself personally as to how matters stood." "yes, that would certainly be the soundest thing to do." "well, why don't you do it?" heinrich remained stationary and jerked out with clenched teeth: "tell me, my dear george, have you not really noticed that i am a coward?" "nonsense, one doesn't call that being a coward." "call it whatever you like. words never hit things off exactly. the more precisely they pretend to do so the less they really do. i know what i am. i would not go there for anything in the world. to make a fool of myself once more, no, no, no...." "well, what will you do?" heinrich shook his shoulders as though the matter really did not concern him. somewhat irritated, george went on questioning him. "if you will allow me to make a remark, what does the ... lady chiefly concerned have to say?" "the lady who is chiefly concerned, as you call her, with a wit, which though unconscious is positively infernal, does not know for the time being anything about my getting anonymous letters." "have you left off corresponding with her?" "what an idea! we write daily to each other as we did before. she the most tender and lying letters, i the meanest you can possibly imagine--disingenuous, reserved letters, that torture me to the quick." "look here, heinrich, you are really not a very noble character." heinrich laughed out loud. "no, i am not noble. i clearly was not born to be that." "and when one thinks that after all these are sheer libels----" george for his part had of course no doubt that the anonymous letters contained the truth. in spite of that he was honestly desirous that heinrich should travel to the actual spot, convince himself, do something definite, box somebody's ears or shoot somebody down. he imagined felician in a similar position, or stanzides or willy eissler. all of them would have taken it better or in a different way, one for which he certainly could have felt more sympathy. suddenly the question ran through his brain as to what he would probably do, if anna were to deceive him. anna deceive him ... was that really possible? he thought of her look that evening, that dark questioning look which she had sent over to demeter stanzides. no, that did not signify anything, he was sure of it, and the old episodes with leo and the singing-master, they were harmless, almost childish. but he thought of something that was different and perhaps more significant--a strange question which she had put to him the other day when she had stayed unduly late in his company and had had to hurry off home with an excuse. was he not afraid, she had asked him, to have it on his conscience that he was making her into a liar? it had rung half like a reproach and half like a warning, and if she herself was so little sure of herself could he trust her implicitly? did he not love her? he ... and did he not deceive her in spite of it, or was ready to do so at any moment, which, after all, came to the same thing? only an hour ago, in the fly, when he held her in his arms and kissed her, she had of course no idea that he had other thoughts than for her. and yet at a certain moment, with his lips on hers, he had longed for sissy. why should it not happen that anna should deceive him? after all, it might have already happened ... without his having an idea of it.... but all these ideas had as it were no substance, they swept through his mind, like fantastic almost amusing possibilities. he was standing with heinrich in front of the closed door in the floriani gassi and shook hands with him. "well, god bless you," he said; "when we see each other again i hope you will be cured of your doubts." "and would that be much good?" asked heinrich. "can one reassure oneself with certainties in matters of love? the most one can do is to reassure oneself with bad news, for that lasts, but being certain of something good is at the best an intoxication.... well, goodbye, old chap. i hope we will see each other again in may. then, whatever happens, i shall come here for a time, and we can talk again about our glorious opera." "yes, if i shall be back again in vienna in may. it may be that i shall not come back before the autumn." "and then go off again on your new career?" "it is quite possible that it will turn out like that," and he looked heinrich in the face with a kind of childlike defiant smile that seemed to say: "i'm not going to tell you." heinrich seemed surprised. "look here, george, perhaps this is the very last time we are standing together in front of this door. oh, i am far from thrusting myself into your confidence. this somewhat one-sided relationship will no doubt have to go on on its present lines. well, it doesn't matter." george looked straight in front of him. "i hope things go all right," said heinrich as the door opened, "and drop me a line now and then." "certainly," answered george, and suddenly saw heinrich's eyes resting upon him with an expression of real sympathy which he had never expected. "certainly ... and you must write to me, too. at any rate give me news of how things are at home and what you are working at. at all events," he added sincerely, "we must continue to keep in touch with each other." the porter stood there with dishevelled hair and an angry sleepy expression, in a greenish-brown dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet. heinrich shook hands with george for the last time. "goodbye, my dear friend," he said, and then in a gentler voice, as he pointed to the porter: "i cannot keep him waiting any longer. you will find no particular difficulty in reading in his noble physiognomy, which is obviously the genuine native article, the names he is calling me to himself at this particular moment. adieu." george could not help laughing. heinrich disappeared. the door clanged and closed. george did not feel the least bit sleepy and determined to go home on foot. he was in an excited exalted mood. he was envisaging the days which were now bound to come with a peculiar sense of tension. he thought of to-morrow's meeting with anna, the things they were going to talk over, the journey, the house that already stood somewhere in the world, which his imagination had already roughly pictured like a house out of a box of toys, light-green with a bright red roof and a black chimney. his own form appeared before him like a picture thrown on a white screen by a magic lantern: he saw himself sitting on a balcony in happy solitude, in front of a table strewn with music paper. branches rocked in front of the railings. a clear sky hung above him, while below at his feet lay the sea, with a dreamy blueness that was quite abnormal. [ ] a reference to the faro game. v george gently opened the door of anna's room. she still lay asleep in bed and breathed deeply and peacefully. he went out of the slightly darkened room, back again into his own and shut the door. then he went to the open window and looked out. clouds bathed in sunshine were sweeping over the water. the mountains opposite with their clearly-defined lines were floating in the brilliancy of the heavens, while the brightest blue was glittering over the gardens and houses of lugano. george was quite delighted to breathe in once more the air of this june morning, which brought to him the moist freshness of the lake and the perfume of the plane-trees, magnolias and roses in the hotel park; to look out upon this view, whose spring-like peace had welcomed him like a fresh happiness every morning for the last three weeks. he drank his tea quickly, ran down the stairs as quickly and expectantly as he had once, when a boy, hurried off to his play, and took his accustomed way along the bank in the grey fragrance of the early shade. here he would think of his own lonely morning walks at palermo and taormina in the previous spring, walks which he had frequently continued for hours on end, since grace was very fond of lying in bed with open eyes until noon. that period of his life, over which a recent though no doubt much-desired farewell seemed to squat like a sinister cloud, usually struck him as more or less bathed in melancholy. but this time all painful things seemed to lie in the far distance, and at any rate he had it in his power to put off the end as long as he wanted, if it did not come from fate itself. he had left vienna with anna at the beginning of march, as it was no longer possible to conceal her condition. in january, in fact, george had decided to speak to her mother. he had more or less prepared himself for it, and was consequently able to make his communication quietly and in well-turned phraseology. the mother listened in silence and her eyes grew large and moist. anna sat on the sofa with an embarrassed smile and looked at george as he spoke, with a kind of curiosity. they sketched out the plan for the ensuing months. george wanted to stay abroad with anna until the early summer. then a house was to be taken in the country in the neighbourhood of vienna, so that her mother should not be far away in the time of greatest need, and the child could without difficulty be given out to nurse in the neighbourhood of the town. they also thought out an excuse for officious inquisitive people for anna's departure and absence. as her voice had made substantial progress of late--which was perfectly true--she had gone off to a celebrated singing mistress in dresden, to complete her training. frau rosner nodded several times, as though she agreed with everything, but the features of her face became sadder and sadder. it was not so much that she was oppressed by what she had just learnt, as she was by the realisation that she was bound to be so absolutely defenceless, poor middle-class mother that she was, sitting opposite the aristocratic seducer. george, who noticed this with regret, endeavoured to assume a lighter and more sympathetic tone. he came closer to the good woman, he took her hand and held it for some seconds in his own. anna had scarcely contributed a word to the whole discussion, but when george got ready to go she got up, and for the first time in front of her mother she offered him her lips to kiss, as though she were now celebrating her betrothal to him. george went downstairs in better spirits, as though the worst were now really over. henceforth he spent whole hours at the rosners' more frequently than before, practising music with anna, whose voice had now grown noticeably in power and volume. the mother's demeanour to george became more friendly. why, it often seemed to him as though she had to be on her guard against a growing sympathy for him, and there was one evening in the family circle when george stayed for supper, improvised afterwards to the company from the meistersingers and lohengrin with his cigar in his mouth, could not help enjoying the lively applause, particularly from josef, and was almost shocked to notice as he went home that he had felt quite as comfortable, as though it had been a home he had recently won for himself. when he was sitting over his black coffee with felician a few days later the servant brought in a card, the receipt of which made a slight blush mount to his cheek. felician pretended not to notice his brother's embarrassment, said good-bye and left the room. he met old rosner in the doorway, inclined his head slightly in answer to his greeting and took no further notice. george invited herr rosner, who came in in his winter coat with his hat and umbrella, to sit down, and offered him a cigar. old rosner said: "i have just been smoking," a remark which somehow or other reassured george, and sat down, while george remained leaning on the table. then the old man began with his accustomed slowness: "you will probably be able to imagine, herr baron, why i have taken the liberty of troubling you. i really wanted to speak to you in the earlier part of the day, but unfortunately i could not get away from the office." "you would not have found me at home in the morning, herr rosner," answered george courteously. "all the better then that i didn't have my journey for nothing. my wife has told me this morning ... what has happened...." he looked at the floor. "yes," said george, and gnawed at his upper lip. "i myself intended.... but won't you take off your overcoat? it is very warm in the room." "no thank you, thank you, it is not at all too warm for me. well, i was horrified when my wife gave me this information. indeed i was, herr baron.... i never would have thought it of anna ... never thought it possible ... it is ... really dreadful...." he spoke all the time in his usual monotonous voice, though he shook his head more often than usual. george could not help looking all the time at his head with its thin yellow-grey hair, and felt nothing but a desolate boredom. "really, herr rosner, the thing is not dreadful," he said at last. "if you knew how much i ... and how sincere my affection for anna is, you would certainly be very far from thinking the thing dreadful. at any rate, i suppose your wife has told you about our plans for the immediate future ... or am i making a mistake...?" "not at all, herr baron, i have been informed of everything this morning. but i must say that i have noticed for some weeks that something was wrong in the house. it often struck me that my wife was very nervous and was often on the point of crying." "on the point of crying! there is really no occasion for that, herr rosner. anna herself, who is more concerned than any one else, is very well and is in her usual good spirits...." "yes, anna at any rate takes it very well, and that, to speak frankly, is more or less my consolation. but i cannot describe to you, baron, how hard hit ... how, i could almost say ... like a bolt from the blue ... i could never, no, never have ... have believed it...." he could not say any more. his voice trembled. "i am really very concerned," said george, "that you should take the matter like this, in spite of the fact that your wife is bound to have explained everything to you, and that the measures we have taken for the near future presumably meet with your approval. i would prefer not to talk about a time which is further, though i hope not too far off, because phrases of all kinds are more or less distasteful to me, but you may be sure, herr rosner, that i certainly shall not forget what i owe to a person like anna.... yes, what i owe to myself." he gulped. in all his memory there was no moment in his life in which he had felt less sympathy for himself. and now, as is necessarily the case in all pointless conversations, they repeated themselves several times, until herr rosner finally apologised for having troubled him, and took his leave of george, who accompanied him to the stairs. george felt an unpleasant aftermath in his soul for some days after this visit. the brother would be the finishing touch, he thought irritably, and he could not help imagining a scene of explanation in the course of which the young man would endeavour to play the avenger of the family honour, while george put him in his place with extraordinarily trenchant expressions. george nevertheless felt a sense of relief after the conversation with anna's parents had taken place, and the hours which he spent with his beloved alone in the peaceful room opposite the church were full of a peculiar feeling of comfort and safety. it sometimes seemed to them both as though time stood still. it was all very well for george to bring guide-books, burckhardt's _cicerone_, and even maps to their meetings, and to plan out with anna all kinds of routes; he did not as a matter of fact seriously think that all this would ever be realised. so far, however, as the house in which the child was to be born was concerned, they were both impressed with the necessity of its being found and taken before they left vienna. anna once saw an advertisement in the paper which she was accustomed to read carefully for that very object, of a lodge near the forest, and not far from a railway station, which could be reached in one and a half hours from vienna. one morning they both took the train to the place in question and they had a memory of a snow-covered lonely wooden building with antlers over the door, an old drunken keeper, a young blonde girl, a swift sleigh-ride over a snowy winter street, an extraordinarily jolly dinner in an enormous room in the inn, and then home in a badly-lighted over-heated compartment. this was the only time that george tried to find with anna the house that must be standing somewhere in the world and waiting to be decided upon. otherwise he usually went alone by train or tramway to look round the summer resorts which were near vienna. once, on a spring day that had come straight into the middle of the winter, george was walking through one of the small places situated quite near town, which he was particularly fond of, where village buildings, unassuming villas and elegant country houses lay close upon each other. he had completely forgotten, as often happened, why he had taken the journey, and was thinking with emotion of the fact that beethoven and schubert had taken the same walk as he, many years ago, when he unexpectedly ran up against nürnberger. they greeted each other, praised the fine day, which had enticed them so far out into the open, and expressed regret that they so rarely saw each other since bermann had left vienna. "is it long since you heard anything of him?" asked george. "i have only had a card from him," replied nürnberger, "since he left. it is much more likely he would correspond regularly with you than with me." "why is it more likely?" inquired george, somewhat irritated by nürnberger's tone, as indeed be frequently was. "well, at any rate you have the advantage over me of being a new acquaintance, and consequently offering more exciting subject-matter for his psychological interest than i can." george detected in the accustomed flippancy of these words a certain sense of grievance which he more or less understood, for, as a matter of fact, heinrich had bothered very little about nürnberger of late, though he had previously seen a great deal of him, it being always his way to draw men to him and then drop them with the greatest lack of consideration, according as their character did or did not fit in with his own mood. "in spite of that i am not much better off than you," said george. "i haven't had any news of him for some weeks either. his father, too, appears to be in a bad way according to the last letter." "so i suppose it will soon be all up with the poor old man now." "who knows? according to what bermann writes me, he can still last for months." nürnberger shook his head seriously. "yes," said george lightly. "the doctors ought to be allowed in cases like that ... to shorten the matter." "you are perhaps right," answered nürnberger, "but who knows whether our friend heinrich, however much the sight of his father's incurable malady may put him off his work and perhaps many other things as well--who knows whether he might not all the same refuse the suggestion of finishing off this hopeless matter by a morphia injection?" george felt again repulsed by nürnberger's bitter, ironic tone, and yet when he remembered the hour when he had seen heinrich more violently upset by a few obscure words in the letter of a mistress than by his father's madness, he could not drive out the impression that nürnberger's opinion of their friend was correct. "did you know old bermann?" he asked. "not personally, but i still remember the time when his name was known in the papers, and i remember, too, many extremely sound and excellent speeches which he made in parliament. but i am keeping you, my dear baron. goodbye. we will see each other no doubt one of these days in the café, or at ehrenbergs'." "you are not keeping me at all," replied george with deliberate courtesy. "i am quite at large, and i am availing myself of the opportunity of looking at houses for the summer." "so you are going in the country, near vienna this year?" "yes, for a time probably, and apart from that a family i know has asked me if i should chance to run across...." he grew a little red, as he always did when he was not adhering strictly to the truth. nürnberger noticed it and said innocently: "i have just passed by some villas which are to let. do you see, for instance, that white one with the white terrace?" "it looks very nice. we might have a look at it, if you won't find it too dull coming with me. then we can go back together to town." the garden which they entered sloped upwards and was very long and narrow. it reminded nürnberger of one in which he had played as a child. "perhaps it is the same," he said. "we lived for years and years you know in the country in grinzing or heiligenstadt." this "we" affected george in quite a strange way. he could scarcely realise nürnberger's ever having been quite young, ever having lived as a son with his father and mother, as a brother with his sisters, and he felt all of a sudden that this man's whole life had something strange and hard about it. at the top of the garden an open arbour gave a wonderfully fine view of the town, which they enjoyed for some time. they slowly went down, accompanied by the caretaker's wife, who carried a small child wrapped in a grey shawl in her arms. they then looked at the house--low musty rooms with cheap battered carpets on the floor, narrow wooden beds, dull or broken mirrors. "everything will be done up again in the spring," explained the caretaker, "then it will look very cheerful." the little child suddenly held out its tiny hand towards george, as if it wanted him to take it up in his arms. george was somewhat moved and smiled awkwardly. as he rode with nürnberger into the town on the platform of the tramway and chatted to him he felt that he had never got so close to him on all the many previous occasions when they had been together, as during this hour of clear winter sunshine in the country. when they said goodbye it was quite a matter of course that they should arrange a new excursion on a day in the immediate future. and so it came about that george was several times accompanied by nürnberger, when he continued his househunting in the neighbourhood of vienna. on these occasions the fiction was still kept up that george was looking for a house for a family whom he knew, that nürnberger believed it and that george believed that nürnberger believed it. on these excursions nürnberger frequently came to speak of his youth, to speak about the parents whom he had lost very early, of a sister who had died young and of his elder brother, the only one of his relatives who was still alive. but he, an ageing bachelor like edmund himself, did not live in vienna, but in a small town in lower austria, where he was a teacher in a public school, where he had been transferred fifteen years ago as an assistant. he could easily have managed afterwards to have got an appointment again in the metropolis, but after a few years of bitterness, and even defiance, he had become so completely acclimatised to the quiet petty life of the place where he was staying that he came to regard a return to vienna as more a sacrifice than anything else, and he now lived on, passionately devoted to his profession and particularly to his studies in philology, far from the world, lonely, contented, a kind of philosopher in the little town. when nürnberger spoke of this distant brother george often felt as though he were hearing him speak about some one who had died, so absolutely out of the question seemed every possibility of a permanent reunion in the future. it was in quite a different tone, almost as though he were speaking of a being who could return once again, that he would talk with a perpetual wistfulness of the sister who had been dead several years. it was on a misty february day, while they were at the railway station waiting for the train to vienna, and walking up and down with each other on the platform, that nürnberger told george the story of this sister, who when a child of sixteen had become possessed as it were by a tremendous passion for the theatre, and had run away from home without saying goodbye in a fit of childish romanticism. she had wandered from town to town, from stage to stage, for ten years, playing smaller and smaller parts, since neither her talent nor her beauty appeared to be sufficient for the career which she had chosen, but always with the same enthusiasm, always with the same confidence in her future, in spite of the disillusions which she experienced and the sorrow which she saw. in the holidays she would come to the brothers, who were still living together, sometimes for weeks, sometimes only for days, and tell them about the provincial halls in which she had acted as though they were great theatres; about her few successes as though they were triumphs which she had won, about the wretched comedians at whose side she worked as though they were great artists, tell them about the petty intrigues that took place around her as though they were powerful tragedies of passion. and instead of gradually realising the miserable world in which she was living a life which was as much to be pitied as that of any one else, she spun every year the essence of her soul into more and more golden dreams. this went on for a long time, until at last she came home, feverish and ill. she lay in bed for months on end with flushed cheeks, raving in her delirium of a fame and happiness which she had never experienced, got up once again in apparent health, and went away once more, only to come back home, this time after a few weeks, in complete collapse with death written on her forehead. her brother now travelled with her to the south; to arco, meran, to the italian lakes, and it was only as she lay stretched out in southern gardens beneath flowering trees, far away from the whirl that had dazed and intoxicated her throughout the years that she realised at last that her life had been simply a racketing about beneath a painted sky and between paper walls--that the whole essence of her existence had been an illusion. but even the little everyday incidents, the apartments and inns of the foreign town, seemed to her memory simply scenes which she had played in as an actress by the footlights, and not scenes which she had really lived, and as she approached nearer and nearer to the grave, there awoke within her an awful yearning for that real life which she had missed, and the more surely she knew that it was lost to her for ever, the clearer became the gaze with which she realised the fullness of the world. and the strangest touch of all was the way in which, in the last weeks of her life, that talent to which she had sacrificed her whole existence without ever really possessing it manifested itself with diabolic uncanniness. "it seems to me, even to-day," said nürnberger, "that i have never heard verses so declaimed, never seen whole scenes so acted, even by the greatest actress, as i did by my sister in the hotel room at cadenabbia, looking out on to the lake of como, a few days before she died. of course," he added, "it is possible, even probable, that my memory is deceiving me." "but why?" asked george, who was so pleased with this _finale_ that he did not want to have it spoiled. and he endeavoured to convince nürnberger, who listened to him with a smile, that he could not have made a mistake, and that the world had lost a great actress in that strange girl who lay buried in cadenabbia. george did not find on his excursions with nürnberger the house in the country for which he was looking. in fact it seemed to become more difficult to find every time he went out. nürnberger made occasional jokes about george's exacting requirements. he seemed to be looking for a villa which was to be faced in front by a well-kept road, while it was to have at the back a garden door which led into the natural forest. eventually george himself did not seriously believe that he would now succeed in finding the desired house, and relied on the pressure of necessity after his return from his travels. it seemed more essential to get as soon as possible into touch with a doctor, but george put this off too from one day to another. but one evening anna informed him that she had been suddenly panic-stricken by a new attack of faintness, had visited doctor stauber and explained her condition to him. he had been very nice, had not expressed any astonishment, had thoroughly reassured her and only expressed the wish to speak to george before they went away. a few days afterwards george went to see the doctor in accordance with his invitation. the consultation hours were over. doctor stauber received him with the friendliness which he had anticipated, seemed to treat the whole matter as being as regular and as much a matter of course as it could possibly be, and spoke of anna just as though she had been a young wife, a method of procedure which affected george in a strange but not unpleasant way. when the practical discussion was over the doctor inquired about the destination of their journey. george had not yet mapped out any programme, only this much was decided, that the spring was to be spent in the south, probably in italy. doctor stauber took the opportunity to talk about his last stay in rome, which was ten years back. he had been in personal touch on this occasion, as he had been once before, with the director of the excavations and spoke to george in almost ecstatic terms of the latest discoveries on the palatine, about which he had written monographs as a young man, which he had published in the antiquarian journals. he then showed george, and not without pride, his library, which was divided into two sections, medicine and the history of art, and took out and offered to lend him a few rare books, one printed in the year on the vatican collections and also a history of sicily. george felt highly excited as he realised with such vividness the rich days that lay in front of him. he was overcome by a kind of homesickness for places which he knew well and had missed for a long time. half-forgotten pictures floated up in his memory, the pyramids of cestius stood on the horizon in sharp outlines, as they had appeared to him when he had ridden back as a boy into the town at evening with the prince of macedon; the dim church, where he had seen his first mistress step up to the altar as a bride, opened its doors; a bark under a dark sky with strange sulphur yellow sails drew near to the coast.... he began to speak about the several towns and landscapes of the south which he had seen as a boy and as a youth, explained the longing for those places which often seized on him like a genuine homesickness, his joy at being able to take in with mature appreciation all the differing things which he had longed for, reserved for himself and then forgotten, and many new things besides, and this time too in the society of a being who was able to appreciate and enjoy everything with him, and whom he held dear. doctor stauber, who was in the act of putting a book back on the shelf, turned round suddenly to george, looked gently at him and said: "i am very glad of that." as george answered his look with some surprise he added: "it was the first tender allusion to your relationship to annerl that i have noticed in the course of the last hour. i know, i know that you are not the kind of man to take a comparative stranger into your confidence, but if only because i had no reason to expect it, it has really done me good. it came straight from your heart, one could see it; and i should have been really sorry for annerl--excuse me, i always call her that--if i had been driven to think that you are not as fond of her as she deserves." "i really don't know," replied george coolly, "what gave you cause to doubt it, doctor." "did i say anything about doubts?" replied stauber good-humouredly. "but, after all, it has happened before that a young man who has had all kinds of experiences does not appreciate a sacrifice of this kind sufficiently, for it still is a sacrifice, my dear baron. we can be as superior to all prejudices as much as we like--but it is not a trifle even to-day for a young girl of good family to make up her mind to do a thing like that, and i won't conceal it from you--of course i did not let annerl notice anything--it gave even me a slight shock when she came to me the other day and told me all about it." "excuse me, herr doctor," replied george, irritated but yet polite, "if it gave you a shock that is surely some proof against your being superior to prejudices...." "you are right," said stauber with a smile, "but perhaps you will overlook this lapse when you consider that i am somewhat older than you and belong to another age. even a more or less independent man ... which i flatter myself i am ... cannot quite escape from the influence of his age. it is a strange thing, but believe me, even among the young people, who have grown up on nietzsche and ibsen, there are quite as many philistines as there were thirty years ago. they won't own up to it, but it does go against the grain with them, for instance, if some one goes and seduces their sister, or if one of their worthy wives suddenly takes it into her head that she wants to live her own life.... many, of course, are consistent and carry their pose through ... but that is more a matter of self-control than of their real views, and in the old days, you know, the age to which i belong, when ideas were so immovably hide-bound, when every one for instance was quite sure of things like this: one has to honour one's parents or else one is a knave ... or ... one only loves really once in one's life ... or it's a pleasure to die for one's fatherland ... in that time, mind you, when every decent man held up some flag or other, or at any rate had something written on his banner ... believe me, the so-called modern ideas had more adherents than you suspect. the only thing was that those adherents did not quite know it themselves, they did not trust their own ideas, they thought themselves, as it were, debauchees or even criminals. shall i tell you something, herr baron? there are really no new ideas at all. people feel with a new intensity--that's what it is. but do you seriously think that nietzsche discovered the superman, ibsen the fraud of life and anzengruber the truth that the parents who desire love and honour from their children ought to 'come up to the scratch' themselves? not a bit of it. all the ethical ideas have always been there, and one would really be surprised if one knew what absolute blockheads have thought of the so-called great new truths, and have even frequently given them expression long before the geniuses to whom we owe these truths, or rather the courage to regard these truths as true. if i have gone rather too far forgive me. i really only wanted to say ... and you will believe me, i am sure.... i know as well as you, baron, that there is many a virgin girl who is a thousand times more corrupt than a so-called fallen woman; and that there is many a young man who passes for respectable who has worse things on his conscience than starting a _liaison_ with an innocent girl. and yet ... it is just the curse of my period ..." he interpolated with a smile, "i could not help it, the first moment annerl told me her story certain unpleasant words which in their day had their own fixed meaning began to echo through my old head in their old tones, silly out-of-date words like ... libertine ... seduction ... leaving in the lurch ... and so on, and that is why i must ask you once more to forgive me, now that i have got to know you somewhat more intimately ... that is why i felt that shock which a modern man would certainly not own that he experienced. but to talk seriously once again, just consider a minute how your poor father, who did not know anna, would have taken the matter. he was certainly one of the shrewdest and most unprejudiced men whom one can imagine ... and all the same you have not the slightest doubt that the matter would not have passed off without his feeling something of a shock as well." george could not help holding out his hand to the doctor. the unexpectedness of this sudden allusion caused so intense a longing to spring up within him that the only thing he could do to assuage it was to begin to talk of him who had passed away. the doctor was able to tell him of many meetings with the late baron, mostly chance casual encounters in the street, at the sessions of the scientific academy, at concerts. there came another of those moments in which george thought himself strangely guilty in his attitude towards the dead man and registered a mental vow to become worthy of his memory. "remember me kindly to annerl," said the doctor as he said goodbye, "but i would rather you did not tell her anything about the shock. she is a very sensitive creature, that you know well enough, and now it is particularly important to save her any excitement. remember, my dear baron, there is only one question before us now--to see that a healthy child comes into the world, everything else.... well, give her my best regards. i hope we shall all see each other again in the summer in the best of health." george went away with a heightened consciousness of his responsibilities towards the being who had given herself to him and to that other who would wake up to existence in a few months. he thought first of making a will and leaving it behind with a lawyer. but on further consideration he thought it more proper to confide in his brother, who after all stood nearer to him in sentiment than any one else. but with that peculiar embarrassment which was characteristic of the really intimate relationship between the brothers he let day after day go by, until at last felician's departure on the hunting expedition in africa was quite imminent. the night before, on the way home from the club, george informed his brother that he was thinking of taking a long journey in the near future. "really! for how long shall you be away?" asked felician. george caught the note of a certain anxiety in these words and felt that it was incumbent on him to add: "it will probably be the last long journey i shall take for some years. i hope to find myself in a permanent position in the autumn." "so you have quite made up your mind?" "yes, of course." "i am very glad, george, for different reasons, as you can imagine, that you want at last to do something serious. and besides, it's a very sound thing, that it is not a case of one of us going out into the world while the other remains at home alone. that would really have been rather sad." george knew quite well that felician would get a foreign diplomatic post in the following autumn, but he had never realised so clearly that in a few months that brotherly life which had lasted for so many years, that common life in the old house opposite the park, yes, his whole youth so to speak, would be irrevocably over and done with. he saw life lying in front of him, serious, almost menacing. "have you any idea," he asked, "where they will send you?" "there is some chance of athens." "would you like that?" "why not? the society ought to be fairly interesting. bernburg was there for three years and was sorry to leave. and they have transferred him to london, too, and that's certainly not to be sniffed at." they walked in silence for a while and took their usual way through the park. an atmosphere suggesting the approaching spring was around them, although small white flakes of snow still gleamed on the lawns. "so you are going to italy?" asked felician. "yes." "as far down south as last spring?" "i don't know yet." again a short silence. suddenly felician's voice came out of the darkness. "have you heard anything of grace since then?" "of grace?" repeated george, somewhat surprised, for it had been a long time since felician had mentioned that name. "i have heard nothing more of grace. besides, that is what we arranged. we took farewell of each other for ever at genoa. that is already more than a year ago...." a gentleman was sitting on a seat quite in the darkness in a fur coat with a top hat and white gloves. "ah, labinski," thought george for a whole minute; the next minute he of course remembered that he had shot himself. this was not the first time that he had thought he had seen him. a man had sat in broad daylight in the botanical garden at palermo under a japanese ash-tree whom george had taken for a whole second for labinski; and recently george had thought he had recognised the face of his dead father behind the shut windows of a fiacre. the houses gleamed behind the leafless branches. one of them was the house in which the brothers lived. the time has come, thought george, for me to mention the matter at last. and to bring matters to a head, he observed lightly: "besides, i am not going to italy alone this year." "hm! hm!" said felician, and looked in front of him. george felt at the same moment that he had not taken the right tone. he was apprehensive of felician's thinking something like this: "oh yes, he has got an adventure again with some shady person or other." and he added seriously: "i say, felician, i have something serious i should like to talk to you about." "what! serious!" "yes." "well, george," said felician gently, and looked at him sideways, "what is up, then? you are not thinking of marrying by any chance?" "oh no," replied george, and then felt irritated that he had repudiated that possibility with such definiteness. "no, it is not a question of marriage, but of something much more vital." felician remained standing for a moment. "you have a child?" he asked seriously. "no, not yet. that's just it, that is why we are leaving." "indeed," said felician. they had got out of the park. involuntarily both looked up to the window of their house, from which only a year ago their father had so often nodded his welcome to them both. both felt with sorrow that somehow since their father's death they had gradually slipped away from each other--and felt at the same time a slight fear of how much further from each other life could still take them. "come into my room," said george when they got upstairs. "that's the most comfortable place." he sat down on his comfortable chair by his secretary. felician lounged in the corner on a little green leather ottoman which was near the writing-table and listened quietly. george told him the name of his mistress, spoke of her with heartfelt sympathy, and asked felician, in case anything should happen to him, george, in the near future to undertake to look after the mother and her child. he left so much of his fortune as was still available to the child, of course. the mother was to have the usufruct until the child became of age. when george had finished felician said with a smile after a short silence: "oh well, you've got every reason to hope that you will come back as whole and sound from your journey as i will from africa, and so our conversation has probably only an academic significance." "i hope so too, of course. but at any rate it reassures me, felician, that you know all about my secret, and that i can be free from anxiety in every way." "yes, of course you can." he shook hands with his brother. then he got up and walked up and down the room. finally he said: "you have no thought of legitimising your relationship?" "not for the time being. one can never tell what the future may bring forth." felician remained standing. "well...." "are you in favour of my marrying?" exclaimed george with some astonishment. "not at all." "felician, be frank, please." "look here, one should not advise any one in affairs like that. not even one's own brother." "but if i ask you, felician? it seems to me as though there is something in the business you didn't quite like." "well, it is like this, george.... you won't misunderstand me.... i know of course that you are not thinking of leaving her in the lurch. on the contrary, i am convinced that you will behave all through far more nobly than any ordinary man in your position. but the question is really this, would you have let yourself go into the thing if you had considered the consequences from every point of view?" "that of course is very hard to answer," said george. "i mean just this: did you intend ... not to make her your companion for life, but to have a child by her all the same?" "great heavens, who thinks of that? of course if one had wanted to be so absolutely on the safe side----" felician interrupted him. "does she know that you are not thinking of marrying her?" "why, you don't think, surely, i promised her marriage?" "no. but you did not promise to leave her stranded either." "it would have been equally mean if i had promised, felician. the whole thing came about as affairs like that always do, developed without any definite plan right up to the present time." "yes, that is all right. the only question is whether one is not more or less under an obligation to have definite plans in really vital matters." "possibly.... but that was never my line, unfortunately." felician remained standing in front of george, looked at him affectionately and nodded a few times. "that is quite true, george. you are not angry with me.... but now that we are talking about it.... of course i am not suggesting i have any right to lecture you on your mode of life...." "go ahead, felician.... i mean if.... it really does me good." he stroked him lightly on the hand which lay on the back of the ottoman. "well, there is not much more to be said. i only mean that in everything you do there is just ... the same lack of system. look here, to talk of another important matter, i personally am quite convinced of your talent and many others are, too. but you really work damned little, don't you? and fame doesn't come of itself, even when one...." "quite so. but i don't work as little as you think, felician, it is only that work is such a peculiar business with people of my temperament. frequently when one is out for a walk or even asleep one gets all kinds of ideas.... and then in the autumn...." "yes, yes, we hope so, though i am afraid that you won't be able to live on your salary at the commencement, and it is very questionable how long your little money will hold out with your mode of life. i tell you candidly, when you mentioned a few moments ago the sum which you were able to leave to your child i had quite a shock." "be patient, felician. in three or five years, when i have my opera finished...." he spoke in an ironical tone. "are you really writing an opera, george?" "i am beginning one shortly." "who is doing the libretto for you?" "heinrich bermann. of course you scowl again." "my dear george, i have always been very far from lecturing you in any way about the people you associate with. it is quite natural that you with your intellectual tastes should live in a different set and mix with different people to those i do, people whom i should probably find rather less to my taste. but so long as herr bermann's libretto is good you have my blessing ... and herr bermann, of course, too." "the libretto is not ready yet, only the scenario." felician could not help laughing. "so that's how your opera stands! i only hope the theatre is already built at which you are going to get a post as conductor." "come, come," said george, somewhat hurt. "forgive me," replied felician, "i have not really any doubts about your future. i should only like you yourself to do a bit more towards it. i really should be so ... proud, george, if you were to do anything great, and it, i'm sure, only depends on yourself. willy eissler, who is a man of genuine musical gifts, told me again only the other day that he thinks more of you than of most of the young composers." "on the strength of the few songs of mine which he knows? you're a good fellow, felician, but there is really no need for you to encourage me. i already know what i have got in me, only i must be more industrious, and my going away will do me quite a lot of good. it does one good to get out of one's usual surroundings for a time, like this. and this time it is quite different from last. it is the first time, felician, that i have had anything to do with a person who is absolutely my equal, who is more ... whom i can treat as a true friend as well, and the consciousness that i am going to have a child, and by her, too, is, in spite of all the accompanying circumstances, rather pleasant." "i can quite understand that," said felician, and contemplated george seriously and affectionately. the clock on the writing-table struck two. "what, so late already," cried felician, "and i have got to pack early to-morrow. well, we can talk over everything at breakfast to-morrow. well, good-night, george." "good-night, felician. thank you," he added with emotion. "what are you thanking me for, george? you really are funny!" they shook hands and then kissed each other, which they had not done for quite a long time, and george resolved to call his child felician if it was to be a boy, and he rejoiced at the good omen of a name which had so happy a ring. after his brother's departure george felt as deserted as though he had never had another friend. living in the great lonely house, where he seemed to be weighed down by a mood like that which had followed the first weeks after his father's death, made him feel depressed. he regarded the days which still had to elapse before the departure as a transition period, in which it was not worth while starting anything. the hours he spent with his mistress in the room opposite the church became colourless and blank. a psychological change, too, seemed to be now taking place in anna herself. she was frequently irritable, then taciturn again, almost melancholy, and george was often overcome by so great a sense of _ennui_ when he was with her that he felt quite nervous of the next month in which they would be thrown completely into each other's society. of course the journey in itself promised change enough, but how would it be in the subsequent months which would have to be spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of vienna? he must also think about a companion for anna; but he was still putting off speaking to her about it, when anna herself came to him with a piece of news which was calculated to remove that difficulty, and at the same time to raise another one, in the simplest way conceivable. anna had recently, particularly since she had gradually given up her lessons, become more and more intimate with therese, and had confided everything to her, and so it soon came about that therese's mother was also in the secret. this lady was much more congenial to anna than her own mother, who after a slight glimmer of understanding had held aloof, aggrieved and depressed, from her erring daughter. frau golowski not only declared herself ready to live with anna in the country, but even promised to discover the little house which george had not been able to find, while the young couple were away. however much this willingness suited george's convenience, he found it none the less somewhat painful to be under an obligation to this old woman, who was a stranger to him, and in moments when he was out of temper it struck him as almost grotesque that it should be leo's mother and berthold's father, of all people, who should be fated to play so important a part in so momentous an event in anna's life. george paid his farewell visit at ehrenbergs' on a fine may afternoon three days before he went away. he had only rarely shown himself there since that christmas celebration and his conversations with else had remained on the most innocent of footings. she confessed to him, as though to a friend who could not now misunderstand remarks of that character, that she felt more and more unsettled at home. in particular the atmosphere of the house, as george had frequently noticed before, seemed to be permanently overcast by the bad relations between father and son. when oskar came in at the door with his nonchalant aristocratic swagger and began to talk in his viennese aristocratic accent, his father would turn scornfully away, or would be unable to suppress allusions to the fact that he could make an end this very day of all that aristocracy by stopping or lowering his so-called allowance, which as a matter of fact was neither more nor less than pocket-money. if, on his side, his father began to talk yiddish, as he was most fond of doing in front of company, and with obvious malice, oskar would bite his lips and make a point of leaving the room. so it was only very rarely during the last few months that father and son stayed in vienna or in neuhaus at the same time. they both found each other's presence almost intolerable. when george came in to ehrenbergs' the room was almost in darkness. the marble isis gleamed from behind the pianoforte, and the twilight of the late afternoon was falling in the alcove where mother and daughter sat opposite each other. for the first time the appearance of these two women struck george as somewhat strangely pathetic. a vague feeling floated up in his mind that perhaps this was the last time he would see this picture, and else's smile shone towards him with such sweet melancholy, that he thought for a whole minute: might i not have found my happiness here, after all? he now sat next to frau ehrenberg (who was going on quietly knitting) opposite else, smoked a cigarette and felt quite at home. he explained that, fascinated by the tempting spring weather, he was starting on his projected journey earlier than he had intended, and that he would probably prolong it until the summer. "and we are going to auhof as early as the middle of may this time," said frau ehrenberg, "and we certainly count upon seeing you down there this year." "if you are not elsewhere engaged," added else with a perfectly straight face. george promised to come in august, at any rate for some days. the conversation then turned on felician and willy, who had started with their party a few days ago from biskra on their hunting expedition in the desert; on demeter stanzides, who announced his immediate intention of resigning from the army and retiring to an estate in hungary; and finally on heinrich bermann of whom no one had had any news for some weeks. "who knows if he will ever come back to vienna at all?" said else. "why shouldn't he? what makes you think that, fräulein else?" "upon my word, perhaps he'll marry that actress and trot about the world with her." george shrugged his shoulders ... he didn't know personally of any actress with whom heinrich was mixed up, and he ventured to express a doubt whether heinrich would ever marry any one, whether she was a princess or a circus rider. "it would be rather a pity if bermann were to," said frau ehrenberg, without taking any notice of george's discretion. "i certainly think that young people take these matters either too lightly or too seriously." else followed up the idea: "yes, it is strange, all you men are either cleverer or much sillier in these matters than in any other, although really it is just in such crucial moments of one's life, that one ought as far as possible to be one's ordinary self." "my dear else," said george casually, "once one's passions are set going----" "yes, when they are set going," emphasised frau ehrenberg. "passions!" exclaimed else. "i believe that like all other great things in the world, they are really something quite rare." "what do you know, my child?" said frau ehrenberg. "at any rate i've never so far seen anything of that kind in my immediate environment," explained else. "who knows if you would discover it," remarked george, "even though it did come once in a way quite near you? viewed from outside a flirtation and a life's tragedy may sometimes look quite the same." "that is certainly not true," said else. "passion is something that is bound to betray itself." "how do you manage to know that, else?" objected frau ehrenberg. "passions can often conceal themselves deeper than any ordinary trumpery little emotion, for the very reason that there is usually more at stake." "i think," replied george, "that it is a very personal matter. there are, of course, people who have everything written on their forehead, and others who are impenetrable; being impenetrable is quite as much a talent as anything else." "it can be trained too, like anything else," said else. the conversation stuck for a moment, as is apt to occur when the personal application that lies behind some general observation flashes out only too palpably. frau ehrenberg started a new topic. "have you been composing anything nice, george?" she asked. "a few trifles for the piano. my quintette will soon be ready too." "the quintette is beginning to grow mythical," said else discontentedly. "else!" said her mother. "well, it really would be a good thing, if he were to be more industrious." "you are perhaps right about that," replied george. "i think artists used to work much more in former days than they do now." "the great ones," qualified george. "no, all," persisted else. "perhaps it is a good thing that you are going to travel," said frau ehrenberg, "for apparently you've too many distractions here." "he'll let himself be distracted anywhere," asserted else sternly. "even in iglau, or wherever else he happens to be next year." "that's why i've never yet thought of your going away," said frau ehrenberg and shook her head; "and your brother will be in sophia or athens next year and stanzides in hungary ... it's really a great pity to think of all the nicest men being scattered like this to the four corners of the world." "if i were a man," said else, "i would scatter too." george smiled. "you're dreaming of a journey round the world in a white yacht, madeira, ceylon, san francisco." "oh no, i shouldn't like to be without a profession, but i should probably have been an officer in the merchant service." "won't you be kind enough"--frau ehrenberg turned to george--"to play us one or two of your new things?" "delighted, i'm sure." he got up from the recess and walked towards the window into the darkness of the room. else got up and turned on the light on top. george opened the piano, sat down and played his ballads. else had sat down in an arm-chair and as she sat there, with her arm resting on the side of the chair and her head resting on her arm in the pose of a _grande dame_ and with the melancholy expression of a precocious child, george felt again strangely thrilled by her look. he was not feeling very satisfied with his ballad to-day, and was fully conscious that he was endeavouring to help out its effect by putting too much expression into his playing. hofrat wilt stepped softly into the room and made a sign that they were not to disturb themselves. he then remained standing by the door leaning against the wall, tall, superior, good-natured, with his closely-cropped grey hair, until george ended his performance with some emphatic harmonies. they greeted each other. wilt congratulated george on being a free man and being now able to travel south. "i'm sorry to say i can't do it," he added, "and all the same one has at times a vague notion that even though one were not to visit one's office for a year on end, not the slightest change would take place in austria." he talked with his usual irony about his profession and his fatherland. frau ehrenberg retorted that there was not a man who was more patriotic, and took his calling more seriously than he himself. he agreed. but he regarded austria as an infinitely complicated instrument, which only a master could handle properly, and said that the only reason for its sounding badly so often was that every muddler tried his art upon it. "they'll go on knocking it about," he said dismally, "until all the strings break and the frame too." when george went else accompanied him into the empty room. she still had a few words to say to him about his ballads. she had particularly liked the middle movement. it had had such an inner glow. anyway, she hoped he would have a good time on his journey. he thanked her. "so," she said suddenly, when he already had his hat in his hand, "it's really a case now of saying a final farewell to certain dreams." "what dreams?" he asked in surprise. "mine of course, which you are bound to have known about by this time." george was very astonished. she had never been so specific. he smiled awkwardly and sought for an answer. "who knows what the future will bring forth?" he said at last lightly. she puckered her forehead. "why aren't you at any rate as straight with me as i am with you? i know quite well that you are not travelling alone ... i also know who is going with you ... what is more i know the whole thing. good gracious, what haven't i known since we have known each other?" and george heard grief and rage quivering below the surface of her words. and he knew that if he ever did make her his wife, she would make him feel that she had had to wait for him too long. he looked in front of him and maintained a silence that seemed at once guilty and defiant. then else smiled brightly, held out her hand and said once again: "_bon voyage_." he pressed her hand as though he were bound to make some apology. she took it away from him, turned round and went back into the room. he still waited for a few seconds standing by the door and then hurried into the street. on the same evening george saw leo golowski again in the café, for the first time for many weeks. he knew from anna that leo had recently had to put up with a great deal of unpleasantness as a volunteer and that that "fiend in human form" in particular had persecuted him with malice, with real hatred in fact. it occurred to george to-day that leo had greatly altered during the short time in which he had not seen him. he looked distinctly older. "i'm very glad to get a chance of seeing you again before i leave," said george and sat down opposite him at the café table. "you are glad," replied leo, "that you happened to run across me again, while i positively needed to see you once again, that is the difference." his voice had even a tenderer note than usual. he looked george in the face with a kind, almost fatherly expression. at this moment george no longer had any doubt that leo knew everything. he felt as embarrassed for a few seconds as though he were responsible to him, was irritated at his own embarrassment and was grateful to leo for not appearing to notice it. this evening they talked about practically nothing except music. leo inquired after the progress of george's work, and it came about during the course of the conversation that george declared himself quite willing to play one of his newest compositions to leo on the following sunday afternoon. but when they took leave of each other, george suddenly had the unpleasant feeling of having passed with comparative success a theoretical examination, and of being faced to-morrow with a practical examination. what did this young man, who was so mature for his years, really want of him? was george to prove to him that his talent entitled him to be anna's lover or her child's father? he waited for leo's visit with genuine repugnance. he thought for a minute of refusing to see him. but when leo appeared with all that innocent sincerity which he so frequently liked to affect, george's mood soon became less harsh. they drank tea and smoked cigarettes and george showed him his library, the pictures which were hanging in the house, the antiquities and the weapons, and the examination feeling vanished. george sat down at the pianoforte, played a few of his earlier pieces and also his latest ones as well as the ballads, which he rendered much better than he had done yesterday at ehrenbergs', and then some songs, while leo followed the melody with his fingers, but with sure musical feeling. eventually he started to play the quintette from the score. he did not succeed and leo stationed himself at the window with the music and read it attentively. "one can't really tell at all so far," he said. "a great deal of it indicates a dilettante with a lot of taste, other parts an artist without proper discipline. it's rather in the songs that one feels ... but feels what?... talent ... i don't know. one feels at any rate that you have distinction, real musical distinction." "well, that's not so much." "as a matter of fact it's pretty little, but it doesn't prove anything against you either, since you have worked so little--worked very little and felt little." "you think ..." george forced a sarcastic laugh. "oh, you've probably lived a great deal but felt ... you know what i mean, george?" "yes, i can imagine well enough, but you're really making a mistake; why i rather think that i have a certain tendency to sentimentalism, which i ought to combat." "yes, that's just it. sentimentalism, you know, is something which is the direct antithesis to feeling, something by means of which one reassures oneself about one's lack of feeling, one's essential coldness. sentimentalism is feeling which one has obtained, so to speak, below cost price. i hate sentimentalism." "hm, and yet i think that you yourself are not quite free from it." "i am a jew, it's a national disease with us. our respectable members are working to change it into rage or fury. it's a bad habit with the germans, a kind of emotional slovenliness so to speak." "so there is an excuse for you, not for us." "there is no excuse for diseases either if, fully realising what one is doing, one has missed one's opportunity of protecting oneself against them. but we are beginning to babble in aphorism and are consequently only on the way to half or quarter truths. let's go back to your quintette. i like the theme of the adagio best." george nodded. "i heard it once in palermo." "what," said leo, "is it supposed to be a sicilian melody?" "no, it rippled to me out of the waves of the sea when i went for a walk one morning along the shore. being alone is particularly good for my work, so is change of scene. that's why i promise myself all kinds of things from my trip." he told him about heinrich bermann's opera plot, which he found very stimulating. when heinrich came back again, leo was to make him seriously start on the libretto. "don't you know yet," said leo, "his father is dead?" "really? when? how do you know?" "it was in the paper this morning." they spoke about heinrich's relationship to the dead man and leo declared that the world would perhaps get on better if parents would more frequently learn by the experiences of their children instead of asking their children to adapt themselves to their own hoary wisdom. the conversation then turned on the relations between fathers and sons, on true and false kinds of gratefulness, on the dying of people one held dear, on the difference between mourning and grief, on the dangers of memory and the duty of forgetting. george felt that leo was a very serious thinker, was very solitary and knew how to be so. he felt almost fond of him when the door closed behind him in the late twilight hour and the thought that this man had been anna's first infatuation did him good. the remaining days passed more quickly than he anticipated, what with purchases, arrangements and all kinds of preparations. and one evening george and anna drove after each other to the station in two separate vehicles and jestingly greeted each other in the vestibule with great politeness, as though they had been distant acquaintances who had met by accident. "my dear fräulein rosner, what a fortunate coincidence! are you also going to munich by any chance?" "yes, herr baron." "hullo, that's excellent! and have you a sleeping-car, my dear fräulein?" "oh yes, herr baron, berth number five." "how strange now, i have number six." they then walked up and down on the platform. george was in a very good temper, and he was glad that in her english dress, narrow-brimmed travelling hat and blue veil anna looked like an interesting foreigner. they went the length of the entire train until they came to the engine, which stood outside the station and was sending violent puffs of light-grey steam up to the dark sky. outside green and red lamps glowed on the track with a faint light. nervous whistles came from somewhere out of the distance and a train slowly struggled out of the darkness into the station. a red light waved magically to and fro over the ground, seemed to be miles away, stopped and was suddenly quite near. and outside, shining and losing themselves in the invisible, the lines went their way to near and far, into night and morning, into the morrow, into the inscrutable. anna climbed into the compartment. george remained standing outside for a while and derived amusement from watching the other travellers, those who were in an excited rush, those who preserved a dignified calm, and those who posed as being calm--and all the various types of people who were seeing their friends off: the depressed, the jolly, the indifferent. anna was leaning out of the window. george chatted with her, behaved as though he had not the slightest idea of leaving and then jumped in at the last minute. the train went away. people were standing on the platform, incomprehensible people who were remaining behind in vienna, and who on their side seemed to find all the others who were now really leaving vienna equally incomprehensible. a few pocket-handkerchiefs fluttered. the station-master stood there impressively and gazed sternly after the train. a porter in a blue-and-white striped linen blouse held a yellow bag high up and looked inquisitively into every window. strange, thought george casually, there are people who are going away and yet leave their yellow bags behind in vienna. everything vanished, handkerchiefs, bags, station-master, station. the brightly-lighted signal-box, the gloriette, the twinkling lights of the town, the little bare gardens along the embankment; and the train whizzed on through the night. george turned away from the window. anna sat in the corner. she had taken off her hat and veil. gentle little tears were running down her cheeks. "come," said george, as he embraced her and kissed her on the eyes and mouth. "come, anna," he repeated even more tenderly, and kissed her again. "what are you crying for, dear? it will be so nice." "it's easy enough for you," she said, and the tears streamed on down her smiling face. they had a beautiful time. they first stopped in munich. they walked about in the lofty halls of the pinakothek, stood fascinated in front of the old darkening pictures, wandered into the glyptothek between marble gods, kings and heroes; and when anna with a sudden feeling of exhaustion sat down on a settee she felt george's tender glance lingering over her head. they drove through the english garden, over broad avenues beneath the still leafless trees, nestling close to each other, young and happy, and were glad to think that people took them for a honeymoon couple. and they had their seats next to each other at the opera, _figaro_, _the meistersingers_, and _tristan_, and they felt as though a resonant transparent veil were woven around them alone out of the notes they loved so well, which separated them from all the rest of the audience. and they sat, unrecognised by any one at prettily-laid little restaurant tables, ate, drank and talked in the best of spirits. and through streets that had the wondrous atmosphere of a foreign land, they wandered home to where the gentle night waited for them in the room they shared, slept peacefully cheek by cheek, and when they awoke there smiled to them from the window a friendly day with which they could do whatever they liked. they found peace in each other as they had never done before, and at last belonged to each other absolutely. then they travelled further to meet the call of the spring; through long valleys on which the snow shone and melted, then, as though traversing one last white winter dream, over the brenner to bozen, where they basked in the sunbeams at noon in the dazzling market-place. on the weather-worn steps of the vast amphitheatre of verona, beneath the cool sky of an easter evening, george found himself at last in sight of that world of his heart's desire into which a real true love was now vouchsafed to accompany him. his own vanished boyhood greeted him out of the pale reddish distance together with all the eternal memories, in which other men and women had their share as well. why, even a breath of those bygone days when his mother had still lived seemed to thrill already through this air with its familiar and yet foreign atmosphere. he was glad to see venice, but it had lost its magic and was as well known as though he had only left it yesterday. he was greeted in the piazza st. marco by some casual viennese acquaintances, and the veiled lady by his side in the white dress earned many an inquisitive glance. once only, late at evening, on a gondola journey through the narrow canals did the looming palaces, which in the daylight had gradually degenerated into artificial scenery, appear to him in all the massive splendour of the dark golden glories of their past. then came a few days in towns, which he scarcely knew or did not know at all, in which he had only spent a few hours as a boy, or had never been in at all. they walked into a dim church out of a sultry padua afternoon, and going slowly from altar to altar contemplated the simple glorious pictures in which saints accomplished their miracles and fulfilled their martyrdoms. on a dismal rainy day a jolty gloomy carriage took them past a brick-red fort, round which lay greenish-grey water in a broad moat, through a market-square where negligently dressed citizens sat in front of the café; among silent mournful streets, where grass grew between the cobble-stones, and they had perforce to believe that this pitifully-dying petty town bore the resounding name of ferrara. but they breathed again in bologna, where the lively flourishing town does not simply content itself with a mere pride in its bygone glories. but it was only when george gazed at the hills of fiesole that he felt himself greeted as it were by a second home. this was the town in which he had ceased to be a boy, the town in which the stream of life had begun to course through his veins. at many places memories floated up in his mind which he kept to himself; and when in the cathedral, where the florentine girl had given him her final look from beneath her bridal veil, he only spoke to anna about that hour in the altlerchenfelder church in that autumn evening, when they had both begun to talk with some dim presentiment about this journey, which had now become realised with such inconceivable rapidity. he showed anna the house in which he had lived nine years ago. the same shops in which coral-dealers, watch-makers and lace-dealers hawked their wares were still underneath. as the second story was to let george would have had no difficulty in seeing immediately the room in which his mother had died. but he hesitated for a long time to set foot in the house again. it was only on the day before their departure, as though feeling that he should not put it off any more, that alone and without any previous word to anna, he went into the house, up the stairs and into the room. the aged porter showed him round and did not recognise him. the same furniture was still all there. his mother's bedroom looked exactly the same as it had done ten years ago, and the same brown wooden bed with its dark-green silver embroidered velvet coverlet still stood in the same corner. but none of the emotions which george had expected stirred within him. a tired memory which seemed flatter and duller than it had ever been before, ran through his soul. he stayed a long time in front of the bed with the deliberate intention of conjuring up those emotions which he felt it was his duty to feel. he murmured the word "mother," he tried to imagine the way in which she had lain here in this bed for many days and nights. he remembered the hours in which she had felt better, and he had been able to read aloud to her or to play to her on the piano in the adjoining room. he looked at the little round table standing in the corner over which his father and felician had spoken in a soft whisper because his mother had just gone to sleep; and finally there arose up in his mind with all the sharp vividness of a theatrical scene the picture of that dreadful evening, when his father and brother had gone out, and he himself had sat at his mother's bedside quite alone with her hand in his ... he saw and heard it all over again. he remembered how she had suddenly felt ill after an extremely quiet day, how he had hurriedly opened the windows and the laughter and speeches of strange people had penetrated into the room with the warm march air, how she lay there at last with open eyes that were already blank, while her hair that only a few seconds ago had streamed in waves over her forehead and temple lay dry and dishevelled on the pillow, and her left arm hung down naked over the edge of the bed with still fingers stretched far apart. this image arose in his mind with such terrible vividness that he saw again mentally his own boyish face and heard once again his own long sobbing ... but he felt no pain. it was far too long ago--nearly ten years. "_e bellissima la vista di questa finestra_," suddenly said the porter behind him as he opened the window--and human voices at once rang into the room from down below just as they had done on that long-past evening. and at the same moment he heard his mother's voice in his ear, just as he had heard it then entreating, dying ... "george ... george" ... and out of the dark corner in the place where the pillows had used to lie he saw something pale shine out towards him. he went to the window and agreed: "_bellissima vista_," but in front of the beautiful view there lay as it were a dark veil. "mother," he murmured, and once again "mother" ... but to his own amazement he did not mean the woman who had borne him and had been buried long ago; the word was for that other woman, who was not yet a mother but who was to be in a few months ... the mother of a child of which he was the father. and the word suddenly rang out, as though some melody that had never been heard or understood before, were now sounding, as though bells with mystic chiming were swinging in the distant future. and george felt ashamed that he had come here alone, had, as it were, almost stolen here. it was now quite out of the question to tell anna that he had been here. the next day they took the train to rome. and while george felt fresher, more at home, more in the vein for enjoyment, with each succeeding day, anna began to suffer seriously from a feeling of exhaustion with increasing frequency. she would often remain behind alone in the hotel, while he strolled about the streets, wandered through the vatican, went to the forum and the palatine. she never kept him back, but he nevertheless felt himself bound to cheer her up before he went out, and got into the habit of saying: "well, you'll keep that for another time, i hope we shall soon be coming here again." then she would smile in her arch way, as though she did not doubt now that she would one day be his wife; and he himself could not help owning that he no longer regarded that development as impossible. for it had gradually become almost impossible for him to realise that they were to say goodbye for ever and to go their several ways this autumn. yet during this period the words with which they spoke about a remote future were always vague. he had fear of it, and she felt that she would be doing well not to arouse that fear, and it was just during these roman days, when he would often walk about alone in the foreign town for hours on end, that he felt as though he were at times slipping away from anna in a manner that was not altogether unpleasant. one evening he had wandered about amid the ruins of the imperial palace until the approach of dusk and from the height of the palatine hill he had seen the sun set in the campagna with all the proud delight of the man who is alone. he had then gone driving for a while along the ancient wall of the city to monte pincio, and when as he leant back in the corner of his carriage he swept the roofs with his look till he saw the cupola of st. peter's, he felt with deep emotion that he was now experiencing the most sublime hour of the whole journey. he did not get back to the hotel till late, and found anna standing by the window pale and in tears, with red spots on her swollen cheeks. she had been dying of nervousness for the last two hours, had imagined that he had had an accident, had been attacked, had been killed. he reassured her, but did not find the words of affection which she wanted, for he felt in some unworthy way a sense of being tied and not free. she felt his coldness and gave him to understand that he did not love her enough; he answered with an irritation that verged on despair. she called him callous and selfish. he bit his lip, made no further answer, and walked up and down the room. still unreconciled they went into the dining-room, where they took their meal in silence, and went to bed without saying good-night. the following days were under the shadow of this scene. it was only on the journey to naples, when they were alone in the compartment, that in their joy over the new scenery to which they were flying they found each other again. from henceforward he scarcely left her a single minute, she seemed to him helpless and somewhat pathetic. he gave up visiting museums since she could not accompany him. they drove together to posilippo and walked in the villa nationale. in the excursion through pompeii he walked next to her sedan-chair like a patient affectionate husband, and while the guide was giving his descriptive account in bad french, george took anna's hand, kissed it and endeavoured in enthusiastic words to make her share in the delight that he himself felt once more in this mysterious roofless town, which after a burial of two thousand years had gradually returned street by street, house by house, to meet the unchanging light of that azure sky. and when they stopped at a place where some labourers were just engaged in extricating with careful movements of their shovels a broken pillar out of the ashes he pointed it out to anna with eyes which shone as brightly as though he had been storing up this sight for her for a long time, and as though everything which had happened before had simply been leading up to the fulfilment of his purpose of taking her to this particular place at this particular minute and showing her this particular wonder. on a dark blue may night they lay in two chairs covered with tarpaulins on the deck of the ship that was taking them to genoa. an old frenchman with clear eyes, who had sat opposite them at dinner, stood near them for a while and drew their attention to the stars that hung in the infinitude like heavy silver drops. he named some of them by name, politely and courteously, as though he felt it incumbent upon him to introduce to each other the shining wanderers of heaven and the young married couple. he then said good-night and went down into his cabin. but george thought of his lonely journey over the same route and under the same sky in the previous spring after his farewell from grace. he had told anna about her, not so much from any emotional necessity, as in order to free his past from that atmosphere of sinister mystery in which it often seemed to anna to disappear, by the conjuring up into life of a specific shape and the designation of a specific name. anna knew of labinski's death, of george's conversation with grace at labinski's grave, of george's stay with her in sicily. he had even shown her a picture of grace; and yet he thought to himself with a slight shudder how little anna herself knew of this very epoch of his life, which he had described to her with an almost reckless lack of reserve; and he felt how impossible it was to give any other person any idea of a period which that person had not actually lived through, and of the contents of so many days and nights every minute of which had been full of vivid life. he realised the comparative insignificance of the little lapses from truth of which he frequently allowed himself to be guilty in his narrative, compared with that ineradicable taint of falseness to which every memory gives birth on its short journey from the lips of one person to the ear of another. and if anna herself at some later time wanted to describe to some friend, some new lover, as honestly as she possibly could, the time which she spent with george, what after all could that friend really learn? not much more than a story such as he had read hundreds of times over in books: a story of a young creature who had loved a young man, had travelled about with him, had felt ecstasy and at times tedium, had felt herself at one with him, and yet had frequently felt lonely. and even if she should make an attempt to give a specific account of every minute ... there still remained an irrevocable past, and for him who has not lived through it himself the past can never be the truth. the stars glistened above him. anna's head had sunk slowly upon his breast and he supported it gently with his hands. only the slight ripple in the depths betrayed that the ship was sailing onward. but it still went on towards the morning, towards home, towards the future. the _hour_ which had loomed over them so long in silence seemed now about to strike and to begin. george suddenly felt that he no longer had his fate in his own hand. everything was going its course. and he now felt in his whole body, even to the hairs of his head, that the ship beneath his feet was relentlessly hurrying forward. they only remained a day in genoa. both longed for rest, and george for his work as well. they meant to stay only a few weeks at an italian lake and to travel home in the middle of june. the house in which anna was going to live would be bound to be ready by then. frau golowski had found out half-a-dozen suitable ones, sent specific details to anna and was waiting for her decision, though she still continued looking for others in case of emergency. they travelled from milan to genoa, but they could not stand the noisy life of a town any longer and left for lugano the very next day. they had been staying here for a period of four weeks and every morning george went along the road which took him, as it did to-day, along the cheerful shore of the lake, past _paradiso_ to the bend, where there was a view which every time he longed to see again. only a few days of their stay were still before them. in spite of the excellent state of anna's health since the beginning of their stay the time had arrived to return to the vicinity of vienna, so as to be able to be ready confidently for all emergencies. the days in lugano struck george as the best he had experienced since his departure from vienna. and he asked himself during many a beautiful moment, if the time he was spending here was not perhaps the best time of his whole life. he had never felt himself so free from desire, so serene both in anticipation and memory, and he saw with joy that anna also was completely happy. expectant gentleness shone in her forehead, her eyes gleamed with arch merriment, as at the time when george had wooed for their possession. without anxiety, without impatience and lifted by the consciousness of her budding motherhood far above the memory of home prejudices or any question of future complications, she anticipated with ecstasy the great hour when she was to give back to the waiting world as an animate creature, that which her body had drunk in during a half-conscious moment of ecstasy. george saw with joy the maturing in her of the comrade that he had hoped to find in her from the beginning, but who had so frequently escaped him in the course of the last few months. in their conversations about his works (all of which she had carefully gone through), about the theory of the song, about the more general musical questions, she revealed to him more knowledge and feeling than he had ever suspected she had in her. and he himself, though he did not actually compose much, felt as though he were making real strides forward. melodies resounded within him, harmonies heralded their approach, and he remembered with deep understanding a remark of felician's, who had once said after he had not had a sword in his hand for months on end, that his arm had had some good ideas during this period. the future, too, occasioned him no anxiety. he knew that serious work would begin as soon as he got back to vienna, and then his way would lie before him, clear and unencumbered. george stood for a long time by the bend in the road which had been the object of his walk. a short broad tongue of land, thickly overgrown with low shrubs, stretched from here straight into the lake, while a narrow gently sloping path led in a few steps to a wooden seat which was invisible from the street and on which george was always accustomed to sit down a little before returning to the hotel. "how many more times," he could not help thinking to-day. "five or six times perhaps and then back to vienna again." and he asked himself what would happen if they did not go back, if they settled down in some house somewhere in italy or switzerland, and began to build up with their child a new life in the double peacefulness of nature and distance. what would happen?... nothing. scarcely any one would be particularly surprised. and no one would miss either him or her, miss them with real grief. these reflections made his mood flippant rather than melancholy; the only thought that made him depressed was that he was frequently overcome by a kind of homesickness, a kind of desire in fact to see certain specific persons. and even now, while he was drinking in the lake air, surrendering himself to the blue of this half foreign, half familiar sky above him and enjoying all the pleasure of solitude and retirement, his heart would beat when he thought of the woods and hills around vienna, of the ringstrasse, the club and his big room with the view of the stadtpark. and he would have felt anxious if his child had not been going to be born in vienna. it suddenly occurred to him that another letter from frau golowski must have arrived to-day together with many other communications from vienna, and he therefore decided to take the road round by the post-office before going back to the hotel. for following his habit during the whole trip he had his letters addressed there and not to the hotel, since he felt that this would give him a freer hand in dealing with any outside emergency. he did not, as a matter of fact, get many letters from vienna. there was usually in spite of their brevity a certain element in heinrich's letters which, as george quite appreciated, was less due to any particular need of sympathy on the part of the author than to the circumstance that it was an integral part of his literary calling to breathe the breath of life into all the sentences which he wrote. felician's letters were as cool as though he had completely forgotten that last heartfelt talk in george's room and that brotherly kiss with which they had taken leave of each other.... he presumes, no doubt, thought george, that his letters will be read by anna too, and does not feel himself bound to give this stranger an insight into his private affairs and his private feelings. nürnberger had sent a few short answers to george's picture-postcards, while in answer to a letter from rome, in which george had referred to his sincere appreciation of the walks they had had together in the early spring, nürnberger expressed his regret in ironically apologetic phrases that he had told george on those excursions such a lot about his own family affairs which could not interest him in the slightest. a letter from old eissler had reached him at naples, informing him that there was no prospect of a vacancy for the following year at the detmold court theatre, but that george had been invited through count malnitz to be present at the rehearsals and performances as a "visitor by special request," and that this was an opportunity which might perhaps pave the way to something more definite in the future. george had given the proposition his polite consideration, but had little inclination for the time being to stay in the foreign town for any length of time with such vague prospects, and had decided to look out for a permanent appointment as soon as he arrived at vienna. apart from this there was no personal note in any of the letters from home. the remembrances to him which frau rosner felt in duty bound to append to her letters to her daughter made no particular appeal, although recently they had been addressed not to the herr baron but to george. he felt certain that anna's parents were simply resigned to what they could not alter, but that they felt it grievously all the same, and had not shown themselves as broad-minded as would have been desirable. in accordance with his habit george did not go back along the bank. passing through narrow streets between garden walls, then under arcades and finally over a wide space from which there was another clear view of the lake, he arrived in front of the post-office, whose bright yellow paint reflected the dazzling rays of the sun. a young lady whom george had already seen in the distance walking up and down the pavement, remained standing as he approached. she was dressed in white and carried a white sunshade spread out over a broad straw hat with a red ribbon. when george was quite near she smiled, and he now suddenly saw a well-known face beneath the white spotted tulle veil. "is it really you, fräulein therese?" he exclaimed as he took the hand which she held out to him. "how do you do, baron?" she replied innocently, as though this meeting were the most ordinary event imaginable. "how is anna?" "very well, thanks. of course you will come and see her?" "if i may." "but tell me now, what are you doing here? can it be that you"--and his glance swept her in amazement from top to toe--"are making a political tour?" "i can't exactly say that," she replied, pushing out her chin, without that movement having its usual effect of making her face appear ugly, "it's more of a holiday jaunt." and her face shone with a genuine smile as she saw george's glance turn towards the door, from which demeter stanzides had just come out in a striped black-and-white flannel suit. he lifted his grey felt hat in salutation and shook hands with george. "good-morning, baron. glad to see you again." "i am very glad, too, herr stanzides." "no letter for me?" therese turned to demeter. "no, therese. only a few cards for me," and he put them in his pocket. "how long have you been here?" inquired george, endeavouring to exhibit as little surprise as possible. "we arrived yesterday," replied demeter. "straight from vienna?" asked george. "no, from milan. we have been travelling for eight days. we were first in venice, that is the orthodox thing to do," added therese, pulled down her veil and took demeter's arm. "you been away much longer?" said demeter. "i saw a card from you some weeks back at ehrenbergs', the house of the vettii, pompeii." "yes, i've had a wonderful trip." "well, we'll have a look round the place a bit," said therese, "and besides, we don't want to detain the baron any more. i am sure he wants to go and fetch his letters." "oh, there is no hurry about that. anyway, we'll see each other again." "will you give us the pleasure, baron," said demeter, "of lunching with us to-day at the europe? that's where we put up." "thanks very much, but i'm afraid it's impossible. but ... but perhaps you could manage to dine with ... with ... us at the park hotel, yes? at half-past seven if that's all right for you. i'll have it served in the garden, under an awfully fine plane-tree, where we usually take our meals." "yes," said therese, "we accept with thanks. perhaps i'll come in an hour earlier and have a quiet chat with anna." "good," replied george, "she will be very glad." "well, till the evening, baron," said demeter, shook hands with him heartily and added: "please give my kind regards at home." therese flashed george an appreciative look, and then went on her way with demeter towards the bank of the lake. george looked after them. if i hadn't known her, he thought, demeter could have introduced her to me straight away as his wife, née princess x. how strange, those two.... he then went into the hall, had his correspondence given to him at the counter and ran cursorily through it. the first thing which caught his eye was a card from leo golowski. there was nothing on it except "dear george, mind you have a good time." then there was a card from the waldsteingarten in the prater, "we have just emptied our glasses to the health of our runaway friend. guido schönstein, ralph skelton, the rattenmamsell." george wanted to read the letters from felician, frau rosner and heinrich quietly at home with anna. he was also in a hurry to inform anna of the news of the strange couple's arrival. he was not quite free from anxiety, for anna's conventional instincts had a knack of waking up occasionally in a quite unexpected manner. anyway, george decided to tell her of his invitation to demeter and therese as though it were an absolute matter of course and was quite ready, in case she should feel hurt or irritated or even have doubts about the matter, to oppose such an attitude firmly and resolutely. he himself was very glad of the evening which was before him after the many weeks that he had spent exclusively in anna's society. he almost felt a little envious of demeter, who was on an irresponsible pleasure-trip like he himself when he had gone travelling with grace in the previous year. then it occurred to him that he liked therese better than ever. in spite of the numerous pretty women whom he had met in the course of the last month he had never felt seriously tempted, even though anna was losing more and more of her womanly grace. to-day for the first time he felt a desire for new embraces. he soon saw anna's light-blue morning dress shining through the railings of the balcony. george whistled the first notes of beethoven's fifth symphony, which was his usual method of announcing himself, and the pale gentle face of his beloved immediately appeared over the railings and her big eyes greeted him with a smile. he held up the packet of letters, she nodded with pleasure and he hurried quickly up to her room and on to the balcony. she was reclining in a cane chair in front of the little table with the green coverlet, on which some needlework was lying, as was nearly always the case when george came home from his morning walk. he kissed her on the forehead and on the mouth. "well, whom do you think i met?" he asked hurriedly. "else ehrenberg," answered anna, without considering. "what an idea? how could she get here?" "well," said anna slyly, "she might have travelled off to find you." "she might, but she didn't. so guess again. i give you three guesses." "heinrich bermann." "nowhere near it. besides there is a letter from him. so guess again." she reflected. "demeter stanzides," she then said. "what, do you really know something?" "what should i know? is he really here?" "by jove, you are positively blushing. ho ho!" he knew of her weakness for demeter's melancholy cavalier beauty but did not feel the slightest trace of jealousy. "so it is stanzides?" she asked. "yes, it is stanzides right enough. but with all the will in the world i can't find anything remarkable about that. it's not remarkable, either. but if you guess whom he is with...." "with sissy wyner." "but...." "well, i was thinking of marriage.... that happens too sometimes." "no, not with sissy, and not married, but with your friend therese, and as unmarried as possible." "get along...." "i tell you, with therese. they've been travelling for eight days. what have you got to say to that? they have been in venice and milan. had you any idea of it?" "no." "really not?" "really not. you know of course that therese only once wrote me a line, and you read her letter with your well-known interest." "you're not astonished enough." "good gracious, i always knew that she had good taste." "so has demeter," exclaimed george with conviction. "elective affinities," remarked anna, elevating her eyebrows, and went on crocheting. "and so this is the mother of my child," said george, with a merry shake of his head. she looked at him with a smile. "when is she coming to see me, then?" "in the afternoon about six, i think. and ... and stanzides is coming too ... a bit later. they are going to dine with us. you don't mind?" "mind? i'm very glad," replied anna simply. george was agreeably surprised. if anna in her present condition had met stanzides in vienna!... he thought. how being away from one's usual environment frees and purifies! "what news did they tell you?" asked anna. "we stood chatting together at the post-office for scarcely three minutes. he sends his regards to you, by the way." anna made no answer and it seemed to george as though her thoughts were travelling again on extremely conventional lines. "have you been up long?" he asked quickly. "yes, i have been sitting here on the balcony for quite a long time. i even went to sleep a bit, the air is so enervating to-day somehow. and i dreamed, too." "what did you dream about?" "of the child," she said. "again?" she nodded. "just the same as the other day. i was sitting here on the balcony in my dream, and had it in my arms at the breast...." "but what was it, a boy or a girl?" "i don't know. just a child. so tiny and so sweet. and the joy was so.... no i won't give it up," she said softly with closed eyes. he stood leaning on the railing and felt the light noon wind stroke his hair. "if you don't want to give it out to nurse," he said, "well you mustn't." and the thought ran through his mind, "wouldn't it be the most convenient thing to marry her?..." but something or other kept him back from saying so. they were both silent. he had laid the letters in front of him on the table. he now took them up and opened one. "let's see, first, what your mother writes?" he said. frau rosner's letter contained the news that all was well at home, that they would all be very glad to see anna again, and that josef had got a post on the staff of the _volksbote_ with a salary of fifty gulden a month. further, an inquiry had come from frau bittner as to when anna was coming back from dresden, and if it was really certain that she would be back again next autumn, because otherwise they would of course have to look about for a new teacher.... anna stood motionless and expressed no opinion. then george read out heinrich's letter. it ran as follows: "dear george, "i am very glad that you will be back so soon, and prefer to tell you so to-day, because once you are there i shall never tell you how very glad i shall be to see you. a few days ago, when i went for a lonely cycle ride along the danube, i genuinely missed you. what an overwhelming atmosphere of loneliness these banks have! i remember having once felt like that five or six years ago on a sunday, when i was in what is technically known as 'jolly company,' and was sitting in the kloster-neuburger beer-house in the large garden with its view of the mountains and the fields. how it ascends from the depths of the waters, loneliness i mean, which certainly is quite a different thing to what one usually thinks it is. it is very far from being the opposite of society. yet it is only perhaps when one is with other people that one has a right to feel lonely. just take this as an aphoristical humorously untrue special supplement, or treat it as such and lay it aside. to come back to my ride along the banks of the danube--it was on that same rather sultry evening that i had all kinds of good ideas, and i hope soon to be able to tell you a lot of startling news about Ägidius, for that's the name that the murderous melancholy youth has got at last, about the deep-thinking impenetrable prince, about the humorous duke heliodorus, the name by which i have the honour of introducing to you the princess's betrothed, and especially about the princess herself, who seems to be a far more remarkable person than i originally supposed." "that's to do with the opera plot?" asked anna, dropping her work. "of course," replied george, and went on reading. "you must also know, my dear friend, that i have finished during the last week some verses for the first act, which so far are not particularly immortal, verses which until some further development, so long i mean, as they are without your music, will hop about the world like wingless angels. the subject-matter appeals to me extraordinarily, and i myself am curious to know what i am really going to make of it. i've begun all kinds of other things as well ... sketched things out ... thought things over. and to put it shortly and with a certain amount of cheek i feel as though a new phase were heralding itself within me. this sounds of course greater cheek than it really is. for chimney-sweeps, ice-cream vendors and colour-sergeants have their phases as well. people of our temperament always recognise it at once. what i regard as very probable is that i shall soon leave the fantastic element in which i now feel so much at home, and will either move up or move down into something extremely real. what would you say, for example, if i were to go in for a political comedy? i feel already that the word 'real' is not quite the right one. for in my view politics is the most fantastic element in which persons can possibly move, the only thing is they don't notice it.... this is the point i ought to drive home. this occurred to me the other day when i was present at a political meeting (untrue, i always get these thoughts). yes--a meeting of working men and women in the brigittenau in which i found myself next to mademoiselle therese golowski, and at which i was compelled to hear seven speeches about universal suffrage. each of the speakers--therese was one of them, too--spoke just as though the solution of that question was the most important thing in the world to him or her personally, and i don't think that any of them had an idea that the whole question was a matter of colossal indifference to them at the real bottom of their hearts. therese was very indignant of course when i enlightened her on the point, and declared that i had been infected by the poisonous scepticism of nürnberger, of whom as a matter of fact i'm seeing far too much. she always makes a point of running him down, since he asked her some time ago in the café whether she was going to have her hair done high or in plaits at her next trial for high treason. anyway, i find it very nice seeing a lot of nürnberger. when i'm having my bad days, there is no one who receives me with more kindness. only there are many days whose badness he doesn't suspect or doesn't want to know of. there are various troubles which i feel that he fails to appreciate and which i've given up talking to him about." "what does he mean?" interrupted anna. "the affair with the actress, clearly," replied george, and went on reading. "on the other hand he is inclined to make up for that by taking other troubles of mine too seriously. that is probably my fault and not his. he manifested a sympathy towards me for the loss i sustained by my father's death, which i confess made me positively ashamed; for though it hit me dreadfully hard we had grown so aloof from one another quite a long time before his madness burst upon him, that his death simply signified a further and more ghastly barrier rather than a new experience." "well?" asked anna, as george stopped. "i've just got an idea." "what is it?" "nürnberger's sister lies buried in the cadenabbia cemetery. i told you about her. i'll run over one of these days." anna nodded. "perhaps i'll go too, if i feel all right. from all i hear of him i find nürnberger much more sympathetic than that horrible egoist your friend heinrich." "you think so?" "but really, the way he writes about his father. it is almost intolerable." "hang it all! if people who have grown so estranged as those two----" "all the same, i haven't really very much in common with my own parents temperamentally either, and yet.... if i.... no, no, i prefer not to talk about such things. won't you go on reading?" george read: "there are more serious things than death, things which are certainly sadder, because these other things lack the finality which takes away the sadness of death, if viewed from the higher standpoint. for instance, there are living ghosts who walk about the streets in the clear daylight with eyes that have died long ago and yet see, ghosts who sit down next to one and talk with a human voice that has a far more distant ring than if it came from a grave. and one might go so far as to say that the essential awfulness of death is revealed to a far greater extent in moments when one has experiences like this, than at those times when one stands near and watches somebody being lowered into the earth ... however near that somebody was." george involuntarily dropped the letter and anna said with emphasis: "well, you can certainly keep him to yourself--your friend heinrich." "yes," replied george slowly. "he is often a bit affected, and yet ... hallo, there goes the first bell for lunch. let's read quickly through to the end." "but i must now tell you what happened yesterday: the most painful and yet ridiculous affair which i have come across for a long time, and i am sorry to say the persons concerned are our good friends the ehrenbergs, father and son." "oh," cried anna involuntarily. george had quickly run through the lines which followed and shook his head. "what is it?" inquired anna. "it is.... just listen," and he went on reading. "you are no doubt aware of the growing acuteness of the relations between oskar and the old man in the course of the last year. you also know the real reasons for it, so that i can just inform you of what has taken place without going into the motives for it any further. well, it's just like this. yesterday oskar passes by the church of st. michael about twelve o'clock midday and takes off his hat. you know that at the present time piety is about the smartest craze going, and so perhaps it is unnecessary to go into any further explanation, as, for example, that a few young aristocrats happened just to be coming out of church and that oskar wanted to behave as a catholic for their special benefit. god knows how often he has previously been guilty of this imposture without being found out, but as luck would have it, it happens yesterday that old ehrenberg comes along the road at the same moment. he sees oskar taking off his hat in front of the church door ... and attacked by a fit of uncontrollable rage he gives his offspring a box on the ears then and there. a box on the ears! oskar the lieutenant in the reserve! midday in the centre of the town! so it is not particularly remarkable that the story was known all over the town the very same evening. it is already in some of the papers to-day. the jewish ones leave it severely alone, except for a few scandal-mongering rags, the anti-semitic ones of course go for it hot and strong. the _christliche volksbote_ is the best, and insists on both the ehrenbergs being brought before a jury for sacrilege or blasphemy. oskar is said to have travelled off, no one knows where, for the time being." "a nice family!" said anna with conviction. george could not help laughing against his will. "my dear girl, else is really absolutely innocent of the whole business." the bell rang for the second time. they went into the dining-room and took their places at a little table by the window which was always laid for them alone. scarcely more than a dozen visitors were sitting at the long table in the middle of the room, mostly englishmen and frenchmen, and also a man no longer in the first flush of youth, who had been there for two days and whom george took for an austrian officer in _mufti_. anyway he bothered about him as little as he did about the others. george had put heinrich's letter in his pocket. it occurred to him that he had not yet read it through to the end, and he took it out again over the coffee and perused the remainder. "what more does he write?" asked anna. "nothing special," answered george. "about people who probably wouldn't interest you particularly. he seems to have got in again with his café set; more in fact than he likes and clearly more than he owns up to." "he'll fit in all right," said anna flippantly. george smiled reflectively. "it is a funny set anyway." "and what is the news with them?" asked anna. george had put the letter down by the cup and now looked at it. "little winternitz ... you know ... the fellow who once recited his poems to me and heinrich last winter ... is going to berlin as reader to a newly-founded theatre. and gleissner, the man who stared at us once so in the museum...." "oh yes, that abominable fellow with the eyeglass." "well, he declares that he is going to give up writing to devote himself exclusively to sport...." "to sport?" "yes, quite a sport of his own. he plays with human souls." "what?" "just listen." he read: "this buffoon is now asserting that he is simultaneously engaged in the solution of the two following psychological problems, which supplement each other in quite an ingenious way. the first is to bring a young and innocent creature to the lowest depth of depravity, while the second is to make a prostitute into a saint, as he puts it. he promises that he will not rest until the first one finishes up in a brothel, and the second one in a cloister." "a nice lot," remarked anna and got up from the table. "how the sound carries over here," said george and followed her into the grounds. a dark-blue day, heavy with the sun, was resting on the tops of the trees. they stood for a while by the low balustrade which separated the garden from the street and looked over the lake to the mountains looming behind silver-grey veils that fluttered in the sunlight. they then walked deeper into the grounds, where the shade was cooler and darker, and as they walked arm-in-arm over the softly-crunching gravel along the high brown ivy-grown walls, and looked in at the old houses with their narrow windows, they chatted about the news that had arrived that day, and for the first time a slight anxiety rose up in their minds at the thought that they would so soon have to leave the friendly secrecy of foreign lands for home, where even the ordinary stereotyped day seemed full of hidden dangers. they sat down beneath the plane-tree at the white lacquered table. this place had always been kept free for them, as though it had been reserved. the newly-arrived austrian gentleman, however, had sat there yesterday afternoon, but driven away by a disapproving glance of anna's had gone away after a polite salutation. george hurried up to his room and fetched a few books for anna and a volume of goethe's poems and the manuscript of his quintette for himself. they both sat there, read, worked, looked up at times, smiled at each other, exchanged a few words, peered again into their books, looked over the balustrade into the open, and felt peace in their souls and summer in the air. they heard the fountain plashing quite near them behind the bushes, while a few drops fell upon the surface of the water. frequently the wheels of a carriage would crunch along on the other side of the high wall, at times faint distant whistles would sound from the lake, and less frequently human voices would ring into the garden from the road along the bank. the day, drunken to the full with sunlight, lay heavy on the tree-tops. later on the noise and the voices increased in volume and number with the gentle wind which was wafted from the lake every afternoon. the beat of the waves on the shore was more audible. the cries of the boatman resounded: on the other side of the wall there rang out the singing of young people. tiny drops from the fountain were sprinkled around. the breath of approaching evening woke once more human beings, land and water. steps were heard on the gravel. therese, still in white, came quickly through the avenue. george got up, went a few steps to meet her and shook hands. anna wanted to get up, too, but therese would not allow it, embraced her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and sat down by her side. "how beautiful it is here!" she exclaimed; "but haven't i come too early?" "what an idea! i'm really awfully glad," replied anna. therese considered her with a scrutinising smile and took hold of both her hands. "well, your appearance is reassuring," she said. "i am very well, as a matter of fact," replied anna, "and you look as if you were too," she joked good-humouredly. george's eyes rested on therese, who was again dressed in white, as she had been in the morning, though now more smartly in english embroidered linen, with a string of light pink corals round her bare throat. while the two women were discussing the strange coincidence of their meeting george got up to give the orders for dinner. when he returned to the garden the two others were no longer there. he saw therese on the balcony with her back leaning against the railing, talking with anna, who was invisible and was presumably in the depths of the room. he felt in good form and walked up and down the avenue, allowed melodies to sing themselves within him, was conscious of his youth and happiness, threw an occasional glance up to the balcony or towards the street, beyond the balustrade, and at last saw demeter stanzides arriving. he went to meet him. "glad to see you," he cried out in welcome from the garden gate. "the ladies are upstairs in the room but will be turning up soon. would you like to have a look at the grounds in the meanwhile?" "delighted." they went on walking together. "do you intend to stay much longer in lugano?" asked george. "no, we go to-morrow to bellaggio, from there to lake maggiore, isola bella. a really good time never lasts. we have got to be home again in a fortnight." "such short leave?" "oh, it is not on my account, but therese has got to go back. i am quite a free man. i have already sent in my papers." "so you seriously mean to retire to your estate?" "my estate?" "yes, i heard something to that effect at ehrenbergs'." "but i haven't got the estate yet, you see. it is simply in the stage of negotiations." "and where are you going to buy one? if it is not a rude question." "where the foxes say good-night to each other. the last place you would think of. on the hungarian-croatian frontier, very lonely and remote but very remarkable. i have a certain sympathy for the district. youthful memories. i spent three years there as a lieutenant. of course i think i shall grow young again there. well, who knows?" "a fine property?" "not bad. i saw it again two months ago. i knew it of course in the old days, it then belonged to count jaczewicz, finally to a manufacturer. then his wife died. he now feels lonely down there and wants to get rid of it." "i don't know," said george, "but i imagine the neighbourhood a little melancholy." "melancholy! well, it seems to me that at a certain period of one's life every neighbourhood acquires a melancholy appearance." and he looked round the balcony, as though to evolve from his surroundings a new proof of the truth of his words. "at what period?" "well, when one begins to get old." george smiled. demeter struck him as so handsome and as still young in spite of the grey hairs on his temple. "how old are you then, herr stanzides? if it isn't a rude question." "thirty-seven. i don't say i am old, but i am getting old. men usually begin to talk about getting old when they have been old for a long time." they sat down on the seat at the end of the garden, just where it runs into the wall. they had a view of the hotel and of the great terrace on the garden. the upper storeys with their verandahs were hidden from them by the foliage of the trees. george offered demeter a cigarette and took one himself. and both were silent for a while. "i heard that you, too, are leaving vienna," said demeter. "yes, that's very probable ... if of course i get a job in some opera. well, even if it isn't this year it is bound to be next." demeter sat with legs crossed over each other, gripped one of them tightly by the knee, and nodded. "yes, yes," he said, and blew the smoke slowly through his lips in driblets. "it is really a fine thing to have a talent. in that case one is bound to feel a bit different sometimes, even about beginning to grow old. that is really the one thing i could envy a man for." "you have no reason to at all. anyway, people with talent are not really to be envied. at any rate, only people with genius. and i envy them probably even more than you do. but i think that talents like yours are something much more definite, something much sounder so to speak. of course one doesn't always happen to be in form.... but at any rate, one always achieves something quite respectable if one can do anything at all, while people in my line, if they are not in form are no better than old age pensioners." demeter laughed. "yes, but an artistic talent like yours lasts longer and develops more and more as the years go on. take beethoven, for instance. the ninth symphony is really the finest thing he did. don't you think so. and what about the second part of _faust_?... while we are bound to go back as the years go on--we can't help it--even the beethovens amongst us. and how early it begins, apart from quite rare exceptions! i was at my prime for instance at twenty-five. i've never done again what i had in me at twenty-five. yes, my dear baron, those were times." "come, i remember seeing you win a race two years ago against buzgo, who was the favourite then.... why, i even betted on him...." "my dear baron," interrupted stanzides, "you take it from me, i know the reason why i left off improving. one can feel a thing like that oneself. and that's why no one knows so well as the sportsman when he's beginning to grow old. and then no further training is any good. the whole thing then becomes purely artificial. and if any one tells you that that's not the case, then he's simply ... but here come the ladies." they both got up. therese and anna were approaching arm-in-arm, one all in white, the other in a black dress, which falling to the ground in wide folds completely hid her figure. the couples met by the fountain. demeter kissed anna's hand. "what a beautiful spot i have the good fortune to see you again in, my dear lady." "it is a pleasant surprise to me, too," replied anna, "quite apart from the scenery." "do you know," said george to anna, "that these good people are travelling off again to-morrow?" "yes, therese has told me." "we want to see as much as possible," explained demeter, "and so far as my recollection goes the other lakes in upper italy are even more magnificent than the one here." "i don't know anything about the others," said anna. "we haven't done them yet." "well, perhaps you will take the opportunity," said demeter, "and make up a party with us for a little tour: bellaggio, pallanza, isola bella." anna shook her head. "it would be very nice but unfortunately i can't get about enough. yes, i am incredibly lazy. there are whole days when i never go out of the grounds. but if george fancies running away from me for a day or two, i don't mind at all." "i have no intention at all of running away from you," said george. he threw a quick glance at therese, whose eyes were sparkling and laughing. they all strolled slowly through the garden while it gradually became dusk, and chatted about the places they had recently seen. when they came back to the table under the plane-tree it was laid for dinner and the fairy-lights were burning in the glass holders. the waiter was just bringing the asti in a bucket. anna sat down on the seat, which had the trunk of the plane-tree for its back. therese sat opposite her and george and demeter on either side. the meal was served and the wine poured out. george inquired after their viennese acquaintances. demeter told them that willy eissler had brought back from his trip some brilliant caricatures both of hunters and of beasts. old ehrenberg had bought the pictures. "do you know about the oskar affair yet?" said george. "what affair?" "oh, the affair with his father in front of st. michael's church." he remembered that he had thought of telling demeter the story some time back before the ladies had appeared, but that he had thought it right to suppress it. it was the wine, no doubt, which now loosened his tongue against his will. he told them briefly what heinrich had written him. "but this is an extremely sad business," said demeter, very much moved, and all the others immediately felt more serious. "why is it a sad business?" asked therese. "i think it is enough to make one laugh till one cried." "my dear therese, you don't consider the consequences it may have for the young man." "good gracious, i know well enough. it will make him impossible in a certain set, but that won't do more than make him realise what a silly ass he has been up to the present." "well," said george, "if oskar really is one of those people who can be made to realise anything.... but i really don't think so." "apart from the fact, my dear therese," added demeter, "that what you call realising doesn't necessarily mean seeing things in their proper light. all sets of people have their prejudices. even you are not free from them." "and what prejudices have we got, i should like to know?" cried therese, and emptied her glass of wine angrily. "we only want to clear away certain prejudices, particularly the prejudice that there is this privileged caste who regard it as a special honour...." "excuse, me, therese dear, but you are not at a meeting now, and i am afraid that the applause at the conclusion of your speech will turn out much fainter than you are accustomed to." "look here," therese turned to anna, "this is how a cavalry officer argues." "i beg your pardon," said george, "the whole business has scarcely anything at all to do with prejudices. a box on the ears in the public street, even though it is from one's own father.... i don't think one has got to be an officer in the reserve or a student." "that box on the ears," cried therese, "gives me a real sense of relief. it represents the well-merited conclusion of a ridiculous and superfluous existence." "conclusion! we hope it's not that," said demeter. "my letter says," replied george, "that oskar has travelled off, no one knows where." "if i am sorry for any one in the business," said therese, "it is certainly for the old man, who, good-hearted fellow that he is, is probably regretting this very day the unpleasant position in which he has placed his beastly snob of a son." "good-hearted!" exclaimed demeter. "a millionaire! a factory owner!... my dear therese...!" "yes, it does happen sometimes. he happens to be one of those people who are at one with us at the bottom of their soul. you remember the evening, demeter, when you had the pleasure of seeing me for the first time. do you know why i was at ehrenbergs' then?... and do you know the object for which he gave me straight away a thousand gulden...? to...." she bit her lips. "i mustn't say, that was the condition." suddenly demeter got up and bowed to somebody who had just passed. it was the austrian gentleman who had arrived yesterday. he lifted his hat and vanished in the darkness of the garden. "do you know that man?" asked george, after a few seconds. "i also seem to know him, but who is it?" "the prince of guastalla," said demeter. "really!" exclaimed therese involuntarily, and her eyes pierced into the darkness. "what are you looking at him for?" said demeter. "he is just a man like any one else." "he is supposed to be banished from court," said george, "isn't he?" "i know nothing about that," replied demeter, "but he is certainly not a favourite there. he recently published a pamphlet about certain conditions in our army, particularly the life of the officers in the provinces. it went very much against him, although as a matter of fact there is nothing really bad in it." "he should have applied to me about that," said therese. "i could have given him a tip or two." "my dear child," said demeter deprecatingly, "what you are probably referring to again is simply an exceptional case. you shouldn't jump at once into generalities." "i am not generalising, but a case like that is sufficient to damn the whole...." "don't make a speech, therese...." "i am speaking about leo." therese turned to george. "it is really awful what he has been going through this year." george suddenly remembered that therese was leo's sister, as though it were a most remarkable thing which he had completely forgotten. did he know that she was here and whom she was with? demeter bit his lips somewhat nervously. "there is an anti-semitic first-lieutenant, you know," said therese, "who rags him in a particularly mean way because he knows how leo despises him." george nodded. he knew all about it. "my dear child," said demeter, "i can't make it out, as i have already told you several times. i happen to know first-lieutenant sefranek, and i assure you it is possible to get on with him. he is not particularly clever, and it may be quite right to say that he has got no particular liking for the israelites, but after all one must admit that there are a lot of so-called opprobrious anti-semitic expressions which really have no significance at all, and which, so far as my experience goes, are used by jews quite as much as by christians. and your worthy brother certainly suffers from a morbid sensitiveness." "sensitiveness is never morbid," retorted therese. "it is only lack of sensitiveness which is a disease, and the most loathsome one i know as a matter of fact. it is notorious that i am as far apart as possible from my brother in my political views. you know that best of all, george. i hate jewish bankers quite as much as feudal landed proprietors, and orthodox rabbis quite as much as catholic priests; but if a man feels himself superior to me because he belongs to another creed or another race than i do, and being conscious of his greater power makes me feel that superiority, i would.... well, i don't know what i would do to a man like that. but anyway i should quite understand leo if he were to take the next opportunity of going tooth-and-nail for herr sefranek." "my dear child," said demeter, "if you have the slightest influence with your brother you should try and stop this tooth-and-nail business at any price. in my view by far the best thing to do in a case like that is to go about things in the respectable, i mean the regulation way. it is really not at all true that that never does any good. the superior officers are mostly quiet people, at any rate they are correct and...." "but leo did that long ago ... as far back as february. he went to the major, the major was very nice to him, and as appears from many indications gave the first-lieutenant a good talking to; the only thing is it unfortunately wasn't the slightest use. on the contrary, the next chance he had the first-lieutenant made a special point of starting his beastly tricks again, and he is continuing them with the most refined malice. i assure you, baron, i am afraid every single day that some misfortune will happen." demeter shook his head. "we live in a mad age. i assure you"--he turned to george--"first-lieutenant sefranek is no more of an anti-semite than you or i. he visits at jewish houses. i even know that he was extremely intimate for years with a jewish regimental doctor. it really seems as though everybody were going mad." "you may be right in that," said therese. "oh, well, leo is so reasonable," said george. "he is so sensible in spite of all his temperament that i am convinced that he won't let himself be swept away by any foolish impulse. after all he must know that it will all be over in a few months; one can manage to put up with it for that time." "do you know, by-the-by, baron," said therese, while following the example of the men she took a cigarette out of a box which the waiter had brought, "do you know that leo was quite charmed with your compositions?" "what, charmed?" said george, while he gave therese a light. "i really hadn't noticed it at all." "well, he liked some things," qualified therese, "and that's practically the same as somebody else being delighted with them." "have you composed anything on your trip?" asked demeter courteously. "only a few songs." "i suppose we shall hear them in the autumn?" said demeter. "good gracious, don't let's talk about the autumn," said therese. "we may be dead or in prison before then." "well, if one really wants to one can manage to avoid the latter alternative," exclaimed demeter. therese shrugged her shoulders. george was sitting near her and believed he could feel the warmth of her body. lights were shining from the hotel windows and a long reddish strip reached the table at which the two couples were sitting. "i suggest," said george, "that we make the best of the fine evening and go for another walk along the shore." "or take a boat," exclaimed therese. they all agreed. george ran up to the room to fetch wraps. when he came down again he found the others standing by the door of the grounds ready to start. he helped anna into her light-grey cloak, hung his own long overcoat over therese's shoulders and kept a dark-green rug over his arm. they went slowly through the avenue to the place where the boats were moored. two boatmen took the party with quick strokes of their oars out of the darkness of the shore into the black shining water. the mountains towered up to the sky, monstrous and gigantic. the stars were not very numerous. tiny bluish-grey clouds hung in the air. the rowers sat on two cross benches; in the middle of the boat on narrow seats the two couples sat opposite each other: george and anna, demeter and therese. all were quite silent at first, it was only after some minutes that george broke the silence. he told them the name of the mountain which separated the lake from the south, drew their attention to a village, which though it seemed infinitely far away as it nestled up to the slope of a cliff could nevertheless be reached in a quarter of an hour; he recognised the white shining house on the height above lugano as the hotel in which demeter and therese were staying and told them about a walk far into the country between sunny vineyards which he had taken the other day. while he spoke anna kept hold of his hand underneath the rug. demeter and therese sat next to each other staidly and correctly, and not at all like lovers who had only found each other a short time ago. it was only now that george gradually recovered his fancy for therese, which had almost vanished during her loud violent speechifying. how long will this demeter affair last? he thought. will it be over when the autumn comes or will it after all last as long or longer than my affair with anna? will this row on the dark lake be some time in the future just a memory of something that has completely vanished, just like my row on the veldeser lake with that peasant girl, which now comes into my mind again for the first time for years?... or like my voyage with grace across the sea? how strange! anna is holding my hand, i am pressing it, and who knows if she isn't feeling at this very minute something similar with regard to demeter to what i am feeling about therese? no, i am sure not.... she carries a child under her heart which has already quickened.... that's why.... hang it all!... why, it's my child as well.... our child is now going for a row on the lake of lugano.... shall i tell it one day that it went for a row round the lake of lugano before it was born? how will it all turn out? we shall be back in vienna again in a few days. does vienna really exist? it will only slowly begin to come into existence again as we train back.... yes, that's how it is.... as soon as i'm home work will start seriously. i shall remain quietly at my home in vienna and just visit anna from time to time; i won't live with her in the country.... or at all events only just before ... and the autumn.... shall i be in detmold? and where will anna be? and the child?... with strangers somewhere in the country. how improbable the whole thing seems!... but it was also very improbable a year ago to-day that i and stanzides should go for a row on the lake of lugano with fräulein anna rosner and fräulein therese golowski respectively. and now the whole thing couldn't be more of a matter of course.... he suddenly heard with abnormal clearness, as though he had just woken up, demeter's voice quite near him. "when does our boat leave to-morrow?" "nine o'clock in the morning," replied therese. "she maps out the plan of campaign you know," said demeter. "i don't need to bother about anything." the moon suddenly shone out over the lake. it seemed as though it had waited behind the mountains and were now coming out to say goodbye. that infinitely distant village by the mountain-slope suddenly lay quite close in all its whiteness. the boat beached. therese got up. she was shrouded in the night and looked strikingly tall. george sprang out of the boat and helped her to disembark. he felt her cool fingers, which did not tremble, in his hand, but moved softly as though on purpose, and caught the breath from her lips quite close. demeter got out after her, then came anna, tired and awkward. the boatman thanked them for their generous tip and both couples started to walk homewards. the prince was sitting on a seat in a long dark cloak in the avenue along the bank. he was smoking a cigar, seemed to be looking out on to the nocturnal lake and turned away his head with the obvious intention of avoiding being saluted. "a man like that could tell a tale," said therese to george, with whom she had fallen further and further behind, while demeter and anna went on in front of them. "so you are going back to vienna as soon as all that?" asked george. "a fortnight. do you think that so soon? at any rate you will be home before us, won't you?" "yes, we shall leave in a few days. we can't put it off any longer. besides, we shall have to break the journey a few times. anna doesn't stand travelling well." "do you know yet that i found the villa for anna just before i left?" said therese. "really, you? did you go looking, too?" "yes, i went into the country a few times with my mother. it is a small fairly old house in salmansdorf with a beautiful garden, which leads straight out to the fields and forest, and the bit of ground in front of the house is quite overgrown.... anna will tell you more about it. i believe it is the last house in the place. then there comes an inn, but a fair distance away from it." "i must have overlooked that house on my house-hunting expeditions in the spring." "clearly, or you would have taken it. there is a little clay figure standing on a lawn near the garden hedge." "can't remember. but do you know, therese, it is really nice of you to have taken all this trouble for us, as well as your mother. more than nice." he thought of adding "when one takes your strenuous life into consideration," but suppressed it. "why are you surprised?" asked therese. "i am very fond of anna." "do you know what i once heard some one say about you?" replied george after a short pause. "well, what?" "that you would either finish up on the scaffold or as a princess." "that's a phrase of doctor berthold stauber. he once told it me himself, you know. he is very proud of it, but it is sheer nonsense." "the betting at present is certainly more on the princess." "who says so? the princess dream will soon be over!" "dream?" "yes, i am just beginning to wake up. it is rather like the morning air streaming into a bedroom." "and then i suppose the other dream will begin?" "what do you mean, the other dream?" "this is what i take to be the case with you. when you are in the public eye again, making speeches, sacrificing yourself for some cause or other, then at some moment or other the whole thing strikes you like a dream, doesn't it? and you think real life is somewhere else." "there is really something in what you say." at this moment demeter and anna, who were standing by the garden gate, turned round towards them both and immediately took the broad avenue towards the entrance of the hotel. george and therese also went on further, unseen outside the railing, into the darkest depths of the shade. george suddenly seized hold of his companion's hand. as though astonished she turned towards him and both now stood opposite each other, enveloped by the darkness and closer than they could understand. they did not know how ... they scarcely meant to, but their lips rested on each other for a short moment that was more charged with the doleful joy of deception than with any other emotion. they then went on, silent, unsatisfied, desirous, and stepped through the garden door. the two others, who were in front of the hotel, now turned round and came to meet them. therese quickly said to george: "of course you don't come with us?" george nodded slightly. they were now all standing in the broad quiet light of the arc-lamps. "it was really a beautiful evening," said demeter, kissing anna's hand. "goodbye then till vienna," said therese and embraced anna. demeter turned to george. "i hope we shall see each other to-morrow morning on the boat." "possibly, but i won't promise." "goodbye," said therese and shook hands with george. she and demeter then turned round to go away. "are you going with them?" asked anna, as they went through the door into the lounge, where men and women were sitting, smoking, drinking, talking. "what an idea?" replied george. "i never thought of it." "herr baron," suddenly called some one behind him. it was the porter, who held a telegram in his hand. "what is this?" asked george, somewhat alarmed, opening it quickly. "oh, how awful!" he exclaimed. "what is it?" asked anna. he read it out while she looked at the piece of paper. "oskar ehrenberg tried to commit suicide early this morning in the forest at neuhaus. shot himself in the temples, little hope of saving his life, heinrich." anna shook her head. they went up the stairs in silence and into anna's room. the balcony door was wide open. george stepped into the open air. a heavy perfume of magnolias and roses streamed in out of the darkness. not a trace of the lake was visible. the mountains towered up as though they had grown out of the abyss. anna came up to george. he laid his arm on her shoulder and loved her very much. it was as though the serious event of which he had just had tidings, had compelled him to realise the true significance of his own experiences. he knew once more that there was nothing more important for him in the whole world than the well-being of this beloved woman who was standing with him on the balcony and who was to bear him a child. vi when george stepped on to the summer heat of the pavement out of the cool central restaurant where he had been accustomed to take his meals for some weeks, and started on his way to heinrich's apartment, his mind was made up to start his trip into the mountains within the next few days. anna was quite prepared for it, and appreciating that the monotonous life of the last few weeks was beginning to make him feel bored and mentally restless had even herself advised him to go away for a few days. they had returned to vienna six weeks ago on a rainy evening and george had taken anna straight from the station to the villa, where anna's mother and frau golowski had been waiting for the overdue travellers for the last two hours in a large but fairly empty room, with a dilapidated yellowish carpet under the dismal light of a hanging lamp. the door on to the garden verandah stood open. outside the pattering rain fell on to the wooden floor and the warm odour of moist leaves and grass swept in. george inspected the resources of the house by the light of a candle which frau golowski carried in front of him, while anna reclined exhausted in the corner of the large sofa covered with fancy calico and was only able to give tired answers to her mother's questions. george had soon taken leave of anna with mingled emotion and relief, stepped with her mother into the carriage which was waiting outside, and while they rode over the dripping streets into the town he had given the embarrassed woman a faithful if forced account of the unimportant events of the last days of their trip. he was at home an hour after midnight, refrained from waking up felician, who was already asleep, and with an undreamt-of joy stretched himself out in his long-lost bed for his first sleep at home after so many nights. since then he had gone out into the country to see anna nearly every day. if he did not feel tempted to make little trips round the summer resorts in the neighbourhood he could easily get to her in an hour on his cycle. but he more frequently took the horse tram and would then walk through the little villages till he came to the low green painted railings behind which stood the modest country house with its three-cornered wooden gable in the small slightly sloping garden. frequently he would choose a way which ran above the village between garden and fields and would enjoy climbing up the green slope till he came to a seat on the border of the forest, from which he could get a clear view of the straggling little place lying in the tiny valley. he saw from here straight on to the roof beneath which anna lived, deliberately allowed his gentle longing for the love who was so near him to grow gradually more and more vivid till he hurried down, opened the tiny door and stepped over the gravel straight through the garden towards the house. frequently, in the more sultry hours of the afternoon, when anna was still asleep, he would sit in the covered wooden verandah which ran along the back of the house in a comfortable easy-chair covered with embroidered calico, take out of his pocket a book he had brought with him and read. then frau golowski in her neat simple dark dress would step out of the dark inner room and in her gentle somewhat melancholy voice, with a touch of motherly kindness playing around her mouth, would report to him about anna's health, particularly whether she had had a good appetite and if she had had a proper walk up and down the garden. when she had finished she always had something to see to in the kitchen or about the house and disappeared. then while george was going on with his reading a fine st. bernard dog which belonged to people in the neighbourhood would come out, greet george with serious tearful eyes, allow him to stroke her short-haired skin and lie down gratefully at his feet. later, when a certain stern whistle which the animal knew well rang out, it would get up with all the clumsiness of its condition, seem to apologise by means of a melancholy look for not being able to stay longer and slink away. children laughed and shouted in the garden next door. now and again an indiarubber ball came over the wall. a pale nursemaid would then appear at the bottom gate and shyly request to have the ball thrown back again. finally, when it had grown cooler, anna's face would show itself at the window that opened on to the verandah, her quiet blue eyes would greet george, and soon she would come out herself in a light house-dress. they would then walk up and down the garden along the faded lilac-bushes and the blooming currant-bushes, usually on the left side, which was bounded by the open meadow, and they would take their rest on the white seat close to the top end of the garden, underneath the pear-tree. it was only when supper was served that frau golowski would appear again, shyly take her place at the table and tell them if asked all the news about her family; about therese, who had now gone on to the staff of a socialist journal; about leo, who being less occupied by his military duties than before was enthusiastically pursuing his mathematical studies; and about her husband, who while he looked on with resignation from the corner of a smoky café at the chess battles of the indefatigable players, always saw new vistas of regular employment display themselves only to close again immediately. frau rosner only paid an occasional visit and usually went away soon after george's appearance. on one occasion, on a sunday afternoon, the father had come as well and had a conversation with george about the weather and scenery, just as though they had met by chance at the house of a mutual acquaintance who happened to be ill. it was only to humour her parents that anna kept herself in complete retirement in the villa. for she herself had grown to lose all consciousness of any false position, feeling just as though she had been george's wedded wife, and when the latter, tired of the monotonous evenings, asked her for permission to bring heinrich along sometimes she had agreeably surprised him by immediately expressing her agreement. heinrich was the only one of george's more intimate friends who still remained in town in these oppressive july days. felician, who had been as affectionate with his brother since his return home as though the comradeship of their boyhood had been kindled afresh, had just taken his diplomatic examination and was staying with ralph skelton on the north sea. else ehrenberg, who had spoken to george once soon after his return by her brother's sick-bed in the sanatorium, had been for a long time at auhof am see with her mother. oskar too, whom his unfortunate attempt at suicide had cost his right eye, though it was said to have saved him his lieutenant's commission, had left vienna with a black shade over his blinded eye. demeter stanzides, willy eissler, guido schönstein, breitner, all were away, and even nürnberger, who had declared so solemnly that he did not mean to leave the town this year, had suddenly vanished. george had visited him before any one else after he came back, to bring him some flowers from his sister's grave in cadenabbia. he had read nürnberger's novel on his journey. the scene was laid in a period which was now almost past; the same period, so it seemed to george, as that of which old doctor stauber had once spoken to him. nürnberger had thrown a grim light over that sickly world of lies in which adult men passed for mature, old men for experienced, and people who did not offend against any written law for righteous; in which love of freedom, patriotism and humanitarianism passed _ipso facto_ for virtue, even though they had grown out of the rotten soil of thoughtlessness or cowardice. he had chosen for the hero of his book a sterling and energetic man who, carried away by the hollow phrases of the period, saw things as they were from the height which he had reached and seized with horror at the realization of his own dizzy ascent, precipitated himself into the void out of which he had come. george was considerably astonished that a man who had created this strong and resounding piece of work should subsequently confine himself to casual cynical comments on the progress of the age, and it was only a phrase of heinrich's to the effect that wrath but not loathing was fated to be fertile that made him understand why nürnberger's work had been stopped for ever. the lonely hour in the cadenabbia cemetery on that dark blue late afternoon had made as strange and deep an impression upon george as though he had actually known and appreciated the being by whose grave he stood. it had hurt him that the gold lettering on the grey stone should have grown faint and that the beds of turf should have been overgrown with weeds, and after he had plucked a few yellow-blue pansies for his friend he had gone away with genuine emotion. he had cast a glance from the other side of the cemetery door through the open window of the death-chamber, and saw a female body on a bier between high burning candles, covered with a black pall as far as her lips, while the daylight and candlelight ran into one another over its small waxen face. nürnberger had not been unmoved by this sympathetic attention on the part of george and on that day they spoke to each other more intimately than they had ever done before. the house in which nürnberger lived was in a narrow gloomy street which led out of the centre of the town and mounted in terraces towards the danube. it was ancient, narrow and high. nürnberger's apartment was on the fifth and top storey, which was reached by a staircase with numerous turns. in the low though spacious room into which george stepped out of a dark hall stood old but well-preserved furniture, while an odour of camphor and lavender came insistently out of the alcove in the recess in front of which a pale green curtain had been let down. portraits of nürnberger's parents in their youth hung on the wall together with brown engravings of landscapes after the dutch masters. numerous old photographs in wooden frames stood on the sideboard. nürnberger fetched a portrait of his dead sister out of a secretary-drawer where it lay beneath some letters that had been yellowed by time. it showed her as a girl of eighteen in a child's costume which seemed to have a kind of historical atmosphere, holding a ball in her hand, and standing in front of a hedge, behind which there towered a background of cliffs. nürnberger introduced all these unknown faraway and dead persons to his friend to-day by means of their portraits, and spoke of them in a tone which seemed to make the gulf of time between the then and the now both wider and deeper. george's glance often swept out over the narrow street towards the grey masonry of ancient houses. he saw small cobwebbed panes with all kinds of household utensils behind them. flower-pots with miserable plants stood on a window-ledge, while fragments of bottles, broken-up barrels, scraps of paper, mouldy vegetables lay in a gutter between two houses, a battered pipe ran down between all this rubbish and disappeared behind a chimney. other chimneys were visible to right and left, the back of a yellowish stone gable could be seen, towers reared up towards the pale blue heaven and a light grey spire with a broken stone cupola which george knew very well, appeared unexpectedly near. automatically his eyes tried to find the quarter where he might be able to fix the position of the house in whose entrance the two stone giants bore on their powerful shoulders the armorial bearings of a vanished stock, and in which his child, which was to come into the world in a few weeks, had been begotten. george gave an account of his trip. he felt the spirit of this hour so deeply that he would have thought himself petty if he had let the matter rest at half-truths. but nürnberger had known the story, and in its entirety too, long ago, and when george showed a little astonishment at this he smiled mockingly. "don't you still remember," he asked, "that morning when we looked over a summer residence in grinzing?" "of course." "and don't you remember too that a woman with a little child in her arms took us round the house and garden?" "yes." "before we went away the child held out its arms towards you, and you looked at it with a certain amount of emotion in your expression." "and that's what made you conclude that i...." "oh well, you know, you're not the man to go in for thrills over the sight of small children, a bit unwashed, too, into the bargain, if they are not linked on to associations of a personal character." "one must beware of you," said george jestingly, but not without some sense of uneasiness. the slight irritation, which he always felt again and again at nürnberger's superior manner, was far from preventing him from cultivating his society more and more. he frequently fetched him from home to go for walks in the streets and parks, and he felt a sense of satisfaction, a sense in fact of personal triumph, when he managed to draw him from the rarefied regions of bitter wisdom into the gentler fields of affectionate intercourse. george's walks with him had become such a pleasant habit that he felt as though his daily life had been impoverished when he found one morning that nürnberger's apartment was closed. some days afterwards came a card of apology from salzburg, which was also signed by a married couple, a manufacturer and his wife, good-natured cheery people, whom george had once got to know slightly through nürnberger in graben. according to heinrich's malicious description the common friend of this married couple had been dragged down the stairs, of course after a desperate resistance, made to sit down in a carriage and been transported to the station more or less like a prisoner. according to heinrich, too, nürnberger had several friends of this innocent kind who felt the need of getting the celebrated cynic to let a few drops of his malice trickle into their palatable cup of life, while nürnberger on his side liked to recuperate in their free-and-easy society from the strain of his acquaintances in literary and psychological circles. the meeting with heinrich had meant a disillusionment to george. after the first words of greeting the author had as usual only spoken about himself, and that, too, in tones of the deepest contempt. he had come at last to the conclusion that he did not really possess any talent but only intelligence, though that of course to an enormous degree. the thing about himself that he cursed the most violently was the lack of harmony in the various phases of his character, which as he well knew not only occasioned suffering to himself but to all who came near him. he was heartless and sentimental, flippant and melancholic, sensitive and callous, an impossible companion and yet drawn towards his fellow-beings ... at any rate at times. a person with such characteristics could only justify his existence by producing something immense, and if the masterpiece which he felt obliged to create did not appear on the scene very soon he would feel that as a decent man he would be obliged to shoot himself. but he was not a decent man.... there lay the rub. "of course you won't shoot yourself," thought george, "principally because you haven't got the pluck to do so." of course he did not give expression to this thought but on the contrary was very sympathetic. he talked of the moods to which after all every artist is liable, and inquired kindly about the material conditions of heinrich's life. it soon transpired that he wasn't in such a bad way by any means. he was even leading a life which as it appeared to george was freer from anxiety than it had ever been before. the maintenance of his mother and sisters for the ensuing years had been assured by a small legacy. in spite of all the hostile influences which were at work against him the fame of his name was increasing from day to day. the miserable affair with the actress seemed to be finished once and for all, and a quite new relationship with a young lady which was as free and easy as could possibly be desired, was actually bringing a certain amount of gaiety into his life. even his work was making good progress. the first act of the opera libretto was as good as ready, and he had made numerous notes for his political comedy. he intended next year to visit the sittings of parliament and attend meetings, and coquetted with the admittedly childish fantastic plan of posing as a member of the social democratic party, trying to tack himself on to the leaders and getting himself taken on, if he could get the chance, as an active member of some organisation or other, simply so as to get a complete insight into the party machinery. still, you know, when he had been talking to any one for five minutes on end, why he had got him absolutely. he would find in some casual word, whose significance would completely escape any one else, a kind of whirlwind which tore the veil from off the souls of men. his dream was to prove himself a master of imagination in his opera poem and a master of realism in his comedy, and thus show the world that he was equally at home both in heaven and on earth. at a subsequent meeting george got him to read as much of the first act of the opera as he had finished. he found the verses very singable and asked heinrich to allow him to take the manuscript to anna. anna could not bring herself to fancy much what george read out to her; but he asserted, though without any real conviction, that what she felt was just the very longing for these verses to be set to music, and that that must necessarily strike her as a weakness. when george came into heinrich's room to-day the latter was sitting at the big table in the middle of the room, which was covered over with papers and letters. written papers of all kinds lay about on the piano and on the ottoman. heinrich still had a sheet of faded yellow paper in his hand when he got up and hailed george with the words, "well, how goes the country?" this was the way in which he was accustomed to inquire after anna's health, a way which george felt afresh every single time to be unduly familiar. "quite well, thanks," he replied. "i have just come to ask you if perhaps you would care to come out there with me to-day." "oh yes, i should like to very much. the thing is, though, that i am just in the middle of putting various papers in order. i can't come before the evening about seven or so. will that suit you?" "quite," said george. "but i see i am disturbing you," he added as he pointed to the littered table. "not at all," replied heinrich. "i am only tidying up, as i just told you. they're my father's posthumous papers. those there are letters to him and here are rough notes more or less like a diary, written for the most part during his parliamentary period. tragic, i tell you! how that man loved his country! and how did they thank him? you've no idea of the refinement with which they drove him out of his party. a complicated network of intrigue, bigotry, brutality.... thoroughly german, to put the matter in a nutshell." george felt a sense of antagonism. "and he dares," he thought, "to hold forth about anti-semitism. is he any better? any juster? does he forget that i am a german myself...?" heinrich went on speaking. "but i will give this man a memorial.... he and no other shall be the hero of my political drama. he is the truly tragi-comic central figure which i have always been wanting." george's antagonism became intensified. he felt a great desire to protect old bermann against his son. "a tragi-comic figure," he repeated, almost aggressively. "yes," retorted heinrich unhesitatingly, "a jew who loves his country.... i mean in the way my father did, with a real feeling of solidarity, with real enthusiasm for the dynasty, is without the slightest question a tragi-comic figure. i mean ... he belonged to that liberalising epoch of the seventies and eighties when even shrewd men were overcome by the catch-words of the age. a man like that to-day would certainly appear merely comic. yes, even if he had finished up by hanging himself on the first nail he came across i could not regard his fate as anything else." "it is a mania of yours," replied george. "you really very often give one the impression that you have quite lost the capacity of seeing anything else in the world except the jewish question, you always see it everywhere. if i were as discourteous as you happen to be at times, i would ... you'll forgive me of course, say that you were suffering from persecution-mania." "persecution-mania ..." replied heinrich dully, as he looked at the wall. "i see, so you call it persecution-mania, that.... oh well." and then he continued suddenly with clenched teeth: "i say, george, i want to ask you something on your conscience." "i'm listening." he placed himself straight in front of george, and with his eyes pierced his forehead. "do you think there's a single christian in the world, even taking the noblest, straightest and truest one you like, one single christian who has not in some moment or other of spite, temper or rage, made at any rate mentally some contemptuous allusion to the jewishness of even his best friend, his mistress or his wife, if they were jews or of jewish descent?" and without waiting for george's answer: "there isn't one, i assure you. you can try another test also if you like. read for instance the letters of any celebrated and otherwise perfectly shrewd and excellent man and observe the passages which contain hostile and ironic expressions about his contemporaries. ninety-nine times out of a hundred it simply deals with an individual without taking any account of his descent or creed. in the hundredth case, where the miserable victim has the misfortune to be a jew, the writer will certainly not forget to mention that fact. that's just how the thing is, i can't help it. what you choose to call persecution-mania, my dear george, is in reality simply an extremely intense consciousness that has been kept continuously awake of a condition in which we jews happen to find ourselves. and as for talking about persecution-mania, why it would be much more logical to talk about a mania for being hidden, a mania for being left alone, a mania for being safe; which though perhaps a less sensational form of disease is certainly a much more dangerous one for its victims. my father suffered from it, like many others of his generation. he at any rate made such a radical cure that he went mad in the process." deep furrows appeared on heinrich's forehead and he looked again towards the wall, straight past george, who had sat down on the hard black leather ottoman. "if that's your way of looking at things," replied george, "why, you have no other logical alternative but to join leo golowski...." "and migrate to palestine with him. is that what you think? as a matter of symbolical politics or actually--what?" he laughed. "have i ever said that i want to get away from here? that i would prefer to live anywhere else except here? above all, have i ever said that i liked living among jews? so far as i at any rate am concerned that would be a purely objective solution of an essentially subjective problem." "i really think so also. and that's why, to tell the truth, i understand less than ever what you want, heinrich. i had the impression last autumn, when you had your tussle with golowski on the sophienalp, that you looked at the matter far more hopefully." "more hopefully?" repeated heinrich in an injured tone. "yes. one felt bound to think then that you believed in the possibility of a gradual assimilation." heinrich contemptuously contracted the corners of his mouth. "assimilation.... a phrase.... yes, that'll come all right some time or other ... in a very very long time. it won't come at all in the way many want it to--it won't come either in the way many are afraid it will.... further, it won't be exactly assimilation ... but perhaps something that beats in the heart of that particular word so to speak. do you know what it will probably look like in the end? that we, we jews i mean, have been a kind of ferment in the brewing of humanity--yes, perhaps that'll come out in anything from one to two thousand years from now. it is a consolation too. don't you think so?" he laughed again. "who knows," said george reflectively, "if you won't be regarded as right--in a thousand years? but till then?" "why, my dear george, there won't be anything in the way of a solution of the question before then. in our time there won't be any solution, that's absolutely positive. no universal solution at any rate. it will rather be a case of a million different solutions. for it's just a question which for the time being every one has got to settle for himself as best he can. every one must manage to find an escape for himself out of his vexation or out of his despair or out of his loathing, to some place or other where he can breathe again in freedom. perhaps there are really people who would like to go as far as jerusalem to find it ... i only fear that many of them, once they arrive at their official goal, would then begin to realise that they had made an utter mistake. i don't think for a minute that migrations like that into the open should be gone in for in parties.... for the roads there do not run through the country outside but through our own selves. every one's life simply depends on whether or not he finds his mental way out. to do that of course it is necessary to see as clearly as possible into oneself, to throw the searchlight into one's most hidden crannies, to have the courage to be what one naturally is--not to be led into a mistake. yes, that should be the daily prayer of every decent man: to make no mistake." where is he getting to again now? thought george. he is quite as morbid in his way as his father was. and at the same time one can't say that he has been personally through bad times. and he has asserted on one occasion that he felt there was no one with whom he had anything in common. it is not a bit true. he feels he has something in common with all jews and he stands nearer to the meanest of them than he does to me. while these thoughts were running through his mind his glance fell on a big envelope lying on the table, and he read the following words written on it in large roman capitals: "don't forget. never forget." heinrich noticed george's look and took the envelope up in his hand. three strong grey seals could be seen on its back. he then threw it down again on the table, drooped his underlip contemptuously and said: "i've tidied up that business as well, you know, to-day. there are days like this when one goes in for a great cleaning-up. other people would have burnt the stuff. what's the point? i shall perhaps read it again with pleasure. the anonymous letters i once told you about are in this envelope, you know." george was silent. up to the present heinrich had vouchsafed no information as to the circumstances under which his relations with the actress had come to an end. only one passage in his letter to lugano had hinted at the fact that it had not been without a certain deep-felt horror that he had seen his former mistress again. almost against his own will the following words came out of george's mouth: "you know, of course, the story of nürnberger's sister who lies buried in cadenabbia?" heinrich answered in the affirmative. "what makes you think of that?" "i visited her grave a few days before i came back." he hesitated. heinrich was looking fixedly at him with a violently interrogative expression which compelled george to go on speaking. "just think now, isn't it strange? since that time those two persons are always associated together in my memory, though i have never seen one of them and have only caught a glimpse of the other one at the theatre--as you know. i mean nürnberger's dead sister and ... this actress." heinrich grew pale to his very lips. "are you superstitious?" he asked scornfully, but it sounded as though he were asking himself. "not at all," cried george. "besides, what has superstition to do with this matter?" "i'll only tell you that everything that has any connection at all with mysticism goes radically against the grain with me. lots of twaddle is passed off in the world for science, but talking about things which one can't know anything about, things whose very essence is that one can never know anything about them, is in my view the most intolerable twaddle of the whole lot." "can she have died, this actress?" thought george. suddenly heinrich took up the envelope again in his hand, and said in that dry tone which he liked to assume at those very moments when he was most deeply harrowed: "writing out these words here is childish tomfoolery or affectation if you like. i could also have added the words daudet put before his sappho: 'to you, my son, when you are twenty years of age....' too silly, anyway. as though the experiences of one man could be the slightest use to another man. the experiences of one man can often be amusing for another, more often bewildering, but never instructive.... and do you know why it is that both those figures are associated in your brain? i'll tell you why. simply because in one of my letters i employed the expression 'ghost' with reference to my former mistress. so that clears up this mysterious embroglio." "that's not impossible," replied george. from somewhere or other came the indistinct sound of bad piano-playing. george looked out. the sun lay on the yellow wall opposite. many windows were open. a boy sat at one of them, his arms resting on the window-ledge, and read. from another two young girls looked down into the garden courtyard. the clattering of utensils was audible. george longed for the open air, for his seat on the border of the forest. before he turned to go it occurred to him to say: "i wanted to tell you, heinrich, that anna too liked your verses very much. have you written any more?" "not many." "it would be nice if you brought along to-day all you have done of the libretto and read it to us." he stood by the piano and struck a couple of chords. "what's that?" asked heinrich. "a theme," replied george "that's just occurred to me for the second act. it is meant to accompany the moment in which the remarkable stranger appears on the ship." heinrich shut the window, george sat down and started to go on playing. there was a knock at the door, and heinrich automatically cried: "come in." a young lady came in in a light cloth skirt with a red silk blouse and a white velvet ribbon with a little gold cross round her neck. a florentine hat trimmed with roses shaded with its broad brim the pale little face from which two big black eyes peered out. "good afternoon," said the strange lady in a low voice, which sounded at the same time both defiant and embarrassed. "excuse me, herr bermann, i didn't know that you had visitors," and she looked inquisitively at george, who had at once recognised her. heinrich grew paler and puckered his forehead. "i certainly had no idea," he began. he then introduced them and said to the lady: "won't you sit down?" "thanks," she answered curtly and remained standing. "perhaps i'll come again later." "please don't," cut in george. "i am just on the point of running off." he watched the look of the actress roving round the room and felt a strange pity for her, such as one frequently feels in dreams for dead people who do not know that they have died. he then saw heinrich's glance rest on this pale little face with inconceivable hardness. he now remembered very clearly seeing her on the stage, with the reddish-blonde hair that fell over her forehead and her roving eyes. "that's not how persons look," he thought, "who are fated to belong only to _one_ man. and to think of heinrich, who plumes himself so much on his knowledge of character, never having felt that! what did he really want of her? it was vanity which burnt in his soul, nothing more than vanity." george walked along the street, which was like a dry oven. the walls of the houses threw back into the air the summer heat which they had absorbed. george took the horse-tram to the hills and woods, and breathed more freely when he was in the country. he walked slowly on between the gardens and villas, then passing the churchyard he took a white road with a gradual incline called sommerhaidenweg, which he regarded as a good omen, and which was used by practically nobody during this late hour of a sunny afternoon. no shade came from the wooded line of heights on his left, only a gentle purring of breezes which had gone to sleep in the leaves. on the right a green incline sloped downwards towards the long stretch of valley where roofs were gleaming between the boughs and tree-tops. further down vineyards and tilled fields struggled up behind garden fences towards meadows and quarries, over which shrubbery and bushes hung in the glittering sun. the path along which george was accustomed to wander was just a thin straight line often lost among the fields, and his eye sought the place on the border of the forest where his favourite seat was situated: meadows and wooded heights at the end of the valley with fresh vales and hills. george felt himself strangely wedded to this landscape and the thought that his own career and his own will called him abroad often wove farewell moods around his lonely walks even now. but at the same time a presentiment of a richer life stirred within him. it was as though many things were coming to birth in his soul which he had no right to disturb by anxious reflection; and there was a murmur of the melodies of days to come in the lower depths of his soul, though it was not yet vouchsafed to him to hear them clearly. he had not been idle, either, in drafting out clearly the rough plan of his future. he had written a letter of polite thanks to detmold, in which he placed himself with reservation at the disposition of the manager for the coming autumn. he had also looked up old professor viebiger, explained his plans to him and requested him if the opportunity presented itself to remember his former pupil. but even though contrary to his expectations he failed to find a position in the autumn he was determined to leave vienna, to retire for the time being to a small town or into the country, and to go on working by himself amid the quietness. he had not clearly worked out how his relations to anna would shape under these circumstances. he only knew that they must never end. he thought vaguely that he and anna would visit each other and go on journeys together at some convenient time; subsequently no doubt she would move to the place where he lived and worked. but it struck him as useless to go deeply into these matters before the actual hour arrived, since his own life had been definitely decided at any rate for the coming year. the sommerhaidenweg ran into the forest, and george took the broad villenweg, which crossed the valley at this point and curved downwards. in a few minutes he found himself in the street, at the end of which stood the little villa in which anna lived. it was close to the forest, near unpretentious yellow bungalows and only raised above their level by its attic and balcony with its triangular wooden gable. he crossed the plot of ground in front of the house where the little blue clay angel welcomed him on its square pedestal in the middle of the lawn between the flower-beds, and went through the narrow passage near which the kitchen lay, and the cool middle room on whose floor the rays of the sun were playing through the dilapidated green venetian blinds and stepped on to the verandah. he turned towards the left and cast a glance through the open window into anna's room, which he found empty. he then went into the garden and walking along the lilac and currant-bushes towards the bottom, soon saw anna some way off, sitting on the white seat under the pear-tree in her loose blue dress. she did not see him coming, but seemed quite plunged in thought. he slowly approached. she still did not look up. he loved her very much at moments like this when she thought she was unobserved and the goodness and peacefulness of her character floated serenely around her clear forehead. the grasshoppers chirruped on the gravel at their feet. opposite them on the grass the strange st. bernard dog lay sleeping. it was the animal which first noticed george's arrival as it woke up. it got up and jogged clumsily towards george. anna now looked up and a happy smile swept over her features. why am i so seldom here? was the thought which ran through george's mind. why don't i live out here and work on top on the balcony under the gable, which has a beautiful view on to the sommerhaidenweg? his forehead had grown damp, for the late afternoon sun was still blazing. he stood in front of anna, kissed her on the eyes and mouth and sat down at her side. the animal had slunk after him and stretched itself out at his feet. "how are you, my darling?" he asked, while he put his arm around her neck. she was very well, as usual, and to-day was a particularly fine day. she had been left quite to herself since the morning, for frau golowski had to go to town again to look after her family. it was really not so bad to be so completely alone with oneself. one could sink then into one's dreams undisturbed. they were of course always the same, but they were so sweet that one did not get tired of them. she had let herself dream about her child. how much she loved it to-day, even before it was born! she would never have considered it possible. did george understand it too?... and as he nodded absent-mindedly she shook her head. no, no ... a man could not understand that, even the very best and kindest man. why, she could feel the little being already moving, could detect the beating of its tender heart, could feel this new incomprehensible soul breathe within her, just in the same way as she felt the flowering and awakening within her of its fresh young body. and george looked in front of him as though ashamed that she was facing the near future. it was true of course that a being would exist, begotten by himself, like himself and itself destined again to give life to new beings; it was true that within the blessed body of that woman, for which he had ceased for a long time now to feel any desire, there was swelling, according to the eternal laws, a life that only a year ago had been undreamt-of, unwished-for, lost in infinity, but which now was forcing its way up to the light like something predestined from time immemorial; it was true that he knew that he was irresistibly drawn into that forged chain that stretched from primal ancestor to future descendant and which he grasped as it were with both hands ... but he did not feel that this miracle made so potent an appeal to him as it really ought. and they spoke to-day more seriously than usual about what was to happen after the child's birth. anna, of course, would keep it with her during the first week, but then they would have to give it to strangers; but at any rate it should live quite near, so that anna could see it at any time without any difficulty. "i say, dear," she said quite lightly and suddenly, "will you often come and visit us?" he looked into her arch smiling face, took both her hands and kissed her. "dearest, what am i to do? tell me yourself. you can imagine how hard it will be for me. but what else is there for me to do? i've got to make a beginning. i've already told you we've given notice to leave the apartment," he added hastily, as though that cut off all retreat. "felician is probably going to athens. yes, it would of course be fine if i could take you with me. but i am afraid that isn't possible. there ought above all to be something more or less certain, i mean one ought--ought at least to be certain that i shall remain in the same place for a longish time." she had listened with quiet seriousness. she then started to speak about her latest idea. he must not believe, she said, that she was thinking of putting the whole burden of responsibility upon him. she was determined as soon as it was feasible to found a music-school. if he left her alone for a long time the school would be here in vienna. if he soon came to fetch her it would be wherever she and he had their home. and when she was once in an independent position she meant to take and keep her child whether she was his wife or not. she was very far from being ashamed of it, he knew that quite well. she was rather proud ... yes, proud of being a mother. he took her hands in his and stroked them. it would all come right enough, he said, feeling somewhat depressed. he suddenly saw himself sitting at supper between wife and child, beneath the modest light of a hanging lamp in an extremely simple home. and this family scene of his imagination wafted towards him, as it were, an atmosphere of troubled boredom. come, it was still too early for that, he was still too young. was it possible, then, that she was to be the last woman whom he was to embrace? of course it might come in years, even in months, but not to-day. as for bringing lies and deceit into a well-ordered home, he had a horror of the idea. yet the thought of rushing away from her to others whom he desired, with the consciousness that he would find anna again just as he had left her, was at once tempting and reassuring. the well-known whistle was heard from outside. the dog got up, made george stroke her yellow-spotted back once again and sadly slunk away. "by jove," said george, "i had almost forgotten all about it. heinrich will be here any minute." he told anna about his visit and did not suppress the fact that he had made the acquaintance of the faithless actress. "did she succeed then?" exclaimed anna, who did not fancy ladies with roving eyes. "i don't think that she succeeded at all," replied george. "heinrich was rather annoyed at her turning up, so far as i could see." "well, perhaps he'll bring her along too," said anna jestingly, "then you will have some one to flirt with again, as you did with the regicide at lugano." "upon my word," said george innocently, and then added casually: "but what's the matter with therese? why doesn't she come to see you any more? demeter is no longer in vienna. she would have plenty of time." "she was here only a few days ago. why, i told you so. don't pretend." "i'd really forgotten it," he answered honestly. "what did she tell you then?" "all there was to tell. the demeter affair is over. her heart is throbbing once more only for the poor and the miserable--until it is called back." and anna confided therese's winter plans to him under the seal of a most rigid silence. disguised as a poor woman she meant to undertake expeditions through shelters, soup- and tea-kitchens, refuges for the homeless and workmen's dwellings, with a view to shedding a light into the most hidden corners for the benefit of the so-called golden heart of vienna. she seemed quite ready for it and was perhaps a little sanguine of discovering some horrors. george looked in front of him. he remembered the stylish lady in the white dress who had stood in the sunshine in lugano in front of the post-office, far from all the cares of the world. "strange creature," he thought. "of course she'll make a book out of it," said anna. "but mind you don't tell any one, not even your friend bermann." "shouldn't think of it! but i say, anna, hadn't you better get something ready for this evening?" she nodded. "come, take me downstairs. i'll see what there is and consult marie too ... so far as is possible to do so." they got up. the shadows had lengthened. the children were making a noise in the next garden. anna took her lover's arm and walked slowly with him. she told him the newest instances of the fantastic stupidity of the maid. the idea of my being a husband, thought george, and listened reflectively. when they got to the house he announced his intention of going to meet heinrich, left anna and went into the street. at this precise moment a one-horse carriage jogged up. heinrich got out and paid the driver. "hallo!" he said to george, "have you really waited for me after all? it's not so late then?" "not at all. you're very punctual. we'll go for a short walk if it suits you." "delighted." they walked on into the forest past the yellow inn with the red terraces. "it is wonderful here," said heinrich, "and your villa too looks awfully nice. why don't you live out here?" "yes, it's absurd not to," agreed george without further explanation. then they were silent for a while. heinrich was in a light grey summer suit and carried his cloak over his arm, letting it trail a little behind him. "did you recognise her again?" he asked suddenly, without looking up. "yes," replied george. "she only came up for one day from her summer engagement. she goes back by train to-night. a surprise attack, so to speak. but it didn't come off." he laughed. "why are you so hard?" asked george, and thought of the big envelope with the grey seals and the silly inscription. "there is really no occasion for you to be so. it is only a fluke that she did not get anonymous letters just like you did, heinrich. and who knows, if you hadn't left her alone for god knows what reasons...." heinrich shook his head and looked at george almost as though he pitied him. "do you mean by any chance that it is my intention to punish her or avenge myself? or do you think i'm one of those mugs who don't know what to make of the world because something has happened to them which they know has already happened to thousands before them and will happen to thousands after them? do you think i despise the 'faithless woman' or that i hate her? not a bit of it. of course i don't mean to say that i don't at times assume the pose of hatred and contempt, only of course to produce better results upon her. but as a matter of fact i understand all that has happened far too well for me to...." he shrugged his shoulders. "well, if you do understand it?..." "but, my dear friend, understanding a thing is no earthly good at all. understanding is a game like anything else. a very 'classy' game and a very expensive one. one can spend one's whole soul over it and finish up a poor devil. but understanding hasn't got the least thing in the world to do with our feelings, almost as little as it has to do with our actions. it doesn't protect us from suffering, from revulsion, from ruin. it leads absolutely nowhere. it's a kind of _cul-de-sac_. understanding always signifies the end." as they walked slowly and silently up a side path with a moderate incline, each one engrossed in his own thoughts, they emerged out of the woods into open meadowland, which gave a clear view of the valley. they looked out over the town and then further on towards the haze-breathing plain through which the river ran shining; they looked towards the far line of the mountains, over which a thin haze was spreading. then in the peace of the evening sun they walked on further towards george's favourite seat on the border of the forest. the sun was not visible. george watched the track of the sommerhaidenweg on the other side of the valley run along the wooded hills; it looked pale and cooled. he then looked down and knew that in the garden at his feet there was a pear-tree, beneath which he had sat a few hours before with some one who was very dear to him, and who carried his child under her bosom, and he felt moved. he felt a slight contempt for the women who were perhaps waiting for him somewhere, but that did not extinguish his desire for them. summer visitors were walking about down below on the path between the garden and the meadows. a young girl looked up and whispered something to another. "you are certainly a popular personality in the place here," remarked heinrich, contracting the corners of his mouth ironically. "not that i know of." "those pretty girls looked at you with great interest. people always find an inexhaustible source of excitement in other people not being married. those holiday-makers down there are bound to look upon you as a kind of don juan and ... your friend as a seduced maiden who has gone wrong, don't you think so?" "i don't know," said george, anxious to cut short the conversation. "and i wonder what i represented," continued heinrich unperturbed, "to the theatrical people in the little town. clearly the deceived lover. consequently an absolutely ridiculous character. and she? well, one can imagine. things are awfully simple for lookers-on. but when one gets to close quarters everything looks utterly different. but the question is whether the complexion it has in the distance isn't the right one? whether one does not persuade oneself into believing a lot of rot, if one's got a part to play in the comedy oneself?" he might quite as well have stayed at home, thought george. but as he could not send him home, and with the object at any rate of changing the conversation, he asked him quickly: "do you hear anything from the ehrenbergs?" "i had a rather sad letter from fräulein else a few days ago," replied heinrich. "you correspond with her?" "no, i don't correspond with her. at any rate i have not yet answered her." "she is taking the oskar business much more to heart than she will own," said george. "i spoke to her once in the nursing-home. we remained standing quite a time outside in the passage in front of the white varnished door behind which poor oskar was lying. at that time they were afraid of the other eye as well. it's really a tragic affair." "tragi-comic," corrected heinrich with hardness. "you see the tragi-comic in everything. i'll tell you why, too. because you're more or less callous. but in this case the comic element takes a back seat." "you make a mistake," replied heinrich. "old ehrenberg's box on the ear was a piece of crudeness, oskar's suicide a piece of stupidity, his making such a bad shot at himself a piece of bungling. these elements certainly can't produce anything really tragic. it is a rather disgusting business, that's all." george shook his head angrily. he had felt genuine sympathy for oskar since his misfortune. he was also sorry for old ehrenberg, who had been staying in neuhaus since then, was only living for his work and refused to see any one. they had both paid their penalty, which was heavier than they had deserved. couldn't heinrich see that and feel it just as he did? they really got on one's nerves at times, these people, with their exaggerated jewish smartness and their relentless psychology--these bermanns and nürnbergers. their principal object in life was to be surprised by nothing whatsoever. what they lacked was kindness. it was only when they grew older that a certain gentleness came over them. george thought of old doctor stauber, of frau golowski, of old eissler, but so long as they were young ... they always kept on the _qui vive_. their one ideal was not to be scored off! a disagreeable lot. he felt more and more that he missed felician and skelton, who as a matter of fact were really quite clever enough. he even missed guido schönstein. "but in spite of all her melancholy," said heinrich after a time, "fräulein else seems to be having a pretty good time of it. they are having people down again at auhof. the wyners were there the other day, sissy and james. james got his doctor's degree the other day at cambridge. classy, eh?" the word sissy darted through george's heart like a flashing dagger. he realised it all of a sudden. he would be with her in a few days. his desire surged up so strongly that he himself scarcely understood it. the dusk came down. george and heinrich got up, went down the fields and entered the garden. they saw anna come down the centre path accompanied by a gentleman. "old doctor stauber," said george. "you know him, i suppose?" they exchanged greetings. "i am very glad," said anna to heinrich, "that you should come and see us at last." "us!" repeated george to himself, with a sense of surprise which he immediately repudiated. he went in front with doctor stauber. heinrich and anna slowly followed. "are you satisfied with anna?" george asked the doctor. "things couldn't be going on better," replied stauber, "only she must continue to take exercise regularly and properly." it struck george, who had not seen the doctor before since his return, that he had not yet given him back the books which he had borrowed and he made his apologies. "there's time enough for that," replied stauber. "i am only too glad if they came in handy." and he asked what impressions he had brought home from rome. george told him of his wanderings through the old imperial palaces, of his drives through the campagna in the evening light, of a sultry hour in hadrian's garden just before a storm. doctor stauber begged him to stop, otherwise he might be induced to leave all his patients here in the lurch so as to run away at once to the city he loved so much. then george made polite inquiries after doctor berthold. was there any foundation for the rumour that he would be engaged again in active political life in the approaching winter? doctor stauber shrugged his shoulders. "he comes back in september, that's the only thing certain so far. he has been very industrious at pasteur's and he wants to elaborate at the pathological institute here a great piece of serum research work which he began in paris. if he takes my advice he'll stick to it, for in my humble opinion what he is now doing is much more important for humanity than the most glorious revolution. of course talents vary, and i've certainly nothing to say against revolutions now and again. but speaking between ourselves, my son's talent is far more on the scientific side. it's rather his temperament which drives him in the other direction ... perhaps only his temper. well, we shall see. but how about your plans for the autumn?" he added suddenly, as he looked at george with his good-natured fatherly expression. "where are you going to swing your bâton?" "i only wish i knew myself," replied george. doctor stauber was walking by his side, his lids half closed and his cigar in his mouth, and while george told him about his efforts and his prospects with self-important emphasis he thought he felt that doctor stauber simply regarded everything he said as nothing more than an attempted justification of his putting off his marriage with anna. a slight irritation against her arose within him; she seemed to be standing behind them and perhaps was enjoying quietly that he was, as it were, being cross-examined by doctor stauber. he deliberately assumed a lighter and lighter tone, as though his own personal plans for the future had nothing at all to do with anna, and finished up by saying merrily: "why, who knows where i shall be this time next year? i may finish up in america." "you might do worse," replied doctor stauber quietly. "i have a cousin who is a violinist in boston, a man named schwarz, who earns there at least six times as much as he gets here at the opera." george did not like being compared with violinists of the name of schwarz and asserted with an emphasis which he himself thought rather exaggerated that it was not at all a question of money-making, at any rate at the beginning. suddenly, he did not know where the thought came from, the idea ran through his mind: "supposing anna dies.... supposing the child were her death...." he felt deeply shocked, as though he had committed a crime by the very thought, and he saw in his imagination anna lying there with the shroud drawn over her chin and he saw the candlelight and daylight streaming over her wax-pale face. he turned round almost anxiously, as though to assure himself that she was there and alive. the features of her face were blurred in the darkness and this frightened him. he remained standing with the doctor till anna arrived with heinrich. he was happy to have her so near him. "you must be quite tired now, dear," he said to her in his tenderest tone. "i've certainly honestly performed my day's work," she replied. "besides," and she pointed to the verandah, where the lamp with the green paper shade was standing on the laid table, "supper will soon be ready. it would be so nice, doctor, if you could stay; won't you?" "i'm afraid it's impossible, my dear child. i ought to have been back in town ages ago. remember me kindly to frau golowski. see you again soon. good-bye, herr bermann. come," he added, "is one going to get another chance soon of seeing or reading one of your fine pieces of work?" heinrich shrugged his shoulders, vouchsafed a social smile and was silent. why, he thought, are even the best-bred men usually tactless when they meet people like myself? do i ask him about his affairs? the doctor went on to express in a few words his sympathy with heinrich over old bermann's death. he remembered the dead man's celebrated speech in opposition to the introduction of tschech as the judicial language in certain bohemian districts. at that time the jewish provincial advocate had come within an ace of being minister of justice. yes, times had changed. heinrich started to listen. after all this could be made use of in the political comedy. doctor stauber took his leave. george accompanied him to the carriage which was waiting outside, and availed himself of the opportunity to ask the doctor some medical questions. the latter was able to reassure him in every respect. "it's only a pity," he continued, "that circumstances do not allow anna to nurse the child herself." george stood still meditatively. it could not hurt her, could it?... at any rate, only the child? or her as well?... he asked the doctor. "why talk about it, my dear baron, if it's not practicable? that's all right, don't you worry," he added, with one foot already in the carriage. "one needn't be nervous about the child of people like you two." george looked him straight in the eye and said: "i will at any rate take care that he lives the first years of his life in healthy air." "that's very nice," said doctor stauber gently. "but speaking generally there is no healthier air in the world for children than their parents' home." he shook hands with george and the carriage rolled away. george remained standing for a moment and felt a lively irritation against the doctor. he vowed mentally that he would never allow the conversation with him to take a turn that would as it were entitle him to give unsolicited advice or make veiled reproaches. what did the old man know? what did he really understand about the whole thing? george's antagonism became more and more violent. when i choose to, he said to himself, i will marry her. can't she have the child with her anyway? hasn't she said herself that she will be proud of having a child? i am not going to repudiate it either, and i will do everything in my power. and later on sometime.... but i should be doing an injustice to myself, to her, to the child if i were to make up my mind to-day to do something which at any rate is still premature. he had slowly walked past the short side of the house into the garden. he saw anna and heinrich sitting on the verandah. marie was just coming out of the house, very red in the face, and putting a warm dish on the table, from which the steam mounted up. how quiet anna sits there, thought george, and remained standing in the darkness. how serene, how free from care, as though she could trust me implicitly, as though there were no such things as death, poverty, treacherous desertion, as though i loved her as much as she deserves. and again he felt alarmed. do i love her less? is she not right in trusting me? when i sit over there on my seat on the edge of the forest so much tenderness often wells up in me that i can scarcely stand it. why do i feel so little of that now? he was standing only a few paces away and watched her first carve and then stare into the darkness out of which he was to come, while her eyes began to shine as he stepped suddenly into the light. my one true love, he thought. when he sat down by the others anna said to him: "you've had a very long consultation with the doctor." "it wasn't a consultation. we were chatting. he also told me about his son who is coming back soon." heinrich inquired after berthold. the young man interested him and he hoped very much to make his acquaintance next winter. his speech last year on the therese golowski case, together with his open letter to his constituents, in which he had explained the reasons for his resignation, yes, they had been really first-class performances.... yes, and more than that--documents of the period. a light almost proud smile flew over anna's face. she looked down to her place and then quickly up to george. george also was smiling. not a trace of jealousy stirred within him. did berthold have any idea...? of course. did he suffer?... probably. could he forgive anna? to think of having to forgive at all! what nonsense. a dish of mushrooms was served. on its appearance heinrich could not refrain from asking if it were at all poisonous. george laughed. "you needn't make fun of me," said heinrich. "if i wanted to kill myself i wouldn't choose either poisoned mushrooms or decayed sausage, but a nobler and swifter poison. at times one is sick of life, but one is never sick of health, even in one's last quarter of an hour. and besides, nervousness is a perfectly legitimate, though usually shamefully repudiated, daughter of reason. what does nervousness really mean? considering all the possibilities that may result from an action, the bad and good ones equally. and what is courage? i mean, of course, real courage, which is manifested far more rarely than one thinks. for the courage which is affected or the result of obedience or simply a matter of suggestion doesn't count. true courage is often really nothing else than the expression of an as it were metaphysical conviction of one's own superfluity." "oh, you jew!" thought george, though without malice, and then said to himself, "perhaps he isn't so far out after all." they found the beer so good, although anna did not drink any, that they sent marie to the inn for a second jugful. their mood became genial. george described his trip again. the days at lugano in the broiling sun, the journey over the snowy brenner, the wandering through the roofless city, which after a night of two thousand years had surged up again to the light; he conjured up again the minute in which they had been present, he and anna, when workmen were carefully and laboriously excavating a pillar out of the ashes. heinrich had not yet seen italy. he meant to go there next spring. he explained that he was frequently torn by a desire for, if not exactly italy, at any rate foreign lands, distance, the world. when he heard people talking about travels he often got heart palpitation like a child the evening before its birthday. he doubted whether he was destined to end his life in his home. it might be, perhaps, that after wandering about for years on end he would come back and find in a little house in the country the peace of his later manhood. who knew--life was so full of coincidences--if he were not destined to finish his life in this very house in which he was now a guest and felt better than he had for a long time? anna thanked him with an air which indicated that she was not merely the hostess of the country house but of the whole world itself with its evening calm. a soft light began to shine out of the darkness of the garden. a warm moist odour came from the grass and flowers. the long fields which ran down to the railing swept into view in the moonlight and the white seat under the pear-tree shimmered as though very far away. anna complimented heinrich on the verses in the opera libretto which george had read to her the other day. "quite right," remarked george, smoking a cigar with his legs comfortably crossed, "have you brought us anything fresh?" heinrich shook his head. "no, nothing." "what a pity!" said anna, and suggested that heinrich should tell them the plot consecutively and in detail. she had been wanting to know about it for a long time. she was unable to get any clear idea of it from george's account. they looked at each other. there came up in their minds that sweet dark hour when they had lain in peace with breast close to breast in a dark room in front of whose windows, behind its floating curtain of snow, a grey church had loomed, and into which the notes of an organ had boomed heavily. yes, they now knew where the house stood in which the child was to come into the world. perhaps another house, too, thought george, stands somewhere or other in which the child that has not yet been born will end its life. death! as a man--or as an old man, or.... oh, what an idea, away with it ... away with it! heinrich declared his readiness to fulfil anna's wish, and stood up. "i shall perhaps find it useful myself," he said apologetically. "but mind you don't suddenly switch off into your political tragi-comedy," remarked george. and then, turning to anna: "he's writing a piece, you know, with a national german corps student for its hero who poisons himself with mushrooms through despair of emancipation of the jews." heinrich nodded dissent. "one glass of beer less and you'd never have made that epigram." "jealousy!" replied george. he felt extraordinarily pleased with life, particularly now that he had firmly made up his mind to leave the day after to-morrow. he sat quite close to anna, held her hand in his and seemed to hear the melody of future days singing in the deepest recesses of his soul. heinrich had suddenly gone into the garden outside the verandah, reached over the railing, took his cloak from the chair and threw it romantically around him. "i'm going to begin," he said. "act i." "first, an overture in d. minor," interrupted george. he whistled an impressive melody, then a few notes and finished with an "and so on." "the curtain rises," said heinrich. "feast in the king's garden. night. the princess is to be married to the duke heliodorus next day. i call him heliodorus for the time being, he will probably have another name though. the king adores his daughter and can't stand heliodorus, who is a kind of popinjay with the tastes of a mad cæsar. the king has really given the feast to annoy heliodorus, and not only are all the nobles in the land invited but the youth of all classes, in so far as they have won a right to be invited by their beauty. and on this evening the princess is to dance with any one who pleases her. and there is some one in particular, his name is Ägidius, with whom she seems quite infatuated. and no one is more pleased about it than the king. jealousy on the part of heliodorus. increased pleasure on the part of the king. scene between heliodorus and the king. scorn. enmity. then something highly unexpected takes place. Ägidius draws his dagger against the king. he wants to murder him. the motives for this attempted murder of course would have to be very carefully worked in if you had not been kind enough, my dear george, to set the thing to music! so it will be enough to hint that the youth hates tyrants, is a member of a secret society, is perhaps a fool or a hero off his own bat. i don't know yet, you see. the attempted murder fails. Ägidius is arrested. the king wishes to be left alone with him. duet. the youth is proud, self-possessed, great. the king superior, cruel, inscrutable. that's about my idea of him. he had already sent many men to their death and already seen many die, but his own inner consciousness is so awfully vivid and intense that all other men seem to him to be living in a state of mere semi-consciousness, so that their death has practically no other significance except the step from twilight into gloom. a death like that strikes him as too gentle or too banal for a case like this. he wishes to plunge this youth from a daylight such as no mortal has yet enjoyed into the most dreadful darkness. yes, that's how his mind works. how much he says or sings about this i don't yet know of course. Ägidius is taken away just like a prisoner condemned, so everybody thinks, to immediate death, and on the very same ship, too, as that on which heliodorus was to have started on his journey with the princess in the evening. the curtain falls. the second act takes place on the deck. the ship under weigh. chorus. isolated figures come up. their significance is only revealed later. dawn. Ägidius is led up from the hold below. to his death, as he is bound, of course, to think. but it turns out otherwise. his fetters are loosed. all bow down to him. he is hailed as a prince. the sun rises. Ägidius has an opportunity of noticing that he is in the very best society--beautiful women, nobles. a sage, a singer, a fool, are intended for important parts. but who should come out of the chorus of women but the princess herself; she belongs absolutely to Ägidius, like everything else on the ship." "what a splendid father and king!" said george. "no price is too dear for him to pay!" explained heinrich, "for a really ingenious idea. that's his line. there follows a splendid duet between Ägidius and the princess. then they sit down to the meal. after the meal dancing. high spirits. Ägidius naturally thinks he has been saved. he is not inordinately surprised, because his hatred for the king was always to a great extent inspired by admiration. the twilight begins to loom. suddenly a stranger is at Ägidius' side. perhaps he has been there for a long time, one among the many, unnoticed, mute. he has a word to say to Ägidius. the feasting and dancing proceed meanwhile. Ägidius and the stranger. 'all this is yours,' says the stranger. 'you can rule according to your humour. you can take possession and kill just as you wish. but to-morrow ... or in two or seven years or in one year or in ten, or still later, this ship will approach an island on whose shore a marble hall towers aloft upon a cliff. and there death waits for you--death. your murderer is with you on the ship. but only the one whose mission it is to be your murderer knows it. nobody else knows who he is. nay, nobody else on this ship has any inkling that you are consecrated to death. remember that. for when you let any one notice that you yourself know your fate you are doomed to death that very hour.'" heinrich spoke these words with exaggerated pathos, as though to conceal his embarrassment. he went on more simply. "the stranger vanishes. perhaps i shall have him disembarked on the mainland by two silent attendants who have accompanied him. Ägidius remains among the hundreds of men and women of which one or the other is his murderer. which one? the sage or the fool? the star-gazer yonder? one of those yonder, ruminating in the darkness? those men stealing up the steps yonder? one of the dancers? the princess herself? she comes up to him again, is very tender, nay, passionate. hypocrite? murderess? his love? does she know? at any rate she is his. all this is to be his to-day. night on the sea. terror. delight. the ship goes slowly on towards that shore that lies hours or years away in the distance of the far-off mist. the princess is nestling at his feet. Ägidius stares into the night and watches." heinrich stopped as though personally affected. melodies rang in george's ear. he heard the music for the scene when the stranger disappears escorted by the mutes, and then gradually the noise of the feast comes to the front of the stage. he did not feel it within him as a mere melody, but he already felt it with all its fulness of instruments. were there not flutes sounding and oboes and clarionets? was not the 'cello singing and the violin? was not a faint beat of a drum droning out of a corner of the orchestra? involuntarily he held up his right arm, as though he had his conductor's bâton in his hand. "and the third act?" asked anna, as heinrich remained silent. "the third act," repeated heinrich, and there was a touch of depression in his voice. "the scene of the third act, of course, will be laid in that hall on the cliff--don't you think so? it must, i think, begin with a dialogue between the king and the stranger. or with a chorus? there are no choruses on uninhabited islands. anyway, the king is there and the ship is in sight. but look here, why should the island be uninhabited?" he stopped. "well?" asked george impatiently. heinrich laid both his arms on the railing of the verandah. "i'll tell you something. this isn't an opera at all...." "what do you mean?" "there are very good reasons for my not getting as far as this part of it. it is a tragedy clearly. i just haven't got the courage to write it. do you know what would have to be described? the inner change in Ägidius would have to be described. that is clearly both the difficulty and the beauty of the subject-matter. in other words it is a thing which i daren't do. the opera idea is simply a way of getting out of it, and i don't know if i ought to take on anything like that." he was silent. "but at any rate," said anna, "you must tell us the end of the opera as you have got it in your mind. i must really admit that i'm quite excited." heinrich shrugged his shoulders and answered in a tired voice: "well, the ship hoves to. Ägidius lands. he is to be hurled into the sea." "by whom?" asked anna. "i've no idea at all," replied heinrich unhappily. "from this point my mind is an absolute blank." "i thought it would be the princess," said anna, and waving her hand through the air executed a death signal. heinrich smiled gently. "i thought of that, of course, also, but...." he broke off and suddenly looked up to the night sky in a state of nervous tension. "it was to finish with a kind of pardon, so far as your original draft went," remarked george irritably. "but that, of course, is only good enough for an opera. but now, as your Ägidius is the hero of a tragedy, of course he will have to be really hurled into the sea." heinrich raised his forefinger mysteriously and his features became animated again. "i think something is just dawning upon me. but don't let's talk about it for the time being, if you don't mind. it's perhaps really been a sound thing that i told you the beginning." "but if you think that i am going to do _entr'acte_ music for you," said george, without particular emphasis, "you are under a delusion." heinrich smiled, guiltily, indifferently and yet quite good-humouredly. anna felt with concern that the whole business had fizzled out. george was uncertain whether he ought to be irritated at his hopes being disappointed or be glad at being relieved of a kind of obligation. but heinrich felt as though the creations of his own mind were deserting him in shadowy confusion, mockingly, without farewell and without promising to come again. he found himself alone and deserted in a melancholy garden, in the society of quite a nice man whom he knew very well, and a young lady who meant nothing at all to him. he could not help thinking all of a sudden of a person who was travelling at this very hour in a badly-lighted compartment in despair and with eyes red with crying, towards dark mountains, worrying whether she would get there in time to-morrow for her rehearsal. he now felt again that since that had come to an end he was going downhill, for he had nothing left, he had no one left. the suffering of that wretched person, the victim of his own agonizing hatred, was the only thing in the world. and who knew? she might be smiling at another the very next day, with those tearful eyes of hers, with her grief and longing still in her soul and a new _joie de vivre_ already in her blood. frau golowski appeared on the verandah. she was flurried and somewhat late, and still carried her umbrella and had her hat on. therese sent her remembrances from town and wanted to arrange to come and see anna again the next day or so. george, who was leaning up against a wooden pillar of the verandah, turned to frau golowski with that studious politeness which he always ostentatiously assumed when talking to her. "won't you ask fräulein therese in both our names if she wouldn't care to stay out here for a day or two? the top room is quite at her service. i'm on the point of going into the mountains for a short time, you know," he added, as though he regularly slept in the little room at all other times. frau golowski expressed her thanks. she would tell therese. george looked at his watch and saw that it was time to start for home. he and heinrich then said good-bye. anna accompanied both of them as far as the garden door, remained standing a little while and watched them till they got on to the height where the sommerhaidenweg began. the little village at the bottom of the valley flowed past them in the moonlight. the hills loomed pale like thin walls. the forest breathed darkness. in the distance thousands of lights glittered out of the night mist of the summer town. heinrich and george walked by each other in silence and a sense of estrangement arose between them. george remembered that walk in the prater in the previous autumn, when their first almost confidential talk had brought them near to each other. how many talks had they not had since? but had they not all, as it were, gone into thin air? and to-day, too, george was unable to walk through the night with heinrich without exchanging a word, as he used to do many a time with guido or with labinski without feeling any loss of real sympathy. the silence became a strain. he began to talk of old stauber, as that was the first subject to occur to him, and praised his reliability and versatility. heinrich was not very taken with him and thought him somewhat intoxicated with the sense of his own kindness, wisdom and excellence. that was another kind of jew which he could not stand--the self-complacent kind. the conversation then turned on young stauber, whose vacillation between politics and science had something extremely attractive about it for heinrich. from that they turned into a conversation about the composition of parliament, about the squabbles between the germans and the tschechs and the attacks of the clericals on the minister of education. they talked with that strained assiduousness with which one is accustomed to talk about things which are absolutely indifferent to one in one's heart of hearts. finally they discussed the question whether the minister ought to remain in office or not after the dubious figure he had cut over the civil marriage question, and had the vaguest ideas after they had finished as to which of them had been in favour of his resignation and which of them against it. they walked along the churchyard. crosses and gravestones towered over the walls and floated in the moonlight. the path inclined downwards to the main road. they both hurried so as to catch the last tram, and standing on the platform in the sultry scented night air drove towards the town. george explained that he thought of doing the first part of his tour on his cycle. obeying a sudden impulse, he asked heinrich if he wouldn't like to join him. heinrich agreed and after a few minutes manifested great keenness. they got out at the schottentor, found out a neighbouring café and after an exhaustive consultation managed, with the help of special maps which they found in encyclopædias, to decide on every possible route. when they left each other their plan was not indeed quite definite, but they already knew that they would leave vienna early, the day after the next, and would mount their cycles at lambach. george stood quite a long time by the open window of his bedroom. he felt intensely awake. he thought of anna, from whom he was to part to-morrow for a few days, and visualised her as sleeping at this hour out there in the country in the pale twilight between the moonlight and the morning. but he felt dully as though this image had nothing at all to do with his own fate, but with the fate of some unknown man, who himself knew nothing about it. and he was absolutely unable to realise that within that slumbering being there slept another being in still deeper mystery, and that this other being was to be his own child. now that the sober mood of the early dawn stole almost painfully through his senses the whole episode seemed more remote and improbable than it had ever been before. a clearer and clearer light showed above the roofs of the town, but it would be a long time before the town woke up. the air was perfectly motionless. no breeze came from the trees in the park opposite, no perfume from the withered flower-beds. and george stood by the window; unhappy and without comprehension. vii george slowly climbed up from the hold on narrow carpeted steps between long oblique mirrors and wrapped in a long dark green rug which trailed behind him, wandered up and down on the empty deck beneath the starry sky. motionless as ever, labinski stood in the stern and turned the wheel, while his gaze was directed towards the open sea. "what a career!" thought george. "first a dead man, then a minister, then a little boy with a muff and now a steersman. if he knew that i were on this ship he would certainly hail me." "look out!" cried behind george the two blue girls, whom he had met on the sea-shore, but he rushed on, wrapped himself in his rug and listened to the flapping of white gulls over his head. immediately afterwards he was in the saloon, down below, sitting at the table, which was so long that the people at the end were quite small. a gentleman near him, who looked like the elder grillparzer, remarked irritably: "this boat's always late. we ought to have been in boston a long time ago." george then felt very nervous; for if he could not show the three music scores in the green cover when he disembarked, he would certainly be arrested for high treason. that was why the prince who had been rushing all over the deck with the wheel all day long often cast such strange side-glances at him. and to intensify his suspicions still more he was compelled to sit at table in his shirtsleeves while all the other gentlemen wore generals' uniforms, as they always did on boats, and all the ladies wore red velvet dresses. "we shall soon be in america," said a raucous steward who was serving asparagus. "only one more station." "the others can sit there quietly," thought george. "they have nothing to do, but i must swim to the theatre straight away." the coast appeared opposite him in the great mirror; nothing but houses without roofs, whose tiers of terraces towered higher and higher, and the orchestra was waiting impatiently up above in a quiet kiosk with a broken stone cupola. the bell on the deck pealed and george tumbled down the steps into the park with his green rug and two pocket handkerchiefs. but they had shipped the wrong one across; it was the stadtpark, as a matter of fact; felician was sitting on a seat, an old lady in a cloak close to him put her fingers on her lips, whistled very loudly and felician said, with an unusually deep voice: "kemmelbach--ybs." "no," thought george, "felician never uses a word like that ..." rubbed his eyes and woke up. the train was just starting again. two red lamps were shining in front of the closed window of the compartment. the night ran past, silent and black. george drew his travelling rug closer round him and stared at the green shaded lamp in the ceiling. "what a good thing that i'm alone in the compartment," he thought. "i have been sound asleep for at least four or five hours. what a strange confused dream that was!" the white gulls first came back into his memory. did they have any significance? then he thought of the old woman in the cloak, who of course was no other than frau oberberger. the lady would not feel particularly flattered. but really, hadn't she looked quite like an old lady, when he had seen her a few days ago by the side of her beaming husband in the box of the little red-and-white theatre of the watering-place? and labinski, too, had appeared to him in his dream as a steersman, strangely enough. and the girls in blue dresses, also, who had looked out of the hotel garden into the piano room through the window as soon as they heard him playing. but what was the really ghostly element in that dream? not the girls in blue, not even labinski, and not the prince of guastalla, who had rushed like mad to the wheel over the deck. no, it was his own figure which had appeared to him so ghostly as it had slunk along by his side multiplied a hundred times over in the long oblique mirrors on both sides. he began to feel cold. the cool night air penetrated into the compartment through the ventilator in the ceiling. the deep black darkness outside gradually changed into a heavy grey and there suddenly rang in george's ears in a sad whisper the words he had heard only a few hours ago in a woman's low voice: how soon will it take you to forget me?... he did not wish to hear those words. he wished they had already become true, and in desperation he plunged back into the memory of his dream. it was quite clear that the steamer on which he had gone to america on his concert tour really meant the ship on which Ägidius had sailed towards his sinister fate. and the kiosk with the orchestra was the hall where Ägidius had waited for death. the starry sky which spread over the sea had been really wonderful. the air had been bluer and the stars more silvery than he had ever seen them in waking life, even on the night when he had sailed with grace from palermo to naples. suddenly the voice of the woman he loved rang through the darkness again, whispering and mournful: "how long will it take you to forget me?"... and he now visualised her as he had seen her a few hours ago, pale and naked, with her dark hair streaming over the pillows. he did not want to think of it, conjured up other images from the depths of his memory and deliberately chased them past him. he saw himself going round a cemetery in the thawing february snow with grace; he saw himself riding with marianne over a white country road towards the wintry forest. he saw himself walking with his father over the ringstrasse in the late evening; and finally a merry-go-round whirled past him. sissy with her laughing lips and eyes was rocking about on a brown wooden horse. else, graceful and ladylike, was sitting in a little red carriage, and anna rode an arab with the reins nonchalantly in her hand. anna! how young and graceful she looked! was that really the same being whom he was to see again in a few hours? and had he really only been away from her for ten days? and was he ever to see again all that he had left ten days ago? the little angel in blue clay between the flower-beds, the verandah with the wooden gable, the silent garden with the currant- and the lilac-bushes? it all seemed absolutely inconceivable. she will wait for me on the white seat under the pear-tree, he thought, and i will kiss her hands as though nothing had happened. "how are you, george dear?" she will ask me. "have you been true to me?" no.... that's not her way of asking, but she will feel without asking at all or my answering that i have not come back the same as i went away. if she only does feel it! if i am only saved from having to lie! but haven't i done so already? and he thought of the letters which he had written from the lake, letters full of tenderness and yearning, which had really been nothing but lies. and he thought of how he had waited at night with a beating heart, his ear glued to the door, till all was quiet in the inn; of how he had then stolen over the passage to that other woman who lay there pale and naked, with her dark eyes wide open, enveloped in the perfume and bluish shimmer of her hair. and he thought of how he and she one night, half drunken with desire and audacity, had stepped out on to the verandah, beneath which the water plashed so seductively. if any one had been out on the lake in the deep darkness of this hour he would have seen their white bodies shining through the night. george thrilled at the memory. we were out of our senses, he thought; how easily it might have happened that i should be lying to-day with a bullet through my heart six feet under the ground. of course there's still a chance of it. they all know. else knew first, though she scarcely ever came down from auhof into the village. james wyner, who saw me with the other woman one evening standing on the landing-stage is bound to have told her. will else marry him? i can understand her liking him so much. he is handsome, that chiselled face, those cold grey eyes which look shrewd and straight into the world, a young englishman. who knows if he wouldn't have turned into a kind of oskar ehrenberg in vienna? and george remembered what else had told him about her brother. he had struck george as so self-possessed, almost mature in fact, on his sick-bed in the nursing-home. and now he was said to be leading a wild life in ostend, to be gambling and gadding about with the most evil associates, as though he wanted to go thoroughly to the dogs. did heinrich still find the matter so tragi-comic? frau ehrenberg had grown quite white with grief. and else had cried her eyes out in front of george one morning in the grounds; but had she only been crying about oskar? the grey in front of the compartment window slowly cleared. george watched the telegraph wires outside sweeping and shifting across each other with swift movements and he thought of how, yesterday afternoon, his own lying words to anna had travelled across one of these wires: "shall be with you early to-morrow morning. fondest love, your own george."... he had hurried back straight from the post-office to an ardent and desperate final hour with the other woman, and he could not realise that even at this very minute, when he had already been away from her for a whole eternity, she should still be lying asleep and dreaming in that same room with the fast-closed windows. and she will be home this evening with her husband and children. home--just as he would be. he knew that it was so and he could not understand it. for the first time in his life he had been near doing something which people would probably have had to call madness. only one word from her ... and he would have gone out with her into the world, have left everything behind, friends, mistress and his unborn child. and was he not still ready to do so? if she called him would he not go? and if he did do so would he not be right? was he not far more cut out for adventures of that kind than for the quiet life full of responsibilities which he had chosen for himself? was it not rather his real line to career boldly and unhesitatingly about the world than to be stuck somewhere or other with his wife and child, with all the bothers about bread-and-butter, his career and at the best a little fame? in the days from which he had just come he had felt that he was living, perhaps for the first time. each moment had been so rich and so full, and not only those spent in her arms. he had suddenly grown young again. the country had flowered with a greater splendour, the arc of the sky had grown wider, the air which he drank had exhaled a finer spice and strength, and melodies had rippled within him as never before. had he ever composed anything better than that wordless song to be sung on the water with its sprightly rocking melody? and that fantasy had risen strangely by the shore of the lake one hour out of depths of his which he had never dreamt of, after he had seen the wondrous woman for the first time. well, herr hofrat wilt would no longer have occasion to regard him as a dilettante. but why did he think of him of all people? did the others know what kind of a man he was any better? didn't it often seem to him as though even heinrich, who had once wanted to write an opera libretto for him, had failed to judge him any more accurately? and he heard again the words which the author had spoken to him that morning when they had cycled from lambach to gmunden through the dew-wet forest. "you need not do creative work in order to realise yourself ... you do not need work ... only the atmosphere of your art...." he suddenly remembered an evening in the keeper's lodge on the alamsee when a huntsman of seventy-three had sung some jolly songs and heinrich had wondered at any one of that age being still so jolly, since one would be bound to feel oneself so near one's death. then they had gone to bed in an enormous room which echoed all their words, philosophised about life and death for a long time, and suddenly fallen asleep. george was still motionless as he lay stretched out in his rug and considered whether he should tell heinrich anything about his meeting with his actress. how pale she had grown when she had suddenly seen him. she had listened, with roving eyes, to his account of the cycle tour with heinrich and then begun to tell him straight away about her mother and her little brother who could draw so wonderfully finely. and the other members of the company had kept staring all the time from the stage door, particularly a man with a green tyrol hat, in which a chamois' beard was stuck. and george had seen her play the same evening in a french farce, and asked himself if the pretty young person who acted and pranced about so wildly down on the stage of the little holiday theatre could really be so desperate as heinrich imagined. not only he but james and sissy as well had liked her very much. what a jolly evening it had been! and the supper after the theatre with james, sissy, old mother wyner and willy eissler! and next day the ride in the four-in-hand of old baron löwenstein, who drove himself. in less than an hour they had reached the lake. a boat was rowing near the bank in the early sunshine. and the woman he loved sat on the rowing-seat with a green silk shawl over her shoulders. but how was it that sissy also had divined the relationship between him and her? and then the merry dinner at the ehrenbergs' up at auhof! george sat between else and sissy, and willy told one funny story after the other. and then on the afternoon, george and sissy had found each other without any rendezvous in the dark green sultriness of the park amid the warm scent of the moss and the pines, while all the others were resting. it had been a wonderful hour, which had floated through this day as lightly as a dream, without vows of troth and without fear of fulfilment. how i like thinking every single minute of it all over again, savouring it to the full, that golden day! i see both of us, sissy and myself, going down over the fields to the tennis-court, hand in hand. i think i played better than i ever did in my life.... and i see sissy again lounging in a cane chair, with a cigarette between her lips and old baron löwenstein at her side, while her looks flamed towards willy. what had become of me at that moment, so far as she was concerned? and the evening! how we swam out in the twilight into the lake, while the warm water caressed me so deliciously. what a delight that was! and then the night ... the night.... the train stopped again. it was already quite light outside. george lay still, as before. he heard the name of the station called out; the voices of waiters, conductors and travellers; heard steps on the platform, station-signals of all kinds, and he knew that in an hour he would be in vienna.... supposing anna had received information about him, just as heinrich had about his mistress the previous winter? he could not imagine that a thing like that could make anna lose control of herself, even if she believed in it. perhaps she would cry, but certainly only to herself, quite quietly. he resolved firmly not to let her notice anything. was not that his plain duty? what was the important thing now? only this, that anna should spend the last weeks quietly and without excitement, and that a healthy child should come into the world. that was all that mattered. how long had it been since he had heard doctor stauber say those words? the child...! how near the hour was, the child.... he thought again; but he could think of nothing except the mere word. he then endeavoured to imagine a tiny living being. but as though to mock him figures of small children kept appearing, who looked as though they had stepped out of a picture-book, drawn grotesquely and in crude colours. where will it spend its first years? he thought. with peasants in the country, in a house with a little garden. but one day we will fetch it and take it home with us. it might, too, turn out differently. one gets a letter like this: your excellency, i have the honour to inform you that the child is seriously ill.... or.... what is the point of thinking about things like that? even though we kept it with us it might fall ill and die. anyway, it must be given to people who are highly responsible. i'll see about it myself.... he felt as though he were confronted with new duties which he had never properly considered and which he had not yet grown able to cope with. the whole business was beginning, as it were, over again. he came out of a world in which he had not bothered about all these things, where other laws had prevailed than those to which he must now submit. and had it not been as though the other people, too, had felt that he was not really one of them, as though they had been steeped in a kind of respect, as though they had been seized by a feeling of veneration for the power and holiness of a great passion, whose sway they witnessed in their own neighbourhood? he remembered an evening on which the hotel visitors had disappeared from the piano-room one after another, as though they had been conscious of their duty to leave him alone with her. he had sat down at the piano and begun to improvise. she had remained in her dark corner in a big arm-chair. first of all he had seen her smile, then the dark shining of her eyes, then only the lines of her figure, then nothing more at all. but he had been conscious the whole time "she is there!" lights flashed out on the other bank opposite. the two girls in the blue dresses had peered in through the window and had quickly disappeared again. then he stopped playing and remained sitting by the pianoforte in silence. then she had come slowly out of the corner like a shadow and had put her hand upon his head. how ineffably beautiful that had been! and it all came into his mind again. how they had rested in the boat in the middle of the lake, with shipped oars, while his head was in her lap! and they had walked through the forest paths on the opposite bank until they came to the seat under the oak. it had been there that he had told her everything--everything as though to a friend. and she had understood him, as never another woman had understood him before. was it not she whom he had always been seeking? she who was at once mistress and comrade, with a serious outlook upon everything in the world, and yet made for every madness and for every bliss? and the farewell yesterday.... the dark brilliance of her eyes, the blue-black stream of her loosened hair, the perfume of her white naked body.... was it really possible that this was over for ever? that all this was never, never to come again? george crumpled the rug between his fingers in his helpless longing and shut his eyes. he no longer saw the softly moving lines of the wooded hills, which swept by in the morning light, and as though for one last happiness he dreamed himself back again into the dark ecstasies of that farewell hour. yet against his will he was overcome by fatigue after the jar and racket of the night in the train, and he was swept away out of the images which he had himself called up, in a route of wild dreams which it was not vouchsafed him to control. he walked over the sommerhaidenweg in a strange twilight that filled him with a deep sadness. was it morning? was it evening? or just a dull day? or was it the mysterious light of some star over the world that had not yet shone for any one except him? he suddenly stood upon a great open meadow where heinrich bermann ran up and down and asked him: are you also looking for the lady's castle? i have been expecting you for a long time. they went up a spiral staircase, heinrich in front, so that george could only see a tail of the overcoat which trailed behind. above, on an enormous terrace which gave a view of the town and the lake, the whole party was assembled. leo had started his dissertation on minor harmonies, stopped when george appeared, came down from his desk and himself escorted him to a vacant chair which was in the first row and next to anna. anna smiled ecstatically when george appeared. she looked young and brilliant in a splendid _décolletée_ evening dress. just behind her sat a little boy with fair hair, in a sailor suit with a broad white collar, and anna said "that's he." george made her a sign to be silent, for it was supposed to be a secret. in the meanwhile leo played the _c sharp minor_ nocturne by chopin in order to prove his theory, and behind him old bösendorfer leaned against the wall in his yellow overcoat, tall, gaunt and good-natured. they all left the concert-room in a great crush. then george put anna's opera cloak round her shoulders and looked sternly at the people round him. he then sat in the carriage with her, kissed her, experienced a great delight in doing so and thought: "if it could only be like this always." suddenly they stopped in front of the house in mariahilf. there were already many pupils waiting upstairs by the window and beckoning. anna got out, said good-bye to george with an arch expression and vanished behind the door, which slammed behind her. "excuse me, sir. ten minutes more," some one said. george turned round. the conductor stood in the doorway and repeated: "we shall be in vienna in ten minutes." "thank you," said george and got up, with a more or less confused head. he opened the window and was glad it was fine weather outside in the world. the fresh morning air quite cheered him up. yellow walls, signal-boxes, little gardens, telegraph poles, streets, flew past him, and finally the train stood in the station. a few minutes later george was driving in an open fiacre to his apartment, saw workmen, shop girls and clerks going to their daily callings; heard the rattle of rolling shutters and in spite of all the anxiety which awaited him, in spite of all the desire which drew him elsewhere, he experienced the deep joy of once more being at home. when he went into his room he felt quite hidden. the old secretary, covered with green baize, the malachite letter-weight, the glass ash-tray with its burnt-in cavalier, the slim lamp with the broad green thick glass shade, the portrait of his father and mother in the narrow mahogany frames, the round little marble table in the corner with its silver case for cigars, the prince of the electorate, after vandyck on the wall, the high bookcase with its olive-coloured curtains; they all gave him a hearty greeting. and how it did one good to have that good home look over the tree tops in the park, towards the spires and roofs. an almost undreamt-of happiness streamed towards him from everything which he found again here, and he felt sore at heart that he would have to leave it all in a few weeks. and how long would it last until one had a home, a real home? he would have liked to have stopped for a few hours in his beloved room but he had no time. he had to be in the country before noon. he had thrown off his clothes and let the warm water swirl round him deliciously in his white bath. to avoid going to sleep in his bath he chose a means he had often employed before. he rehearsed in his mind note by note a fugue of bach's. he thought of a pianoforte that would have to be diligently practised and music scores which would have to be read. wouldn't it really be more sensible to devote another year to study? not to enter into negotiations straight away or to take a post, which he would turn out to be unable to fill? rather to stay here and work. stay here? but where? notice had been given. it occurred to him for a moment to take the apartment in the old house opposite the grey church, where he had spent such beautiful hours with anna, and it was as though he were remembering a long-past episode, an adventure of his youth, gay and yet a little mysterious, that had been over long ago.... he went back into his room, refreshed and wearing a brand-new suit, the first light one which he had put on since his father's death. a letter lay on the secretary which had just arrived by the first post, from anna. he read it. it was only a few words: "you are here again, my love--i welcome you. i do long to see you. don't keep me waiting too long. your anna...." george got up. he did not himself know what it was in the short letter that touched him so strangely. anna's letters had always retained, in spite of all their tenderness, a certain precise, almost conventional element, and he had frequently jokingly called them "proclamations." this was couched in a tone that reminded him of the passionate girl of by-gone days, of that love of his whom he had almost forgotten, and a strangely unexpected anxiety seized on his heart. he rushed downstairs, took the nearest fiacre and drove to the country. he soon felt agreeably distracted by the sight of the people in the streets who meant nothing to him at all; and later, when he was near the wood, he felt soothed by the charm of the blue summer day. suddenly, sooner than george had anticipated, the vehicle stopped in front of the country house. involuntarily george first looked up to the balcony under the gable. a little table was standing there with a white cover and a little basket on it. oh yes, therese had been staying here for a few days. he now remembered for the first time. therese...! where was it now? he got out, paid the carriage and went into the front garden where the blue angel stood on its unpretentious pedestal amid the faded flower-beds. he stepped into the house. marie was just laying the table in the large centre room. "madam's over there in the garden," she said. the verandah door was open. the planks of its floor creaked underneath george's feet. the garden with its perfume and its sultriness received him. it was the old garden. during all the days in which george had been far away it had lain there silently, just as it was lying at this minute; in the dawn, in the sunshine, in the twilight, in the darkness of night; always the same.... the gravel path cut straight through the field to the heights. there were children's voices on the other side of the bushes from which red berries were hanging. and over there on the white seat, with her elbow on its arm, very pale, in her flowing blue morning dress, yes, that was anna. yes, really she. she had seen him now. she tried to get up. he saw it, and saw at the same time that she found it difficult. but why? was she spell-bound by excitement? or was the hour of trial so near? he signed to her with his hand that she was to remain seated, and she really did sit down again, and only just stretched out her arms lightly towards him. her eyes were shining with bliss. george walked very quickly, with his grey felt hat in his hand, and now he was at her side. "at last," she said, and it was a voice which came from as far back as those words in her letter of this morning. he took her hands, shook them in a strange clumsy way, felt a lump in his throat, but was still unable to articulate anything and just nodded and smiled. and suddenly he knelt before her on the grass, with her hands in his and his head in her lap. he felt her lightly taking her hands away, and putting them on his head; and then he heard himself crying quite softly. and he felt as though he were in a sweet vague dream, a little boy again and lying at his mother's feet, and this moment were already a mere memory, painful and far away, even while he was living it. viii frau golowski came out of the house. george could see her from the top end of the garden as she stepped on to the verandah. he hurried excitedly towards her, but as soon as she saw him in the distance she shook her head. "not yet?" asked george. "the professor thinks," replied frau golowski, "some time before dark." "some time before dark," said george and looked at his watch. and now it was only three. she held out her hand sympathetically and george looked into her kind eyes, which were somewhat tired by her nocturnal vigils. the white transparent curtain in front of anna's window had just been slightly drawn back. old doctor stauber appeared by the window, threw george a friendly reassuring glance, disappeared again and the curtains were drawn. frau rosner was sitting in the large centre room by the round table. george could only see from the verandah the outlines of her figure; her face was quite in the shade. then a whimpering and then a loud groan forced their way from the room in which anna lay. george stared up at the window, stood still for a while, then turned round and walked for the hundredth time to-day up the path to the top of the garden. it is clear that she is already too weak to shriek, he thought; and his heart pained him. she had lain in labour for two whole days and two whole nights. the third day was now approaching its end,--and now it was still to last until evening came. on the evening of the first day doctor stauber had called in the professor, who had been there twice yesterday and had remained in the house since noon to-day. while anna had gone to sleep for a few minutes, and the nurse was watching by her bed, he had walked up and down in the garden with george and had endeavoured to explain to him all the peculiar features of the case. for the time being there was no ground for anxiety. they could hear the child's heart beating quite clearly. the professor was a still fairly young man with a long blonde beard, and his words trickled gently and kindly like drops of some anodyne drug. he spoke to the sick woman like a child, stroked her over the hair and forehead, caressed her hands and gave her pet names. george had learned from the nurse that this young doctor exhibited the same devotion and same patience at every sick-bed. what a profession! thought george, who had once, during these three bad days, fled to vienna for a few hours, which enabled a man to have a sound dreamless sleep for six good hours up there in the attic this very night while anna was writhing in pain. he walked along by the faded lilac-bushes, tore off leaves, crunched them in his hand and threw them on the ground. a lady in a black-and-white striped morning dress was walking in the next garden on the other side of the low bushes. she looked at george seriously and almost sympathetically. quite so! thought george. of course she heard anna's screams the day before yesterday, yesterday and to-day. the whole place in fact knew of what was happening there; even the young girls in the _outré_ gothic villa, who had once taken him for the interesting seducer; and there was real humour in the fact that a strange gentleman with a reddish pointed beard, who lived two houses away, should have suddenly greeted him yesterday in the village with respectful understanding. remarkable, thought george, how one can make oneself popular with people. but frau rosner let it be seen that even though she did not regard george as mainly responsible for the seriousness of the position she certainly regarded him as somewhat callous. he did not bear any grudge for this against the poor good woman. she could not of course have any idea how much he loved anna. it was not long since he had known it himself. she had not addressed any question to him on that morning of his arrival when george had lifted his head off her lap after a long silent fit of weeping, but he had read in the painful surprise of her eyes that she guessed the truth, and he thought he understood why she did not question him. she must realise how completely she possessed him again, how henceforth he belonged to her more than he had ever done before, and when he told her in the subsequent hours and days of the time which he had spent far away from her, and that now fateful name resounded casually but yet insistently out of the catalogue of the women whom he had met, she smiled, no doubt, in her slightly mocking way, but scarcely differently than when he spoke of else or sissy, or the little girls in their blue dresses who had peeped into the music-room when he was playing. he had been living in the villa for two weeks, had been feeling well and in good form for serious work. he spread out every morning on the little table, where therese's needlework had lain a short time ago, scores, works on musical theory, musical writing-paper, and occupied himself with solving problems in harmony and counterpoint. he often lay down in the meadow by the edge of the forest and read some favourite book or other, let melodies ring within him, indulged in day-dreams and was quite happy, with the rustling of the trees and the brilliance of the sun. in the afternoon, when anna was resting, he would read aloud or talk to her. they often talked with affectionate anticipation about the little creature that was soon to come into the world, but never about their own future, whether distant or immediate. but when he sat by her bed, or walked up and down the garden with her arm-in-arm, or sat by her side on the white seat under the pear-tree, where the shining stillness of the late summer day rested above them, he knew they were tied fast to each other for all time, and that even the temporary separation with which they were faced could have no power to affect them in view of the certain feeling that they were all in all to each other. it was only since the pains had come upon her that she seemed removed from him to a sphere where he could not follow her. yesterday he had sat by her bed for hours and had held her hand in his. she had been patient, as always, had anxiously inquired if he were quite comfortable in the house, had begged him to work and go for walks as he had done before, since after all he could not help her, and had assured him that since she was suffering she loved him even more. and yet she was not the same, george felt, as she had been during these days. particularly when she screamed out--as she had this morning in her worst pains--her soul was so far away from him that he felt frightened. he was near the house again. no noise came from anna's room, in front of the window of which the curtains moved slightly. old doctor stauber was standing on the verandah. george hastened towards him with a dry throat. "what is it?" he asked hastily. doctor stauber put his hand on his shoulder. "going on nicely." a groan came from within, grew louder, grew into a wild frenzied scream. george passed his hand over his damp forehead and said to the doctor with a bitter smile: "is that what you mean by going on nicely?" stauber shrugged his shoulders. "it is written, 'with pain shalt thou....'" george felt a certain sense of resentment. he had never believed in the god of the childishly pious, who was supposed to reveal himself as the fulfiller of the wishes of wretched men and women, as the avenger and forgiver of miserable human sins. the nameless one which he felt in the infinite beyond his senses, and transcending all understanding, could only regard prayer and blasphemy as poor words out of a human mouth. not even when his mother had died, after the senseless martyrdom of her suffering, not even when his father had died, passing away painlessly so far as he could understand, had he presumed to indulge in the belief that his own personal misfortunes in the world's progress signified more than the falling of a leaf. he had not bowed down in cowardly humility to any inscrutable solution of the riddle, nor had he foolishly murmured against an ungracious power of whose decrees he was the personal victim. to-day he felt for the first time as though somewhere or other in the clouds an incomprehensible game was being played in which his own fortunes were the stakes. the scream within had died away and only groans were audible. "and the beating of the heart?" asked george. doctor stauber looked at him. "it could still be heard clearly ten minutes ago." george fought against a dreadful thought which had been hounded up out of the depths of his soul. he was healthy, she was healthy, two strong young people.... could anything like that be really possible? doctor stauber put his hand on his shoulder again. "go for a walk," he said. "we'll call you as soon as it's time." and he turned away. george remained standing on the verandah for another minute. he saw frau rosner sitting huddled up in solitary brooding on the sofa near the wall in the large room that was beginning to grow dim in the shade of the late afternoon. he went away, walked round the house and went up the wooden stairs into his attic. he threw himself on the bed and shut his eyes. after a few minutes he got up, walked up and down in the room, but gave up doing so as the floor creaked. he went on to the balcony. the score of _tristan_ lay open on the table. george looked at the music. it was the prelude to the third act. the music rang in his ears. the sea waves were beating heavily on a cliff shore, and out of the mournful distance rang the sad melody of an english horn. he looked over the pages far away into the silver-white brilliance of the daylight. there was sunshine everywhere--on the roofs, paths, gardens, hills and forests. the sky was spread out in its azure vastness and the smell of the harvest floated up from the depths. how were things with me a year ago? thought george. i was in vienna, quite alone. i had not an idea. i had sent her a song ... '_deinem blick mich zu bequemen_' ... but i scarcely gave her a thought ... and now she lies down there dying.... he gave a violent start. he had meant to say mentally ... "she is lying in labour," and the words "lies dying" had as it were stolen their way on to his lips. but why was he so frightened? how childish! as though there existed presentiments like that! and if there really were danger, and the doctors had to decide, then of course they would have to save the mother. why, doctor stauber had only explained that to him a few days ago. what, after all, is a child that hasn't yet lived? nothing. he had begotten it at some moment or other without having wished it, without having even thought of the possibility that he might have become a father. how did he know either that in that dark hour of ecstasy, behind closed blinds a few weeks ago he had not ... also become a father without having wished it, without having even thought of the possibility; and perhaps it might have happened without his ever knowing! he heard voices and looked down; the professor's coachman had caught hold of the arm of the housemaid, who was only slightly resisting. perhaps the foundations are being laid here too of a new human life, thought george, and turned away in disgust. then he went back into his room, carefully filled his cigarette-case out of the box that stood on the table, and it suddenly seemed to him that his excitement was baseless and even childish, and it occurred to him: "my mother, too, once lay like that before i came into the world, just as anna is doing now. i wonder if my father walked about as nervously as i am doing? i wonder if he would be here now if he were still alive? i wonder if i would have told him at all? i wonder if all this would have happened if he had lived?" he thought of the beautiful serene summer days by the veldeser lake. his comfortable room in his father's villa swept up in his memory and in some vague way, almost dreamwise, the bare attic with the creaking floor in which he now found himself seemed to typify his whole present existence in contrast to that former life which had been so free from care and responsibility. he remembered a serious talk about the future which he had had a few days ago with felician. immediately after this thought there came into his mind the conversation which he had had with a woman in the country, who had introduced herself with the offer to take charge of the child. she and her husband possessed a small property near the railway, only an hour away from vienna, and her only daughter had died in the previous year. she had promised that the little one should be well looked after, as well, in fact, as though it were not a stranger's at all, and as george thought of this he suddenly felt as though his heart were standing still. it will be there before dark.... the child.... his child, but a strange woman was waiting somewhere to take it away with her. he was so tired after the excitement of the last few days that his knees hurt him. he remembered having previously felt similar physical sensations, the evening after his "leaving-examination" and the time when he had learnt of labinski's suicide. how different, how joyful, how full of hope had been his mood three days ago, just before the pains began! he now felt nothing except an unparalleled dejection, while he found the musty smell of the attic more and more unpleasant. he lit a cigarette and stepped on to the balcony again. the warm silent air did him good. the sunshine still lay on the sommerhaidenweg and a gilded cross shone over the walls from the direction of the churchyard. he heard a noise beneath him. steps? yes, steps and voices too. he left the balcony and the room and rushed down over the creaking wooden staircase. a door opened, steps were hurrying over the floor. the next moment he was on the bottom step opposite frau golowski. his heart stood still. he opened his mouth without asking. "yes," she nodded, "a boy." he gripped both her hands and felt, while he was beaming all over, a stream of happiness was running through his soul with a potency and intense warmth that he had never anticipated. he suddenly noticed that frau golowski's eyes were not shining as brightly as they certainly ought to have. the stream of happiness within him ebbed back. something choked his throat. "well?" he said. then he added, almost menacingly: "does it live?" "it just breathed once.... the professor hopes...." george pushed the woman on one side, reached the great centre room in three strides and stood still as though spell-bound. the professor, in a long white linen apron, held a small creature in his arms and rocked it hurriedly to and fro. george stood still. the professor nodded to him and went on undisturbed with what he was doing. he was examining the little creature in his arms with scrutinising eyes, he put it on the table, over which a white linen cloth had been spread, made the child's limbs execute violent exercises, rubbed its breast and face, then lifted it high up several times in succession, and george always saw how the child's head drooped heavily on to its breast. then the doctor put it on to the linen cloth, listened with his ear on its bosom, got up, put one hand on its little body and motioned gently with the other to george to approach. involuntarily holding his breath george came quite near him. he looked first at the doctor and then at the little creature which lay on the white linen. it had its eyes quite open, strangely big blue eyes, like those of anna. the face looked quite different from what george had expected, not wrinkled and ugly like that of an old dwarf, no; it was really a human face, a silent beautiful child-face, and george knew that these features were the image of his own. the professor said gently: "i've not heard its heart beat for the last hour." george nodded. then he asked hoarsely: "how is she?" "quite well, but you mustn't go in yet, herr baron." "no," replied george and shook his head. he stared at the immobile little body with its bluish shimmer and knew that he was standing in front of the corpse of his own child. nevertheless he looked at the doctor again and asked: "can nothing more be done?" he shrugged his shoulders. george breathed deeply and pointed to the closed bedroom door. "does she know yet----" he asked the doctor. "not yet. let's be thankful for the time being that it is over. she has gone through a lot, poor girl. i only regret that it should turn out to have been for nothing." "you expected it, herr professor?" "i feared it since this morning." "and why ... why?" the doctor answered softly and gently: "a very exceptional case, as i told you before." "you told me...?" "yes, i tried to explain to you that this possibility ... it was strangled, you see, by the umbilical cord. scarcely one or two per cent. of births end like that." he was silent. george gazed at the child. quite right, the professor had prepared him in advance only he had not taken it seriously. frau rosner was standing by him with helpless eyes. george held out his hand to her and they looked at each other like persons whom the sore stress of circumstances has made companions in misfortune. then frau rosner sank down on a chair by the wall. the professor said to george: "i will now go and just have a look at the mother." "mother!" repeated george, and gazed at him. the doctor looked away. "you will tell her?" asked george. "no, not at once. anyway, she will be ready for it. she asked several times in the course of the day if it was still alive. it will not have so dreadful an effect upon her as you fear, herr baron ... at any rate during the first hours, the first days. you mustn't forget what she has gone through." he pressed george's limply-hanging hand and went. george stood there motionless. he was gazing continually at the little creature, and it seemed to him a picture of undreamt-of beauty. he touched its cheeks, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers. how mysteriously complete it all was! and there it lay, having died without having lived, destined to go from one darkness into another, through a senseless nothingness. there it lay, the sweet tiny body which was ready for life and yet was unable to move. there they shone, those big blue eyes, as though with desire to drink in the light of heaven, and completely blind before they had seen a ray. and there was the small round mouth which was open as though with thirst, but yet could never drink at a mother's breast. there it gazed, that white child-face with its perfect human features, which was never to receive or feel the kiss of a mother, the kiss of a father. how he loved this child! how he loved it, now that it was too late! a choking despair rose within his throat. he could not cry. he looked around him. no one was in the room and it was quite still next door. he had no desire to go into that other room, nor had he any fear. he only felt that it would have been rather senseless. his eye returned to the dead child, and suddenly the poignant question thrilled through him whether it was really bound to be true. could not every one make a mistake, a physician as much as a layman? he held his open palm before the child's open lips and it was as though something cool was breathed towards him. and then he held both hands over the child's breast and again it seemed as though a light puff were playing over the tiny body. but it felt just the same as in the other place: no breath of life had blown towards him. he now bent down again and his lips touched the child's cool forehead. something strange, something he scarcely felt tingled through his body to the very tips of his toes. he knew it now; he had lost the game up there in the clouds, his child was dead. then he slowly lifted his head and turned away. the sight of the garden tempted him into the open. he stepped on to the verandah and saw doctor stauber and frau rosner sitting on the seat that was propped against the wall--both silent. they looked at him. he turned away as though he did not know them and went into the garden. the shadow of the house fell obliquely over the lawn, there was still sunlight higher up but it was dull and as though without the strength to illumine the air. why did he want to think of that light which was sun and yet did not shine, that blue in the heights which was heaven and yet did not bless him? what was the point of the silence of this garden, which should console and comfort him, and yet received him to-day as though it were some strange inhospitable place? it gradually occurred to him that just such a twilight had enveloped him in a dream a short time ago with a dreariness of which he had previously had no idea, and had filled his soul with incomprehensible melancholy. what now? he said to himself aloud. he did not seek for any answer, and only knew that something unforeseen and unalterable had happened that must change the face of the world for him for all time. he thought of the day when his father had died. a wild grief had overwhelmed him then; yet he had been able to cry and the world had not suddenly become dark and void. his father had really lived, had once been young, had worked, loved, had children, experienced joys and sorrows. and the mother who had borne him had not suffered in vain. and even if he himself should have to die to-day, however early it might be, he had nevertheless a life behind him, a life full of light and music, happiness and suffering, hope and anxiety, steeped in all the fulness of the world. and even if anna had passed away to-day, in the hour when she gave life to a new being, she would as it were have fulfilled her lot and her end would have had its terrible but none the less deep significance. but what had happened to his child was senseless, was revolting--a piece of irony from somewhere or other, whither one could send no question and no answer. what was the point of it all? what had been the significance of these past months with all their dreams, their troubles and their hopes? for he knew, all in a flash, that the expectation of the wonderful hour in which his child was to be born had always lain in the depths of his soul every single day, even those which were most matter-of-fact, those which were most vacant, or those which were most wanton. and he felt ashamed, impoverished, miserable. he stood by the garden fence at the top end and looked towards the edge of the forest, towards his seat on which he had rested so often, and he felt as though forest and field and seat had previously been his possessions, and that he must now surrender them too, like so much else. in a corner of the garden stood a dark grey neglected summer-house with three little window-apertures and a narrow opening for a door. he had always disliked it, and had only gone in once for a few moments. to-day he felt drawn inside. he sat down on the cracked seat and suddenly felt hidden and soothed, as though all that had happened were less true or could in some inconceivable way be undone. yet this hallucination soon vanished, he left the inhospitable room and stepped into the open. i must now go back into the house again, he thought with a sense of exhaustion, and could not quite realise that the dead body of his child must be resting in the dark room, which he could see from here stretching behind the verandah like an unfathomable darkness. he walked slowly down the garden. anna's mother was standing with a gentleman on the verandah. george recognised old rosner. he stood there in his overcoat, he had laid his hat in front of him on the table. he passed a pocket handkerchief over his forehead and his red-lidded eyes twitched. he went towards george and pressed his hand. "what a pity that it turned out differently," he said, "than we had all hoped and expected!" george nodded. he then remembered that the old gentleman's heart had not been quite right during the past week and inquired after his health. "it is kind of you to ask, herr baron. i am a little better, only i find going uphill rather troublesome." george noticed that the glass door that led to the centre room was closed. "excuse me," he said to old rosner, strode straight to the door, opened it and quickly closed it behind him. frau golowski and doctor stauber were standing near the table and speaking to each other. he walked up to them and they suddenly stopped talking. "well?" he inquired. doctor stauber said: "we have been speaking about the ... formalities. frau golowski will be kind enough to see to all that." "thank you," replied george and held out his hand to frau golowski. "all that," he thought. a coffin, a funeral, a notification to the local registry; a son born of anna rosner, spinster, died on the same day. nothing about the father of course. yes, his part was finished. only to-day? had it not been finished the very second when quite by chance he became a father? he looked at the table. the cloth was spread over the tiny corpse. oh, how quick! he thought bitterly. am i never to see it again? i suppose i may be allowed to, once. he drew the cloth a little away from the body and held it high up. he saw a pale child-face which was quite familiar to him, only since then some one had closed the eyes. the old grandfather's clock in the corner ticked. six o'clock. scarcely an hour had passed since his child had been born and died: the fact was already as indisputably certain as though it could never have been otherwise. he felt a light touch on the shoulder. "she took it quietly," said doctor stauber, standing behind him. george dropped the cloth over the child's face and turned his head towards the side. "she already knows, then...?" doctor stauber nodded. frau golowski had turned away. "who told her?" asked george. "it wasn't necessary to tell her," replied doctor stauber, "was it?" he turned to frau golowski. the latter explained: "when i went in to her she just looked at me, and then i saw at once that she already knew." "and what did she say?" "nothing--nothing at all. she turned her eyes towards the window and was quite still. she asked where you had gone, herr baron, and what you were doing." george breathed deeply. the door of anna's room opened. the professor came out in a black coat. "she is quite quiet," he said to george. "you can go in to her." "did she speak to you about it?" asked george. the professor shook his head. then he said: "i am afraid i must go into town now; you'll excuse me, won't you? i hope things will go on all right. i shall be here early to-morrow any way. good-bye, dear herr baron." he pressed his hand sympathetically. "you'll drive in with me, doctor stauber, won't you?" "yes," said doctor stauber, "i only want to say good-bye to anna." he went. george turned to the professor. "may i ask you something?" "please do." "i should very much like to know, herr professor, whether this is simply imagination. it seems to me, you know"--and he again lifted up the cloth from the tiny corpse--"as though this child did not look like a new-born one, more beautiful, so to speak. i feel as though the faces of new-born children were bound to be more wrinkled, more like old men. i can't tell you whether i have ever seen one or whether i've only read about it." "you are quite right," replied the professor. "it is just in cases of this kind, and also of course when things turn out more fortunately, that the features of the children are not distorted, are frequently, in fact, quite beautiful." he contemplated the little face with professional sympathy, nodded a few times: "pity, pity" ... let the cloth fall down again, and george knew that he had seen his child's face for the last time. what name would it have had? felician.... good-bye, little felician! doctor stauber came out of the next room and gently closed the door. "anna is expecting you," he said to george. the latter gave him his hand, shook hands with the professor again, nodded to frau golowski and went into the next room. the nurse got up from anna's side and disappeared out of the room. opposite the door hung a mirror in which george saw an elegant young gentleman who was pale and was smiling. anna lay in her bed, which stood clear in the middle of the room, with big clear eyes, which looked straight at george. "what kind of a figure do i cut?" he thought. he pushed the chair close to her bed with some ceremoniousness, sat down, grasped her hand, put it to his forehead and then kissed her fingers long and almost ardently. anna was the first to speak. "you were in the garden?" she asked. "yes, i was in the garden." "i saw you come down from the top some time ago." "you had better not talk, anna. don't you feel it a strain?" "these few words! oh no. but you can tell me something...." he was holding her hand in his all the time and looking at her fingers. then he said: "do you know that there is a little summer-house at the top end of the garden? yes, of course you know.... i only mean, we'd never properly realised it." "i was in there a few times during the first week," said anna. "i don't like it." "no, indeed!" "have you done any work this morning?" she then asked. "what an idea, anna!" she shook her head quite gently. "and recently you have been getting on so well with it." he smiled. she remained serious. "you were in town yesterday?" she asked. "you know i was." "did you find any letters? i mean important ones." "you should really not talk so much, anna. i'll tell you everything right enough. well then, i found no letters of any importance. there was nothing from detmold either. anyway, i'll go and see professor viebiger one of these days. but we can talk about these things another time, don't you think? and so far as work goes ... i've been having another look at _tristan_ this morning. i even know it down to the smallest detail. i could trust myself to conduct it to-day, if it came to the point." she was silent and looked at him. he remembered the evening when he had sat by her side at the munich opera, as though enveloped in a transparent veil of the notes he loved so well. but he said nothing about it. it grew dark. anna's features began to grow dim. "are you going to town to-day?" she asked. he had not thought of doing so. but he now felt as though a kind of relief were beckoning to him. yes, he would go in. what, after all, could he do out here? but he did not answer at once. anna began again: "i think you would perhaps like to speak to your brother." "yes, i should like to very much. i suppose you are going to sleep soon?" "i hope so." "how tired you must be," he said as he stroked her arm. "no, it is rather different. i feel so awake ... i can't tell you how awake i feel.... it seems as though i had never been so awake in my whole life. and i know at the same time that i'm going to sleep more deeply than i ever have ... as soon as i've once closed my eyes." "yes, of course you will. but may i stay a bit longer with you? i'd really like to go on sitting here till you've fallen asleep." "no, george, if you are here i can't go to sleep. but just stay a bit longer. it's so nice." he held her hand all the time and looked out on to the garden, which was now lying in the twilight. "you weren't very much up at auhof this year?" said anna indifferently, as though simply making conversation. "oh yes, nearly every day. didn't i tell you?--i think else will marry james wyner and go with him to england." he knew that she was not thinking of else but of some one quite different. and he asked himself: does she perhaps mean ... that that is the reason? a warm puff blew in from outside. children's voices rang in. george looked out. he saw the white seat gleaming under the pear-tree and thought of how anna had waited for him there in her flowing dress, beneath the fruit-laden branches, girdled by the gentle miracle of her motherhood. and he asked himself: "was it fated then that it must end like this? or was it after all so fated at the moment when we embraced each other for the first time?" the professor's remark that one to two per cent. of all births ended like that came into his mind. so it was a fact that since people had started being born one or two in every hundred must perish in this senseless fashion at the very moment when they were brought into the light! and so many must die in their first years, and so many in the flower of their youth, and so many as men. and again a fated number put an end to their own lives, like labinski. and so many were doomed to fail in their attempt, as in oskar ehrenberg's case. why search for reasons? some law is at work, incomprehensible and inexorable, which we men cannot struggle against. who is entitled to complain? why should i be the victim? if it doesn't happen to one, it will happen to another ... whether innocent or guilty like he was. one to two per cent. get hit, that is heavenly justice. the children who were laughing in the garden opposite, they were allowed to live. allowed? no, they _must_ live, even as his own child had had to die, after the first breath it drew, doomed to travel from one darkness into another, through a senseless nothingness. it was twilight outside and it was almost night in the room. anna lay still and motionless. her hand did not move in george's, but when george got up he saw that her eyes were open. he bent down, hesitated a moment, then put his arm round her neck and kissed her on her lips, which were hot and dry and did not answer his touch. then he went. in the next room the hanging lamp was alight over the table on which the dead child had lain some while back. the green tablecloth was now spread out as though nothing had happened. the door of frau golowski's room was open. the light of a candle shone in, and george knew that his child was sleeping in there, its first and last sleep. frau golowski and frau rosner sat next to each other on the sofa by the wall, dumb, and as though huddled together. george went up to them. "has herr rosner gone already?" he turned to frau rosner. "yes, he rode into the town with the doctors," she answered, and looked at him questioningly. "she is quiet." george answered her look. "i think she will sleep soundly." "won't you take something?" asked frau golowski. "you haven't since one o'clock had...." "no thanks, i'm going into town now. i want to speak to my brother. i am also expecting important letters. i'll be here again early to-morrow." he took his leave, went up to his attic, fetched the _tristan_ score from the balcony into the room, took his stick and overcoat, lit a cigarette and left the house. as soon as he was in the street he felt freer. an awful upheaval lay behind him. it had ended unhappily, but at any rate it had ended. and anna was bound to be all right. of course with mothers as well there was the fated percentage. but it was clear that the possibility of an unfortunate issue was according to the law of probabilities necessarily much less than if the child had remained alive. he walked through the straggling village with swift strides, tried not to think of anything and looked with forced attention at every single house by which he passed. they were all mean, most of them positively dreary and squalid. behind them little gardens sloped up to vineyards, cultivated fields and meadows in the evening mist. in an almost empty inn garden a few musicians were sitting by a long table, playing a melancholy waltz on violins, guitars and a concertina. later on he passed more presentable houses, and he looked in through open windows into decently lighted rooms in which there were tables laid for dinner. he eventually took his seat in a cheerful inn garden, as far away as possible from the other not very numerous customers. he took his meal and soon felt a salutary fatigue come over him. on the tram he almost dozed off in his corner. it was only when the conveyance was driving through more lively streets that he thoroughly woke up and remembered what had happened, with an agonising but arid precision. he got out and walked home through the moist sultriness of the stadtpark. felician was not at home. he found a telegram lying on his secretary. it was from detmold and ran as follows: "we request you kindly to inform us if you can possibly come to us within the next three days. this offer is to be considered for the time being as binding on neither party; travelling expenses paid in any event.--faithfully, manager of the hoftheater." next to it lay the red form for the answer. george was in a state of nervous tension. what should he answer now? the telegram clearly indicated that there was a vacancy for the post of conductor. should he ask for a postponement? after eight days it would be quite easy to go there for an interview and then come back at once. he found thinking about it a strain. at any rate the matter could wait till to-morrow, and if that was too late then there would be no essential change in the position after all. he would always be welcomed as a special visitor, he knew that already. it was perhaps better not to bind himself ... to go on working at his training somewhere, without yet taking obligations or responsibilities upon himself, and then to be ready and equipped for the following year. but what paltry considerations these were, when compared with the terrible event of his life which had occurred to-day! he took up the malachite paper-weight and put it on the telegram. what now...? he asked himself. go to the club and rout out felician? yet that was not quite the place to tell him about the matter. it would really be best to stay at home and wait for him. it was in fact a little tempting to undress at once and lie down. but he certainly would not be able to sleep. so he came to think of tidying up his papers a little once again. he opened the drawer in his secretary, sorted bills and letters and made notes in his note-book. the noise of the street came in through the open windows as though from a distance. he thought of how he had read the letters of his dead parents in the same place in the previous summer after his father's death, and how the same noise of the town and the same perfume from the park had streamed in to him just like to-day. the year that had elapsed since then seemed in his tired mind to extend into eternities, then contracted again into a short span of time, and something kept whispering in his soul: what for ... what for? his child was dead. it would be buried in the churchyard by the sommerhaidenweg. it would rest there in consecrated ground, from the toilsome journey which it was fated to take from one darkness into another through a senseless nothingness. it would lie under a little cross, as though it had lived and suffered a whole human life.... as though it had lived! it had really lived from the moment when its heart had already begun to beat in its mother's body. no, even earlier.... it had belonged to the realm of the living from the very moment when its mother's body had received it. and george thought of how many children of men and women were fated to perish even earlier than his own child, how many, wished and unwished, were fated to die in the first days of their life without their own mothers even having an idea. and while he dozed with shut eyes, half asleep and half awake, in front of his secretary, he saw nothing but shining crosses standing up on tiny mounds, as though it were a toy cemetery and a reddish yellow toy sun were shining over it. but suddenly the image represented the cadenabbia cemetery. george was sitting like a little boy on the stone wall which surrounded it, and suddenly turned his gaze down towards the lake. and then there rode in a very long narrow boat, beneath dull yellow sails, with a green shawl on her shoulders, a woman, sitting motionless on the rowing bench, a woman whose face he tried to recognise with vague and almost painful efforts. the bell rang. george got up. what was it? oh, of course, there was no one there to open. the servant had been discharged since the first day of the month, and the porter's wife, who now looked after the brothers, was not in the apartment at this hour. george went into the hall and opened the door. heinrich bermann was standing in the hall. "i saw a light in your room from down below," he said. "it was a good idea my first going past your house. i was going, as a matter of fact, to drive out to your place in the country." is his manner really so excited? thought george, or do i only think it is? he asked him to come in and sit down. "thanks, thanks, i prefer to walk up and down. no, don't light the high lamp. the table lamp's quite enough.... anyway--how are you getting on out there?" "a child was born this morning," replied george quietly. "but unfortunately it was dead." "still-born?" "i don't know if one can say that," replied george with a bitter smile; "for it is supposed to have drawn one breath according to the doctor. the pains lasted for three days on end. it was ghastly. now it's all over." "dead! i'm very sorry--i really am." he held out his hand to george. "it was a boy," said george, "and strangely enough, very beautiful. quite different from what new-born children usually look like." he then told him, too, how he had stayed quite a time in an inhospitable summer-house which he had never gone into before, and the strange way in which the lighting of the country had suddenly altered. "it was a light," said george, "that places in one's dreams sometimes have. quite indefinite ... like twilight ... but rather mournful." while he said this, he knew that he would have described the whole matter quite differently to felician. heinrich sat in the corner of the ottoman and let the other speak. he then began: "it is strange. all this affects me very much, of course, and yet ... it calms me at the same time." "calms you?" "yes. as though certain things which i unhappily had to fear had suddenly grown less probable." "what kind of things?" without listening to him heinrich went on speaking with set teeth. "or is it only because i am in the presence of another man's grief? or is it because i am somewhere else, in a strange flat? that would be quite possible. haven't you noticed that even one's own death strikes one as something highly improbable, when one is travelling for instance; frequently in fact when one is out for a walk. man is subject to incomprehensible illusions like that." heinrich turned round after a few seconds, as though he had regained his self-control, but remained standing by the window with both hands resting on the sill behind him, and said laconically in a hard voice: "there's the possibility, you see, of the girl whose acquaintance you casually made the other day at my place having committed suicide. please don't look so startled. as you know, many of her letters hinted that she would do it." "well?" said george. heinrich lifted his hand deprecatingly. "i never took it seriously at all. but i got a letter this morning which, i don't quite know how to express it, had an uncanny ring of truth about it. as a matter of fact there is nothing in it which she hasn't already written to me ten or twenty times over; but the tone ... the tone.... to come to the point, i am as good as convinced that it has happened this time. perhaps at this very minute!" he stopped and stared in front of him. "no, heinrich." george stepped up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. "no!" he added, more firmly, "i don't believe it at all. i spoke to her a few weeks ago. you know about that. and then she certainly did not give me the impression ... i also saw her playing comedy.... if you had seen her acting in that impudent farce, you wouldn't believe it either, heinrich. she only wants to revenge herself on you for your cruelty. unconsciously, perhaps. probably she has convinced herself on many occasions that she cannot go on living, but the fact that she has stuck it out till to-day.... of course, if she had done it at once...." heinrich shook his head impatiently. "just listen, george. i telegraphed to the summer theatre. i inquired if she were still there, suggesting that it was a question of a new part for her, rehearsal of a new piece of mine, or something like that. i have been waiting at home ... till now ... but there is no answer. if i don't get one, or not a satisfactory one, i'll certainly go there." "yes, but why didn't you simply ask if she...." "if she has killed herself? one doesn't want to make oneself ridiculous, george. i might have asked for news on that point every other day or so, of course.... it would certainly have had a kind of grotesque humour right enough." "look here now--you don't believe it yourself?" "i'll go home now to see if there's a telegram there. good-bye, george. forgive me. i couldn't stand it any more at home, you see.... i am really sorry to have bothered you with my own affairs at a time like this. once more, i ask you to forgive me." "you had no idea.... and even if you had known.... in my case, it's quite--a finished chapter, so to speak. in my case, there is unfortunately nothing more to do." he looked excitedly out of the window, over the tops of the trees, towards the red spires and roofs which towered up out of the faint red light of the evening town. then he said: "i'll come with you, heinrich. i can't start anything at home. i mean.... if you don't mind my society." "mind!... my dear george!..." he pressed his hand. they went. at first they walked along the park in silence. george remembered his walk with heinrich through the prater allee last autumn, and immediately after that he remembered the may evening when anna rosner had appeared in the waldsteingarten later than the others, and frau ehrenberg had whispered to him, "i have asked her specially for you." yes, for him. if it had not been for that evening anna would never have become his mistress, and none of all the events which lay heavy on him to-day would ever have happened. was there some law at work in this? of course! so many children had to come into the world every year, and a certain number of those out of wedlock, and good frau ehrenberg had imagined that inviting fräulein anna rosner for baron von wergenthin had been a matter of her own personal fancy. "is anna quite out of danger?" asked heinrich. "i hope so," replied george. then he spoke about the pain which she had suffered, her patience, and her goodness. he felt the need of describing her as a perfect angel, as though he could thereby atone a little for the wrong he had done her. heinrich nodded. "she really seems to be one of the few women who are made to be mothers. it isn't true, you know, that there are many of that kind. having children--that's what they're all there for; but being mothers! and to think of her, of all people, having to suffer like that! i really never had an idea that anything like that could happen." george shrugged his shoulders. then he said: "i had been expecting to see you out there again. i think you even made some promise to that effect when you dined with us and therese a week ago." "oh yes. didn't we squabble dreadfully, therese and i? it got even more violent on the way home. really quite funny. we walked, you know, right into the town. the people who met us are absolutely bound to have taken us for a couple of lovers, we quarrelled so dreadfully." "and who won in the end?" "won? does it ever happen that any one wins? one only argues to convince oneself, never to convince the other person. just imagine therese eventually realising that a rational person can never become a member of any party! or if i had been driven to confess that my independence of party betokened a lack of philosophy of life, as she contended! why, we could both have shut up shop straight away. but what do you think of all this talk about a philosophy of life? as though a philosophy of life were anything else than the will and the capacity to see life as it really is. i mean, to envisage it without being led astray by any preconceived idea, without having the impulse to deduce a new law straight away from our particular experience, or to fit our experience into some existing law. but people mean nothing more by the expression 'philosophy of life' than a higher kind of devotion to a pet theory, devotion to a pet theory within the sphere of the infinite, so to speak. or they go on talking about a gloomy or cheerful philosophy according to the colours in which their individual temperament and the accidents of their personal life happen to paint the world for them. people in the full possession of their senses have a philosophy of life and narrow-minded people haven't. that's how the matter stands. as a matter of fact, one doesn't need to be a metaphysician to have a philosophy of life.... perhaps in fact one shouldn't be one at all. at any rate, metaphysics have nothing at all to do with the philosophy of life. each of the philosophers really knew in his heart of hearts that he simply represented a kind of poet. kant believed in the thing in itself, and schopenhauer in the world as will and representation, just like shakespeare believed in hamlet, and beethoven in the ninth symphony. they knew that another work of art had come into the world, but they never imagined for a single minute that they had discovered a final 'truth.' every philosophical system, if it has any rhythm or depth, represents another possession for the world. but why should it alter a man's relationship to the world if he himself has all his wits and senses about him?" he went on speaking with increasing excitement and fell, as it seemed to george, into a feverish maze. george then remembered that heinrich had once invented a merry-go-round that turned in spirals higher and higher above the earth, to end finally in the top of a tower. they chose a way through suburban streets, with few people and only moderate lighting. george felt as though he were walking about in a strange town. suddenly a house appeared that was strangely familiar to him, and he now noticed for the first time that they were passing the house of the rosner family. there were lights in the dining-room. probably the old man was sitting there alone, or in the company of his son. is it possible, thought george, that in a few weeks anna will be sitting there again at the same table as her mother and father and brother as though nothing had happened? that she will sleep again night after night behind that window with its closed blinds and leave that house day after day to give her wretched lessons.... that she will take up that miserable life again as though nothing at all had changed? no. she should not go back to her family. it would be quite senseless. she must come to him, live with him, the man she belonged to. the detmold telegram! he had almost forgotten it, but he must talk it over with her. it showed hope and prospects. living was cheap in a little town like that. besides, george's own fortune was a long way from being eaten up. one would be justified in chancing it. besides, this post simply represented the beginning. perhaps he would get another one soon in a larger town. in a single night one might be a success without expecting it--that was always the way--and one would have a name, not only as a conductor, but also as a composer, and it need only be two or three years before they could have the child with them.... the child ... how the thought raged through his brain!... to think of one being able to forget a thing like that even for a minute. heinrich went on speaking all the time. it was quite obvious that he wanted to stupefy himself. he continued to annihilate philosophers. he had just degraded them from poets to jugglers. every system, yes, every philosophic system and every moral system was nothing but a juggle of words, a flight from the animated fulness of phenomena into the marionette fixity of categories. but that was the very thing which mankind desired. hence all the philosophies, all the religions, all the moral laws. they were all taking part in that identical flight. a few, a very few, were given the awful inner faculty of being ready to feel every experience as new and individual--were given the strength to endure standing in a new world as it were, every single minute. and the truth was this: only the man who conquered the cowardly impulse of imprisoning all experiences in words was shown life--that manifold unity, that wondrous thing, in its own true shape. george had the feeling that heinrich, with all his talk, was simply trying to succeed in shaking off any sense of responsibility towards a higher law by refusing to recognise any. and with a kind of growing antagonism to heinrich's silly and extraordinary behaviour he felt that the scheme of the world that had threatened some hours ago to fall to pieces was gradually beginning to put itself together again within his own soul. he had only recently rebelled against the senselessness of the fate which had struck him, and yet he already began to feel vaguely that even what had appeared to him as a grievous misfortune had not been precipitated upon his head out of the void, but that it had come to him along a way which, though darker, was quite as preordained as that which approached him along a far more visible road and which he was accustomed to call necessity. they were in front of the house in which heinrich lived. the concierge stood at the door and informed them that he had put a telegram in heinrich's room a short time ago. "oh," said heinrich indifferently, and slowly went up the stairs. george followed. heinrich lit a candle in the hall. the telegram lay on the little table. heinrich opened it, held it near to the flickering light, read it himself and then turned to george. "she's expected for the rehearsal to-morrow, and has not yet turned up." he took the light in his hand and followed by george went into the next room, put the light on the secretary, and walked up and down. george heard through the open window the strumming of a piano resounding over the dark courtyard. "is there nothing else in the telegram?" he asked. "no. but it's obvious that not only has she been absent from the rehearsal, but that she wasn't to be found in her lodgings either. otherwise, they would certainly have telegraphed that she was ill, or given some explanation or other. yes, my dear george," he breathed deeply, "it has happened this time." "why? there is no proof of it. scarcely anything to go on." heinrich cut short the other's remarks with a curt gesture. he then looked at his watch and said: "there are no more trains to-day.... yes.... what should one do first?" he stopped, remained standing, and suddenly said: "i'll go to her mother's. yes. that's the best.... perhaps--perhaps...." they left the apartment. they took a conveyance at the next corner. "did the mother know anything?" asked george. "damn it all," said heinrich, "about as much as mothers usually know. it is incredible the small amount of thought people give to what is taking place under their very noses, if they are not compelled to do so by some actual occasion. and most people have no idea how much they really know at the bottom of their hearts without owning up to it. the good woman is bound of course to be somewhat surprised at my springing up so suddenly.... i haven't seen her for a long time." "what will you say to her?" "yes, what will i say to her?" repeated heinrich, and bit at his cigar. "i say, i've got a splendid idea. you'll come with me, george. i'll introduce you as a manager, eh? you are travelling through, have got to catch a special train for st. petersburg at eleven o'clock this very day. you've heard somewhere or other that the young lady is staying in vienna, and i as an old friend of the family have been kind enough to introduce you." "do you feel in the mood for comedies like that?" asked george. "please forgive me, george, it's really not at all necessary. i'll just ask the old woman if she has any news.... what do you say?... how sultry it is to-night!" they drove over the ring, through the echoing burghof, through the streets of the town. george felt in a strange state of tension. supposing the actress were now really sitting quietly at home with her mother? he felt that it would mean a kind of disillusionment for him. and then he felt ashamed of that emotion. do i look upon the whole thing as simply a distraction? he thought. what happens to other people ... is rarely more than that, nürnberger would say.... a strange way of distracting oneself in order to forget the death of one's child.... but what is one to do?... i can't alter things. i shall be going away in a few days, thank heaven. the vehicle stopped in front of a house in the neighbourhood of the praterstern. a train was growling over the viaduct opposite; underneath the avenues of the prater ran into the darkness. heinrich dismissed the conveyance. "thank you very much," he said to george. "good-bye." "i'll wait for you here." "will you really? well, i should be awfully grateful if you would." he disappeared through the door. george walked up and down. in spite of the lateness of the hour it was still fairly lively in the street. the strains of a military band in the prater carried to the place where he was. a man and a woman went past him; the man carried in his arms a sleeping child, which had slung its hands round its father's neck. george thought of the garden in grinzinger, of the unwashed little thing which had stretched out its tiny hands to him from its mother's arms. had he been really touched then, as nürnberger had asserted? no, it was certainly not emotion. something else perhaps. the vague consciousness of standing with both hands linked in that riveted chain which stretches from ancestors to descendants, of participating in the universal human destiny. now, he stood suddenly released again, alone ... as though spurned by a miracle whose call he had heard without sufficient veneration. it struck ten o'clock from a neighbouring church tower. only five hours, thought george, and how far away it all seemed! now he was at liberty to knock about the world as he had done before.... was he really at liberty? heinrich came out of the doorway. the door closed behind him. "nothing," he said. "the mother has no idea. i asked her for the address, as though i had something important to communicate to her. i had just come from the prater, and it had occurred to me ... and so on. a nice old woman. the brother sits at a table and copies on a drawing-board out of an illustrated paper a mediæval castle with innumerable turrets." "be candid, for once in a way," said george. "if you could save her by doing so, wouldn't you forgive her now?" "my dear george, don't you see yet that it is not a question of whether i want to forgive her or not? just remember this, i could just have stopped loving her, which can frequently happen without one's being deceived at all. imagine this--a woman who loves you pursuing you, a woman whose contact for some reason or other makes you shudder swearing to you that she'll kill herself if you reject her. would it be your duty to give in? could you reproach yourself the slightest bit if she really went to her death, through the so-called pangs of despised love? would you regard yourself as her murderer? it is sheer nonsense, isn't it? but if you think that it's what other people call conscience which is now torturing me, you are making a mistake. it is simply anxiety about what has happened to a person who was once very dear to me, and is i suppose still very dear to me. the uncertainty...." he suddenly stared fixedly in one direction. "what is the matter with you?" asked george. "don't you see? a telegraph messenger is coming towards the door of the house." before the man had time to ring heinrich was at his side, and said a few words which george could not understand. the messenger seemed to be making objections. heinrich was answering and george, who had come nearer, could hear him. "i have been waiting for you here in front of the door because the doctor gave me stringent orders to do so. this telegram contains ... perhaps ... bad news ... and it might be the death of my mother. if you don't believe me, you just ring and i'll go into the house with you." but he already had the telegram in his hands, opened it hurriedly and started to read it by the light of the street lamp. his face remained absolutely immobile. then he folded the telegram together again, handed it to the messenger, pressed a few silver coins into his hand. "you must now take it in yourself." the messenger was surprised, but the tip put him in a better temper. heinrich rang and turned away. "come!" he said to george. they went silently down the street. after a few minutes heinrich said: "it has happened." george felt more violently shocked than he had anticipated. "is it possible...?" he exclaimed. "yes," said heinrich. "she drowned herself in the lake--where you spent a few days this summer," he added in a tone which seemed to imply that george too was somehow partly responsible for what had happened. "what's in the telegram?" inquired george. "it's from the manager. it contains the news that she has had a fatal accident while out boating. requests her mother to give further directions." he spoke in a cool hard voice, as though he were reading an announcement out of a paper. "that poor woman! i say, heinrich, oughtn't you to...." "what!... go to her? what should i be doing there?" "who is there, except you, who can at a time like this stand by her ... ought to, in fact?" "who except me?" he remained standing. "you think that because it happened more or less on my account? i tell you positively that i feel absolutely innocent. the boat out of which she let herself drop, and the waves which received her could not feel more innocent than i do. i just want to settle that point.... but that i should go in and see the mother.... yes, you are quite right about it." and he turned again in the direction of the house. "i will remain with you if you like," said george. "what an idea, george! just go quietly home. what more am i to ask you to do? and remember me to anna, and tell her how sorry i am.... well, you know that.... ah, here we are. you don't mind my keeping you a few seconds more before i...." he stood silently there. he then began again, and his features became distorted. "i'll tell you something, george. it's like this. it's a great happiness that at certain times one doesn't know what has really happened to one. if one immediately realised the awfulness of moments like this, you know, to the extent one realises them afterwards in one's memory, or realises them before in anticipation--one would go mad. even you, george--yes, even you. and many do really go mad. those are probably the people who are granted the gift of realising straight away.... my mistress has drowned herself, do you see? that's all one can say. has the same kind of thing really happened to any one else before? oh no. of course you think that you have read or heard of something similar. it is not true. to-day is the first time--the first time since the world's been in existence--that anything like this has ever happened." the door opened and closed again. george was alone in the street. his head was dazed, his heart oppressed. he went a few steps, then took a fly and drove home. he saw the dead woman in front of him, just as she had stood in front of the stage door on that bright summer day in her red blouse and short white skirt, with the roving eyes beneath the reddish hair. he would have sworn at the time that she had a _liaison_ with the comedy actor who looked like guido. perhaps that really was the case. that might be _one_ kind of love and what she felt for heinrich another. really there were far too few words. you go to your death for one man, you go to bed with another--perhaps the very night before you drown yourself for the first. and what, after all, does a suicide really mean? only perhaps that at some moment or other one has failed to appreciate death. how many tried again if they had failed once? the conversation with grace came into his mind, that hot-and-cold conversation by labinski's grave on the sunny february day in the thawing snow. she had confessed to him then that she had not felt any fear or horror when she had found labinski shot in front of the door of her flat. and when her little sister had died many years ago she had watched the whole night by the death-bed without feeling even a trace of what other people called horror. but, so she told george, she had learned to feel in men's embraces something that might be rather like that feeling. at first the thing had puzzled her acutely, subsequently she thought she could understand it, but according to what the doctors said she was doomed to barrenness, and that must be the reason why it came about that the moment of supreme delight, which was rendered as it were pointless by this fate, plunged her in terror and apprehension. this had struck george at the time as a piece of affectation. to-day he felt a breath of truth in it for the first time. she had been a strange creature. would he ever meet again a person of a similar type? why not? quite soon, as a matter of fact. a new epoch in his life was now beginning and the next adventure was perhaps waiting for him somewhere or other. adventure...? had he a right still to think about such things?... were not, from to-day onwards, his responsibilities more serious than they had ever been? did he not love anna more than he had ever done before? the child was dead, but the next one would live.... heinrich had spoken the truth: anna was simply cut out to be a mother. a mother.... but he thought with a shiver: was she cut out at the same time to be the mother of _my_ children? the fly stopped. george got out and went up the two storeys to his apartment. felician was not yet home. who knows when he will come? thought george. i can't wait for him, i'm too tired. he undressed quickly, sank into bed, and a deep sleep enveloped him. when he woke up his eyes tried to find through the window a white line between field and forest, the sommerhaidenweg which he had been accustomed to look at for some days. but he only saw the bluish empty sky which a tower was piercing, and suddenly realised that he was at home, and all that he had lived through yesterday came into his mind. yet he felt fresh and alert in mind and body, and it seemed to him as though apart from the calamity which had befallen him there was a piece of good fortune which he had to remember. oh yes, the detmold telegram.... was it really so lucky? he had not thought so yesterday evening. there was a knock at his door. felician came into the room with his hat and stick in his hand. "i didn't know that you slept at home last night," he said. "glad to see you. well, what's the news out there?" george rested his arm on the pillow and looked up towards his brother. "it's over," he said; "a boy, but dead," and he looked straight in front of him. "not really," said felician with emotion, came up to him and instinctively put his hand upon his brother's head. he then put hat and stick on one side and sat down on the bed by him, and george could not help thinking of the morning hours of the years of his childhood, when he had often seen his father sitting like that on the edge of the bed when he woke up. he explained to felician how it had all happened, laying especial stress on anna's patience and gentleness; but he felt with a certain sense of misgiving that he had to force himself a bit to keep the tone of seriousness and depression which was appropriate to his news. felician listened sympathetically, then got up and walked up and down the room. then george got up, began to dress and told his brother of the remarkable developments of the rest of the evening. he spoke about his walks and drives with heinrich bermann and of the strange way in which they had learned at last of the actress's suicide. "oh, that's the one," said felician. "it's already in the papers, you know." "well, what happened?" asked george curiously. "she rowed out into the lake and slipped into the water out of the boat.... well, you can read it.... i suppose you're now going straight out into the country again?" he added. "of course," replied george, "but i have still got something to tell you, felician, something which may interest you." and he told his brother about the detmold telegram. felician seemed surprised. "this is getting serious," he exclaimed. "yes, it's getting serious," replied george. "you have not yet answered?" "no, how could i?" "and what do you mean to do?" "frankly, i don't know. you understand i can't go straight away, particularly under circumstances like this." felician looked reflective. "a little delay probably wouldn't hurt," he said then. "i agree. i must first find out how they're getting on out there. of course i should also like to talk it over with anna." "where have you put the telegram? can i read it?" "it's lying on the secretary," said george, who was at the moment engaged in tying up his shoes. felician went into the next room, took the telegram in his hand and read it. "it is much more urgent," he observed, "than i thought." "it seems to me, felician, that it still strikes you as strange that i am shortly going to have a real profession." felician stood at his brother's side again and stroked his hair. "it is perhaps rather providential that the telegram should have come yesterday." "providential! how so?" "i mean that after such a sad business the prospect of practical occupation ought to do you twice as much good.... but i am afraid i must leave you now. i've still got quite a lot to do. farewell visits among other things." "when are you going then, felician?" "a week to-day. i say, george, i suppose you are probably coming back from the country to-day?" "certainly, if everything is all right out there." "perhaps we might see each other again in the evening." "i should like to very much, felician." "well then, if it suits you i'll be at home at seven. we might go and have supper together--but alone, not at the club." "yes, with pleasure." "and you might do me a favour," began felician again after a short silence. "remember me out there very very kindly ... tell her that i sympathise most sincerely." "thank you, felician. i will tell her." "really, george, i can't tell you how much it touched me," continued felician with warmth. "i only hope that she'll soon get over it.... and you, too." george nodded. "do you know," he said gently, "what it was going to be called?" felician looked at his brother's eyes very seriously, then he pressed his hand. "next time," he said with a kindly smile. he shook hands with his brother again and went. george looked after him, torn by varying emotions. yet he's not altogether sorry, he thought, that it should have turned out like that. he got ready quickly and decided to cycle into the country again to-day. it was only when he had got past most of the traffic that he really became conscious of himself. the sky had grown a little dull and a cool wind blew from the hills towards george, like an autumn greeting. he did not want to meet any one in the little village where yesterday's events were bound to be already known, and took the upper road between the meadows and the garden to the approach from the back. the nearer the moment came when he was to see anna again, the heavier his heart grew. at the railing he dismounted from his cycle and hesitated a little. the garden was empty. at the bottom lay the house sunk in silence. george breathed deeply and painfully. how different it might have been! he thought, walked down and heard the gravel crunch beneath his feet. he went on to the verandah, leaned his cycle against the railing and looked into the room through the open window. anna lay there with open eyes. "good morning," he cried, as cheerfully as he could. frau golowski, who was sitting by anna's bed, got up and said at once: "we've had a good sleep, a good sound sleep." "that's right," said george, and vaulted over the railing into the room. "you're very enterprising to-day," said anna with her arch smile, which reminded george of long-past times. frau golowski informed him that the professor had been early in the morning, had expressed himself completely satisfied and taken frau rosner with him in his carriage into the town. she then went away with a kindly glance. george bent down over anna, kissed her with real feeling on the eyes and mouth, pushed the chair nearer, sat down and said: "my brother--sends you his sincere wishes." her lips quivered imperceptibly. "thank you," she replied gently, and then remarked: "so you came out on your cycle?" "yes," he replied. "one has to keep a look-out you know on the way, and there are times when it's rather a sound thing one has to do so." he then told her how last evening had finished up. he related the whole thing as an exciting story, and it was only in the orthodox way at the end that anna was allowed to find out how heinrich's mistress had ended her life. he expected to see her moved, but she kept a strangely hard expression about her mouth. "it's really dreadful," said george. "don't you think so?" "yes," replied anna shortly, and george felt that her kindness completely failed her here. he saw the loathing flowing out of her soul, not tepidly, as though from one person to another, but strong and deep like a stream of hate from world to world. he dropped the subject and began again. "now for something important, my child." he was smiling but his heart beat a little. "well?" she asked tensely. he took the detmold telegram out of his breast pocket and read it to her. "what do you think of that?" he asked with affected pride. "and what did you answer?" "nothing so far," he replied casually, as though he had never thought of taking the matter seriously. "of course i wanted first to talk it over with you." "well, what do you think?" she asked imperturbably. "i ... shall refuse of course. i'll wire that i ... at any rate, can't come yet awhile." and he seriously explained to her that nothing would be lost by a postponement, that he would at any rate be welcomed as a special visitor, and that this pressing request was only due to an accident that one had no right to expect. she let him go on speaking for a while, then she said: "there you go being casual again. i think you should have made a special point of answering at once and...." "well, and...." "perhaps have even taken the train there straight away this morning." "instead of coming out to see you--eh?" he jested. she remained serious. "why not?" she said, and noticing him jerk his head up in surprise, "i'm getting on very well, thank heaven, george. and even if i were a bit worse you couldn't do any good, so...." "yes, my child," he interrupted, "it seems to me you don't appreciate what it really means! going there, of course, is a fairly simple matter--but--staying there! staying there at least till easter! the season lasts till then." "well, george, i think it quite right that you haven't gone away without first saying goodbye to me. but look here, you've got to go anyway, haven't you? even though we didn't actually speak about it during the last weeks we were both quite well aware of it. for whether you go away in a month's time or the day after to-morrow--or to-day...." george now began to argue seriously. it was not at all the same thing whether he went away in a month's time or to-day. one could manage to get used to certain thoughts in the course of a month, and besides, talk over everything properly--with regard to the future. "what is there so much to talk over?" she replied in a tired voice. "why, in a month's time you'll be.... you'll have as little chance of taking me with you as you have to-day. i even think that there won't be any point in our talking seriously about anything until after your return. a great deal will be bound to be cleared up by then.... at any rate, with regard to your prospects...." she looked out of the window into the garden. george showed mild indignation at her matter-of-fact coolness, which never deserted her, even at a moment like that. "yes, indeed," he said, "when one considers--what it means for you to stay here, and me...." she looked at him. "i know what it means," she said. instinctively he avoided her look, took her hands and kissed them. he felt inwardly harrowed. when he looked up again he saw her eyes resting on him quite maternally, and she spoke to him like a mother. she explained to him that it was _just_ because of the future--and there swept around that word a gentle suggestion of actual hope--that he should not miss an opportunity like that. in two or three weeks he could come back from detmold to vienna for a few days, for the people there would certainly appreciate that he must put his affairs over here in order. but above all it was necessary to give them a proof of his seriousness. and if he set any store by her advice there was only one thing to do: take the train that very evening. he need have no anxiety about her. she felt that she was quite out of danger. she felt that quite unmistakably. of course he would hear from her every day, twice a day if he liked, morning and evening. he did not yield at once, coming back again to the point that the unexpectedness of this separation would occasion a relapse. she answered that she would much prefer a quick separation like this to the prospect of another four weeks spent in anxiety, emotion and the fear of losing him. and the essential point remained that it was not a question of more than half the year, so they had half the year for themselves, and if everything went all right there would not be many periods of separation for the--the future. he now began again: "and what will you do in this half-year, while i'm away? it is really...." she interrupted him. "for the time being it will go on just as it has been going on for years; but i have been thinking this morning about a lot of things." "the school for singing?" "that, too. although of course that is neither so easy nor so simple. and besides," she added, with her arch expression, "it would be a pity if one had to shut it up again too soon. but we'll talk about all that later on. you go now and telegraph." "yes, but what!" he exclaimed in such desperation that she could not help laughing. then she said: "quite simple, 'shall have the honour to present myself at your office to-morrow noon. yours very obediently or faithfully ... or very proudly....'" he looked at her. then he kissed her hand and said: "you're certainly the cleverer of us two." his tone seemed to hint "the cooler too." but a gentle, tender and somewhat mocking look from her turned away the _innuendo_. "well, i'll be back again in ten minutes." he left her with a cheerful face, went into the next room and shut the door. opposite, in that other room, it now occurred to him again forcibly--his dead child lay in its coffin.... for the necessary steps, to use doctor stauber's expression of yesterday, were bound to have been already taken. he felt a paroxysm of grievous yearning. frau golowski came out of the hall. she came up to him and spoke with admiration of anna's resignation and calmness. george listened somewhat absent-mindedly. his looks kept always glancing through the doorway and at last he said gently: "i should like to see it once more." she looked at him, at first slightly shocked and then sympathetically. "nailed down already?" he asked anxiously. "sent away already," replied frau golowski slowly. "sent away!" his face became convulsed with such agony that the old woman laid her hands on his arm as though to calm him. "i went to notify it quite early," she said, "and then the other matter took place very quickly. they took it away an hour ago to the mortuary." "to the mortuary ..." george shuddered. he was silent for a long time as though unnerved from having just learned a terrible and completely unexpected piece of news. when he recovered himself again he still felt frau golowski's friendly hand upon his arm and saw her kind eyes with their tired lines resting on his face. "so it's all finished," he said, with an indignant look upwards, as though his last hope had been maliciously stolen from him. he then shook hands with frau golowski. "and you've undertaken all this, dear lady.... i really don't know ... how i can ever...." a gesture from the old woman deprecated any further thanks. george left the house, threw a contemptuous glance at the little blue angel, which seemed to look anxiously down at the faded flower-beds, and went into the street. on his way to the post-office he worried over the wording of the telegram that was to announce his arrival at the place of his new profession and his new prospects. ix old doctor stauber and his son sat over their coffee. the old man held a paper in his hand and seemed to be trying to find something. "the hearing of the case," he said, "is not yet fixed." "really!" replied berthold, "leo golowski thinks that it will take place in the middle of november, that is to say in about three weeks. therese, you know, visited her brother a few days ago in prison. they say he is perfectly calm and in quite good spirits." "well, who knows? perhaps he will be acquitted," said the old man. "that's highly improbable, father. he ought to be glad, on the other hand, that he isn't being prosecuted for ordinary murder. an attempt was certainly made to get him prosecuted for it." "you certainly can't call it a serious attempt, berthold. you see the treasury didn't bother about the silly libel to which you are referring." "but if they had regarded it as a libel," retorted berthold sharply, "they would have been under an obligation to prosecute the libellers. beside, it is common knowledge that we are living in a state where no jew is safe from being convicted to death for ritual murder; so why should the authorities shrink from taking official cognisance of the theory that jews when they fight duels with pistols with christians manage--perhaps for religious reasons--to ensure for themselves a criminal advantage? that the court didn't lack the good-will to take another opportunity of doing a service to the party in power is best seen by the fact that he still remains under arrest pending the trial, in spite of the fact that the high bail was tendered." "i don't believe the story about the bail," said the old doctor. "where's leo golowski to get fifty thousand gulden from?" "it wasn't fifty thousand, father, but a hundred thousand, and so far leo golowski knows nothing about it. i can tell you in confidence, father, that salomon ehrenberg put up the money." "indeed! well, i'll tell you something in confidence too, berthold." "well?" "it's possible that it won't go to trial at all. golowski's advocate has presented a petition to quash the proceedings." berthold burst out laughing. "on those grounds! and do you think, father, that that can have the slightest prospect of success? yes, if leo had fallen and the first-lieutenant had survived ... then perhaps." the old man shook his head impatiently. "you must always make opposition speeches, my boy, at any price." "forgive me, father," said berthold, twitching his brows. "every one hasn't got the enviable gift of being able to ignore certain tendencies in public life when they don't concern him personally." "is that what i am in the habit of doing, then?" retorted the old man vehemently, and the half-shut eyes beneath the high forehead opened almost bitterly. "but it is you, berthold, much more than i, who refuse to look where you don't want to see. i think you're beginning to brood over your ideas. you're getting morbid. i had hoped that a stay in another city, in another country, would cure you of certain petty narrow ideas, but they have grown worse instead. i notice it. i can neither understand nor approve any one starting fighting like leo golowski did. but to go on standing with your clenched fist in your pocket, so to speak--what's the point of it? pull yourself together, man. character and industry always pull through in the end. what's the worst that can happen to you? that you get your professorship a few years later than any one else. i don't think it is so great a misfortune. they won't be able to ignore your work if it is worth anything...." "it is not only a question of myself," objected berthold. "but it is mostly a matter of second-class interests of that kind. and to come back to our previous topic, it is really very questionable whether if it had been the first-lieutenant who had shot down leo golowski and ehrenberg, or ehrenmann[ ] for that matter, would have turned up with a hundred thousand gulden for him. yes, to be sure, and now you are quite at liberty to take me for an anti-semite too, if it amuses you, although i am driving straight into the rembrandtstrasse to see old golowski. well, good-bye, try and come to reason at last." he held out his hand to his son. the latter took it without changing countenance. the old man turned to go. at the door he said: "i suppose we shall see each other this evening at the medical society?" berthold shook his head. "no, father, i am spending this evening in a less edifying place--the 'silberne weintraube,' where there is a meeting of the social political union." "which you can't miss?" "impossible." "well, i wish you would tell me straight out. are you going to stand for the landtag?" "i ... am going to stand." "indeed! you think you're capable now of being able to face the ... unpleasantness which you ran away from last year?" berthold looked through the window at the autumn rain. "you know, father," he replied, twitching his brows, "that i wasn't in the right frame of mind then. i now feel strong and armed, in spite of your previous remarks, which have really touched the actual point. and above all i know precisely what i want." the old man shrugged his shoulders. "i can't understand how any one can give up a definite work ... and you will certainly have to give it up, for a man can't serve two masters ... to think of dropping something definite to ... to make speeches to people whose profession, so to speak, it is to have preconceived opinions--to fight for opinions which are usually not even believed in by the man who puts you forward to represent them." berthold shook his head. "i assure you, father, i'm not tempted this time by any oratorical or dialectical ambition. this time i have discovered the sphere in which i hope it will be possible for me to do quite as definite work as in the laboratory. i intend, you know, if i do any good at all, to bother about nothing else except questions of public health. perhaps i can count on your blessing, father, for this kind of political activity." "on mine ... yes. but how about your own?" "what do you mean?" "the blessing to which one might give the name of the inner call." "you doubt even that," replied berthold, really hurt. the servant came in and gave the old doctor a visiting card. he read it. "tell him i'll be glad to see him in a minute." the servant went away. berthold went on speaking in a state of some excitement. "i feel justified in saying that my training, my knowledge...." his father interrupted him as he played with the card. "i don't doubt your knowledge or your energy or your industry, but it seems to me that to be able to do any particular good in the sphere of public health you need as well as those excellent qualities another one too, which in my view you only have to a very small extent: kindness, my dear berthold, love of mankind." berthold shook his head vehemently. "i regard the love of humanity which you mean, father, as absolutely superfluous and rather injurious. pity--and what else can loving people whom one doesn't personally know really be?--necessarily leads to sentimentalism, to weakness. and when one wants to help whole groups of men then, above all, you must be able to be hard at times, hard to individuals--yes, be ready in fact to sacrifice them if the common good demands it. you only need to consider, father, that the most honest and consistent social hygiene would have the direct result of annihilating diseased people, or at any rate excluding them from all enjoyment of life, and i don't deny that i have all kinds of ideas tending in that way which may seem cruel at the first glance. but the future, i think, belongs to ideas. you needn't be afraid, father, that i shall begin straight away to preach the murder of the unhealthy and the superfluous. but theoretically that's certainly what my programme leads to. do you know, by the way, whom i had a very interesting conversation with the other day on this very subject?" "what subject do you mean?" "to put it precisely, a conversation on the right to kill. with heinrich bermann the author, the son of the late deputy." "but where did you get the opportunity of seeing him then?" "the other day at a meeting. therese golowski brought him along. you know him, too, don't you, father?" "yes," replied the old man, "i've known him for quite a long time." and he added: "i met him again this year in the summer at anna rosner's." berthold's eyebrows again twitched violently. then he said sarcastically: "i thought it was something like that. bermann mentioned, you know, that he had seen you some time ago, but he wouldn't remember exactly where. i concluded that it must have been a case of--discretion. i see. so the herr baron thought he would introduce his friends into her house." "my dear berthold, your tone seems to suggest that you have not got over a certain matter as completely as you previously hinted." berthold shrugged his shoulders. "i have never denied that i have an antipathy for baron wergenthin. that is why the whole business was so painful to me from the very beginning." "is that why?" "yes." "and yet i think, berthold, that you would regard the matter differently if you were to meet anna rosner again some time or other as a widow--even assuming that her late husband was even more antipathetic to you than baron von wergenthin." "that's possible. one can certainly presume that she has been loved--or at any rate respected, not just taken and--chucked away as soon as the spree was over. i'd have found that rather.... well, i won't put it any more definitely." the old man shook his head as he looked at his son. "it really seems as though all the advanced views of you young people break down as soon as your passions and vanities come into question." "so far as certain questions of cleanness or cleanliness are concerned i do not know that i am guilty of any so-called advanced views, father, and i don't think that you would be particularly delighted either if i felt any desire to be the successor of a more or less dead baron wergenthin." "certainly not, berthold. for her sake, especially, for you would torture her to death." "don't be uneasy," replied berthold, "anna's in no peril from my quarter. it's all over." "that's a good reason. but, happily, there's an even better one. baron wergenthin's neither dead nor has he cleared out...." "it doesn't matter, you know, about the actual word." "he has, as you know, a position as a conductor in germany...." "what a piece of luck! he has really been very fortunate over the whole thing. not even having to provide for a child." "you have two faults, berthold. in the first place you are really an unkind man, and in the second place you never let one finish. i was just on the point of saying that it doesn't seem to be anything like all over between anna and baron wergenthin. only the day before yesterday she gave me his kind regards." berthold shrugged his shoulders as though the matter were finished so far as he was concerned. "how's old rosner?" he asked. "he'll pull through all right this time," replied the old man. "anyway, i hope that you've retained a sufficient sense of detachment to realise that his attacks are not due to his grief about the prodigal daughter, but to a sclerosis of the arteries that is unfortunately fairly far advanced." "is anna giving lessons again?" asked berthold after some hesitation. "yes," replied the old man, "but perhaps not much longer." and he showed his son the visiting card which he was still holding in his hand. berthold contracted the corners of his mouth. "do you think," he asked ironically, "he has come here to celebrate his wedding, father?" "i shall soon find that out," replied the old man. "at any rate i'm very glad to see him again--for i assure you he's one of the most charming young men i've ever met." "extraordinary!" said berthold. "a quite unique winner of hearts. even therese raves about him. and heinrich bermann the other day, it was almost funny.... oh well, a slim handsome blonde young man, a baron, a german, a christian--what jew could withstand the magic?... goodbye, father." "berthold!" "well, what?" he bit his lips. "pull yourself together! remember what you are." "i ... remember." "no, you don't. otherwise you couldn't forget so often who the others are." berthold lifted his head interrogatively. "you should really go to rosner's some time. it is not worthy of you to let anna see your disapproval in so--childish a fashion. goodbye ... hope you'll have a good time in the 'silberne weintraube." he shook hands with his son and then went into his consulting-room. he opened the door of the waiting-room and with a friendly nod of the head invited george von wergenthin, who was turning over the leaves of an album, to come in. "i must first apologise to you, herr doctor," said george, after he had sat down. "my departure was so sudden.... unfortunately i had no opportunity of saying goodbye to you, of thanking you personally for your great...." doctor stauber deprecated his thanks. "i am very glad to see you again," he said, "i suppose you are here in vienna on leave?" "of course," replied george. "i've only got three days' leave; they need me there so urgently, you see," he added with a modest smile. doctor stauber sat opposite him in the chair behind his secretary and contemplated him kindly. "you feel very satisfied with your new position, so anna says." "oh yes; of course there are all kinds of difficulties when one plunges into a new kind of life like i did. but taking it all round everything has turned out much easier than i expected." "so i hear. and that you have already had a very good introduction at court." george smiled. "anna of course imagines that episode to be more magnificent than it really was. i played once at the hereditary prince's and a lady member of the theatre sang two songs of mine there; that's all. but what is much more important is that i have a chance of being appointed conductor this very season." "i thought you were already." "no, herr doctor, not yet officially. i have already conducted a few times as deputy, _freischütz_ and _undine_, but for the time being i am only accompanist." in response to further questions from the doctor he told him some more about his activities at the detmold opera. he then got up and said goodbye. "perhaps i can give you a lift part of the way in my carriage," said the doctor. "i am driving to the rembrandtstrasse to the golowskis'." "thanks very much, herr doctor, but that's not on my way. anyway, i intend to visit frau golowski in the course of to-morrow. she's not ill, is she?" "no. of course the excitement of the last weeks is bound to have had some effect upon her." george mentioned that he had written a few words to her and also to leo immediately after the duel. "when one thinks that it might have turned out differently ..." he added. doctor stauber looked in front of him. "having children," he said, "is a happiness which one pays for by instalments." at the door george began somewhat hesitatingly: "i also wanted ... to inquire of you, herr doctor, about the real state of herr rosner's health.... i must say i found him looking better than i had expected from anna's letters." "i hope that he will get all right again," replied stauber. "but of course one must remember that he's an old man. he's even old for his years." "but it's not a case of anything serious?" "old age is a serious business in itself," replied doctor stauber, "especially as his whole antecedent life, his youth and manhood, were not particularly cheerful." george, whose eyes had been roving round the room, suddenly exclaimed: "i've just thought of it, herr doctor. i've never sent you back the books you were good enough to lend me in the spring. and now i'm afraid all our things are at the depository, silver, furniture, pictures and the books as well. so i must ask you, herr doctor, to have patience till the spring." "if you have no worse troubles than that, my dear baron...." they went slowly down the stairs and doctor stauber inquired after felician. "he's in athens," replied george, "i've heard from him twice, not yet in any great detail.... how strange it is, herr doctor, coming back as a stranger to a town where one was at home a short time ago, and staying at an hotel as a gentleman from detmold!..." doctor stauber got into his carriage. george asked him to give his very best regards to frau golowski. "i'll tell her. and i wish you all further success, my dear baron. goodbye." it was five by the stephanskirche clock. george was faced with an empty hour. he decided to stroll slowly into the suburb in the thin tepid autumn rain. he had scarcely slept at all in the train and he had been at the rosners' two hours after his arrival. anna herself had opened the door to him, greeted him with an affectionate kiss, and quickly taken him into the room, where her parents welcomed him with more politeness than sincerity. the mother, who preserved her usual embarrassed and slightly injured tone, did not say much. the father, sitting in the corner of the ottoman, with a blue-coloured rug over his knees, felt it incumbent on him to inquire about the social and musical conditions of the little capital from which george had come. then he had remained alone awhile with anna. they first exchanged question and answer with undue quickness, and subsequently endearments, which were both flat and awkward, and they both seemed disappointed that they did not feel the happiness of seeing each other again with anything like the intensity which their love had given them to expect. very soon a pupil of anna's put in an appearance. george took his leave and hurriedly arranged an appointment for the evening with his mistress. he would fetch her from bittner's and then take her to the opera to see the performance of _tristan_. he had then taken his midday meal by the big window of a restaurant in the ringstrasse, made purchases and given orders at his tradesmen's, looked up heinrich, whom he did not find at home, and finally, obeying a sudden idea, decided to pay his "return-thanks" visit to doctor stauber. he now walked on slowly through the streets which he knew so well and which already seemed to have an atmosphere of strangeness; and he thought of the town from which he came and in which he was feeling at home far more quickly than he had expected. count malnitz had received him with great kindness from the very first moment. he had the plan of reforming the opera in accordance with modern ideas and wanted to win george to him, so the latter thought, as a collaborator and friend in his far-reaching projects. for the first conductor, excellent musician no doubt though he might be, was nowadays more of a court official than an artist. he had been appointed when he was five-and-twenty and had now been stationed in the little town for thirty years, a paterfamilias with six children, respected, contented and without ambition. soon after his arrival george heard songs sung at a concert which a long time ago had spread the fame of the young conductor throughout almost the whole world. george was unable to understand the impression produced by these quite out-of-date pieces, but none the less warmly complimented the composer with a kindly sympathy for the ageing man in whose eyes there seemed to shine the distant glamour of a richer and more promising past. george frequently asked himself if the old conductor still thought of the fact that he had once been taken for a man who was destined to go far, and whether he, like so many other of the inhabitants, regarded the little town as a hub from which the rays of influence and of fame fell far around. george had only found in a few any desire for a larger and more complex sphere of activity; it often seemed to him as though they rather treated him with a kind of good-natured pity because he came from a great town, and in particular from vienna. whenever the name of that town was mentioned in front of people george noticed in their smug and somewhat sarcastic manner that almost as regularly as harmonies accompany the bass, certain other words would be immediately switched into the conversation, even though they were not specifically mentioned: waltzes ... café ... _süsses mädel_[ ] ... grilled chicken ... fiacre ... parliamentary scandal. george was often irritated by this and made up his mind to do all he could to improve his countrymen's reputation in detmold. he had been asked to come because the third conductor, a quite young man, had suddenly died, and so george, on the very first day, had to sit at the piano in the little rehearsal-room and perform singing accompaniments. it went off excellently. he rejoiced in his gifts, which were stronger and surer than he had himself hoped, and it seemed to him, so far as he could recollect, that anna had slightly underestimated his talent. apart from this he threw himself more seriously into his compositions than he had ever done before. he worked at an overture which had originated out of the _motifs_ of bermann's opera. he had begun a violin sonata, and the mythical quintette, as else had called it once, was nearly finished. it was going to be performed this very winter in one of the court _soirées_, which were under the direction of the deputy-conductor of the detmold orchestra, a talented young man, the only person in fact in his new home with whom george had so far become at all intimate, and with whom he was accustomed to take his meals at the "elephant." george still inhabited a fine room in this inn, with a view on to the big square planted with lindens, and from day to day put off taking an apartment. he was quite uncertain whether he would be still in detmold next year and he also had the feeling that it would be bound to wound anna, if he were to do anything which looked like settling down as a bachelor for any length of time. yet he had said no word in his letters to her about any of the prospects of the future, just as she, on her side, left off addressing to him doubting or impatient questions. they practically only communicated to each other actual facts. she wrote of her gradual return into her old groove of life, and he of all the new surroundings among which he must first settle down. although there was practically nothing which he had to keep from her, he made a special point of slurring over many things that might easily lead to a misunderstanding. how was one to express in words the strange atmosphere which permeated in the morning the rehearsals in the half-dark body of the theatre, when the odour of cosmetics, perfumes, dresses, gas, old wood and fresh paint came down from the stage to the stalls, when figures which one did not at first recognise hopped to and fro between the rows of seats in ordinary or stage dress, when some breath which was heavy and scented blew gently against one's neck? and how was one to describe a glance which flashed down from the eyes of a young singer while one looked up to her from the keys...? or when one saw this young singer home through the theaterplatz and the königsstrasse in the broad light of noon and used the opportunity not merely to talk about the part of micaela, which one had just been studying with her, but also about all kinds of other, though no doubt fairly innocent, things? could one recount this to one's mistress in vienna without her reading something suspicious between the lines? and even if one had laid stress on the fact that micaela was engaged to a young doctor in berlin who adored her as much as she did him it would scarcely have improved matters, for that would really have looked as though one felt obliged to answer and reassure. how strange, thought george, that it is just this very evening that she is singing the micaela which i practised with her, and that i am going here along this same road out to mariahilf which i used to take a year ago so frequently and so gladly. he thought of a specific evening when he had fetched anna from out there, walked about with her in the quiet streets, looked at funny photographs in a doorway and finally walked with her on the cool stone flags of an ancient church, in a soft but how ominous conversation about an unknown future.... and now all had turned out quite differently to what he had hoped--quite differently.... why did it strike him like that?... what had he anticipated then at that time?... had not the year that had just passed been wonderfully rich and beautiful with its happiness and its grief? and did he not love anna to-day better and more deeply than ever? and had he not frequently yearned for her in that fresh town as hotly as though for a woman who had never yet belonged to him? to-day's early meeting with its flat and awkward endearments in the sinister atmosphere of a grey hour really ought not to lead him astray.... he was at the appointed place. when he looked up to the lighted windows, behind which anna was giving her lesson, a slight emotion came over him, and when she came out of the door the next minute, in a simple english dress and a grey felt hat on her rich dark blonde hair, holding a book in her hand, just as she had appeared a year ago, an unexpected feeling of happiness suddenly streamed over him. she did not see him at once, for he was standing in the shadow of a house. she opened her umbrella and went as far as the corner where she had been in the habit of waiting for him the previous year. he gazed at her for a while and was glad that she looked so fine and distinguished. then he followed her quickly, and caught her up in a few strides. she informed him at once that she could not go to the opera with him. her father had been taken ill this afternoon. george was very disappointed. "won't you at any rate come with me for the first act?" she shook her head. "no, i am not very keen on that sort of thing. it is much better for you to give the seat to some friend. go and fetch nürnberger or bermann." "no," he replied, "if you can't come with me i'd rather go alone. i should have enjoyed it so much. i am not very keen on the performance personally. i'd prefer to stay with you ... so far as i am concerned, even at your people's; but i must go. i have--to make a report." anna backed him up. "of course you must go," and she added: "i wouldn't advise you, too, to spend an evening with us. it's really not particularly jolly." he had taken the umbrella out of her hand and held it over her, while she held his arm. "i say, anna," he said, "i should like to make a suggestion!" he was surprised that he should be looking for a way of leading up to it, and began hesitatingly: "my few days in vienna are, of course, more or less unsettled and cut up--and now there's this depressed atmosphere at your people's as well.... we are not really managing to see anything of each other: don't you agree?" she nodded without looking at him. "so wouldn't you like to come part of the way with me, anna, when i go back again?" she looked at him sideways in her arch way and did not answer. he went on speaking. "i can, you see, quite well manage to get an extra day's leave if i wire to the theatre. it would really be awfully nice if we had a few hours all to ourselves." she consented with sincerity but not enthusiasm and made her decision depend on the state of her father's health. she then asked him how he had spent the day. he told her in detail, and also added his programme for to-morrow. "so we two will see each other in the evening," he said. "i'll come to your place if that's convenient, and then we'll arrange further details." "yes," said anna, and looked in front of her down the damp brown-grey street. he tried again to persuade her to come to the opera with him, but it was futile. he then inquired about her singing lessons and followed that up by speaking about his own activity, as though he had to convince her that after all he was not having a much better time than she was. and he referred to his letters, in which he had written about everything in full detail. "so far as that's concerned ..." she said suddenly in quite a hard voice.... and when, hurt by her tone, he could not help throwing back his head, she proceeded: "what is there really in letters, however detailed they are?" he knew what she was thinking about--he felt a certain heaviness at heart. was there not in the very inexorableness of this silence all that she refused to voice aloud?--question, reproach and rage. he had already felt this morning and now felt again that a certain sense of positive enmity to himself was rising within her, against which she herself seemed to be struggling in vain. was this morning the first time...? had it not dated far longer back? perhaps it had been always there, from the very first moment when they had belonged to each other, and even in the moments of their supreme happiness? had not this hostile feeling been present when she pressed her bosom against his behind dark curtains to the music of the organ, when she waited for him in the room at the hotel in rome, with eyes red with tears, while he had been watching with delight from monte pincio the sun setting in the campagna, and had realised that he was finding this hour of solitary enjoyment the most wonderful in the whole journey? had it not been present when he ran down the gravel path on a hot morning, dropped down at her feet and cried in her lap as though it had been the lap of a mother? and when he had sat by her bedside and looked out into the garden at eventime, while the dead child she had borne an hour ago lay silent on the white linen cloth, had it not been there again, drearier than ever, so that it would have been almost unbearable, if they had not long ago managed to put up with it, in the way one manages to endure so much of the unsatisfactoriness and so much of the sorrow that comes up out of the depths of human intercourse? and now how painfully did he feel this sense of hostility as he walked arm-in-arm with her, holding the umbrella carefully over her, down the damp streets? it was there again--menacing and familiar. the words which she had spoken were still ringing in his ears: "what is there really in letters, however detailed they are?"... but even more solemnly there rang in his ears the unspoken words: what does the most ardent kiss in which body and soul seem to fuse really come to? what does the fact that we travelled together for months through strange lands really come to? what does the fact that i had a child by you come to? what does the fact that you cried out in my lap your remorse for your deception? what does it all come to, when you still go and leave me quite alone?... why, i was alone at the very moment when my body drank in the germ of life which i carried within me for nine months, which was intended to live amongst strangers, though our own child, and which did not wish to remain on earth! but while all this sank heavily into his soul he agreed in a light tone that she was really quite right and that letters--even though they were actually twenty pages long--could not contain much in particular; and while a harrowing pity for her sprang up in him he gently expressed the hope that there would be a time in which they would neither of them any longer be thrown back upon mere letters. and then he found words of greater tenderness, told her of those lonely walks of his in the outskirts of the strange town when he thought of her; told her of the hours in that meaningless hotel room, with its view of the linden-planted square, and of his yearning for her, which was always present whether he sat alone at his work or accompanied singers at the pianoforte or chatted with new acquaintances. but when he stood with her in front of the house door, with her hand in his, and looked up into her eyes as he murmured a bright goodbye, he was shocked to see in them the flickering out of a jaded sense of disillusionment that had almost ceased to be painful. and he knew that all the words which he had spoken to her had meant nothing to her, had meant less than nothing, since the one word, the word she scarcely hoped for any more, and yet longed for all the time, had not come. a quarter of an hour later george was sitting in his stall at the opera. he was first a little depressed and limp, but the pleasure of enjoyment soon began to course through his veins. and when brangäne threw the king's cloak over her mistress's shoulders, kurwenal announced the king's approach and the ship's crew on the deck hailed the land amid all the glory of the resplendent heavens, george had long ago forgotten a bad night in the train, some boring commissions, an extremely forced conversation with an old jewish doctor and a walk on the wet pavement which mirrored the light of the lamps by the side of a young lady who looked decent, distinguished and somewhat depressed. and when the curtain fell for the first time and the light streamed through the enormous room, upholstered in red and gold, he did not feel any unpleasant sense of being brought back to sober life, but he rather felt as though he were plunging his head out of one dream into another; while a reality which was full of all kinds of wretched complications flew impotently past somewhere outside. the atmosphere of this house, so it seemed to him, had never made him so intensely happy as it did to-day. he had never felt so palpably that all the audience, so long as they were here, were protected in some mystic way against all the pain and all the dirt of life. he stood up in his corner seat, which was in front by the middle gangway, saw many a pleased glance turn towards him and felt conscious of looking handsome, elegant and even somewhat unusual. and besides that he was--and this filled him with satisfaction--a man who had a profession, a position, a man who sat in this very theatre with a responsible commission to perform, as a kind of envoy from a german court theatre. he looked round with his opera-glass. from the back of the stalls gleissner greeted him with a somewhat too familiar nod of his head and seemed immediately afterwards to be expatiating on george's personal characteristics to the young lady who sat next to him. who could she be? was it the harlot which the author, with his hobby for experimenting on souls, wanted to make into a saint, or was it the saint whom he wanted to make into a harlot? hard to say, thought george. they'd both look about the same, halfway. george felt the lens of an opera-glass burning on the top of his head. he looked up. it was else, who was looking down to him from a box in the first tier. frau ehrenberg sat near her and between them there bowed over the front of the box a tall young man who was no other than james wyner. george bowed and two minutes later stepped into the box, to find himself greeted with friendliness but not a trace of surprise. else, in a low-cut black velvet dress, with a small pearl necklet round her throat and a somewhat strange though interesting coiffure, held out her hand to him. "and how did you manage to get here? on leave? sacked? run away?" george explained, briefly and good-humouredly. "it was very nice of you," said frau ehrenberg, "to have sent us a line from detmold." "he really shouldn't have done that, either," remarked else. "it was quite calculated to make one think that he had gone off to america with some one or other." james was standing in the middle of the box, tall and gaunt, with his chiselled face and his dark smooth hair parted at the side. "well, george, how do you like detmold?" else was looking at him with dropped eyelashes. she seemed delighted with his way of still always speaking german as though he had to translate it to himself out of english. anyway, she employed the occasion to make a joke and said: "how george likes it in detmold! i am afraid your question is indiscreet, james." then she turned to george. "we are engaged, you know." "we haven't yet sent out any cards, you know," added frau ehrenberg. george offered his congratulations. "lunch with us to-morrow," said frau ehrenberg. "you will only meet a few people. i'm sure they'll all be very glad to see you again--sissy, frau oberberger, willy eissler." george excused himself. he could not bind himself to any specific time, but if he possibly could he would very much like to look in during the course of the afternoon. "quite so," said else in a low voice, without looking at him, while her arm, in its long white glove, lay carelessly on the ledge of the box. "you are probably spending the middle of the day in the family circle." george pretended not to hear and praised to-night's performance. james declared that he liked _tristan_ better than all the other operas by wagner, including the _meistersingers_. else simply remarked: "it's awfully fine, but as a matter of fact i'm all against love-philtres and things in that line." george explained that the love-philtre was to be regarded as a symbol, whereupon else declared that she had a distaste for symbols as well. the first signal for the second act was given. george took his leave and rushed downstairs with only just enough time to take his place before the curtain rose. he remembered again the semi-official capacity in which he was sitting in the theatre to-night, and determined not to surrender himself unreservedly to his impressions. he soon managed to discover that it was possible to produce the love-scene quite differently from the way in which it was being done to-night. nor did he think it right that melot, by whose hand tristan was doomed to die, should be represented by a second-rate singer, as was nearly always the case. after the fall of the curtain on the second act he got up with a kind of increased self-consciousness, stood up in his seat and looked frequently up to the box in the first tier, from which frau ehrenberg nodded to him benevolently, while else spoke to james, who was standing still behind her with crossed arms. it struck george that he would see james's sister again to-morrow. did she still often think of that wonderful hour in the park in the afternoon, amid the dark green sultriness of the park, in the warm perfume of the moss and the pines? how far away that was! he then remembered a fleeting kiss in the nocturnal shadow of the garden wall at lugano. how far away that was too! he thought of the evening under the plane-tree, and the conversation about leo came again into his mind. a remarkable fellow that leo, really. how consistently he had stuck to his plan! for he must have formed it a long time ago. and obviously leo had only waited for the day when he could doff his uniform to put it into execution. george had received no answer to the letter which he had immediately written him after hearing about the duel. he resolved to visit leo in prison if it were possible. a man in the first row greeted him. it was ralph skelton. george arranged by pantomimic signs to meet him at the end of the performance. the lights were extinguished, the prelude to the third act began. george heard the tired sea-waves surging against the desolate beach and the grievous sighs of a mortally wounded hero were wafted through the blue thin air. where had he heard this last? hadn't it been in munich...? no, it couldn't be so far back. and he suddenly remembered the hour when the sheets of the _tristan_ music had been spread open before him on a balcony beneath a wooden gable. a sunny path opposite ran to the churchyard between field and forest, while a cross had flashed with its golden light; down in the house a woman he loved had groaned in agony and he had felt sick at heart. and yet this memory, too, had its own melancholy sweetness, like all else that had completely passed. the balcony, the little blue angel between the flowers, the white seat under the pear-tree, where was it all now? he would see the house again once more, once more before he left vienna. the curtain rose. the shawm rang out yearningly beneath the pale expanse of an unsympathetic heaven. the wounded hero slumbered in the shade of the linden branches, and by his head watched kurwenal the faithful. the shawm was silent, the herdsman bent questioningly over the wall and kurwenal made answer. by jove, that was a voice of unusual timbre! if we only had a baritone like that, thought george. and many other things, too, which we need! if he were only given the requisite power he felt himself able, in the course of time, to turn the modest theatre at which he worked into a first-class stage. he dreamed of model performances to which people would stream from far and wide. he no longer sat there as an envoy, but as a man to whom it was perhaps vouchsafed to be himself a leader in not too distant days. further and higher coursed his hopes. perhaps just a few years--and his own original harmonies would be ringing through a spacious hall of a musical festival, and the audience would be listening as thrilled as the one to-day, while somewhere outside a hollow reality would be flowing impotently past. impotently? that was the question. did he know whether it was given him to compel human beings by his art as it had been given to the master to whom they were listening to-day--to triumph over the difficulty, wretchedness and awfulness of everyday life? impatience and doubt tried to rise out of his soul; but his will and common-sense quickly banished them and he now felt again the pure happiness he always experienced when he heard beautiful music, without thinking of the fact that he often wished himself to do creative work and obtain recognition for doing it. in moments like this the only relation to his beloved art of which he was conscious was that he was able to understand it with deeper appreciation than any other human being. and he felt that heinrich had spoken the truth when they had ridden together through a forest damp with the morning dew: it was not creative work--it was simply the atmosphere of his art which was necessary to his existence. he was not one of the damned, like heinrich, who always felt driven to catch hold of things, to mould them, to preserve them, and who found his world fall to pieces whenever it tried to escape from his creative hand. isolde in brangäne's arms had dropped dead over tristan's body, the last notes were dying away, the curtain fell. george cast a glance up to the box in the first tier. else stood by the ledge with her look turned towards him, while james put her dark-red cloak over her shoulders, and it was only now, that after a nod of the head as quick as though she had meant no one to notice it, she turned towards the exit. remarkable, thought george from a distance: there is a certain ... melancholy romantic something about the way she carries herself, about many of her movements. it is then that she reminds me most of the gipsy girl of nice, or the strange young person with whom i stood in front of the titian venus in florence.... did she ever love me? no. and she doesn't love her james either. who is it then?... perhaps ... it was really that mad drawing-master in florence. or no one at all. or heinrich, of all people?... he met skelton in the _foyer_. "back again?" queried the latter. "only for a few days," replied george. it transpired that skelton had not really known what george was doing and had thought that he was on a kind of musical tour through the german towns for the purposes of study. he was now more or less surprised to hear that george was here on leave and had been practically commissioned by the manager to inspect the new production of _tristan_. "will this suit you?" said skelton. "i've got an appointment with breitner; at the '_imperial_,' the white room." "excellent," replied george. "i'm staying there." doctor von breitner was already smoking one of his celebrated big cigars when the two men appeared at his table. "what a surprise!" he exclaimed, when george greeted him. he had heard that george was engaged as conductor in düsseldorf. "detmold," said george, and he thought: "the people here don't bother about me particularly.... but what does it matter?" skelton described the _tristan_ performance and george mentioned that he had spoken to the ehrenbergs. "do you know that oskar ehrenberg is on his way to india or ceylon?" asked doctor von breitner. "really!" "and whom do you think with?" "some woman, i suppose?" "oh, of course. i've even heard they've got five or seven women with them." "who?--'they.'" "oskar ehrenberg ... and ... have a guess.... well, the prince of guastalla!" "impossible!" "funny, eh? they became very thick this year at ostend or at spa.... _cherchez_ ... et cetera. it seems that just as there are women, you know, for whom people fight duels there's also another class across whom, as it were, you shake hands. now they've left europe together. perhaps they'll found a kingdom on some island or other and oskar ehrenberg will be prime minister." willy eissler appeared. his complexion was sallow, his voice hoarse and he looked as if he had been keeping late hours. "hullo, baron! forgive me not being thunderstruck but i have already heard that you are here. some one or other saw you in the kärtnerstrasse." george requested willy to remember count malnitz to his father. he himself, he was sorry to say, had no time on this occasion to look up the old gentleman, to whom, as he observed with a pretty mock-modesty, he owed his position in detmold. "so far as your future is concerned, baron," said willy, "i never had any anxiety about it, particularly since i heard bellini sing your songs last year--or was it further back? but it is quite a good idea of yours, deciding to leave vienna. you'd have been bound to have been taken for a dilettante here for a cool twenty or thirty years. that's always the way in vienna. i know it. when people know that a man comes of a good family, has a taste too for pretty ties, good cigarettes and various other amenities of life, they don't believe that he has real artistic capacity. you wouldn't be taken seriously here without proof from outside.... so hurry up and furnish us with a brilliant one, baron." "i'll make an effort to," said george. "by the way, have you heard the latest, gentlemen?" began willy again. "leo golowski, the one-year-volunteer who shot first-lieutenant sefranek, is free." "let out on bail?" asked george. "no, he's quite free. his advocate addressed a petition to the emperor to quash the proceedings, and it turned out successful to-day." "incredible!" exclaimed breitner. "why are you so surprised, breitner?" said willy. "it is possible, you know, for something sensible to happen in austria once in a blue moon." "a duel is never sensible," said skelton, "and therefore a pardon for a duel can't be sensible either." "a duel, my dear skelton, is either something very much worse or something very much better than sensible," replied willy. "it is either a ghastly folly or a relentless necessity, either a crime or an act of deliverance. it is not sensible and doesn't need to be so. in exceptional cases, one can't make any headway at all with common-sense, and i am sure you too will concede, skelton, that in a case like the one of which we have just been speaking a duel was inevitable." "absolutely," said breitner. "i can imagine a polity," observed skelton, "in which differences of that kind were settled by a court." "differences of that kind settled by a court! oh, i say!... do you really think, skelton, that in a case where there is no question of right or of possession at issue, but where men confront each other with a stupendous hate, do you really think that a proper settlement could be arrived at by means of a fine or imprisonment? the fact, gentlemen, that refusal to fight a duel in such cases is regarded as a piece of cowardice by all people who possess temperament, honour and honesty has a fairly deep significance. in the case of jews at any rate," he added. "so far as the catholics are concerned it is well known that it is only their orthodoxy which keeps them from fighting." "that's certainly the case," said breitner simply. george wanted to know details of the affair between leo golowski and the first-lieutenant. "quite so," said willy. "of course you've only just arrived. well, the first-lieutenant gave him a fine ragging for the whole year, and as a matter of fact----" "i know the prelude," interrupted george. "part of it from first-hand information." "really! well, the prelude, to stick to that expression, was over on the first of october. i mean leo golowski had finished his year of service. and on the second he placed himself in front of the barracks early in the morning and quietly waited till the first-lieutenant came out of the door. as soon as he did he stepped up to him; the first-lieutenant reached for his sword, but leo golowski grabs hold of his hand, doesn't let it go, puts his other fist in front of his forehead. there is a story, too, that leo is supposed to have flung the following words at the first-lieutenant.... i don't know if it's true." "what words?" asked george curiously. "'you were worth more than i was yesterday, herr first-lieutenant; now we are on an equality for the time being--but one of us will be worth more than the other again by this time to-morrow.'" "somewhat talmudic," remarked breitner. "you, of course, must be the best judge of that, breitner," replied willy, and went on with his story. "well, the duel took place next morning in the fields by the danube--three exchanges of ball at twenty paces without advancing. if that proved abortive the sword till one or other was _hors de combat_.... the first shots missed on both sides, and after the second ... after the second, i say, golowski was really worth more than the first-lieutenant, for the latter was worth nothing, less than nothing--a dead man." "poor devil," said breitner. willy shrugged his shoulders. "he just happened to have caught a tartar. i'm sorry, too, but one must admit that austria would be a different place in many respects if all jews would behave like leo golowski in similar cases. unfortunately...." skelton smiled. "you know, willy, i don't like any one to say anything against the jews when i am there. i like them, and i should be sorry if people wanted to solve the jewish question by a series of duels, for when it was all over there wouldn't be a single male specimen left of that excellent race." at the end of the conversation skelton had to admit that the duel could not be abolished in austria for the present. but he reserved the right of putting the question whether that fact was really an argument in favour of the duel, and not rather an argument against austria, since many other countries--he refrained from mentioning any out of a sense of modesty--had discarded the duel for centuries. and did he go too far if he ventured to designate austria--the country, too, in which he had felt really at home for the last six years--as the country of social shams? in that country more than anywhere else there existed wild disputes without a touch of hate and a kind of tender love without the need of fidelity. quite humorous personal likings existed or came into existence between political opponents; party colleagues, on the other hand, reviled, libelled and betrayed each other. you would only find a few people who would vouchsafe specific views on men and things, and anyway even these few would be only too ready to make reservations and admit exceptions. the political conflict there gave one quite the impression as though the apparently most bitter enemies, while exchanging their most virulent abuse, winked to each other: "it's not meant so seriously." "what do you think, skelton?" asked willy. "would you wink, too, if the bullets were flying on both sides?" "you certainly would, willy, unless death were staring you in the face. but that circumstance, i think, doesn't affect one's mood but only one's demeanour." they went on sitting together for a long time and continued gossiping. george heard all kinds of news. he learned among other things that demeter stanzides had concluded the purchase of the estate on the hungarian-croatian frontier, and that the rattenmamsell was looking forward to a happy event. willy eissler was much excited at the result of this crossing of the races, and amused himself in the meanwhile by inventing names for the expected child, such as israel pius or rebecca portiuncula. subsequently the whole party betook itself to the neighbouring café. george played a game of billiards with breitner and then went up to his room. he made out in bed a time-table for the next day and finally sank into a deliciously deep sleep. the paper he had ordered the day before was brought in with the tea in the morning, together with a telegram. the manager requested him to report on a singer. to george's delight it was the one he had heard yesterday in kurwenal. he was also allowed to stay three days beyond his specified leave, "in order to put his affairs in order at his convenience," since an alteration of the programme happened to allow it. excellent, really, thought george. it struck him that he had completely forgotten his original intention of wiring for a prolongation of his leave. i have got even more time for anna now than i thought, he reflected. we might perhaps go into the mountains. the autumn days are fine and mild, and at this time one would be pretty well alone and undisturbed anywhere. but supposing there is an accident again--an--accident--again!... those were the very words in which the thought had flown through his mind. he bit his lips. was that how he had suddenly come to regard the matter? an accident.... where was the time when he had thought of himself almost with pride as a link in an endless chain which went from the first ancestors to the last descendants? and for a few moments he seemed to himself like a failure in the sphere of love, somewhat dubious and pitiable. he ran his eye over the paper. the proceedings against leo golowski had been quashed by an imperial pardon. he had been discharged from prison last evening. george was very glad and decided to visit leo this very day. he then sent a telegram to the count, and made out a report with due formality and detail on yesterday's performance. when he got out into the street it was nearly eleven. the air had the cool clearness of autumn. george felt thoroughly rested, refreshed and in a good temper. the day lay before him rich with hopes and promised all kinds of excitement. only something troubled him without his immediately knowing what it was.... oh yes, the visit in the paulanergasse, the depressing rooms, the ailing father, the aggrieved mother. i'll simply fetch anna, he thought, take her for a walk and then go and have supper somewhere with her. he passed a flower shop, bought some wonderful dark-red roses and had them sent to anna with a card on which he wrote: "a thousand wishes. goodbye till the evening." when he had done this he felt easier in his mind. he then went through the streets in the centre of the town to the old house in which nürnberger lived. he climbed up the five storeys. a slatternly old servant with a dark cloth over her head opened the door and ushered him into her master's room. nürnberger was standing by the window with his head slightly bent, in the brown high-cut lounge-suit which he liked to wear at home. he was not alone. heinrich, of all people, got up from the old arm-chair in front of the secretary with a manuscript in his hand. george was heartily welcomed. "has your being in vienna anything to do with the crisis in the management of the opera?" asked nürnberger. he refused to allow this observation to be simply passed over as a joke. "look here," he said, "if little boys who a short time ago were only in a position to give formal proof of their connection with german literature on the strength of the regularity of their visits to a literary café, are invited to take appointments as readers on the berlin stage, well, in an age like this i see no occasion for astonishment if baron wergenthin is fetched in triumph to the vienna opera after his no doubt strenuous six weeks' career as the conductor of a german court theatre." george paid a tribute to truth by explaining that he had only obtained a short leave to put his vienna affairs in order, and did not forget to mention that he had seen the new production of _tristan_ yesterday as a kind of agent for his manager, but he smiled ironically at himself all the time. then he gave a short and fairly humorous description of his experiences up to the present in the little capital. he even touched jestingly on the court concerts as though he were far from taking his position, his present successes, the theatre, or indeed life in general with any particular seriousness. conversation then turned on leo golowski's release from prison. nürnberger rejoiced at this unhoped-for issue, but yet firmly refused to be surprised at it, for the most highly improbable things always happened in life, and particularly in austria, as they all knew very well. but when george mentioned the rumour of oskar ehrenberg's yachting trip with the prince as a new proof of the soundness of nürnberger's theory, he was at first inclined nevertheless to be slightly sceptical. yet he finished by admitting its possibility, since his imagination, as he had known for a long time, was invariably surpassed by reality. heinrich looked at the time. it was time for him to say goodbye. "haven't i disturbed you, gentlemen?" asked george. "i think you were reading something, heinrich, when i came in?" "i had already finished," replied heinrich. "you'll read me the last act to-morrow, heinrich?" said nürnberger. "i have no intention of doing so," replied heinrich with a laugh. "if the first two acts are as great a frost in the theatre as they were with you, my dear nürnberger, it will be positively impossible to play the thing through to the end. we'll assume, nürnberger, that you rush indignantly out of the stalls into the open air. i'll let you off the cat-calls and the rotten eggs." "hang it all!" exclaimed george. "you're exaggerating again, heinrich," said nürnberger. "i only ventured to make a few objections," he said, turning to george, "that's all. but he's an author, you know." "it all depends on what you mean by 'objection,'" said heinrich. "after all, it is only an objection to the life of a fellow human being if you cut his head open with a hatchet; only it's a fairly effective one." he pointed to his manuscript and turned to george. "you know what that is? my political tragi-comedy. no wreaths, by request." nürnberger laughed. "i assure you, heinrich, you could still make something really splendid out of your subject. you can even keep the whole scenario and a number of the characters. all you need to do is to make up your mind to be less fair when you revise your draft." "but surely his fairness is a fine thing," said george. nürnberger shook his head. "one may be anywhere else, only not in the drama," and turning to heinrich again, "in a piece like that, which deals with a question of the day, or indeed several questions, as you really intended, you'll never do any good with a purely objective treatment. the theatre public demands that the subjects tackled by the author should be definitely settled, or that at any rate some illusion of that kind should be created. for of course there never is any real solution, and an apparent solution can only be made by a man who has the courage or the simplicity or the temperament to take sides. you'll soon appreciate the fact, my dear heinrich, that fairness is no good in the drama." "do you know, nürnberger," said heinrich, "one perhaps might do some good even with fairness. i think i simply haven't got the right kind. as a matter of fact, you know, i've no desire at all to be fair. i imagine it must be so wonderfully nice to be unfair. i think it would be the most healthy gymnastic exercise for one's soul that one could possibly practise. it must do one such a lot of good to be able really to hate the man whose views you are combating. it saves one, i'm sure, a great deal of inner strength which you can expend far better yourself in the actual fight. yes, if one still preserves fairness of heart.... but my fairness is here," and he pointed to his forehead. "i do not stand above parties either, but i belong to them all in a kind of way, or am against them all. i have not got the divine but the dialectical fairness. and that's why"--he held his manuscript high up--"it has resulted in such a boring and fruitless lot of twaddle." "woe to the man," said nürnberger, "who is rash enough to write anything like that about you." "well, you see," replied heinrich with a smile, "if some one else were to say it, one couldn't suppress the slight suspicion that he might be right. but now i must really go. good-bye, george. i'm very sorry that you missed me yesterday. when are you leaving again?" "to-morrow." "anyway, i shall see you before you leave. i'm home to-day the whole afternoon and evening. you will find a man who has resolutely turned away from the questions of the day and devoted himself again to the eternal problems, death and love.... do you believe in death, by-the-bye, nürnberger? i am not asking you about love." "that somewhat cheap joke from a man in your position," said nürnberger, "makes me suspect that in spite of your very dignified demeanour my criticism has...." "no, nürnberger, i swear to you that i am not wounded. i have rather a comfortable sensation of the whole thing being finished with." "finished with, why so? it is still quite possible that i've made a mistake, and that this very piece, which i didn't think quite a success, will have a success on the stage which will make you into a millionaire. i should be deeply grieved if on account of my criticism, which may be very far from being authoritative...." "quite so, quite so, nürnberger. we must all of us always admit the possibility that we may be mistaken. and the next time i'll write another piece, and one with the following title too: '_nobody's going to take me in_,' and you shall be the hero of it, nürnberger." nürnberger smiled. "... i? that means you'll take a man whom you imagine you know, that you'll try to describe those sides of his character which suit your game--that you'll suppress others which are no use to you, and the result...." "the result," interrupted heinrich, "will be a portrait taken by a mad photographer with a spoilt camera during an earthquake and an eclipse of the sun. is that right, or is there anything missing?" "the psychology ought to be exhaustive," said nürnberger. heinrich took his leave in boisterous spirits and went away with his rolled-up manuscript. when he had gone george remarked: "his good temper strikes me as a bit of a pose, you know." "do you think so? i have always found him in remarkably good form lately." "in really good form? do you seriously think so? after what he has gone through?" "why not? men who are so almost exclusively self-centred as he is get over emotional troubles with surprising quickness. characters of that type, and as a matter of fact other kinds of men as well, feel the slightest physical discomfort far more acutely than any kind of sentimental pain, even the faithlessness and death of the persons they happen to love. it comes no doubt from the fact that every emotional pain flatters our vanity somehow or other, and that you can't say the same thing about an attack of typhoid or a catarrh in the stomach. then there is this additional point about artistic people, for while catarrh of the stomach provides positively no copy at all (at any rate that used to be reasonably certain a short time ago) you can get anything you jolly well like out of your emotional pains, from lyric poems down to works on philosophy." "emotional pains are of very different kinds, of course," replied george. "and being deceived or deserted by a mistress ... or even her dying a natural death ... is still rather a different thing to her killing herself on our account." "do you know for a certainty," replied nürnberger, "that heinrich's mistress really killed herself on his account?" "didn't heinrich tell you, then?..." "of course, but that doesn't prove much. even the shrewdest amongst us are always fools about the things which concern ourselves." such remarks as these on the part of nürnberger produced a strangely disconcerting effect on george. they belonged to the class of which nürnberger was rather fond, and which, as heinrich had once observed, quite destroyed all the point of all human intercourse, and in fact of all human relations. nürnberger went on speaking. "we only know two facts. one is that our friend once had a _liaison_ with a girl and the other that the girl in question threw herself into the water. we both of us know practically nothing about all the intervening facts, and heinrich probably doesn't know anything more about them either. none of us can know why she killed herself, and perhaps the poor girl herself didn't know either." george looked through the window and saw roofs, chimneys and weather-beaten pipes, while fairly near was the light-grey tower with the broken stone cupola. the sky opposite was pale and empty. it suddenly occurred to george that nürnberger had not yet made any inquiry about anna. what was he probably thinking? thinking no doubt that george had deserted her, and that she had already consoled herself with another lover. why did i come to vienna? he thought desultorily, as though his journey had had no other purpose than to listen to nürnberger giving him what had now turned out to be a sufficiently pessimistic analysis of life. it struck twelve. george took his leave. nürnberger accompanied him as far as the door and thanked him for his visit. he inquired earnestly about what george was doing in his new home, about his work and his new acquaintances, as though their previous conversation on the subject had not really counted, and now learned for the first time of the accident which was responsible for george's sudden appointment in the little town. "yes, that's just what i always say," he then remarked. "it is not we who make our fate, but some circumstance outside us usually sees to that--some circumstance which we were not in a position to influence in any way, which we never have a chance of bringing into the sphere of our calculations. after all, do you deserve any credit...? i feel justified in putting this question, much as i respect your talent. nor does old eissler, whose interest in your affairs you once told me about, deserve any credit either for your being wired to from detmold and finding your true sphere of work there so quickly. no. an innocent man, some one you don't know, had to die a sudden death to enable you to find that particular place vacant. and what a lot of other things which you were equally unable to influence, and which you were quite unable to foresee, had to come on the scene to enable you to leave vienna with a light heart--to enable you, in fact, to leave it at all." george felt hurt. "what do you mean by a light heart?" he asked. "i mean a lighter heart than you would have had under other circumstances. if the little creature had remained alive who knows whether you...." "you can take it from me that i would have gone away, even then. and anna would have taken it quite as much as a matter of course as she does now. don't you believe me? why, perhaps i'd have gone with an even lighter heart if that matter had turned out otherwise. why, it was anna who persuaded me to accept. i was quite undecided. you have no idea what a good sensible creature anna is." "oh, i don't doubt it at all. according to all you have told me about her from time to time, she certainly seems to have behaved with more dignity in her position than young ladies of her social status are usually accustomed to exhibit on such occasions." "my dear herr nürnberger, the position really wasn't as dreadful as all that." "come, don't say that. for however much things may have been made easier by your courtesy and consideration, take it from me that the young lady is bound to have felt frequently during the last months the irregularity of her position. i am sure there isn't a single member of the feminine sex, however daring and advanced may be her views, who doesn't prefer in a case like that to have a ring on her finger. and it's all in favour, too, of your friend's sensible and dignified behaviour that she never allowed you to notice it, and that she took the bitter disillusionment at the end of these nine months, which were certainly not entirely a bed of roses, with calmness and self-possession." "disillusionment is rather a mild word. pain would perhaps be more correct." "i dare say it was both. but in this case, as in most others, the burning wound of pain heals more quickly than the throbbing piercing wound of disillusionment." "i don't quite understand." "well, my dear george, you don't doubt, do you, that if the little creature had remained alive you two would have married very quickly; why, you'd even be married this very day." "and you think that now, just because we have no child.... yes, you seem to be of the opinion that ... that ... it's all over between us. but you are quite wrong, quite wrong, my dear friend." "my dear george," replied nürnberger, "both of us would prefer not to speak about the future. neither you nor i know the place where a strand of our fate is being spun at this very moment. you didn't have the slightest inkling, either, when that conductor was attacked by a stroke, and if i now wish you luck in your future career i don't know whose death i have not conjured down by that very wish." they took leave of each other on the landing. nürnberger cried after george from the stairs: "let me hear from you now and then." george turned round once more. "and mind you do the same." he only saw nürnberger's gesture of resigned remonstrance, smiled involuntarily, hurried down the stairs and took a conveyance at the nearest corner. he pondered over nürnberger and bermann on his way to the golowskis'. what a strange relationship it was between them. a scene which he thought he had seen some time or other in a dream came into george's mind. the two sat opposite each other, each held a mirror in front of the other. the other saw himself in it with the mirror in his hand, and in that mirror the other again with his mirror in his hand, and so on to infinity; but did either of them really know the other, did either of them really know himself? george's mind became dizzy. he then thought of anna. was nürnberger right again? was it really all over? could it really ever end? ever?... life is long! but were even the ensuing months dangerous? no. that was not to be taken seriously, however it might turn out. perhaps micaela.... and in easter he would be in vienna again. then there came the summer, they would be together, and then? yes, what then? engagement? herr rosner and frau rosner's son-in-law, joseph's brother-in-law! oh well, what did he care about the family? it was anna after all who was going to be his wife, that good gentle sensible creature. the fly stopped in front of an ugly fairly new house, painted yellow, in a wide monotonous street. george told the driver to wait and went into the doorway. the house looked quite dilapidated from inside. mortar had crumbled away from the walls in many places and the steps were dirty. there was a smell of bad fat coming out of some of the kitchen windows. two fat jewesses were talking on the landing of the first storey in a jargon which george found positively intolerable. one of them said to a boy whom she held by the hand: "moritz, let the gentleman pass." why does she say that? thought george, there's plenty of room; she obviously wants to get into conversation with me. as though i could do her any harm or any good! an expression of heinrich's in a long-past conversation came into his mind: "an enemy's country." a servant-girl showed him into a room which he immediately recognised as leo's. books and papers on the writing-table, the piano open, a gladstone bag, which was still not completely unpacked, open on the sofa. the door opened the next minute. leo came in, embraced his visitor and kissed him so quickly on both cheeks that the man who was welcomed with such heartiness had no time to be embarrassed. "this is nice of you," said leo, and shook both his hands. "you can't imagine how glad i was ..." began george. "i believe you.... but please come in with me. we are having dinner, you know, but it's nearly over." he took him into the next room. the family was gathered round the table. "i don't think you know my father yet," observed leo, and introduced them to each other. old golowski got up, put away the serviette which he had tied round his neck and held out his hand to george. the latter was surprised that the old man should look so completely different from what he had expected. he was not patriarchal, grey-bearded and venerable, but with his clean-shaven face and broad cunning features looked more like an ageing provincial comedian than anything else. "i am very glad to make your acquaintance, herr baron," he said, while one could read in his crafty eyes ... "i know everything." therese hastily asked george the conventional questions: when he had come, how long he was staying, how he was; he answered patiently and courteously, and she looked him in the face with animation and curiosity. then he asked leo about his plans for the near future. "i must first practise the piano industriously, so as not to make a fool of myself before my pupils. people were very nice to me, of course. i had books, as many as i wanted, but they certainly didn't put a piano at my disposition." he turned to therese. "you should certainly flog that point to death in one of your next speeches. this bad treatment of prisoners awaiting trial must be abolished." "it was no laughing matter for him this time yesterday," said old golowski. "if you think by any chance," said therese, "that the good luck which happened to come your way will alter my views you are making a violent mistake. on the contrary." and turning to george she continued: "theoretically, you know, i am absolutely against their having let him out. if you'd simply knocked the fellow down dead, as you would have been quite entitled to do, without this abominable farce of a duel you'd never have been let out, but would have served your five to ten years for a certainty. but since you went in for this ghastly life-and-death gamble which is favoured by the state, because you cringed down to the military point of view you've been pardoned. am i not right?" she turned again to george. the latter only nodded and thought of the poor young man whom leo had shot, who as a matter of fact had had nothing else against the jews except that he disliked them just as much as most people did after all--and whose real fault had only been that he had tried it on the wrong man. leo stroked his sister's hair and said to her: "look here, if you say publicly in your next speech what you've just said to-day within these four walls you'll really impress me." "yes, and you'll impress me," replied therese, "if you take a ticket to jerusalem to-morrow with old ehrenberg." they got up from the table. leo invited george to come into his room with him. "shall i be disturbing you?" asked therese. "i too would like to see something of him, you know." they all three sat in leo's room and chatted. leo seemed to be enjoying his regained freedom without either scruples or remorse. george felt strangely affected by this. therese sat on the sofa in a dark well-fitting dress. to-day was the first occasion on which she resembled the young lady who had drunk asti under a plane-tree in lugano, when she was the mistress of a cavalry officer, and who had subsequently kissed some one else. she asked george to play the piano. she had never yet heard him. he sat down, played something from _tristan_ and then improvised with happy inspiration. leo expressed his appreciation. "what a pity that he is not staying," said therese, as she leaned against the wall and crossed her hands over her high coiffure. "i am coming back at easter," replied george, and looked at her. "but only to disappear again," said therese. "that may be," replied george, and the thought that his home was no longer here, that he had no home at all anywhere, and would not have for a long time, suddenly overwhelmed him. "how would it be," said leo, "if we went on a tour together in the summer?--you, bermann and i? i promise you that you won't be bored by theoretical conversation like you were once last autumn ... do you still remember?" "oh well," said therese, stretching herself, "nothing will come of it anyway. deeds, gentlemen!" "and what comes of deeds?" asked leo. "putting them at the highest, they simply save individual situations for the time being." "yes, deeds which you do for yourself," said therese. "but i only call a real deed what one is capable of doing for others, without any feeling of revenge, without any personal vanity, and if possible anonymously." at last george had to go. what a lot of things he still had to see to. "i'll come part of the way with you," said therese to him. leo embraced him again, and said: "it really was nice of you." therese disappeared to fetch her hat and jacket. george went into the next room. old frau golowski seemed to have been waiting for him; with a strangely anxious face she came up to him and put an envelope in his hand. "what is that?" "the account, herr baron. i didn't want to give it to anna.... it might perhaps have upset her too much." "oh yes...." he put the envelope in his pocket and thought that it felt strangely different to any other.... therese appeared with a little spanish hat, ready to go out. "here i am. goodbye, mamma. shan't be home for dinner." she went down the stairs with george and threw him sideways a glance of pleasure. "where can i take you?" asked george. "just take me along with you. i'll get out somewhere." they got in, the vehicle went on. she put to him all kinds of questions which he had already answered in the apartment, as though she took it for granted that he was now bound to be more candid with her than before the others. she did not learn anything except that he felt comfortable in his new surroundings and that his work gave him satisfaction. had his appearance been a great surprise for anna? no, not at all. he had of course given her notice of it. and was it really true that he meant to come back again at easter? it was his definite intention.... she seemed surprised. "do you know that i had almost imagined...." "what?" "that we would never see you again!" he was somewhat moved and made no answer. the thought then ran through his mind: would it not have been more sensible...? he was sitting quite close to therese and felt the warmth of her body, as he had done before in lugano. in what dream of hers might she now be living--in the dark jumbled dream of making humanity happy, or the light gay dream of a new romantic adventure? she kept looking insistently out of the window. he took her hand, without resistance, and put it to his lips. she suddenly turned round to him and said innocently: "yes, stop now. i'd better get out here." he let go her hand and looked at therese. "yes, my dear george. what wouldn't one fall into," she said, "if one didn't"--she gave an ironic smile--"have to sacrifice oneself for humanity? do you know what i often think?... perhaps all this is only a flight from myself." "why.... why do you take to flight?" "goodbye, george." the vehicle stopped. therese got out, a young man stood still and stared at her, she disappeared in the crowd. i don't think she'll finish up on the scaffold, thought george. he drove to his hotel, had his midday meal, lit a cigarette, changed his clothes and went to ehrenbergs'. james, sissy, willy eissler and frau oberberger were with the ladies of the house in the dining-room taking black coffee. george sat down between else and sissy, drank a glass of benedictine and answered with patience and good humour all the questions which his new activities had provoked. they soon went into the drawing-room, and he now sat for a time in the raised alcove with frau oberberger, who looked young again to-day and was particularly anxious to hear more intimate details about george's personal experiences in detmold. she refused to believe him when he denied having started intrigues with all the singers in the place. of course she simply regarded theatrical life as nothing but a pretext and opportunity for romantic adventures. anyway, she always made a point of thinking she detected the most monstrous goings-on in the _coulisses_ behind the curtain, in the dressing-rooms and in the manager's office. when george had no option but to disillusion her, by his report of the simple, respectable, almost philistine life of the members of the opera, and by the description of his own hardworking life, she visibly began to go to pieces, and soon he found himself sitting opposite an aged woman, in whom he recognised the same person as had appeared to him last summer, first in the box of a little white-and-red theatre and later in a now almost forgotten dream. he then went and stood with sissy near the marble isis, and each sought to find in the eyes of the other during their harmless chatter a memory of an ardent hour beneath the deep shade of a dark green park in the afternoon. but to-day that memory seemed to them both to be plunged in unfathomable depths. then he went and sat next to else at the little table on which books and photographs were lying. she first addressed to him some conventional questions like all the rest. but suddenly she asked quite unexpectedly and somewhat gently: "how is your child?" "my child...." he hesitated. "tell me, else, why do you ask me...? is it simply curiosity?" "you are making a mistake, george," she replied calmly and seriously. "you usually make mistakes about me, as a matter of fact. you take me for quite superficial, or god knows what. well, there's no point in talking about it any more. anyway, my asking after the child is not quite so incomprehensible. i should very much like to see it sometime." "you would like to see it?" he was moved. "yes, i even had another idea.... but one which you will probably think quite mad." "let's hear it, else." "i was thinking, you know, we might take it with us." "who, we?" "james and i." "to england?" "who's told you we're going to england? we are staying here. we've already taken a place in 'cottage'[ ] outside. no one need know that it is your child." "what a romantic thought!" "good gracious, why romantic? anna can't keep it with her, and you certainly can't. where could you put it during the rehearsals? in the prompter's box, i suppose?" george smiled. "you are very kind, else." "i'm not kind at all. i only think why should an innocent little creature pay the penalty or suffer for.... oh well, i mean it can't help it.... after all ... is it a boy?" "it was a boy." he paused, then he said gently: "it's dead, you know." and he looked in front of him. "what! oh, i see ... you want to protect yourself against my officiousness." "no, else, how can you?... no, else, in matters like that one doesn't lie." "it's true, then? but how did it...?" "it was still-born." she looked at the ground. "no? how awful!" she shook her head. "how awful!... and now she's lost everything quite suddenly." george gave a slight start and was unable to answer. how every one seemed to take it for granted that the anna affair was finished. and else did not pity him at all. she had no idea of how the death of the child had shocked him. how could she have an idea either? what did she know of the hour when the garden had lost its colour for him and the heavens their light, because his own beautiful child lay dead within the house? frau ehrenberg joined them. she declared that she was particularly satisfied with george. anyway, she had never doubted that he would show what he was made of as soon as he once got started in a profession. she was firmly convinced, too, that they would have him here in vienna as a conductor in three to five years. george pooh-poohed the idea. for the time being he had not thought of coming back to vienna. he felt that people worked more and with greater seriousness outside in germany. here one always ran the danger of losing oneself. frau ehrenberg agreed, and took the opportunity to complain about heinrich bermann, who had lapsed into silence as an author and now never showed himself anywhere. george defended him and felt himself obliged to state positively that heinrich was more industrious than he had ever been. but frau ehrenberg had other examples of the corrupting influence of the vienna air, particularly nürnberger, who now seemed to have cut himself completely off from the world. as for what had happened to oskar ... could that have happened in any other town except vienna? did george know, by-the-by, that oskar was travelling with the prince of guastalla? her tone did not indicate that she regarded that as anything special, but george noticed that she was a little proud of it, and entertained the opinion somewhere at the back of her mind that oskar had turned out all right after all. while george was speaking to frau ehrenberg he noticed that else, who had retired with james into the recess, was directing glances towards him--glances full of melancholy and of knowledge, which almost frightened him. he soon took his leave, had a feeling that else's handshake was inconceivably cold, while those of the others were amiably indifferent, and went. "how funny it all is," he thought in the vehicle which drove him to heinrich's. people knew everything before he did. they had known of his _liaison_ with anna before it had begun, and now they knew that it was over before he did himself. he had half a mind to show them all that they were making a mistake. of course, in so vital an affair as that one should be very careful not to decide on one's course of action out of considerations of pique. it was a good thing that a few months were now before him in which he could pull himself together and have time for mature reflection. it would be good for anna, too, particularly good for her, perhaps. yesterday's walk with her in the rain over the brown wet streets came into his mind again, and struck him as ineffably sad. alas, for the hours in the arched room into which the strains of the organ opposite had vibrated through the floating curtain of snow--where were they? yes, where had these hours gone to? and so many other wonderful hours as well! he saw himself and anna again in his mind's eye, as a young couple on their honeymoon, walking through streets which had the wonderful atmosphere of a strange land; commonplace hotel rooms, where he had only stayed with her for a few days, suddenly presented themselves before him, consecrated as it were by the perfume of memory.... then his love appeared to him, sitting on a white seat, beneath the heavy branches, with her high forehead girdled with the deceptive presentiment of gentle motherhood. and finally she stood there with a sheet of music in her hand while the white curtain fluttered gently in the wind. and when he realised that it was the same room in which she was now waiting for him, and that not more than a year had gone by since that evening hour in the late summer when she had sung his own songs for the first time to his own accompaniment, he breathed heavily and almost anxiously in his corner. when he was in heinrich's room a few minutes afterwards he asked him not to look upon this as a visit. he only wanted to shake hands with him. he would fetch him for a walk to-morrow morning if that suited him.... yes--the idea occurred to him while he was speaking--for a kind of farewell walk in the salmansdorf forest. heinrich agreed, but asked him to stay just a few minutes. george asked him jestingly if he had already recovered from his failure of this morning. heinrich pointed to the secretary, on which were lying loose sheets covered with large nervous writing. "do you know what that is? i have taken up _Ägidius_ again, and just before you came i thought of an ending which was more or less feasible. i'll tell you more about it to-morrow if it will interest you." "by all means. i am quite excited about it. it's a good thing, too, that you have settled down to a definite piece of work again." "yes, my dear george, i don't like being quite alone, and must create some society for myself as quickly as possible, people i choose myself ... otherwise, any one who wants to come along, and one is not keen on being at home to every chance ghost." george told him that he had called on leo and found him in far better spirits than he had ever expected. heinrich leaned against the secretary with both his hands buried in his trouser pockets and his head slightly bent; the shaded lamp made uncertain shadows on his face. "why didn't you expect to find him in good spirits? if it had been us ... if it had been me, at any rate, i should probably have felt exactly the same." george was sitting on the arm of a black leather arm-chair with crossed legs and his hat and stick in his hand. "perhaps you are right," he said, "but i must confess all the same that when i saw his cheerful face i found it very strange to realise that he had a human life on his conscience." "you mean," said heinrich, beginning to walk up and down the room, "that it is one of those cases where the relationship of cause and effect is so illuminating that you are justified in saying quietly 'he has killed' without its looking like a mere juggle of words.... but speaking generally, george, don't you think that we regard these matters a little superficially? we must see the flash of a dagger or hear the whistle of a bullet in order to realise that a murder has been committed. as though any man who let any one else die would be in most cases different from a murderer in anything else except having managed the business more comfortably and being more of a coward...." "are you really reproaching yourself, heinrich? if you had really believed that it was bound to turn out like that ... i am sure you would not have ... let her die." "perhaps ... i don't know. but i can tell you one thing, george: if she were still alive--i mean if i had forgiven her, to use the expression you are so fond of using now and then--i should regard myself as guiltier than i do to-day. yes, yes, that's how it is. i will confess to you, george, there was a night ... there were a few nights, when i was practically crushed by grief, by despair, by.... other people would have taken it for remorse, but it was nothing of the kind. for amid all my grief, all my despair, i knew quite well that this death meant a kind of redemption, a kind of reconciliation, a kind of cleanness. if i had been weak or less vain ... as you no doubt regard it ... if she had been my mistress again, something far worse than that death would have happened for her as well ... loathing and anguish, rage and hate, would have crawled around our bed ... our memories would have rotted bit by bit--why, our love would have decomposed whilst its body was still alive. it had no right to be. it would have been a crime to have protracted the life of this love affair which was sick unto death, just as it is a crime--and what is more, will be regarded so in the future--to protract the life of a man who is doomed to a painful death. any sensible doctor will tell you as much. and that is why i'm very far from reproaching myself. i don't want to justify myself before you or before any one else in the world, but that is just how it is. i _can't_ feel guilty. i often feel very bad, but that hasn't the least thing in the world to do with any consciousness of guilt." "you went there just afterwards?" asked george. "yes, i went there. i even stood by when they lowered the coffin into the ground. yes, i trained there with the mother." he stood by the window, quite in the darkness, and shook himself. "no, i shall never forget it. besides, it is only a lie to say that people come together in a common sorrow. people never come together if they're not natural affinities. they feel even further away from each other in times of trouble. that journey! when i remember it! i read nearly the whole time, too. i found it positively intolerable to talk to the silly old creature. there is no one one hates more than some one who is quite indifferent to you and requires your sympathy. we stood together by her grave, too, the mother and i--i, the mother, and a few actors from the little theatre.... and afterwards i sat in the inn with her alone, after the funeral--a _tête-à-tête_ wake. a desperate business, i can tell you. do you know, by-the-by, where she lies buried? by your lake, george. yes. i have often found myself driven to think of you. you know of course where the churchyard is? scarcely a hundred yards from auhof. there's a delightful view on to our lake, george; of course, only if one happens to be alive." george felt a slight horror. he got up. "i am afraid i must leave you, heinrich. i am expected. you'll excuse me?" heinrich came up to him out of the darkness of the window. "thank you very much for your visit. well, to-morrow, isn't it? i suppose you are going to anna now? please give her my best wishes. i hear she is very well. therese told me." "yes, she looks splendid. she has completely recovered." "i'm very glad. well, till to-morrow then. i'm extremely glad that i shall be able to see you again before you leave. you must still have all kinds of things to tell me. i've done nothing again but talk about myself." george smiled. as though he hadn't grown used to this with heinrich. "good-bye," he said, and went. much of what heinrich had said echoed in george's mind when he sat again in his fiacre. "we must see the flash of a dagger in order to realise that a murder has been committed." george felt that there was a kind of subterranean connection, but yet one which he had guessed for a long time, between the meaning of these words and a certain dull sense of discomfort which he had frequently felt in his own soul. he thought of a past hour when he had felt as though a gamble over his unborn child was going on in the clouds, and it suddenly struck him as strange that anna had not yet spoken a word to him about the child's death, that she had even avoided in her letters any reference, not only to the final misfortune, but also to the whole period when she had carried the child under her bosom. the conveyance approached its destination. why is my heart beating? thought george. joy?... bad conscience?... why to-day all of a sudden? she can't have any grievance against me.... what nonsense! i am run down and excited at the same time, that's what it is. i shouldn't have come here at all. why have i seen all these people again? wasn't i a thousand times better off in the little town where i had started a new life, in spite of all my longings?... i ought to have met anna somewhere else. perhaps she will come away with me.... then everything will still come right in the end. but is anything wrong?... are our relations really in a bad way? and is it a crime to prolong them?... that may be a convenient excuse on certain occasions. when he went into rosners' the mother, who was sitting alone at the table, looked up from her book and shut it with a snap. the light of a lamp that was swinging gently to and fro flowed from overhead on to the table, distributing itself equally in all directions. josef got up from a corner of the sofa. anna, who had just come out of her room, stroked her high wavy hair with both hands, welcomed george with a light nod of the head and gave him at this moment the impression of being rather an apparition than real flesh and blood. george shook hands with every one and inquired after herr rosner's health. "he is not exactly bad," said frau rosner, "but he finds it difficult to stand up." josef apologised at being found sleeping on the sofa. he had to use the sunday in order to rest himself. he was occupying a position on his paper which often kept him there till three o'clock in the morning. "he is working very hard now," said his mother corroboratively. "yes," said josef modestly, "when a fellow gets real scope, so to speak...." he went on to observe that the _christliche volksbote_ was enjoying a larger and larger circulation, particularly in germany. he then addressed some questions to george about his new home, and showed a keen interest in the population, the condition of the roads, the popularity of cycling and the surrounding neighbourhood. frau rosner, on her side, made polite inquiries about the composition of the repertoire. george supplied the information and a conversation was soon in progress, in which anna also played a substantial part, and george found himself suddenly paying a visit to a middle-class and conventional family where the daughter of the house happened to be musical. the conversation finally finished up in george feeling himself bound to express a wish to hear the young lady sing once more--and he had as it were to pull himself together to realise that the woman whose voice he had asked to hear was really his own anna. josef made his excuses; he was called away by an appointment with club friends in the café. "do you still remember, herr baron ... the classy party on the sophienalp?" "of course," replied george, smiling, and he quoted: "der gott, der eisen wachsen liess...." "der wollte keine knechte," added josef. "but we have left off singing that now for a long time. it is too like the 'watch on the rhine,' and we don't want to have it cast in our teeth any more that we have a sneaking fancy for the other side of the frontier. we had great fights about it on the committee. one gentleman even sent in his resignation. he's a solicitor, you know, in the office of doctor fuchs, the national german deputy. yes, it's all politics, you know." he winked. they must not think, of course, that now that he himself had an insight into the machinery of public life he still took the swindle seriously. with the scarcely surprising remark that he could tell a tale or two if he wanted, he took his leave. frau rosner thought it time to go and look after her husband. george sat alone with anna, opposite her by the round table, over which the hanging lamp shed its light. "thank you for the beautiful roses," said anna. "i have them inside in my room." she got up, and george followed her. he had quite forgotten that he had sent her any flowers. they were standing in a high glass in front of the mirror. they were dark red and their reflection was opaque and colourless. the piano was open, some music stood ready and two candles were burning at the side. apart from that all the light in the room was what came from the adjoining apartment through the wide opening left by the door. "you've been playing, anna?" he came nearer. "the countess's aria? been singing, too?" "yes--tried to." "all right?" "it is beginning to ... i think so. well, we'll see. but first tell me what you have been doing all to-day." "in a minute. we haven't welcomed each other at all so far." he embraced and kissed her. "it is a long time since----" she said, smiling past him. "well?" he asked keenly, "are you coming with me?" anna hesitated. "but what do you really think of doing, george?" "quite simple. we can go away to-morrow afternoon. you can choose the place. reichenau, semmering, brühl, anywhere you like.... and i'll bring you back in the morning the day after to-morrow." something or other kept him back from mentioning the telegram which gave him three whole days to do what he liked with. anna looked in front of her. "it would be very nice," she said tonelessly, "but it really won't be possible, george." "on account of your father?" she nodded. "but he is surely better, isn't he?" "no, he is not at all well. he is so weak. they wouldn't of course reproach me directly in any way. but i ... i can't leave mother alone now, for that kind of excursion." he shrugged his shoulders, feeling slightly wounded at the designation which she had chosen. "come, be frank," she added in a jesting manner. "are you really so keen on it?" he shook his head, almost as if in pain, but he felt that this gesture also was lacking in sincerity. "i don't understand you, anna," he said, more weakly than he really meant. "to think that a few weeks of being away from each other, to think of ... well, i don't know what to call it.... it is as though we had got absolutely out of touch. it's really me, anna, it's really me...." he repeated in a vehement but tired voice. he got up from the chair in front of the piano. he took her hands and put them to his lips, feeling nervous and somewhat moved. "what was _tristan_ like?" she inquired. he gave her a conscientious account of the performance and did not leave out his visit to the ehrenbergs' box. he spoke of all the people whom he had seen and conveyed to her heinrich bermann's wishes. he then drew her on to his knee and kissed her. when he removed his face from hers he saw tears running over her cheeks. he pretended to be surprised, "what's the matter, child?... but why, why...?" she got up and went to the window with her face turned away from him. he stood up too, feeling somewhat impatient, walked up and down the room once or twice, then went up to her, pressed her close to him, and then immediately began again in great haste: "anna, just think it over and see if you really can't come with me! it would all be so different from what it is here. we could really talk things over thoroughly. we have got such important matters to discuss. i need your advice as well, about the plans i am to make for next year. i've written to you about it, haven't i? it is very probable, you see, that i shall be asked to sign a three years' contract in the next few days." "what am i to advise you?" she said. "after all, you know best whether it suits you there or not." he began to tell her about the kind and talented manager who clearly wished to have him for a collaborator; about the old and sympathetic conductor who had once been so famous; about a very diminutive stage-hand who was called alexander the great; about a young lady with whom he had studied the micaela, and who was engaged to a berlin doctor; and about a tenor, who had already been working at the theatre for twenty-seven years and hated wagner violently. he then began to talk about his own personal prospects, artistic and financial. there was no doubt that he could soon attain an excellent and assured position at the little court theatre. on the other hand one had to bear in mind that it was dangerous to bind oneself for too long; a career like that of the old conductor would not be to his taste. of course ... temperaments varied. he for his part believed himself safe from a fate like that. anna looked at him all the time, and finally said in a half jesting, half meditative tone, as though she were speaking to a child: "yes, isn't he trying hard?" the thrust went home. "in what way am i trying hard?" "look here, george, you don't owe me explanations of any kind." "explanations? but you are really.... really, i'm not giving you any explanations, anna. i'm simply describing to you how i live and what kind of people i have to deal with ... because i flatter myself that these things interest you, in the same way that i told you where i had been yesterday and to-day." she was silent, and george felt again that she did not believe him, that she was justified in not believing him--even though now and again the truth happened to come from his lips. all kinds of words were on the tip of his tongue, words of wounded pride, of rage, of gentle persuasion--each seemed to him equally worthless and empty. he made no reply, sat down at the piano and gently struck some notes and chords. he now felt again as though he loved her very much and was simply unable to tell it her, and as though this hour of meeting would have been quite different if they had celebrated it elsewhere. not in this room, not in this town; in a place, for preference, which they neither of them knew, in a new strange environment, yes, then perhaps everything would have been again just as it had been once before. then they would have been able to have rushed into each other's arms--as once before, with real yearning, and found delight--and peace. the idea occurred to him: "if i were to say to her now 'anna! three days and three nights belong to us!' if i were to beg her ... with the right words.... entreat her at her feet.... 'come with me, come!'... she would not hold out long! she would certainly follow me...." he knew it. why did he not speak the right words? why did he not entreat her? why was he silent, as he sat at the piano and gently struck notes and chords...? why?... then he felt her soft hand upon his head. his fingers lay heavy on the notes, some chord or other vibrated. he did not dare to turn round. she knows it, too, he felt. what does she know?... is it true, then...? yes ... it is true. and he thought of the hour after the birth of his dead child--when he had sat by her bed and she had lain there in silence, with her looks turned towards the gloomy garden.... she had known it even then--earlier than he--that all was over. and he lifted his hands from the piano, took hers, which were still lying on his head, guided them to his cheeks, drew her to him till she was again quite close, and she slowly dropped down on to his knees. and he began again, shyly: "anna ... perhaps ... you could manage to.... perhaps i too could manage for a few days' more leave if i were to telegraph. anna dear ... just listen.... it would be really so beautiful...." a plan came to him from the very depths of his consciousness. if he really were to go travelling with her for some days, and were to take the opportunity honestly to say to her, "it must end, anna, but the end of our love must be beautiful like the beginning was. not dim and gloomy like these hours in your people's house...." if i were honestly to say that to her--somewhere in the country--would it not be more worthy of her and mine--and our past happiness...? and with this plan in his mind he grew more insistent, bolder, almost passionate.... and his words had the same ring again as they had had a long, long time ago. sitting on his knees, with her arms around his neck, she answered gently: "george, i am not--going to go through it another time...." he already had a word upon his lips with which he could have dissipated her alarm. but he kept it back, for if put in so many words it would have simply meant that while he was thinking of course of living again a few hours of delight with her, he did not feel inclined to take any responsibility upon himself. he felt it. all he need say to avoid wounding her was this one thing: "you belong to me for ever!--you really must have a child by me--i'll fetch you at christmas or easter at the outside. and we will never be parted from each other any more." he felt the way in which she waited for these words with one last hope, with a hope in whose realisation she had herself ceased to believe. but he was silent. if he had said aloud the words she was yearning for he would have bound himself anew, and ... he now realised more deeply than he had ever realised before that he wanted to be free. she was still resting on his knees, with her cheek leaning on his. they were silent for a long time and knew that this was the farewell. finally george said resolutely: "well, if you don't want to come with me, anna, then i'll go straight back--to-morrow, and we'll see each other again in the spring. until then there are only letters. only in the event of my coming at christmas if i can...." she had got up and was leaning against the piano. "the boy's mad again," she said. "isn't it really better if we don't see each other till after easter?" "why better?" "by then--everything will be so much clearer." he tried to misunderstand her. "you mean about the contract?" "yes...." "i must make up my mind in the next few weeks. the people want of course to know where they are. on the other hand, even if i did sign for three years, and other chances came along, they wouldn't keep me against my will. but up to the present it really seems to me that staying in that small town has been an extremely sound thing for me. i have never been able to work with such concentration as there. haven't i written to you how i have often sat at my secretary after the theatre till three o'clock in the morning, and woken up fresh at eight o'clock after a sound sleep?" she gazed at him all the time with a look at once pained and reflective, which affected him like a look of doubt. had she not once believed in him! had she not spoken those words of trust and tenderness to him in a twilight church: "i will pray to heaven that you become a great artist"? he felt again as though she did not think anything like as much of him as in days gone by. he felt troubled and asked her uncertainly: "you'll allow me, of course, to send you my violin sonata as soon as it is finished? you know i don't value anybody else's criticism as much as i do yours." and he thought: if i could only just keep her as a friend ... or win her over again ... as a friend ... is it possible? she said: "you have also spoken to me about a few new fantasies you have written just for the pianoforte." "quite right; but they are not yet quite ready. but there's another one which i ... which i ..." he himself found his hesitations foolish--"composed last summer by the lake where that poor girl was drowned, heinrich's mistress you know, which you don't know yet either. couldn't i ... i'll play it to you quite gently; would you like me to?" she nodded and shut the door. there, just behind him, she stood motionless as he began. and he played. he played the little piece with all its passionate melancholy which he had composed by that lake of his, when anna and the child had been completely forgotten. it was a great relief to him that he could play it to her. she must be bound to understand the message of these notes. it was impossible for her not to understand. he heard himself as it were speaking in the notes; he felt as though it was only now that he understood himself. farewell, my love, farewell. it was very beautiful. and now it is over ... farewell, my love.... we have lived through what was fated for both of us. and whatever the future may hold for me and for you we shall always mean something to each other which we can neither of us ever forget. and now my life goes another way.... and yours too. it must be over ... i have loved you. i kiss your eyes.... i thank you, you kind, gentle, silent one. farewell, my love ... farewell.... the notes died away. he had not looked up from the keys while he was playing: he now turned slowly round. she stood behind him solemn and with lips which quivered slightly. he caught her hands and kissed them. "anna, anna ..." he exclaimed. he felt as if his heart would break. "don't quite forget me," she said softly. "i'll write to you as soon as i'm there again." she nodded. "and you'll write to me, too, anna ... everything ... everything ... you understand?" she nodded again. "and ... and ... i'll see you again early to-morrow." she shook her head. he wanted to make some reply as though he were astonished--as if it were really a matter of course that he should see her again before his departure. she lightly lifted her hand as though requesting him to be silent. he stood up, pressed her to him, kissed her mouth, which was cool and did not answer his kiss, and left the room. she stayed behind standing with limp arms and shut eyes. he hurried down the stairs. he felt down below in the street as though he must go up again--and say to her: "but it's all untrue! that was not our goodbye. i really do love you. i belong to you. it can't be over...." but he felt that he ought not to. not yet. perhaps to-morrow. she would not escape him between this evening and to-morrow morning ... and he rushed aimlessly about the empty streets as though in a slight delirium of grief and freedom. he was glad he had made no appointments with any one and could remain alone. he dined somewhere far off in an old low smoky inn in a silent corner while people from another world sat at the neighbouring tables, and it seemed to him that he was in a foreign town: lonely, a little proud of his loneliness and a little frightened of his pride. the following day george was walking with heinrich about noon through the avenues of the dornbacher park. an air which was heavy with thin clouds enveloped them, the sodden leaves crackled and slid underneath their feet, and through the shrubbery there glistened that very road on which they had gone the year before towards the reddish-yellow hill. the branches spread themselves out without stirring, as though oppressed by the distant sultriness of the greyish sun. heinrich was just describing the end of his drama, which had occurred to him yesterday. Ägidius had been landed on the island ready after his death-journey to undergo within seven days his foretold doom. the prince gives him his life. Ägidius does not take it and throws himself from the cliffs into the sea. george was not satisfied: "why must Ägidius die?" he did not believe in it. heinrich could not understand the necessity for any explanation at all. "why, how can he go on living?" he exclaimed. "he was doomed to death. it was with his hand before his eyes that he lived the most splendid, the most glorious days that have ever been vouchsafed to man as the uncontrolled lord upon the ship, the lover of the princess, the friend of the sages, singers and star-gazers, but always with the end before his eyes. all this richness would, so to speak, lose its point: why, his sublime and majestic expectation of his last minute would be bound to become transformed in Ägidius's memory into a ridiculous dupe's fear of death, if all this death-journey were to turn out in the end to be an empty joke. that's why he must die." "then you think it's true?" asked george, with even greater doubt than before. "i can't help it--i don't." "that doesn't matter," replied heinrich. "if you thought it true now, things would be too easy for me. but it would have become true as soon as the last syllable of my piece is written. or...." he did not go on speaking. they walked up a meadow, and soon the expanse of the familiar valley spread out at their feet. the sommerhaidenweg gleamed on the hill-slope on their right, on the other side hard by the forest the yellow-painted inn was visible with its red wooden terraces, and not far off was the little house with the dark grey gable. the town could be descried in an uncertain haze, the plain floated still further towards the heights and far in the distance loomed the pale low drawn outlines of the mountains. they now had to cross a broad highway and at last a footpath took them down over the fields and meadows. remote on either side slumbered the forest. george felt a presentiment of the yearning with which in the years to come, perhaps on the very next day, he would miss this landscape which had now ceased being his home. at last they stood in front of the little house with the gable which george had wanted to see one last time. the door and windows were boarded up; battered by the weather, as though grown old before its time, it stood there and had no truck with the world. "well, so this is what is called saying goodbye," said george lightly. his look fell upon the clay figure in the middle of the faded flower-beds. "funny," he said to heinrich, "that i've always taken the blue boy for an angel. i mean i called him that, for i knew, of course, all the time what he looked like and that he was really a curly-headed boy with bare feet, tunic and girdle." "you will swear a year from to-day," said heinrich, "that the blue boy had wings." george threw a glance up to the attic. he felt as though there existed a possibility of some one suddenly coming out on the balcony: perhaps labinski who had paid him no visits since that dream; or he himself, the george von wergenthin of days gone by; the george of that summer who had lived up there. silly fancies. the balcony remained empty, the house was silent and the garden was deep asleep. george turned away disappointed. "come," he said to heinrich. they went and took the road to the sommerhaidenweg. "how warm it's grown!" said heinrich, took off his overcoat and threw it over his shoulder, as was his habit. george felt a desolate and somewhat arid sense of remembrance. he turned to heinrich: "i'd prefer to tell you straight away. the affair is over." heinrich threw him a quick side-glance and then nodded, not particularly surprised. "but," added george, with a weak attempt at humour, "you are earnestly requested not to think of the angel boy." heinrich shook his head seriously. "thank you. you can dedicate the fable of the blue boy to nürnberger." "he's turned out right, once again," said george. "he always turns out right, my dear george. one can positively never be deceived if one mistrusts everything in the world, even one's own scepticism. even if you had married anna he would have turned out right ... or at any rate you would have thought so. but at any rate i think ... you don't mind my saying so, i suppose ... it's sound that it's turned out like this." "sound? i've no doubt it is for me," replied george with intentional sharpness, as though he were very far from having any idea of sparing his conduct. "it was perhaps even a duty, in your sense of the term, heinrich, which i owed to myself to bring it to an end." "then it was certainly equally your duty to anna," said heinrich. "that remains to be seen. who knows if i have not spoilt her life?" "her life? do you still remember leo golowski saying about her that she was fated to finish up in respectable life? do you think, george, that a marriage with you would have been particularly respectable? anna was perhaps cut out to be your mistress--not your wife. who knows if the fellow she is going to marry one day or other wouldn't really have every reason to be grateful to you if only men weren't so confoundedly silly? people only have pure memories when they have lived through something--this applies to women quite as much as men." they walked further along the sommerhaidenweg in the direction of the town, which towered out of the grey haze, and approached the cemetery. "is there really any point," asked george hesitatingly, "in visiting the grave of a creature that has never lived?" "does your child lie there?" george nodded. his child! how strange it always sounded! they walked along the brown wooden palings above which rose the gravestones and crosses, and then followed a low brick wall to the entrance. an attendant of whom they inquired showed them the way over the wide centre path which was planted with willows. there were rows of little oval plates, each one with two short prongs stuck into the ground, on little mounds like sand-castles, close to the planks in a fairly large plot of ground. the mound for which george was looking lay in the middle of the field. dark red roses lay on it. george recognised them. his heart stood still. what a good thing, he thought, that we didn't meet each other! did she hope to, i wonder? "there where the roses are?" asked heinrich. george nodded. they remained silent for a while. "isn't it a fact," asked heinrich, "that during the whole time you never once thought of the possibility of its ending like this?" "never? i don't quite know. all kinds of possibilities run through one's mind. but of course i never seriously thought of it. besides, how could one?" he told heinrich, and not for the first time, of how the professor had explained the child's death. it had been an unfortunate accident through which one to two per cent. of unborn children were bound to perish. as to why this accident should have taken place in this particular case, that, of course, the professor had not been able to explain. but was accident anything more than a word? was not even that accident bound to have its cause? heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "of course.... one cause after the other and its final cause in the beginning of all things. we could of course prevent the happening of many so-called accidents if we had more perception, more knowledge and more power. who knows if your child's death could not have been prevented at some moment or other?" "and perhaps it may have been in my own power," said george slowly. "i don't understand. was there any premonitory symptom or...." george stood there staring fixedly at the little mound. "i'll ask you something, heinrich, but don't laugh at me. do you think it possible that an unborn child can die from one not longing for it to come, in the way one ought to--dying, as it were, of too little love?" heinrich put his hand on his shoulder. "george, how does a sensible man like you manage to get hold of such metaphysical ideas?" "you can call it whatever you like, metaphysical or silly; for some time past i haven't been able to shake off the thought that to some extent i bear the blame for it having ended like that." "you?" "if i said a minute ago that i did not long for it enough i didn't express myself properly. the truth is this: that i had quite forgotten that little creature that was to have come into the world. in the last few weeks immediately before its birth, especially, i had absolutely forgotten it. i can't put it any differently. of course i knew all the time what was going to happen, but it didn't concern me, as it were. i went on with my life without thinking of it. not the whole time, but frequently, and particularly in the summer by the lake, my lake as you call it ... then i was.... yes, when i was there i simply knew nothing about my going to have a child." "i've heard all about it," said heinrich, looking past him. george looked at him. "you know what i mean then? i was not only far away from the child, the unborn child, but from the mother too, and in so strange a way that with the best will in the world i can't describe it to you, can't even understand it myself to-day. and there are moments when i can't resist the thought that there must have been some connection between that forgetting and my child's death. do you think anything like that so absolutely out of the question?" heinrich's forehead was furrowed deeply. "quite out of the question? one can't go as far as that. the roots of things are often so deeply intertwined that we find it impossible to look right down to the bottom. yes, perhaps there even are connections like that. but even if there are ... they are not for you, george! even if such connections did exist they wouldn't count so far as you were concerned." "wouldn't count for me?" "the whole idea which you just tell me, well, it doesn't fit in with my conception of you. it doesn't come out of your soul. not a bit of it. an idea of that kind would never have occurred to you your whole life long if you hadn't been intimate with a person of my type, and if it hadn't been your way sometimes not to think your own thoughts but those of men who were stronger--or even weaker than you are. and i assure you, whatever turn your life may have taken even down by that lake, your lake ... our lake ... you haven't incurred any so-called guilt. it might have been guilt in the case of some one else. but with a man like you whose character--you don't mind my saying this--is somewhat frivolous and a little unconscientious there would certainly be no sense of guilt. shall i tell you something? as a matter of fact you don't feel guilty about the child at all, but the discomfort which you feel only comes from your thinking yourself under an obligation to feel guilty. look here, if i had gone through anything like your adventure i might perhaps have been guilty because i might possibly have felt myself guilty." "would you have been guilty in a case like mine, heinrich?" "no, perhaps i wouldn't. how can i know? you're probably now thinking of the fact that i recently drove a creature straight to her death and in spite of that felt, so to speak, quite guiltless." "yes, that's what i'm thinking of. and that's why i don't understand...." heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "yes. i felt quite guiltless. somewhere or other in my soul and somewhere else, perhaps deeper down, i felt guilty.... and deeper down still, guiltless again. the only question is how deep we look down into ourselves. and when we have lit the lights in all the storeys, why, we are everything at the same time: guilty and guiltless, cowards and heroes, fools and wise men. 'we'--perhaps that's putting it rather too generally. in your case, for example, george, there are far less of these complications, at any rate when you're outside the influence of the atmosphere which i sometimes spread around you. that's why, too, you are better off than i am--much better off. my look-out is ghastly, you know. you surely must have noticed it before. what's the good to me of the lights burning in all my storeys? what's the good to me of my knowledge of human nature and my splendid intelligence? nothing.... less than nothing. as a matter of fact there's nothing i should like better, george, than that all the ghastly events of the last months had not happened, just like a bad dream. i swear to you, george, i would give my whole future and god knows what if i could make it undone. but if it were undone ... then i should probably be quite as miserable as i am now." his face became distorted as though he wanted to scream. but immediately afterwards he stood there again, stiff, motionless, pale, as though all his fire had gone out. and he said: "believe me, george, there are moments when i envy the people with a so-called philosophy of life. as for me, whenever i want to have a decently ordered world i have always first got to create one for myself. that's rather a strain for any one who doesn't happen to be the deity." he sighed heavily. george left off answering him. he walked with him under the willows to the exit. he knew that there was no help for this man. it was fated that some time or other he should precipitate himself into the void from the top of a tower which he had circled up in spirals; and that would be the end of him. but george felt in good form and free. he made the resolve to use the three days which still belonged to him as sensibly as possible. the best thing to do was to be alone in some quiet beautiful country-side, to rest himself fully and recuperate for new work. he had taken the manuscript of the violin sonata with him to vienna. he was thinking of finishing that before all others. they crossed the doorway and stood in the street. george turned round, but the cemetery wall arrested his gaze. it was only after a few steps that he had a clear view of the valley. all he could do now was to guess where the little house with the grey gables was lying; it was no longer visible from here. beyond the reddish-yellow hills which shut off the view of the landscape the sky sank down in the faint autumn light. a gentle farewell was taking place within george's soul of much happiness and much sorrow, the echoes of which he heard as it were in the valley which he was now leaving for a long time; and at the same time there was within his soul the greeting of days as yet unknown, which rang to his youth from out the wideness of the world. [ ] a pun on the word _ehre_ which means honour. [ ] literally "sweet girl." the phrase was invented by schnitzler himself. [ ] a fashionable district in vienna. none (http:www.girlebooks.com & http://www.freeliterature.org) the doctor's wife a novel by the author of "lady audley's secret," "aurora floyd" etc. etc. etc. london john and robert maxwell milton house, shoe lane, fleet street contents. i. a young man from the country ii. a sensation author iii. isabel iv. the end of george gilbert's holiday v. george at home vi. too much alone vii. on the bridge viii. about poor joe tillet's young wife ix. miss sleaford's engagement x. a bad beginning xi. "she only said, 'my life is weary!'" xii. something like a birthday xiii. "oh, my cousin, shallow-hearted!" xiv. under lord thurston's oak xv. roland says, "amen" xvi. mr. lansdell relates an adventure xvii. the first warning xviii. the second warning xix. what might have been! xx. "oceans should divide us!" xxi. "once more the gate behind me falls" xxii. "my love's a noble madness" xxiii. a little cloud xxiv. lady gwendoline does her duty xxv. "for love himself took part against himself" xxvi. a popular preacher xxvii. "and now i live, and now my life is done!" xxviii. trying to be good. xxix. the first whisper of the storm xxx. the beginning of a great change xxxi. fifty pounds xxxii. "i'll not believe but desdemona's honest" xxxiii. keeping a promise xxxiv. retrospective xxxv. "'twere best at once to sink to peace" xxxvi. between two worlds xxxvii. "if any calm, a calm despair" the doctors wife. chapter i. a young man from the country there were two surgeons in the little town of graybridge-on-the-wayverne, in pretty pastoral midlandshire,--mr. pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the middle of the queer old high street; and john gilbert, the parish doctor, who lived in his own house on the outskirts of graybridge, and worked very hard for a smaller income than that which the stylish mr. pawlkatt derived from his aristocratic patients. john gilbert was an elderly man, with a young son. he had married late in life, and his wife had died very soon after the birth of this son. it was for this reason, most likely, that the surgeon loved his child as children are rarely loved by their fathers--with an earnest, over-anxious devotion, which from the very first had been something womanly in its character, and which grew with the child's growth. mr. gilbert's mind was narrowed by the circle in which he lived. he had inherited his own patients and the parish patients from his father, who had been a surgeon before him, and who had lived in the same house, with the same red lamp over the little old-fashioned surgery-door, for eight-and-forty years, and had died, leaving the house, the practice, and the red lamp to his son. if john gilbert's only child had possessed the capacity of a newton or the aspirations of a napoleon, the surgeon would nevertheless have shut him up in the surgery to compound aloes and conserve of roses, tincture of rhubarb and essence of peppermint. luckily for the boy, he was only a common-place lad, with a good-looking, rosy face; clear grey eyes, which stared at you frankly; and a thick stubble of brown hair, parted in the middle and waving from the roots. he was tall, straight, and muscular; a good runner, a first-rate cricketer, tolerably skilful with a pair of boxing-gloves or single-sticks, and a decent shot. he wrote a fair business-like hand, was an excellent arithmetician, remembered a smattering of latin, a random line here and there from those roman poets and philosophers whose writings had been his torment at a certain classical and commercial academy at wareham. he spoke and wrote tolerable english, had read shakespeare and sir walter scott, and infinitely preferred the latter, though he made a point of skipping the first few chapters of the great novelist's fictions in order to get at once to the action of the story. he was a very good young man, went to church two or three times on a sunday, and would on no account have broken any one of the ten commandments on the painted tablets above the altar by so much as a thought. he was very good; and, above all, he was very good-looking. no one had ever disputed this fact: george gilbert was eminently good-looking. no one had ever gone so far as to call him handsome; no one had ever presumed to designate him plain. he had those homely, healthy good looks which the novelist or poet in search of a hero would recoil from with actual horror, and which the practical mind involuntarily associates with tenant-farming in a small way, or the sale of butcher's meat. i will not say that poor george was ungentlemanly, because he had kind, cordial manners, and a certain instinctive christianity, which had never yet expressed itself in any very tangible form, but which lent a genial flavour to every word upon his lips, to every thought in his heart. he was a very trusting young man, and thought well of all mankind; he was a tory, heart and soul, as his father and grandfather had been before him; and thought especially well of all the magnates round about wareham and graybridge, holding the grand names that had been familiar to him from his childhood in simple reverence, that was without a thought of meanness. he was a candid, honest, country-bred young man, who did his duty well, and filled a small place in a very narrow circle with credit to himself and the father who loved him. the fiery ordeal of two years' student-life at st. bartholomew's had left the lad almost as innocent as a girl; for john gilbert had planted his son during those two awful years in the heart of a quiet wesleyan family in the seven-sisters road, and the boy had enjoyed very little leisure for disporting himself with the dangerous spirits of st. bartholomew's. george gilbert was two-and-twenty, and in all the course of those two-and-twenty years which made the sum of the young man's life, his father had never had reason to reproach him by so much as a look. the young doctor was held to be a model youth in the town of graybridge; and it was whispered that if he should presume to lift his eyes to miss sophronia burdock, the second daughter of the rich maltster, he need not aspire in vain. but george was by no means a coxcomb, and didn't particularly admire miss burdock, whose eyelashes were a good deal paler than her hair, and whose eyebrows were only visible in a strong light. the surgeon was young, and the world was all before him; but he was not ambitious; he felt no sense of oppression in the narrow high street at graybridge. he could sit in the little parlour next the surgery reading byron's fiercest poems, sympathizing in his own way with giaours and corsairs; but with no passionate yearning stirring up in his breast, with no thought of revolt against the dull quiet of his life. george gilbert took his life as he found it, and had no wish to make it better. to him graybridge-on-the-wayverne was all the world. he had been in london, and had felt a provincial's brief sense of surprised delight in the thronged streets, the clamour, and the bustle; but he had very soon discovered that the great metropolis was a dirty and disreputable place as compared to graybridge-on-the-wayverne, where you might have taken your dinner comfortably off any doorstep as far as the matter of cleanliness is concerned. the young man was more than satisfied with his life; he was pleased with it. he was pleased to think that he was to be his father's partner, and was to live and marry, and have children, and die at last in the familiar rooms in which he had been born. his nature was very adhesive, and he loved the things that he had long known, because they were old and familiar to him; rather than for any merit or beauty in the things themselves. the th of july, , was a very great day for george gilbert, and indeed for the town of graybridge generally; for on that day an excursion train left wareham for london, conveying such roving spirits as cared to pay a week's visit to the great metropolis upon very moderate terms. george had a week's holiday, which he was to spend with an old schoolfellow who had turned author, and had chambers in the temple, but who boarded and lodged with a family at camberwell. the young surgeon left graybridge in the maltster's carriage at eight o'clock upon that bright summer morning, in company with miss burdock and her sister sophronia, who were going up to london on a visit to an aristocratic aunt in baker street, and who had been confided to george's care during the journey. the young ladies and their attendant squire were in very high spirits. london, when your time is spent between st. bartholomew's hospital and the seven-sisters road, is not the most delightful city in the world; but london, when you are a young man from the country, with a week's holiday, and a five-pound note and some odd silver in your pocket, assumes quite another aspect. george was not enthusiastic; but he looked forward to his holiday with a placid sense of pleasure, and listened with untiring good humour to the conversation of the maltster's daughters, who gave him a good deal of information about their aunt in baker street, and the brilliant parties given by that lady and her acquaintance. but, amiable as the young ladies were, george was glad when the midlandshire train steamed into the euston terminus, and his charge was ended. he handed the misses burdock to a portly and rather pompous lady, who had a clarence-and-pair waiting for her, and who thanked him with supreme condescension for his care of her nieces. she even went so far as to ask him to call in baker street during his stay in london, at which sophronia blushed. but, unhappily, sophronia did not blush prettily; a faint patchy red broke out all over her face, even where her eyebrows ought to have been, and was a long time dispersing. if the blush had been beauty's bright, transient glow, as brief as summer lightning in a sunset sky, george gilbert could scarcely have been blind to its flattering import; but he looked at the young lady's emotion from a professional point of view, and mistook it for indigestion. "you're very kind, ma'am," he said. "but i'm going to stay at camberwell; i don't think i shall have time to call in baker street." the carriage drove away, and george took his portmanteau and went to find a cab. he hailed a hansom, and he felt as he stepped into it that he was doing a dreadful thing, which would tell against him in graybridge, if by any evil chance it should become known that he had ridden in that disreputable vehicle. he thought the horse had a rakish, unkempt look about the head and mane, like an animal who was accustomed to night-work, and indifferent as to his personal appearance in the day. george was not used to riding in hansoms; so, instead of balancing himself upon the step for a moment while he gave his orders to the charioteer, he settled himself comfortably inside, and was a little startled when a hoarse voice at the back of his head demanded "where to, sir?" and suggested the momentary idea that he was breaking out into involuntary ventriloquism. "the temple, driver; the temple, in fleet street," mr. gilbert said, politely. the man banged down a little trap-door and rattled off eastwards. i am afraid to say how much george gilbert gave the cabman when he was set down at last at the bottom of chancery lane; but i think he paid for five miles at eightpence a mile, and a trifle in on account of a blockade in holborn; and even then the driver did not thank him. george was a long time groping about the courts and quadrangles of the temple before he found the place he wanted, though he took a crumpled letter out of his waistcoat-pocket, and referred to it every now and then when he came to a standstill. wareham is only a hundred and twenty miles from london; and the excursion train, after stopping at every station on the line, had arrived at the terminus at half-past two o'clock. it was between three and four now, and the sun was shining upon the river, and the flags in the temple were hot under mr. gilbert's feet. he was very warm himself, and almost worn out, when he found at last the name he was looking for, painted very high up, in white letters, upon a black door-post,--" th floor: mr. andrew morgan and mr. sigismund smith." it was in the most obscure corner of the dingiest court in the temple that george gilbert found this name. he climbed a very dirty staircase, thumping the end of his portmanteau upon every step as he went up, until he came to a landing, midway between the third and fourth stories; here he was obliged to stop for sheer want of breath, for he had been lugging the portmanteau about with him throughout his wanderings in the temple, and a good many people had been startled by the aspect of a well-dressed young man carrying his own luggage, and staring at the names of the different rows of houses, the courts and quadrangles in the grave sanctuary. george gilbert stopped to take breath; and he had scarcely done so, when he was terrified by the apparition of a very dirty boy, who slid suddenly down the baluster between the floor above and the landing, and alighted face to face with the young surgeon. the boy's face was very black, and he was evidently a child of tender years, something between eleven and twelve, perhaps; but he was in nowise discomfited by the appearance of mr. gilbert; he ran up-stairs again, and placed himself astride upon the slippery baluster with a view to another descent, when a door above was suddenly opened, and a voice said, "you know where mr. manders, the artist, lives?" "yes, sir;--waterloo road, sir, montague terrace, no. ." "then run round to him, and tell him the subject for the next illustration in the 'smuggler's bride.' a man with his knee upon the chest of another man, and a knife in his hand. you can remember that?" "yes, sir." "and bring me a proof of chapter fifty-seven." "yes, sir." the door was shut, and the boy ran down-stairs, past george gilbert, as fast as he could go. but the door above was opened again, and the same voice called aloud,-- "tell mr. manders the man with the knife in his hand must have on top-boots." "all right, sir," the boy called from the bottom of the staircase. george gilbert went up, and knocked at the door above. it was a black door, and the names of mr. andrew morgan and mr. sigismund smith were painted upon it in white letters as upon the door-post below. a pale-faced young man, with a smudge of ink upon the end of his nose, and very dirty wrist-bands, opened the door. "sam!" "george!" cried the two young men simultaneously, and then began to shake hands with effusion, as the french playwrights say. "my dear old george!" "my dear old sam! but you call yourself sigismund now?" "yes; sigismund smith. it sounds well; doesn't it? if a man's evil destiny makes him a smith, the least he can do is to take it out in his christian name. no smith with a grain of spirit would ever consent to be a samuel. but come in, dear old boy, and put your portmanteau down; knock those papers off that chair--there, by the window. don't be frightened of making 'em in a muddle; they can't be in a worse muddle than they are now. if you don't mind just amusing yourself with the 'times' for half an hour or so, while i finish this chapter of the 'smuggler's bride,' i shall be able to strike work, and do whatever you like; but the printer's boy is coming back in half an hour for the end of the chapter." "i won't speak a word," george said, respectfully. the young man with the smudgy nose was an author, and george gilbert had an awful sense of the solemnity of his friend's vocation. "write away, my dear sam; i won't interrupt you." he drew his chair close to the open window, and looked down into the court below, where the paint was slowly blistering in the july sun. chapter ii. a sensation author. mr. sigismund smith was a sensation author. that bitter term of reproach, "sensation," had not been invented for the terror of romancers in the fifty-second year of this present century; but the thing existed nevertheless in divers forms, and people wrote sensation novels as unconsciously as monsieur jourdain talked prose. sigismund smith was the author of about half-a-dozen highly-spiced fictions, which enjoyed an immense popularity amongst the classes who like their literature as they like their tobacco--very strong. sigismund had never in his life presented himself before the public in a complete form; he appeared in weekly numbers at a penny, and was always so appearing; and except on one occasion when he found himself, very greasy and dog's-eared at the edges, and not exactly pleasant to the sense of smell, on the shelf of a humble librarian and newsvendor, who dealt in tobacco and sweetstuff as well as literature, sigismund had never known what it was to be bound. he was well paid for his work, and he was contented. he had his ambition, which was to write a great novel; and the archetype of this _magnum opus_ was the dream which he carried about with him wherever he went, and fondly nursed by night and day. in the meantime he wrote for his public, which was a public that bought its literature in the same manner as its pudding--in penny slices. there was very little to look at in the court below the window; so george gilbert fell to watching his friend, whose rapid pen scratched along the paper in a breathless way, which indicated a dashing and dumas-like style of literature, rather than the polished composition of a johnson or an addison. sigismund only drew breath once, and then he paused to make frantic gashes at his shirt-collar with an inky bone paper-knife that lay upon the table. "i'm only trying whether a man would cut his throat from right to left, or left to right," mr. smith said, in answer to his friend's look of terror; "it's as well to be true to nature; or as true as one can be, for a pound a page--double-column pages, and eighty-one lines in a column. a man would cut his throat from left to right: he couldn't do it in the other way without making perfect slices of himself." "there's a suicide, then, in your story?" george said, with a look of awe. "_a_ suicide!" exclaimed sigismund smith; "_a_ suicide in the 'smuggler's bride!' why, it teems with suicides. there's the duke of port st. martin's, who walls himself up alive in his own cellar; and there's leonie de pasdebasque, the ballet-dancer, who throws herself out of count cæsar maraschetti's private balloon; and there's lilia, the dumb girl,--the penny public like dumb girls,--who sets fire to herself to escape from the--in fact, there's lots of them," said mr. smith, dipping his pen in his ink, and hurrying wildly along the paper. the boy came back before the last page was finished, and mr. smith detained him for five or ten minutes; at the end of which time he rolled up the manuscript, still damp, and dismissed the printer's emissary. "now, george," he said, "i can talk to you." sigismund was the son of a wareham attorney, and the two young men had been schoolfellows at the classical and commercial academy in the wareham road. they had been schoolfellows, and were very sincerely attached to each other. sigismund was supposed to be reading for the bar; and for the first twelve months of his sojourn in the temple the young man had worked honestly and conscientiously; but finding that his legal studies resulted in nothing but mental perplexity and confusion, sigismund beguiled his leisure by the pursuit of literature. he found literature a great deal more profitable and a great deal easier than the study of coke upon lyttleton, or blackstone's commentaries; and he abandoned himself entirely to the composition of such works as are to be seen, garnished with striking illustrations, in the windows of humble newsvendors in the smaller and dingier thoroughfares of every large town. sigismund gave himself wholly to this fascinating pursuit, and perhaps produced more sheets of that mysterious stuff which literary people call "copy" than any other author of his age. it would be almost impossible for me adequately to describe the difference between sigismund smith as he was known to the very few friends who knew anything at all about him, and sigismund smith as he appeared on paper. in the narrow circle of his home mr. smith was a very mild young man, with the most placid blue eyes that ever looked out of a human head, and a good deal of light curling hair. he was a very mild young man. he could not have hit any one if he had tried ever so; and if you had hit him, i don't think he would have minded--much. it was not in him to be very angry; or to fall in love, to any serious extent; or to be desperate about anything. perhaps it was that he exhausted all that was passionate in his nature in penny numbers, and had nothing left for the affairs of real life. people who were impressed by his fictions, and were curious to see him, generally left him with a strong sense of disappointment, if not indignation. was this meek young man the byronic hero they had pictured? was this the author of "colonel montefiasco, or the brand upon the shoulder-blade?" they had imagined a splendid creature, half magician, half brigand, with a pale face and fierce black eyes, a tumbled mass of raven hair, a bare white throat, a long black velvet dressing-gown, and thin tapering hands, with queer agate and onyx rings encircling the flexible fingers. and then the surroundings. an oak-panelled chamber, of course--black oak, with grotesque and diabolic carvings jutting out at the angles of the room; a crystal globe upon a porphyry pedestal; a mysterious picture, with a curtain drawn before it--certain death being the fate of him who dared to raise that curtain by so much as a corner. a mantel-piece of black marble, and a collection of pistols and scimitars, swords and yataghans--especially yataghans--glimmering and flashing in the firelight. a little show of eccentricity in the way of household pets: a bear under the sofa, and a tame rattlesnake coiled upon the hearth-rug. this was the sort of thing the penny public expected of sigismund smith; and, lo, here was a young man with perennial ink-smudges upon his face, and an untidy chamber in the temple, with nothing more romantic than a waste-paper basket, a litter of old letters and tumbled proofs, and a cracked teapot simmering upon the hob. this was the young man who described the reckless extravagance of a montefiasco's sumptuous chamber, the mysterious elegance of a diana firmiani's dimly-lighted boudoir. this was the young man in whose works there were more masked doors, and hidden staircases, and revolving picture-frames and sliding panels, than in all the old houses in great britain; and a greater length of vaulted passages than would make an underground railway from the scottish border to the land's end. this was the young man who, in an early volume of poems--a failure, as it is the nature of all early volumes of poems to be--had cried in passionate accents to some youthful member of the aristocracy, surname unknown-- "lady mable, lady may, no pæan in your praise i'll sing; my shattered lyre all mutely tells the tortured hand that broke the string. go, fair and false, while jangling bells through golden waves of sunshine ring; go, mistress of a thousand spells: but know, midst those you've left forlorn, _one_, lady, gives you scorn for scorn." "now, george," mr. smith said, as he pushed away a very dirty inkstand, and wiped his pen upon the cuff of his coat,--"now, george, i can attend to the rights of hospitality. you must be hungry after your journey, poor old boy! what'll you take?" there were no cupboards in the room, which was very bare of furniture, and the only vestiges of any kind of refreshment were a brown crockery-ware teapot upon the hob, and a roll and pat of butter upon a plate on the mantel-piece. "have something!" sigismund said. "i know there isn't much, because, you see, i never have time to attend to that sort of thing. have some bread and marmalade?" he drew out a drawer in the desk before which he was sitting, and triumphantly displayed a pot of marmalade with a spoon in it. "bread and marmalade and cold tea's capital," he said; "you'll try some, george, won't you? and then we'll go home to camberwell." mr. gilbert declined the bread and marmalade; so sigismund prepared to take his departure. "morgan's gone into buckinghamshire for a week's fishing," he said, "so i've got the place to myself. i come here of a morning, you know, work all day, and go home to tea and a chop or a steak in the evening. come along, old fellow." the young men went out upon the landing. sigismund locked the black door and put the key in his pocket. they went down-stairs, and through the courts, and across the quadrangles of the temple, bearing towards that outlet which is nearest blackfriars bridge. "you'd like to walk, i suppose, george?" mr. smith asked. "oh, yes; we can talk better walking." they talked a great deal as they went along. they were very fond of one another, and had each of them a good deal to tell; but george wasn't much of a talker as compared to his friend sigismund. that young man poured forth a perpetual stream of eloquence, which knew no exhaustion. "and so you like the people at camberwell?" george said. "oh yes, they're capital people; free and easy, you know, and no stupid stuck-up gentility about them. not but what sleaford's a gentleman; he's a barrister. i don't know exactly where his chambers are, or in what court he practises when he's in town; but he _is_ a barrister. i suppose he goes on circuit sometimes, for he's very often away from home for a long time together; but i don't know what circuit he goes on. it doesn't do to ask a man those sort of questions, you see, george; so i hold my tongue. i don't think he's rich, that's to say not rich in a regular way. he's flush of money sometimes, and then you should see the sunday dinners--salmon and cucumber, and duck and green peas, as if they were nothing." "is he a nice fellow?" "oh yes; a jolly, out-spoken sort of a fellow, with a loud voice and black eyes. he's a capital fellow to me, but he's not fond of company. he seldom shows if i take down a friend. very likely you mayn't see him all the time you stay there. he'll shut himself up in his own room when he's at home, and won't so much as look at you." george seemed to be rather alarmed at this prospect. "but if mr. sleaford objects to my being in the house," he began, "perhaps i'd better--" "oh, he doesn't object, bless you!" sigismund cried, hastily; "not a bit of it. i said to mrs. sleaford the other morning at breakfast, 'a friend of mine is coming up from midlandshire; he's as good a fellow as ever breathed,' i said, 'and good-looking into the bargain,'--don't you blush, george, because it's spooney,--and i asked mrs. s. if she could give you a room and partially board you,--i'm a partial boarder, you know,--for a week or so. she looked at her husband,--she's very sharp with all of _us_, but she's afraid of _him_,--and sleaford said yes; my friend might come and should be welcome, as long as he wasn't bothered about it. so your room's ready, george, and you come as my visitor; and i can get orders for all the theatres in london, and i'll give you a french dinner in the neighbourhood of leicester square every day of your life, if you like; and we'll fill the cup of dissipation to the highest top sparkle." it was a long walk from the temple to camberwell; but the two young men were good walkers, and as sigismund smith talked unceasingly all the way, there were no awkward pauses in the conversation. they walked the whole length of the walworth road, and turned to the left soon after passing the turn-pike. mr. smith conducted his friend by mazy convolutions of narrow streets and lanes, where there were pretty little villas and comfortable cottages nestling amongst trees, and where there was the perpetual sound of clattering tin pails and the slopping of milk, blending pleasantly with the cry of the milkman. sigismund led george through these shady little retreats, and past a tall stern-looking church, and along by the brink of a canal, till they came to a place where the country was wild and sterile in the year . i dare say that railways have cut the neighbourhood all to pieces by this time, and that mr. sleaford's house has been sold by auction in the form of old bricks; but on this summer afternoon the place to which sigismund brought his friend was quite a lonely, countrified spot, where there was one big, ill-looking house, shut in by a high wall, and straggling rows of cottages dwindling away into pigsties upon each side of it. standing before a little wooden door in the wall that surrounded mr. sleaford's garden, george gilbert could only see that the house was a square brick building, with sickly ivy straggling here and there about it, and long narrow windows considerably obscured by dust and dirt. it was not a pleasant house to look at, however agreeable it might be as a habitation; and george compared it unfavourably with the trim white-walled villas he had seen on his way,--those neat little mansions at five-and-thirty pounds a year; those cosy little cottages, with shining windows that winked and blinked in the sunshine by reason of their cleanliness; those dazzling brass plates, which shone like brazen shields upon the vivid green of newly-painted front doors. if mr. sleaford's house had ever been painted within mr sleaford's memory, the barrister must have been one of the oldest inhabitants of that sterile region on the outskirts of camberwell; if mr. sleaford held the house upon a repairing lease, he must have anticipated a prodigious claim for dilapidations at the expiration of his tenancy. whatever could be broken in mr. sleaford's house was broken; whatever could fall out of repair had so fallen. the bricks held together, and the house stood; and that was about all that could be said for the barrister's habitation. the bell was broken, and the handle rattled loosely in a kind of basin of tarnished brass, so it was no use attempting to ring; but sigismund was used to this. he stooped down, put his lips to a hole broken in the wood-work above the lock of the garden-door, and gave a shrill whistle. "they understand that," he said; "the bell's been broken ever since i've lived here, but they never have anything mended." "why not?" "because they're thinking of leaving. i've been with them two years and a half, and they've been thinking of leaving all the time. sleaford has got the house cheap, and the landlord won't do anything; so between them they let it go. sleaford talks about going to australia some of these days." the garden-door was opened while mr. smith was talking, and the two young men went in. the person who had admitted them was a boy who had just arrived at that period of life when boys are most obnoxious. he had ceased to be a boy pure and simple, and had not yet presumed to call himself a young man. rejected on one side by his juniors, who found him arrogant and despotic, mooting strange and unorthodox theories with regard to marbles, and evincing supreme contempt for boys who were not familiar with the latest vaticinations of the sporting prophets in "bell's life" and the "sunday times;" and flouted on the other hand by his seniors, who offered him halfpence for the purchase of hardbake, and taunted him with base insinuations when he was seized with a sudden fancy for going to look at the weather in the middle of a strong cheroot,--the hobbledehoy sought vainly for a standing-place upon the social scale, and finding none, became a misanthrope, and wrapped himself in scorn as in a mantle. for sigismund smith the gloomy youth cherished a peculiar hatred. the young author was master of that proud position to obtain which the boy struggled in vain. he was a man! he could smoke a cigar to the very stump, and not grow ashy pale, or stagger dizzily once during the operation; but how little he made of his advantages! he could stay out late of nights, and there was no one to reprove him, _he_ could go into a popular tavern, and call for gin-and-bitters, and drink the mixture without so much as a wry face, and slap his money upon the pewter counter, and call the barmaid "mary;" and there was no chance of _his_ mother happening to be passing at that moment, and catching a glimpse of his familiar back-view through the half-open swinging door, and rushing in, red and angry, to lead him off by the collar of his jacket, amid the laughter of heartless bystanders. no; sigismund smith was a man. he might have got tipsy if he had liked, and walked about london half the night, ringing surgeons' bells, and pulling off knockers, and being taken to the station-house early in the morning, to be bailed out by a friend by-and-by, and to have his name in the sunday papers, with a sensational heading, "another tipsy swell," or "a modern spring-heeled jack." yes; horace sleaford hated his mother's partial boarder; but his hatred was tempered by disdain. what did mr. smith make of all his lofty privileges? nothing; absolutely nothing. the glory of manhood was thrown away upon a mean-spirited cur, who, possessed of liberty to go where he pleased, had never seen a fight for the championship of england, or the last grand rush for the blue riband of the turf; and who, at four-and-twenty years of age, ate bread and marmalade openly in the face of contemptuous mankind. master sleaford shut the door with a bang, and locked it. there was one exception to the rule of no repairs in mr. sleaford's establishment, the locks were all kept in excellent order. the disdainful boy took the key from the lock, and carried it in-doors on his little finger. he had warts upon his hands, and warts are the stigmata of boyhood; and the sleeves of his jacket were white and shiny at the elbows, and left him cruelly exposed about the wrists. the knowledge of his youth, and that shabby frouziness of raiment peculiar to middle-class hobbledehoyhood, gave him a sulky fierceness of aspect, which harmonized well with a pair of big black eyes and a tumbled shock of blue-black hair. he suspected everybody of despising him, and was perpetually trying to look-down the scorn of others with still deeper scorn. he stared at george gilbert, as the young man came into the garden, but did not deign to speak. george was six feet high, and that was in itself enough to make _him_ hateful. "well, horace!" mr. smith said, good-naturedly. "well, young 'un," the boy answered, disdainfully, "how do _you_ find yourself?" horace sleaford led the way into the house. they went up a flight of steps leading to a half-glass door. it might have been pretty once upon a time, when the glass was bright, and the latticed porch sheltered by clustering roses and clematis; but the clematis had withered, and the straggling roses were choked with wild convolvulus tendrils, that wound about the branches like weedy serpents, and stifled buds and blossoms in their weedy embrace. the boy banged open the door of the house, as he had banged-to the door of the garden. he made a point of doing every thing with a bang; it was one way of evincing his contempt for his species. "mother's in the kitchen," he said; "the boys are on the common flying a kite, and izzie's in the garden." "is your father at home?" sigismund asked. "no, he isn't, clever; you might have known that without asking. whenever is he at home at this time of day?" "is tea ready?" "no, nor won't be for this half-hour," answered the boy, triumphantly; "so, if you and your friend are hungry, you'd better have some bread and marmalade. there's a pot in your drawer up-stairs. i haven't taken any, and i shouldn't have seen it if i hadn't gone to look for a steel pen; so, if you've made a mark upon the label, and think the marmalade's gone down lower, it isn't _me_. tea won't be ready for half-an-hour; for the kitchen-fire's been smokin', and the chops can't be done till that's clear; and the kettle ain't on either; and the girl's gone to fetch a fancy loaf,--so you'll have to wait." "oh, never mind that," sigismund said; "come into the garden, george; i'll introduce you to miss sleaford." "then _i_ shan't go with you," said the boy; "i don't care for girls' talk. i say, mr. gilbert, you're a midlandshire man, and you ought to know something. what odds will you give me against mr. tomlinson's brown colt, vinegar cruet, for the conventford steeple-chase?" unfortunately mr. gilbert was lamentably ignorant of the merits or demerits of vinegar cruet. "i'll tell you what i'll do with you, then," the boy said; "i'll take fifteen to two against him in fourpenny-bits, and that's one less than the last manchester quotation." george shook his head. "horse-racing is worse than greek to me, master sleaford," he said. the "master" goaded the boy to retaliate. "your friend don't seem to have seen much life," he said to sigismund. "i think we shall be able to show him a thing or two before he goes back to midlandshire, eh, samuel?" horace sleaford had discovered that fatal name, samuel, in an old prayer-book belonging to mr. smith; and he kept it in reserve, as a kind of poisoned dart, always ready to be hurled at his foe. "we'll teach him a little life, eh, samuel?" he repeated, "haw, haw, haw!" but his gaiety was cut suddenly short; for a door in the shadowy passage opened, and a woman's face, thin and vinegary of aspect, looked out, and a shrill voice cried: "didn't i tell you i wanted another penn'orth of milk fetched, you young torment? but, law, you're like the rest of them, that's all! _i_ may slave my life out, and there isn't one of you will as much as lift a finger to help me." the boy disappeared upon this, grumbling sulkily; and sigismund opened a door leading into a parlour. the room was large, but shabbily furnished and very untidy. the traces of half-a-dozen different occupations were scattered about, and the apartment was evidently inhabited by people who made a point of never putting anything away. there was a work-box upon the table, open, and running over with a confusion of tangled tapes, and bobbins, and a mass of different-coloured threads, that looked like variegated vermicelli. there was an old-fashioned desk, covered with dusty green baize, and decorated with loose brass-work, which caught at people's garments or wounded their flesh when the desk was carried about; this was open, like the work-box, and was littered with papers that had been blown about by the summer breeze, and were scattered all over the table and the floor beneath it. on a rickety little table near the window there was a dilapidated box of colours, a pot of gum with a lot of brushes sticking up out of it, half-a-dozen sheets of skelt's dramatic scenes and characters lying under scraps of tinsel, and fragments of coloured satin, and neatly-folded packets of little gold and silver dots, which the uninitiated might have mistaken for powders. there were some ragged-looking books on a shelf near the fire-place; two or three different kinds of inkstands on the mantel-piece; a miniature wooden stage, with a lop-sided pasteboard proscenium and greasy tin lamps, in one corner of the floor; a fishing-rod and tackle leaning against the wall in another corner; and the room was generally pervaded by copy-books, slate-pencils, and torn latin grammars with half a brown-leather cover hanging to the leaves by a stout drab thread. everything in the apartment was shabby, and more or less dilapidated; nothing was particularly clean; and everywhere there was the evidence of boys. i believe mr. sleaford's was the true policy. if you have boys, "cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war;" shut your purse against the painter and the carpenter, the plumber and glazier, the upholsterer and gardener; "let what is broken, so remain,"--reparations are wasted labour and wasted money. buy a box of carpenter's tools for your boys, if you like, and let them mend what they themselves have broken; and, if you don't mind their sawing off one or two of their fingers occasionally, you may end by making them tolerably useful. mr. sleaford had one daughter and four sons, and the sons were all boys. people ceased to wonder at the shabbiness of his furniture and the dilapidation of his house, when they were made aware of this fact. the limp chintz curtains that straggled from the cornice had been torn ruthlessly down to serve as draperies for tom when he personated the ghost in a charade, or for jack when he wanted a sail to fasten to his fishing-rod, firmly planted on the quarter-deck of the sofa. the chairs had done duty as blocks for the accommodation of many an imaginary anne boleyn and marie antoinette, upon long winter evenings, when horace decapitated the sofa-pillow with a smoky poker, while tom and jack kept guard upon the scaffold, and held the populace--of one--at bay with their halberds--the tongs and shovel. the loose carpets had done duty as raging oceans on many a night, when the easy-chair had gone to pieces against the sideboard, with a loss of two wine-glasses, and all hands had been picked up in a perishing state by the crew of the sofa, after an undramatic interlude of slaps, cuffs, and remonstrances from the higher powers, who walked into the storm-beaten ocean with cruel disregard of the unities. mr. sleaford had a room to himself up-stairs--a bluebeard chamber, which the boys never entered; for the barrister made a point of locking his door whenever he left his room, and his sons were therefore compelled to respect his apartment. they looked through the keyhole now and then, to see if there was anything of a mysterious nature in the forbidden chamber; but, as they saw nothing but a dingy easy-chair and an office-table, with a quantity of papers scattered about it, their curiosity gradually subsided, and they ceased to concern themselves in any manner about the apartment, which they always spoke of as "pa's room." chapter iii. isabel. the garden at the back of mr. sleaford's house was a large square plot of ground, with fine old pear-trees sheltering a neglected lawn. a row of hazel-bushes screened all the length of the wall upon one side of the garden; and wherever you looked, there were roses and sweet-brier, espaliered apples, and tall straggling raspberry-bushes, all equally unfamiliar with the gardener's pruning knife; though here and there you came to a luckless bush that had been hacked at and mutilated in some amateur operations of "the boys." it was an old-fashioned garden, and had doubtless once been beautifully kept; for bright garden-flowers grew up amongst the weeds summer after summer, as if even neglect or cruel usage could not disroot them from the familiar place they loved. thus rare orchids sprouted up out of beds that were half full of chickweed, and lilies-of-the-valley flourished amongst the ground-sel in a shady corner under the water-butt. there were vines, upon which no grape had ever been suffered to ripen during mr. sleaford's tenancy, but which yet made a beautiful screen of verdant tracery all over the back of the house, twining their loving tendrils about the dilapidated venetian shutters, that rotted slowly on their rusted hinges. there were strawberry-beds, and there was an arbour at one end of the garden in which the boys played at "beggar my neighbour," and "all fours," with greasy, dog's-eared cards in the long summer afternoons; and there were some rabbit-hutches--sure evidence of the neighbourhood of boys--in a sheltered corner under the hazel-bushes. it was a dear old untidy place, where the odour of distant pigsties mingled faintly with the perfume of the roses; and it was in this neglected garden that isabel sleaford spent the best part of her idle, useless life. she was sitting in a basket-chair under one of the pear-trees when sigismund smith and his friend went into the garden to look for her. she was lolling in a low basket-chair, with a book on her lap, and her chin resting on the palm of her hand, so absorbed by the interest of the page before her that she did not even lift her eyes when the two young men went close up to her. she wore a muslin dress a good deal tumbled and not too clean, and a strip of black velvet was tied round her long throat. her hair was almost as black as her brother's, and was rolled up in a great loose knot, from which a long untidy curl fell straggling on her white throat--her throat was very white, with the dead, yellowish whiteness of ivory. "i wish that was 'colonel montefiasco,'" said mr. smith, pointing to the book which the young lady was reading. "i should like to see a lady so interested in one of _my_ books that she wouldn't so much as look up when a gentleman was waiting to be introduced to her." miss sleaford shut her book and rose from her low chair, abashed by this reproach; but she kept her thumb between the pages, and evidently meant to go on with the volume at the first convenient opportunity. she did not wait for any ceremonious introduction to george, but held out her hand to him, and smiled at him frankly. "yon are mr. gilbert, i know," she said. "sigismund has been talking of you incessantly for the last week. mamma has got your room ready; and i suppose we shall have tea soon. there are to be some chops on purpose for your friend, sigismund, mamma told me to tell you." she glanced downwards at the book, as much as to say that she had finished speaking, and wanted to get back to it. "what is it, izzie?" sigismund asked, interpreting her look. "algerman mountfort." "ah, i thought so. always _his_ books." a faint blush trembled over miss sleaford's pale face. "they are so beautiful!" she said. "dangerously beautiful, i'm afraid, isabel," the young man said, gravely; "beautiful sweetmeats, with opium inside the sugar. these books don't make you happy, do they, izzie?" "no, they make me unhappy; but"--she hesitated a little, and then blushed as she said--"i like that sort of unhappiness. it's better than eating and drinking and sleeping, and being happy that way." george could only stare at the young lady's kindling face, which lighted up all in a moment, and was suddenly beautiful, like some transparency which seems a dingy picture till you put a lamp behind it. the young surgeon could only stare wonderingly at mr. sleaford's daughter, for he hadn't the faintest idea what she and his friend were talking about. he could only watch her pale face, over which faint blushes trembled and vanished like the roseate reflections of a sunset sky. george gilbert saw that isabel sleaford had eyes that were large and black, like her brother's, but which were entirely different from his, notwithstanding; for they were soft and sleepy, with very little light in them, and what little light there was, only a dim dreamy glimmer in the depths of the large pupils. being a very quiet young man, without much to say for himself, george gilbert had plenty of leisure in which to examine the young lady's face as she talked to her mother's boarder, who was on cordial brotherly terms with her. george was not a very enthusiastic young man, and he looked at miss sleaford's face with no more emotion than if she had been a statue amongst many statues in a gallery of sculpture. he saw that she had small delicate features and a pale face, and that her great black eyes alone invested her with a kind of weird and melancholy beauty, which kindled into warmer loveliness when she smiled. george did not see the full extent of isabel sleaford's beauty, for he was merely a good young man, with a tolerable commonplace intellect, and isabel's beauty was of a poetical kind, which could only be fully comprehended by a poet; but mr. gilbert arrived at a vague conviction that she was what he called "pretty," and he wondered how it was that her eyes looked a tawny yellow when the light shone full upon them, and a dense black when they were shadowed by their dark lashes. george was not so much impressed by miss sleaford's beauty as by the fact that she was entirely different from any woman he had ever seen before; and i think herein lay this young lady's richest charm, by right of which she should have won the homage of an emperor. there was no one like her. whatever beauty she had was her own, and no common property shared with a hundred other pretty girls. you saw her once, and remembered her for ever; but you never saw any mortal face that reminded you of hers. she shut her book altogether at sigismund's request, and went with the two young men to show george the garden; but she carried the dingy-looking volume lovingly under her arm, and she relapsed into a dreamy silence every now and then, as if she had been reading the hidden pages by some strange faculty of clairvoyance. horace sleaford came running out presently, and summoned the wanderers to the house, where tea was ready. "the boys are to have theirs in the kitchen," he said; "and we elders tea together in the front parlour." three younger boys came trooping out as he spoke, and one by one presented a dingy paw to mr. gilbert. they had been flying a kite, and fishing in the canal, and helping to stack some hay in the distant meadow; and they were rough and tumbled, and smelt strongly of out-door amusements. they were all three very much like their brother; and george, looking at the four boys as they clustered round him, saw eight of the blackest eyes he ever remembered having looked upon; but not one of those four pairs of eyes bore any resemblance to isabel's. the boys were only miss sleaford's half-brothers. mr. sleaford's first wife had died three years after her marriage, and isabel's only memory of her mother was the faint shadow of a loving, melancholy face; a transient shadow, that came to the motherless girl sometimes in her sleep. an old servant, who had come one day, long ago, to see the sleafords, told isabel that her mother had once had a great trouble, and that it had killed her. the child had asked what the great trouble was; but the old servant only shook her head, and said, "better for you not to know, my poor, sweet lamb; better for you never to know." there was a pencil-sketch of the first mrs. sleaford in the best parlour; a fly-spotted pencil-sketch, which represented a young woman like isabel, dressed in a short-waisted gown, with big balloon sleeves; and this was all miss sleaford knew of her mother. the present mrs. sleaford was a shrewish little woman, with light hair, and sharp grey eyes; a well-meaning little woman, who made everybody about her miserable, and who worked from morning till night, and yet never seemed to finish any task she undertook. the sleafords kept one servant, a maid-of-all-work, who was called the girl; but this young person very rarely emerged from the back kitchen, where there was a perpetual pumping of water and clattering of hardware, except to disfigure the gooseberry-bushes with pudding-cloths and dusters, which she hung out to dry in the sunshine. to the ignorant mind it would have seemed that the sleafords might have been very nearly as well off without a servant; for mrs. sleaford appeared to do all the cooking and the greater part of the house-work, while isabel and the boys took it in turns to go upon errands and attend to the garden-door. the front parlour was a palatial chamber as compared to the back; for the boys were chased away with slaps by mrs. sleaford when they carried thither that artistic paraphernalia which she called their "rubbish," and the depredations of the race were, therefore, less visible in this apartment. mrs. sleaford had made herself "tidy" in honour of her new boarder, and her face was shining with the recent application of strong yellow soap. george saw at once that she was a very common little woman, and that any intellectual graces inherited by the boys must have descended to them from their father. he had a profound reverence for the higher branch of the legal profession, and he pondered that a barrister should have married such a woman as mrs. sleaford, and should be content to live in the muddle peculiar to a household where the mistress is her own cook, and the junior branches are amateur errand boys. after tea the two young men walked up and down the weedy pathways in the garden, while isabel sat under her favourite pear-tree reading the volume she had been so loth to close. sigismund and his midlandshire friend walked up and down, smoking cigars, and talking of what they called old times; but those old times were only four or five years ago, though the young men talked like greybeards, who look back half a century or so, and wonder at the folly of their youth. isabel went on with her book; the light was dying away little by little, dropping down behind the pear-trees at the western side of the garden, and the pale evening star glimmered at the end of one of the pathways. she read on more eagerly, almost breathlessly, as the light grew less; for her step-mother would call her in by-and-by, and there would be a torn jacket to mend, perhaps, or a heap of worsted socks to be darned for the boys; and there would be no chance of reading another line of that sweet sentimental story, that heavenly prose, which fell into a cadence like poetry, that tender, melancholy music which haunted the reader long after the book was shut and laid aside, and made the dull course of common life so dismally unendurable. isabel sleaford was not quite eighteen years of age. she had been taught a smattering of everything at a day-school in the albany road; rather a stylish seminary in the opinion of the camberwellians. she knew a little italian, enough french to serve for the reading of novels that she might have better left unread, and just so much of modern history as enabled her to pick out all the sugar-plums in the historian's pages,--the mary stuarts, and joan of arcs, and anne boleyns, the iron masks and la vallières, the marie antoinettes and charlotte cordays, luckless königsmarks and wicked borgias; all the romantic and horrible stories scattered amid the dry records of magna chartas and reform bills, clamorous third estates and beds of justice. she played the piano a little, and sang a little, and painted wishy-washy-looking flowers on bristol-board _from_ nature, but not at all _like_ nature; for the passion-flowers were apt to come out like blue muslin frills, and the fuchsias would have passed for prawns with short-sighted people. miss sleaford had received that half-and-half education which is popular with the poorer middle classes. she left the albany road seminary in her sixteenth year, and set to work to educate herself by means of the nearest circulating library. she did not feed upon garbage, but settled at once upon the highest blossoms in the flower-garden of fiction, and read her favourite novels over and over again, and wrote little extracts of her own choosing in penny account-books, usually employed for the entry of butcher's-meat and grocery. she knew whole pages of her pet authors by heart, and used to recite long sentimental passages to sigismund smith in the dusky summer evenings; and i am sorry to say that the young man, going to work at colonel montefiasco next morning, would put neat paraphrases of bulwer, or dickens, or thackeray into that gentleman's mouth, and invest the heroic brigand with the genial humour of a john brodie, the spirituality of a zanoni, and the savage sarcasm of a lord steyne. perhaps there never was a wider difference between two people than that which existed between isabel sleaford and her mother's boarder. sigismund wrote romantic fictions by wholesale, and yet was as unromantic as the prosiest butcher who ever entered a cattle-market. he sold his imagination, and isabel lived upon hers. to him romance was something which must be woven into the form most likely to suit the popular demand. he slapped his heroes into marketable shape as coolly as a butterman slaps a pat of butter into the semblance of a swan or a crown, in accordance with the requirements of his customers. but poor isabel's heroes were impalpable tyrants, and ruled her life. she wanted her life to be like her books; she wanted to be a heroine,--unhappy perhaps, and dying early. she had an especial desire to die early, by consumption, with a hectic flush and an unnatural lustre in her eyes. she fancied every time she had a little cough that the consumption was coming, and she began to pose herself, and was gently melancholy to her half-brothers, and told them one by one, in confidence, that she did not think she should be with them long. they were slow to understand the drift of her remarks, and would ask her if she was going out as a governess; and, if she took the trouble to explain her dismal meaning, were apt to destroy the sentiment of the situation by saying, "oh, come now, hookee walker. who ate a plum-dumpling yesterday for dinner, and asked for more? that's the only sort of consumption _you've_ got, izzie; two helps of pudding at dinner, and no end of bread-and-butter for breakfast." it was not so that florence dombey's friends addressed her. it was not thus that little paul would have spoken to his sister; but then, who could tolerate these great healthy boys after reading about little paul? poor izzie's life was altogether vulgar and commonplace, and she could not extract one ray of romance out of it, twist it as she would. her father was not a dombey, or an augustine caxton, or even a rawdon crawley. he was a stout, broad-shouldered, good-tempered-looking man, who was fond of good eating, and drank three bottles of french brandy every week of his life. he was tolerably fond of his children; but he never took them out with him, and he saw very little of them at home. there was nothing romantic to be got out of him. isabel would have been rather glad if he had ill-used her; for then she would have had a grievance, and that would have been something. if he would have worked himself up into a rage, and struck her on the stairs, she might have run out into the lane by the canal; but, alas, she had no good captain cuttle with whom to take refuge, no noble-hearted walter to come back to her, with his shadow trembling on the wall in the dim firelight! alas, alas! she looked north and south and east and west, and the sky was all dark; so she was obliged to go back to her intellectual opium-eating, and become a dreamer of dreams. she had plenty of grievances in a small way, such as having to mend awkward three-cornered rents in her brothers' garments, and being sent to fetch butter in the walworth road; but she was willing enough to do these things when once you had wrenched her away from her idolized books; and she carried her ideal world wherever she went, and was tending delirious byron at missolonghi, or standing by the deathbed of napoleon the great while the shopman slapped the butter on the scale, and the vulgar people hustled her before the greasy counter. if there had been any one to take this lonely girl in hand and organize her education, heaven only knows what might have been made of her; but there was no friendly finger to point a pathway in the intellectual forest, and isabel rambled as her inclination led her, now setting up one idol, now superseding him by another; living as much alone as if she had resided in a balloon, for ever suspended in mid air, and never coming down in serious earnest to the common joys and sorrows of the vulgar life about her. george and sigismund talked of miss sleaford when they grew tired of discoursing upon the memories of their schoolboy life in midlandshire. "you didn't tell me that mr. sleaford had a daughter," george said. "didn't i?' "no. she--miss sleaford--is very pretty." "she's gorgeous," answered sigismund, with enthusiasm; "she's lovely. i do her for all my dark heroines,--the good heroines, not the wicked ones. have you noticed isabel's eyes? people call them black; but they're bright orange-colour, if you look at them in the sunshine. there's a story of balzac's called 'the girl with the golden eyes.' i never knew what golden eyes were till i saw isabel sleaford." "you seem very much at home with her?" "oh, yes; we're like brother and sister. she helps me with my work sometimes; at least she throws out suggestions, and i use them. but she's dreadfully romantic. she reads too many novels." "too many?" "yes. don't suppose that i want to depreciate the value of the article. a novel's a splendid thing after a hard day's work, a sharp practical tussle with the real world, a healthy race on the barren moorland of life, a hearty wrestling match in the universal ring. sit down then and read 'ernest maltravers,' or 'eugene aram,' or the 'bride of lammermoor,' and the sweet romance lulls your tired soul to rest, like the cradle-song that soothes a child. no wise man or woman was ever the worse for reading novels. novels are only dangerous for those poor foolish girls who read nothing else, and think that their lives are to be paraphrases of their favourite books. that girl yonder wouldn't look at a decent young fellow in a government office with three hundred a year and the chance of advancement," said mr. smith, pointing to isabel sleaford with a backward jerk of his thumb. "_she's_ waiting for a melancholy creature, with a murder on his mind." they went across the grass to the pear-tree, under which isabel was still seated. it was growing dark, and her pale face and black eyes had a mysterious look in the dusky twilight. george gilbert thought she was fitted to be the heroine of a romance, and felt himself miserably awkward and commonplace as he stood before her, struggling with the sensation that he had more arms and legs than he knew what to do with. i like to think of these three people gathered in this neglected suburban garden upon the st of july, , for they were on the very threshold of life, and the future lay before them like a great stage in a theatre; but the curtain was down, and all beyond it was a dense mystery. these three foolish children had their own ideas about the great mystery. isabel thought that she would meet a duke some day in the walworth road; the duke would be driving his cab, and she would be wearing her best bonnet and _not_ going to fetch butter; and the young patrician would be struck by her, and would drive off to her father, and there and then make a formal demand of her hand; and she would be married to him, and wear ruby velvet and a diamond coronet ever after, like edith dombey in mr. hablot browne's grand picture. poor george fashioned no such romantic destiny in his day-dreams. he thought that he would marry some pretty girl, and have plenty of patients, and perhaps some day be engaged in a great case which would be mentioned in the "lancet," and live and die respected, as his grandfather had done before him, in the old house with the red-tiled roof and oaken gable-ends painted black. sigismund had, of course, only one vision,--and that was the publication of that great book, which should be written about by the reviewers and praised by the public. he could afford to take life very quietly himself; for was he not, in a vicarious manner, going through more adventures than ever the mind of man imagined? he came home to camberwell of an afternoon, and took half a pound of rump-steak and three or four cups of weak tea, and lounged about the weedy garden with the boys; and other young men who saw what his life was, sneered at him and called him "slow." slow, indeed! is it slow to be dangling from a housetop with a frayed rope slipping through your hands and seventy feet of empty space below you? is it slow to be on board a ship on fire in the middle of the lonely atlantic, and to rescue the entire crew on one fragile raft, with the handsomest female passenger lashed to your waist by means of her back hair? is it slow to go down into subterranean passages, with a dark lantern and half-a-dozen bloodhounds, in pursuit of a murderer? this was the sort of thing that sigismund was doing all day and every day--upon paper; and when the day's work was done, he was very well contented to loll in a garden-chair and smoke his cigar, while enthusiastic isabel talked to him about byron, and shelley, and napoleon the first; for the two poets and the warrior were her three idols, and tears came into her eyes when she talked of the sorrowful evening after waterloo, or the wasted journey to missolonghi, just as if she had known and loved these great men. * * * * * the lower windows of the house were lighted by this time, and mrs. sleaford came to the back-parlour window to call the young people to supper. they kept primitive hours at camberwell, and supper was the pleasantest meal in the day; for mrs. sleaford's work was done by that time, and she softened into amiability, and discoursed plaintively of her troubles to sigismund and her children. but to-night was to be a kind of gala, on account of the young man from the country. so there was a lobster and a heap of lettuces,--very little lobster in proportion to the green-stuff,--and sigismund was to make a salad. he was very proud of his skill in this department of culinary art, and as he was generally about five-and-twenty minutes chopping, and sprinkling, and stirring, and tasting, and compounding, before the salad was ready, there was ample time for conversation. to-night george gilbert talked to isabel; while horace enjoyed the privilege of sitting up to supper chiefly because there was no one in the house strong enough to send him to bed, since he refused to retire to his chamber unless driven there by force. he sat opposite his sister, and amused himself by sucking the long feelers of the lobster, and staring reflectively at george with his elbows on the table, while sigismund mixed the salad. they were all very comfortable and very merry, for isabel forgot her heroes, and condescended to come down temporarily to george's level, and talk about the great exhibition of the previous year, and the pantomime she had seen last christmas. he thought her very pretty, as she smiled at him across the table; but he fell to wondering about her again, and wondered why it was she was so different from miss sophronia burdock and the young ladies of graybridge-on-the-wayverne, whom he had known all his life, and in whom he had never found cause for wonder. the salad was pronounced ready at last, and the "six ale," as horace called it, was poured out into long narrow glasses, and being a light frisky kind of beverage, was almost as good as champagne. george had been to supper-parties at graybridge at which there had been real champagne, and jellies, and trifles, but where the talk had not been half so pleasant as at this humble supper-table, on which there were not two forks that matched one another, or a glass that was free from flaw or crack. the young surgeon enjoyed his first night at camberwell to his heart's content; and sigismund's spirits rose perceptibly with the six ale. it was when the little party was gayest that horace jumped up suddenly with the empty lobster-shell in his hand, and told his companions to "hold their noise." "i heard him," he said. a shrill whistle from the gate sounded as the boy spoke. "that's him again!" he exclaimed, running to the door of the room. "he's been at it ever so long, perhaps; and won't he just give it me if he has!" everybody was silent; and george heard the boy opening the hall-door and going out to the gate. he heard a brief colloquy, and a deep voice with rather a sulky tone in it, and then heavy footsteps coming along the paved garden-walk and counting the steps before the door. "it's your pa, izzie," mrs. sleaford said. "he'll want a candle: you'd better take it out to him; i don't suppose he'll care about coming in here." george gilbert felt a kind of curiosity about isabel's father, and was rather disappointed when he learnt that mr. sleaford was not coming into the parlour. but sigismund smith went on eating bread and cheese, and fishing pickled onions out of a deep stone jar, without any reference to the movements of the barrister. isabel took a candle, and went out into the hall to greet her father. she left the door ajar, and george could hear her talking to mr. sleaford; but the barrister answered his daughter with a very ill grace, and the speech which george heard plainest gave him no very favourable impression of his host. "give me the light, girl, and don't bother!" mr. sleaford said. "i've been worried this day until my head's all of a muddle. don't stand staring at me, child! tell your mother i've got some work to do, and mayn't go to bed all night." "you've been worried, papa?" "yes; infernally. and i don't want to be bothered by stupid questions now i've got home. give me the light, can't you?" the heavy footsteps went slowly up the uncarpeted staircase, a door opened on the floor above, and the footsteps were heard in the room over the parlour. isabel came in, looking very grave, and sat down, away from the table. george saw that all pleasure was over for that night; and even sigismund came to a pause in his depredations on the cheese, and meditated, with a pickled onion on the end of his fork. he was thinking that a father who ill-used his daughter would not be a bad subject for penny numbers; and he made a mental plan of the plot for a new romance. if mr. sleaford had business which required to be done that night, he seemed in no great hurry to begin his work; for the heavy footsteps tramped up and down, up and down the floor overhead, as steadily as if the barrister had been some ascetic romanist who had appointed a penance for himself, and was working it out in the solitude of his own chamber. a church clock in the distance struck eleven presently, and a dutch clock in the kitchen struck three, which was tolerably near the mark for any clock in mr. sleaford's house. isabel and her mother made a stir, as if about to retire; so sigismund got up, and lighted a couple of candles for himself and his friend. he undertook to show george to the room that had been prepared for him, and the two young men went up-stairs together, after bidding the ladies good night. horace had fallen asleep, with his elbows upon the table, and his hair flopping against the flaring tallow-candle near him. the young surgeon took very little notice of the apartment to which he was conducted. he was worn out by his journey, and all the fatigue of the long summer day; so he undressed quickly, and fell asleep while his friend was talking to him through the half-open door between the two bedrooms. george slept, but not soundly; for he was accustomed to a quiet house, in which no human creature stirred after ten o'clock at night; and the heavy tramp of mr. sleaford's footsteps in a room near at hand disturbed the young man's slumbers, and mixed themselves with his dreams. it seemed to george gilbert as if mr. sleaford walked up and down his room all night, and long after the early daylight shone through the dingy window-curtains. george was not surprised, therefore, when he was told at breakfast next morning that his host had not yet risen, and was not likely to appear for some hours. isabel had to go to the walworth road on some mysterious mission; and george overheard fragments of a whispered conversation between the young lady and her mother in the passage outside the parlour-door, in which the word "poor's rates," and "summonses," and "silver spoons," and "backing," and "interest," figured several times. mrs. sleaford was busy about the house, and the boys were scattered; so george and sigismund took their breakfast comfortably together, and read mr. sleaford's "times," which was not as yet required for that gentleman's own use. sigismund made a plan of the day. he would take a holiday for once in a way, he said, and would escort his friend to the royal academy, and divers other picture-galleries, and would crown the day's enjoyment by a french dinner. the two young men left the house at eleven o'clock. they had seen nothing of isabel that morning, nor of the master of the house. all that george gilbert knew of that gentleman was the fact that mr. sleaford had a heavy footstep and a deep sulky voice. * * * * * the st of july was a blazing summer's day, and i am ashamed to confess that george gilbert grew very tired of staring at the pictures in the royal academy. to him the finest works of modern art were only "pretty pictures," more or less interesting according to the story they told; and sigismund's disquisitions upon "modelling," and "depth," and "feeling," and tone, and colour, and distance, were so much unintelligible jargon; so he was glad when the day's work was over, and mr. smith led him away to a very dingy street a little way behind the national gallery. "and now i'm going to give you a regular french dinner, george, old fellow;" sigismund said, in a triumphant tone. mr. gilbert looked about him with an air of mystification. he had been accustomed to associate french dinners with brilliantly lighted cafés and gorgeous saloons, where the chairs were crimson velvet and gold, and where a dozen vast sheets of looking-glass reflected you as you ate your soup. he was a little disappointed, perhaps, when sigismund paused before a narrow doorway, on each side of which there was an old-fashioned window with queer-shaped wine and liqueur bottles neatly ranged behind the glass. a big lantern-shaped lamp hung over the door, and below one of the windows was an iron grating, through which a subtle flavour of garlic and mock-turtle soup steamed out upon the summer air. "this is boujeot's," said mr. smith. "it's the jolliest place; no grandeur, you know, but capital wine and first-rate cooking. the emperor of the french used to dine here almost every day when he was in england; but he never told any one his name, and the waiters didn't know who he was till they saw his portrait as president in the 'illustrated news.'" it is a popular fiction that the prince louis napoleon was in the habit of dining daily at every french restaurant in london during the years of his exile; a fiction which gives a romantic flavour to the dishes, and an aroma of poetry to the wines. george gilbert looked about him as he seated himself at a little table chosen by his friend, and he wondered whether napoleon the third had ever sat at that particular table, and whether the table-cloth had been as dirty in his time. the waiters at boujeot's were very civil and accommodating, though they were nearly harassed off their legs by the claims of desultory gentlemen in the public apartments, and old customers dining by pre-arrangement in the private rooms up-stairs. sigismund pounced upon a great sheet of paper, which looked something like a chronological table, and on the blank margins of which the pencil records of dinners lately consumed and paid for had been hurriedly jotted down by the harassed waiters. mr. smith was a long time absorbed in the study of this mysterious document; so george gilbert amused himself by staring at some coffee-coloured marine views upon the walls, which were supposed to represent the bay of biscay and the cape of good hope, with brown waves rolling tempestuously under a brown sky. george stared at these, and at a gentleman who was engaged in the soul-absorbing occupation of paying his bill; and then the surgeon's thoughts went vagabondizing away from the little coffee-room at boujeot's to mr. sleaford's garden, and isabel's pale face and yellow-black eyes, glimmering mysteriously in the summer twilight. he thought of miss sleaford because she was so unlike any other woman he had ever seen, and he wondered how his father would like her. not much, george feared; for mr. gilbert senior expected a young woman to be very neat about her back-hair, which isabel was not, and handy with her needle, and clever in the management of a house and the government of a maid-of-all-work; and isabel could scarcely be that, since her favourite employment was to loll in a wicker-work garden-chair and read novels. the dinner came in at last, with little pewter covers over the dishes, which the waiter drew one by one out of a mysterious kind of wooden oven, from which there came a voice, and nothing more. the two young men dined; and george thought that, except for the fried potatoes, which flew about his plate when he tried to stick his fork into them, and a flavour of garlic, that pervaded everything savoury, and faintly hovered over the sweets, a french dinner was not so very unlike an english one. but sigismund served out the little messes with an air of swelling pride, and george was fain to smack his lips with the manner of a connoisseur when his friend asked him what he thought of the _filets de sole à la maître d'hôtel_, or the _rognons à la_ south african sherry. somehow or other, george was glad when the dinner was eaten and paid for, and it was time to go home to camberwell. it was only seven o'clock as yet, and the sun was shining on the fountains as the young men went across trafalgar square. they took an omnibus at charing cross, and rode to the turnpike at walworth, in the hope of being in time to get a cup of tea before mrs. sleaford let the fire out; for that lady had an aggravating trick of letting out the kitchen-fire at half-past seven or eight o'clock on summer evenings, after which hour hot water was an impossibility; unless mr. sleaford wanted grog, in which case a kettle was set upon a bundle of blazing firewood. george gilbert did not particularly care whether or not there was any tea to be procured at camberwell, but he looked forward with a faint thrill of pleasure to the thought of a stroll with isabel in the twilit garden. he thought so much of this, that he was quite pleased when the big, ill-looking house and the dead wall that surrounded it became visible across the barren waste of ground that was called a common. he was quite pleased, not with any fierce or passionate emotion, but with a tranquil sense of pleasure. when they came to the wooden door in the garden-wall, sigismund smith stooped down and gave his usual whistle at the keyhole; but he looked up suddenly, and cried: "well, i'm blest!" "what's the matter?" "the door's open." mr. smith pushed it as he spoke, and the two young men went into the front garden. "in all the time i've lived with the sleafords, that never happened before," said sigismund. "mr. sleaford's awfully particular about the gate being kept locked. he says that the neighbourhood's a queer one, and you never know what thieves are hanging about the place; though, _inter nos_, i don't see that there's much to steal hereabouts," mr. smith added, in a confidential whisper. the door of the house, as well as that of the garden, was open. sigismund went into the hall, followed closely by george. the parlour door was open too, and the room was empty--the room was empty, and it had an abnormal appearance of tidiness, as if all the litter and rubbish had been suddenly scrambled together and carried away. there was a scrap of old frayed rope upon the table, lying side by side with some tin-tacks, a hammer, and a couple of blank luggage-labels. george did not stop to look at these; he went straight to the open window and looked out into the garden. he had so fully expected to see isabel sitting under the pear-tree with a novel in her lap, that he started and drew back with an exclamation of surprise at finding the garden empty; the place seemed so strangely blank without the girlish figure lolling in the basket-chair. it was as if george gilbert had been familiar with that garden for the last ten years, and had never seen it without seeing isabel in her accustomed place. "i suppose miss sleaford--i suppose they're all out," the surgeon said, rather dolefully. "i suppose they _are_ out," sigismund answered, looking about him with a puzzled air; "and yet, that's strange. they don't often go out; at least, not all at once. they seldom go out at all, in fact, except on errands. i'll call the girl." he opened the door and looked into the front parlour before going to carry out this design, and he started back upon the threshold as if he had seen a ghost. "what is it?" cried george. "my luggage and your portmanteau, all packed and corded; look!" mr. smith pointed as he spoke to a couple of trunks, a hatbox, a carpet-bag, and a portmanteau, piled in a heap in the centre of the room. he spoke loudly in his surprise; and the maid-of-all-work came in with her cap hanging by a single hair-pin to a knob of tumbled hair. "oh, sir!" she said, "they're all gone; they went at six o'clock this evenin'; and they're going to america, missus says; and she packed all your things, and she thinks you'd better have 'em took round to the greengrocer's immediant, for fear of being seized for the rent, which is three-quarters doo; but you was to sleep in the house to-night, if you pleased, and your friend likewise; and i was to get you your breakfastes in the morning, before i take the key round to the albany road, and tell the landlord as they've gone away, which he don't know it yet." "gone away!" said sigismund; "gone away!" "yes, sir, every one of 'em; and the boys was so pleased that they would go shoutin' 'ooray, 'ooray, all over the garding, though mr. sleaford swore at 'em awful, and did hurry and tear so, i thought he was a-goin' mad. but miss isabel, she cried about goin' so sudden and seemed all pale and frightened like. and there's a letter on the chimbley-piece, please, which she put it there." sigismund pounced upon the letter, and tore it open. george read it over his friend's shoulder. it was only two lines. "dear mr. smith,--don't think hardly of us for going away so suddenly. papa says it must be so. "yours ever faithfully, "isabel." "i should like to keep that letter," george said, blushing up to the roots of his hair. "miss sleaford writes a pretty hand." chapter iv. the end of george gilbert's holiday. the two young men acted very promptly upon that friendly warning conveyed in mrs. sleaford's farewell message. the maid-of-all-work went to the greengrocer's, and returned in company with a dirty-looking boy--who was "mrs. judkin's son, please, sir"--and a truck. mrs. judkin's son piled the trunks, portmanteau, and carpet-bag on the truck, and departed with his load, which was to be kept in the custody of the judkin family until the next morning, when sigismund was to take the luggage away in a cab. when this business had been arranged, mr. smith and his friend went out into the garden and talked of the surprise that had fallen upon them. "i always knew they were thinking of leaving," sigismund said, "but i never thought they'd go away like this. i feel quite cut up about it, george. i'd got to like them, you know, old boy, and to feel as if i was one of the family; and i shall never be able to partial-board with any body else." george seemed to take the matter quite as seriously as his friend, though his acquaintance with the sleafords was little more than four-and-twenty hours old. "they must have known before to-day that they were going," he said. "people don't go to america at a few hours' notice." sigismund summoned the dirty maid-of-all-work, and the two young men subjected her to a very rigorous cross-examination; but she could tell them very little more than she had told them all in one breath in the first instance. "mr. sleaford 'ad 'is breakfast at nigh upon one o'clock, leastways she put on the pertaturs for the boys' dinner before she biled 'is egg; and then he went out, and he come tarin' 'ome agen in one of these 'ansom cabs at three o'clock in the afternoon; and he told missus to pack up, and he told the 'ansom cabman to send a four-wheeler from the first stand he passed at six o'clock precise; and the best part of the luggage was sent round to the greengrocer's on a truck, and the rest was took on the roof of the cab, and master 'orace rode alongside the cabman, and would smoke one of them nasty penny pickwicks, which they always made 'im bilious; and mr. sleaford he didn't go in the cab, but walked off as cool as possible, swinging his stick, and 'olding his 'ead as 'igh as hever." sigismund asked the girl if she had heard the address given to the cabman who took the family away. "no," the girl said. mr. sleaford had given no address. he directed the cabman to drive over waterloo bridge, and that was all the girl heard. mr. smith's astonishment knew no bounds. he walked about the deserted house, and up and down the weedy pathways between the espaliers, until long after the summer moon was bright upon the lawn, and every trailing branch and tender leaflet threw its sharp separate shadow on the shining ground. "i never heard of such a thing in all my life," the young author cried; "it's like penny numbers. with the exception of their going away in a four-wheeler cab instead of through a sliding panel and subterranean passage, it's for all the world like penny numbers." "but you'll be able to find out where they've gone, and why they went away so suddenly," suggested george gilbert; "some of their friends will be able to tell you." "friends!" exclaimed sigismund; "they never had any friends--at least not friends that they visited, or anything of that kind. mr. sleaford used to bring home some of his friends now and then of an evening, after dark generally, or on a sunday afternoon. but we never saw much of them, for he used to take them up to his own room; and except for his wanting french brandy and cigars fetched, and chops and steaks cooked, and swearing at the girl over the balusters if the plates weren't hot enough, we shouldn't have known that there was company in the house. i suppose his chums were in the law, like himself," mr. smith added, musingly; "but they didn't look much like barristers, for they had straggling moustachios, and a kind of would-be military way; and if they hadn't been sleaford's friends, i should have thought them raffish-looking." neither of the young men could think of anything or talk of anything that night except the sleafords and their abrupt departure. they roamed about the garden, staring at the long grass and the neglected flower-beds; at the osier arbour, dark under the shadow of a trailing vine, that was half-smothered by the vulgar luxuriance of wild hops,--the osier arbour in which the spiders made their home, and where, upon the rotten bench, romantic izzie had sat through the hot hours of drowsy summer days, reading her favourite novels, and dreaming of a life that was to be like the plot of a novel. they went into the house, and called for candles, and wandered from room to room, looking blankly at the chairs and tables, the open drawers, the disordered furniture, as if from those inanimate objects they might obtain some clue to the little domestic mystery that bewildered them. the house was pervaded by torn scraps of paper, fragments of rag and string, morsels of crumpled lace and muslin, bald hair-brushes lying in the corners of the bedrooms, wisps of hay and straw, tin-tacks, and old kid-gloves. everywhere there were traces of disorder and hurry, except in mr. sleaford's room. that sanctuary was wide open now, and mr. smith and his friend went into it and examined it. to sigismund a newly-excavated chamber in a long-buried city could scarcely have been more interesting. here there was no evidence of reckless haste. there was not a single fragment of waste paper in any one of the half-dozen open drawers on either side of the desk. there was not so much as an old envelope upon the floor. a great heap of grey ashes upon the cold hearthstone revealed the fact that mr. sleaford had employed himself in destroying papers before his hasty departure. the candlestick that isabel had given him upon the previous night stood upon his desk, with the candle burnt down to the socket. george remembered having heard his host's heavy footsteps pacing up and down the room; and the occasional opening and shutting of drawers, and slamming of the lids of boxes, which had mixed with his dreams all through that brief summer's night. it was all explained now. mr sleaford had of course been making his preparations for leaving camberwell--for leaving england; if it was really true that the family were going to america. early the next morning there came a very irate gentleman from the albany road. this was the proprietor of the neglected mansion, who had just heard of the sleaford hegira, and who was in a towering passion because of those three quarter's rent which he was never likely to behold. he walked about the house with his hands in his pockets, kicking the doors open, and denouncing his late tenants in very unpleasant language. he stalked into the back parlour, where george and sigismumd were taking spongy french rolls and doubtful french eggs, and glared ferociously at them, and muttered something to the effect that it was like their impudence to be making themselves so "jolly comfortable" in his house when he'd been swindled by that disreputable gang of theirs. he used other adjectives besides that word "disreputable" when he spoke of the sleafords; but sigismund got up from before the dirty table-cloth, and protested, with his mouth full, that he believed in the honesty of the sleafords; and that, although temporarily under a cloud, mr. sleaford would no doubt make a point of looking up the three quarter's rent, and would forward post-office orders for the amount at the earliest opportunity. to this the landlord merely replied, that he hoped his--sigismund's--head would not ache till mr. sleaford _did_ send the rent; which friendly aspiration was about the only civil thing the proprietor of the mansion said to either of the young men. he prowled about the rooms, poking the furniture with his stick, and punching his fist into the beds to see if any of the feathers had been extracted therefrom. he groaned over the rents in the carpets, the notches and scratches upon the mahogany, the entire absence of handles and knobs wherever it was possible for handles or knobs to be wanting; and every time he found out any new dilapidation in the room where the two young men were taking their breakfast, he made as if he would have come down upon them for the cost of the damage. "is that the best teapot you're a-having your teas out of? where's the britannia metal as i gave thirteen-and-six for seven year ago? where did that twopenny-halfpenny blown-glass sugar-basin come from? it ain't mine; mine was di'mond-cut. why, they've done me two hundred pound mischief. i could afford to forgive 'em the rent. the rent's the least part of the damage they've done me." and then the landlord became too forcible to be recorded in these pages, and then he went groaning about the garden; whereupon george and sigismund collected their toilet-apparatus, and such trifling paraphernalia as they had retained for the night's use, and hustled them into a carpet-bag, and fled hastily and fearfully, after giving the servant-maid a couple of half-crowns, and a solemn injunction to write to sigismund at his address in the temple if she should hear any tidings whatever of the sleafords. so, in the bright summer morning, george gilbert saw the last of the old house which for nearly seven years had sheltered mr. sleaford and his wife and children, the weedy garden in which isabel had idled away so many hours of her early girlhood; the straggling vines under which she had dreamed bright sentimental dreams over the open leaves of her novels. the young men hired a cab at the nearest cab-stand, and drove to the establishment of the friendly greengrocer who had given shelter to their goods. it was well for them, perhaps, that the trunks and portmanteau had been conveyed to that humble sanctuary; for the landlord was in no humour to hesitate at trifles, and would have very cheerfully impounded sigismund's simple wardrobe, and the bran-new linen shirts which george gilbert had brought to london. they bestowed a small gratuity upon mrs. judkin, and then drove to sigismund's chambers, where they encamped, and contrived to make themselves tolerably comfortable, in a rough gipsy kind of way. "you shall have morgan's room," sigismund said to his friend, "and i can make up a bed in the sitting-room; there's plenty of mattresses and blankets." they dined rather late in the evening at a celebrated tavern in the near neighbourhood of those sacred precincts where law and justice have their head-quarters, and after dinner sigismund borrowed the "law list." "we may find out something about mr. sleaford in that," he said. but the "law list" told nothing of mr. sleaford. in vain sigismund and george took it in turn to explore the long catalogue of legal practitioners whose names began with the letter s. there were st. johns and simpsons, st. evremonds and smitherses, standishes and sykeses. there was almost every variety of appellation, aristocratic and plebeian; but the name of sleaford was not in the list: and the young men returned the document to the waiter, and went home wondering how it was that mr. sleaford's name had no place among the names of his brotherhood. * * * * * i have very little to tell concerning the remaining days which the conditions of george gilbert's excursion ticket left him free to enjoy in london. he went to the theatres with his friend, and sat in stifling upper boxes, in which there was a considerable sprinkling of the "order" element, during these sunshiny summer evenings. sigismund also took him to divers _al fresco_ entertainments, where there were fireworks, and "polking," and bottled stout; and in the daytime george was fain to wander about the streets by himself, staring at the shop-windows, and hustled and frowned at for walking on the wrong side of the pavement; or else to loll on the window-seat in sigismund's apartment, looking down into the court below, or watching his friend's scratching pen scud across the paper. sacred as the rites of hospitality may be, they must yet give way before the exigencies of the penny press; and sigismund was rather a dull companion for a young man from the country who was bent upon a week's enjoyment of london life. for very lack of employment, george grew to take an interest in his friend's labour, and asked him questions about the story that poured so rapidly from his hurrying pen. "what's it all about, sigismund?" he demanded. "is it funny?" "funny!" cried mr. smith, with a look of horror; "i should think not, indeed. who ever heard of penny numbers being funny? what the penny public want is plot, and plenty of it; surprises, and plenty of 'em; mystery, as thick as a november fog. don't you know the sort of thing? 'the clock of st. paul's had just sounded eleven hours;'--it's generally a translation, you know, and st. paul's stands for notre dame;--'a man came to appear upon the quay which extends itself all the length between the bridges of waterloo and london.' there isn't any quay, you know; but you're obliged to have it so, on account of the plot. 'this man--who had a true head of vulture, the nose pointed, sharp, terrible; all that there is of the most ferocious; the eyes cavernous, and full of a sombre fire--carried a bag upon his back. presently he stops himself. he regards with all his eyes the quay, nearly desert; the water, black and shiny, which stretches itself at his feet. he listens, but there is nothing. he bends himself upon the border of the quay. he puts aside the bag from his shoulders, and something of dull, heavy, slides slowly downwards and falls into the water. at the instant that the heavy burthen sinks with a dull noise to the bottom of the river, there is a voice, loud and piercing, which seems to elevate itself out of the darkness: 'philip launay, what dost thou do there with the corpse of thy victim?'--that's the sort of thing for the penny public," said mr. smith; "or else a good strong combination story." "what do you call a combination story?" mr. gilbert asked, innocently. "why, you see, when you're doing four great stories a week for a public that must have a continuous flow of incident, you can't be quite as original as a strict sense of honour might prompt you to be; and the next best thing you can do, if you haven't got ideas of your own, is to steal other people's ideas in an impartial manner. don't empty one man's pocket, but take a little bit all round. the combination novel enables a young author to present his public with all the brightest flowers of fiction neatly arranged into every variety of garland. i'm doing a combination novel now--the 'heart of midlothian' and the 'wandering jew.' you've no idea how admirably the two stories blend. in the first place, i throw my period back into the middle ages--there's nothing like the middle ages for getting over the difficulties of a story. good gracious me! why, what is there that isn't possible if you go back to the time of the plantagenets? i make jeannie deans a dumb girl,--there's twice the interest in her if you make her dumb,--and i give her a goat and a tambourine, because, you see, the artist likes that sort of thing for his illustrations. i think you'd admit that i've very much improved upon sir walter scott--a delightful writer, i allow, but decidedly a failure in penny numbers--if you were to run your eye over the story, george; there's only seventy-eight numbers out yet, but you'll be able to judge of the plot. of course i don't make aureola,--i call my jeannie 'aureola;' rather a fine name, isn't it? and entirely my own invention,--of course i don't make aureola walk from edinburgh to london. what would be the good of that? why, anybody _could_ walk it if they only took long enough about it. i make her walk from london to rome, to get a papal bull for the release of her sister from the tower of london. that's something like a walk, i flatter myself; over the alps--which admits of aureola's getting buried in the snow, and dug out again by a mount st. bernard's dog; and then walled up alive by the monks because they suspect her of being friendly to the lollards; and dug out again by cæsar borgia, who happens to be travelling that way, and asks a night's lodging, and heard aureola's tambourine behind the stone wall in his bedroom, and digs her out and falls in love with her; and she escapes from his persecution out of a window, and lets herself down the side of the mountain by means of her gauze scarf, and dances her way to rome, and obtains an audience of the pope, and gets mixed up with the jesuits:--and that's where i work into the 'wandering jew,'" concluded mr. smith. george gilbert ventured to suggest that in the days when the plantagenet ruled our happy isle, ignatius loyola had not yet founded his wonderful brotherhood; but mr. smith acknowledged this prosaic suggestion with a smile of supreme contempt. "oh, if you tie me down to facts," he said, "i can't write at all." "but you like writing?" "for the penny public? oh, yes; i like writing for them. there's only one objection to the style--it's apt to give an author a tendency towards bodies." mr. gilbert was compelled to confess that this last remark was incomprehensible to him. "why, you see, the penny public require excitement," said mr. smith; "and in order to get the excitement up to a strong point, you're obliged to have recourse to bodies. say your hero murders his father, and buries him in the coal-cellar in no. . what's the consequence? there's an undercurrent of the body in the coal-cellar running through every chapter, like the subject in a fugue or a symphony. you drop it in the treble, you catch it up in the bass; and then it goes sliding up into the treble again, and then drops down with a melodious groan into the bass; and so on to the end of the story. and when you've once had recourse to the stimulant of bodies, you're like a man who's accustomed to strong liquors, and to whose vitiated palate simple drinks seem flat and wishy-washy. i think there ought to be a literary temperance pledge by which the votaries of the ghastly and melodramatic school might bind themselves to the renunciation of the bowl and dagger, the midnight rendezvous, the secret grave dug by lantern-light under a black grove of cypress, the white-robed figure gliding in the grey gloaming athwart a lonely churchyard, and all the alcoholic elements of fiction. but, you see, george, it isn't so easy to turn teetotaller," added mr. smith, doubtfully; "and i scarcely know that it is so very wise to make the experiment. are not reformed drunkards the dullest and most miserable of mankind? isn't it better for a man to do his best in the style that is natural to him than to do badly in another man's line of business? 'box and cox' is not a great work when criticised upon sternly æsthetic principles; but i would rather be the author of 'box and cox,' and hear my audience screaming with laughter from the rise of the curtain to the fall thereof, than write a dull five-act tragedy, in the unities of which aristotle himself could find no flaw, but from whose performance panic-stricken spectators should slink away or ere the second act came to its dreary close. i think i should like to have been guilbert de pixérécourt, the father and prince of melodrama, the man whose dramas were acted thirty thousand times in france before he died (and how many times in england?); the man who reigned supreme over the playgoers of his time, and has not yet ceased to reign. who ever quotes any passage from the works of guilbert de pixérécourt, or remembers his name? but to this day his dramas are acted in every country theatre; his persecuted heroines weep and tremble; his murderous scoundrels run their two hours' career of villany, to be dragged off scowling to subterranean dungeons, or to die impenitent and groaning at the feet of triumphant virtue. before nine o'clock to-night there will be honest country-folks trembling for the fate of theresa, the orphan of geneva, and simple matrons weeping over the peril of the wandering boys. but guilbert de pixérécourt was never a great man; he was only popular. if a man can't have a niche in the walhalla, isn't it something to have his name in big letters in the play-bills on the boulevard? and i wonder how long my friend guilbert would have held the stage, if he had emulated racine or corneille. he did what it was in him to do, honestly; and he had his reward. who would not wish to be great? do you think i wouldn't rather be the author of the 'vicar of wakefield' than of 'colonel montefiasco?' i _could_ write the 'vicar of wakefield,' too, but--" george stared aghast at his excited friend. "but not oliver goldsmith's 'vicar of wakefield,'" sigismund explained. he had thrown down his pen now, and was walking up and down the room with his hands thrust deep down in his pockets, and his face scarlet with fierce excitement. "i should do the vicar in the detective pre-raphaelite style. moses knows a secret of his father's--forged accommodation-bills, or something of that kind; sets out to go to the fair on a drowsy summer morning, not a leaf stirring in the vicarage garden. you hear the humming of the bees as they bounce against the vicarage-windows; you see the faint light trembling about olivia's head, as she comes to watch her brother riding along the road; you see him ride away, and the girl watching him, and feel the hot sleepy atmosphere, and hear the swoop of the sickle in the corn-fields on the other side of the road; and the low white gate swings-to with a little click, and miss primrose walks slowly back to the house, and says, 'papa, it's very warm;' and you know there's something going to happen. "then the second chapter comes, and mr. primrose has his dinner, and goes out to visit his poor; and the two girls walk about the garden with mr. burchell, watching for moses, who never comes back. and then the serious business of the story begins, and burchell keeps his eye upon the vicar. nobody else suspects good mr. primrose; but burchell's eye is never off him; and one night, when the curtains are drawn, and the girls are sitting at their work, and dear mrs. primrose is cutting out comfortable flannels for the poor, the vicar opens his desk, and begins to write a letter. you hear the faint sound of the light ashes falling on the hearth, the slow ticking of an eight-day clock in the hall outside the drawing-room door, the sharp snap of mrs. primrose's scissors as they close upon the flannel. sophia asks burchell to fetch a volume from the bookcase behind the vicar's chair. he is a long time choosing the book, and his eye looks over the vicar's shoulder. he takes a mental inventory of the contents of the open desk, and he sees amongst the neatly-docketed papers, the receipted bills, and packets of envelopes--what? a glove, a green kid-glove sewn with white, which he distinctly remembers to have seen worn by moses when he started on that pleasant journey from which he never returned. can't you see the vicar's face, as he looks round at burchell, and knows that his secret is discovered? i can. can't you fancy the awful silent duel between the two men, the furtive glances, the hidden allusions to that dreadful mystery, lurking in every word that burchell utters? "that's how _i_ should do the 'vicar of wakefield,'" said sigismund smith, triumphantly. "there wouldn't be much in it, you know; but the story would be pervaded by moses's body lying murdered in a ditch half a mile from the vicarage, and burchell's ubiquitous eye. i dare say some people would cry out upon it, and declare that it was wicked and immoral, and that the young man who could write about a murder would be ready to commit the deed at the earliest convenient opportunity. but i don't suppose the clergy would take to murdering their sons by reason of my fiction, in which the rules of poetical justice would be sternly adhered to, and nemesis, in the shape of burchell, perpetually before the reader." poor george gilbert listened very patiently to his friend's talk, which was not particularly interesting to him. sigismund preached "shop" to whomsoever would listen to him, or suffer him to talk; which was pretty much the same to this young man. i am afraid there were times when his enthusiastic devotion to his profession rendered mr. smith a terrible nuisance to his friends and acquaintance. he would visit a pleasant country-house, and receive hospitable entertainment, and enjoy himself; and then, when all that was morbid in his imagination had been stimulated by sparkling burgundy and pale hochheimer, this wretched young traitor would steal out into some peaceful garden, where dew-laden flowers flung their odours on the still evening air, and sauntering in the shadowy groves where the nightingale's faint "jug-jug" was beginning to sound, would plan a diabolical murder, to be carried out in seventy-five penny numbers. sometimes he was honourable enough to ask permission of the proprietor of the country mansion; and when, on one occasion, after admiring the trim flower-gardens and ivied walls, the low turreted towers and grassy moats, of a dear old place that had once been a grange, he ventured to remark that the spot was so peaceful it reminded him of slow poisoning, and demanded whether there would be any objection to his making the quiet grange the scene of his next fiction,--the cordial cheery host cried out, in a big voice that resounded high up among the trees where the rooks were cawing, "people it with fiends, my dear boy! you're welcome to people the place with fiends, as far as i'm concerned." chapter v. george at home. the young surgeon went home to midlandshire with his fellow-excursionists, when the appointed monday came round. he met miss burdock and her sister on the platform in euston square, and received those ladies from the hands of their aunt. sophronia did not blush now when her eyes met george gilbert's frank stare. she had danced twice with a young barrister at the little quadrille-party which her aunt had given in honour of the maltster's daughters; a young barrister who was tall and dark and stylish, and who spoke of graybridge-on-the-wayverne as a benighted place, which was only endurable for a week or so in the hunting season. miss sophronia burdock's ideas had expanded during that week in baker street, and she treated her travelling companion with an air of haughty indifference, which might have wounded george to the quick had he been aware of the change in the lady's manner. but poor george saw no alteration in the maltster's daughter; he watched no changes of expression in the face opposite to him as the rushing engine carried him back to midlandshire. he was thinking of another face, which he had only seen for a few brief hours, and which he was perhaps never again to look upon; a pale girlish countenance, framed with dense black hair; a pale face, out of which there looked large solemn eyes, like stars that glimmer faintly through the twilight shadows. before leaving london, george had obtained a promise from his friend sigismund smith. whatever tidings mr. smith should at any time hear about the sleafords, he was to communicate immediately to the young surgeon of graybridge-on-the-wayverne. it was, of course, very absurd of george to take such an interest in this singular family; the young man admitted as much himself; but, then, singular people are always more or less interesting; and, having been a witness of mr. sleaford's abrupt departure, it was only natural that george should want to know the end of the story. if these people were really gone to america, why, of course, it was all over; but if they had not left london, some one or other of the family might turn up some day, and in that case sigismund was to write and tell his friend all about it. george gilbert's last words upon the platform at euston square had relation to this subject; and all the way home he kept debating in his mind whether it was likely the sleafords had really gone to america, or whether the american idea had been merely thrown out with a view to the mystification of the irate landlord. * * * * * life at graybridge-on-the-wayverne was as slow and sleepy as the river which widened in the flat meadows outside the town; the dear old river which crept lazily past the mouldering wall of the churchyard, and licked the moss-grown tombstones that had lurched against that ancient boundary. everything at graybridge was more or less old and quaint and picturesque; but the chief glory of graybridge was the parish church; a grand old edifice which was planted beyond the outskirts of the town, and approached by a long avenue of elms, beneath whose shadow the tombstones glimmered whitely in the sun. the capricious wayverne, which was perpetually winding across your path wheresoever you wandered in pleasant midlandshire, was widest here; and on still summer days the grey towers of the old church looked down at other phantasmal towers in the tranquil water. george used to wander in this churchyard sometimes on his return from a trout-fishing expedition, and, lounging among the tombstones with his rod upon his shoulder, would abandon himself to the simple day-dreams he loved best to weave. but the young surgeon had a good deal of work to do, now that his father had admitted him to the solemn rights of partnership, and very little time for any sentimental musings in the churchyard. the parish work in itself was very heavy, and george rode long distances on his steady-going grey pony to attend to captious patients, who gave him small thanks for his attendance. he was a very soft-hearted young man, and he often gave his slender pocket-money to those of his patients who wanted food rather than medicine. little by little people grew to understand that george gilbert was very different from his father, and had a tender pity for the sorrows and sufferings it was a part of his duty to behold. love and gratitude for this young doctor may have been somewhat slow to spring up in the hearts of his parish patients; but they took a deep root, and became hardy, vigorous plants before the first year of george's service was over. before that year came to a close the partnership between the father and son had been irrevocably dissolved, without the aid of legal practitioners, or any legal formulas whatsoever; and george gilbert was sole master of the old house with the whitewashed plaster-walls and painted beams of massive oak. the young man lamented the loss of his father with all that single-minded earnestness which was the dominant attribute of his character. he had been as obedient to his father at the last as he had been at the first; as submissive in his manhood as in his childhood. but in his obedience there had been nothing childish or cowardly. he was obedient because he believed his father to be wise and good, reverencing the old man with simple, unquestioning veneration. and now that the father was gone, george gilbert began life in real earnest. the poor of graybridge-on-the-wayverne had good reason to rejoice at the change which had given the young doctor increase of means and power. he was elected unanimously to the post his father's death had left nominally vacant; and wherever there was sickness and pain, his kindly face seemed to bring comfort, his bright blue eyes seemed to inspire courage. he took an atmosphere of youth and hope and brave endurance with him everywhere, which was more invigorating than the medicines he prescribed; and, next to mr. neate the curate, george gilbert was the best-beloved and most popular man in graybridge. he had never had any higher ambition than this. he had no wish to strive or to achieve; he only wanted to be useful; and when he heard the parable of the talents read aloud in the old church, a glow of gentle happiness thrilled through his veins as he thought of his own small gifts, which had never yet been suffered to grow rusty for lack of service. the young man's life could scarcely have been more sheltered from the storm and tempest of the world, though the walls of some mediæval monastery had encircled his little surgery. could the tumults of passion ever have a home in the calm breast of these quiet provincials, whose regular lives knew no greater change than the slow alternation of the seasons, whose orderly existences were never disturbed by an event? away at conventford there were factory strikes, and political dissensions, and fighting and rioting now and then; but here the tranquil days crept by, and left no mark by which they might be remembered. miss sophronia burdock did not long cherish the memory of the dark-haired barrister she had met in baker street. to do so would have been as foolish as to "love some bright particular star, and think to wed it," in the young damsel's opinion. she wisely banished the barrister's splendid image, and she smiled once more upon mr. gilbert when she met him coming out of church in the cold wintry sunlight, looking to especial advantage in his new mourning clothes. but george was blind to the sympathetic smiles that greeted him. he was not in love with miss sophronia burdock. the image of isabel's pale face had faded into a very indistinct shadow by this time; nay, it was almost entirely blotted out by the young man's grief for his father's death; but if his heart was empty enough now, there was no place in it for miss burdock, though it was hinted at in graybridge that a dower of four thousand pounds would accompany that fair damsel's hand. george gilbert had no high-flown or sentimental notions; but he would have thought it no greater shame to rifle the contents of the maltster's iron safe, than to enrich himself with the possessions of a woman he did not love. in the meantime he lived his peaceful life in the house where he had been born, mourning with simple, natural sorrow for the old father who had so long sat at the opposite side of the hearth, reading a local paper by the light of a candle held between his eyes and the small print, and putting down the page every now and then to descant, at his ease, upon the degeneracy of the times. the weak, loving, fidgety father was gone now, and george looked blankly at the empty chair which had taken the old man's shape; but his sorrow was unembittered by vain remorse or cruel self-reproach: he had been a good son, and he could look back at his life with his dead father, and thank god for the peaceful life that they had spent together. but he was very lonely now in the old house, which was a bare, blank place, peopled by no bright inanimate creations by which art fills the homes of wealthy hermits with fair semblances of life. the empty walls stared down upon the young man as he sat alone in the dim candlelight, till he was fain to go into the kitchen, which was the most cheerful room in the house, and where he could talk to william and tilly, while he lounged against the quaint old angle of the high oaken chimney-piece smoking his cigar. william and tilly were a certain mr. and mrs. jeffson, who had come southwards with the pretty young woman whom mr. john gilbert had encountered in the course of a holiday-trip to a quiet yorkshire town, where the fair towers of a minster rose above a queer old street, beyond whose gabled roofs lay spreading common-lands, fair pasture-farms, and pleasant market-gardens. it was in the homestead attached to one of these pasture-farms that john gilbert had met the bright, rosy-faced girl whom he made his wife; and mr. and mrs. jeffson were poor relations of the young lady's father. at mrs. gilbert's entreaty they consented to leave the little bit of garden and meadow-land which they rented near her father's farm, and followed the surgeon's wife to her new home, where matilda jeffson took upon herself the duties of housekeeper, general manager, and servant-of-all-work; while her husband looked after the surgeon's table, and worked in the long, old-fashioned garden, where the useful element very much preponderated over the ornamental. i am compelled to admit that, in common with almost all those bright and noble qualities which can make man admirable, mr. william jeffson possessed one failing. he was lazy. but then his laziness gave such a delicious, easy-going tone to his whole character, and was so much a part of his good nature and benevolence, that to wish him faultless would have been to wish him something less than he was. there are some people whose faults are better than other people's virtues. mr. jeffson was lazy. in the garden which it was his duty to cultivate, the snails crawled along their peaceful way, unhindered by cruel rake or hoe; but then, on the other hand, the toads grew fat in shadowy corners under the broad dock-leaves, and the empty shells of their slimy victims attested the uses of those ugly and venomous reptiles. the harmony of the universe asserted itself in that midlandshire garden, unchecked by any presumptuous interference from mr. jeffson. the weeds grew high in waste patches of ground, left here and there amongst the gooseberry-bushes and the cabbages, the raspberries and potatoes; and william jeffson offered little hindrance to their rank luxuriance. "there was room enough for all he wanted," he said philosophically; "and ground that wouldn't grow weeds would be good for naught. mr. gilbert had more fruit and vegetables than he could eat or cared to give away; and surely that was enough for anybody." officious visitors would sometimes suggest this or that alteration or improvement in the simple garden; but mr. jeffson would only smile at them with a bland, sleepy smile, as he lolled upon his spade, and remark, "that he'd been used to gardens all his life, and knew what could be made out of 'em, and what couldn't." in short, mr. jeffson and matilda jeffson his wife did as they liked in the surgeon's house, and had done so ever since that day upon which they came to midlandshire to take friendly service with their second cousin, pretty mrs. john gilbert. they took very small wages from their kinswoman's husband, but they had their own apartments, and lived as they pleased, and ordered the lives of their master and mistress, and idolized the fair-haired baby-boy who was born by-and-by, and who grew day by day under their loving eyes, when the tender gaze of his mother had ceased to follow his toddling footsteps, or yearn for the sight of his frank, innocent face. mr. jeffson may have neglected the surgeon's garden, by reason of that lymphatic temperament which was peculiar to him; but there was one business in which he never lacked energy, one pursuit in which he knew no weariness. he was never tired of any labour which contributed to the pleasure or amusement of mr. gilbert's only son. he carried the child on his shoulders for long journeys to distant meadows in the sunshiny haymaking season, when all the air was fragrant with the scent of grass and flowers; he clambered through thorny gaps amidst the brambly underwood, and tore the flesh off his poor big hands hunting for blackberries and cob-nuts for master "jarge." he persuaded his master into the purchase of a pony when the boy was five years old, and the little fellow trotted to wareham at mr. jeffson's side when that gentleman went on errands for the graybridge household. william jeffson had no children of his own, and he loved the surgeon's boy with all the fondness of a nature peculiarly capable of love and devotion. it was a bitter day for him when master jarge went to the classical and commercial academy at wareham; and but for those happy saturday afternoons on which he went to fetch the boy for a holiday that lasted till sunday evening, poor william jeffson would have lost all the pleasures of his simple life. what was the good of haymaking if george wasn't in the thick of the fun, clambering on the loaded wain, or standing flushed and triumphant, high up against the sunlit sky on the growing summit of the new-made stack? what could be drearier work than feeding the pigs, or milking the cow, unless master jarge was by to turn labour into pleasure by the bright magic of his presence? william jeffson went about his work with a grave countenance during the boy's absence, and only brightened on those delicious saturday afternoons when master jarge came hurrying to the little wooden gate in dr. mulder's playground, shouting a merry welcome to his friend. there was no storm of rain or hail, snow or sleet, that ever came out of the heavens, heavy enough to hinder mr. jeffson's punctual attendance at that little gate. what did he care for drenching showers, or thunderclaps that seemed to shake the earth, so long as the little wooden gate opened, and the fair young face he loved poked out at him with a welcoming smile? "our boys laid any money you wouldn't come to-day, jeff," master gilbert said sometimes; "but i knew there wasn't any weather invented that would keep you away." o blessed reward of fidelity and devotion! what did william jeffson want more than this? matilda jeffson loved her master's son very dearly in her own way; but her household duties were a great deal heavier than mr. jeffson's responsibilities, and she had little time to waste upon the poetry of affection. she kept the boy's wardrobe in excellent order; baked rare batches of hot cakes on saturday afternoons for his special gratification; sent him glorious hampers, in which there were big jars of gooseberry-jam, pork-pies, plum-loaves, and shrivelled apples. in all substantial matters mrs. jeffson was as much the boy's friend as her husband; but that tender, sympathetic devotion which william felt for his master's son was something beyond her comprehension. "my master's daft about the lad," she said, when she spoke of the two. george gilbert taught his companion a good deal in those pleasant saturday evenings, when the surgeon was away amongst his patients, and the boy was free to sit in the kitchen with mr. and mrs. jeffson. he told the yorkshireman all about those enemies of boyhood, the classic poets; but william infinitely preferred shakespeare and milton, byron and scott, to the accomplished romans, whose verses were of the lamest as translated by george. mr. jeffson could never have enough of shakespeare. he was never weary of hamlet, lear, othello, and romeo, the bright young prince who tried on his father's crown, bold hotspur, ill-used richard, passionate margaret, murderous gloster, ruined wolsey, noble katharine. all that grand gallery of pictures unrolled its splendours for this man, and the schoolboy wondered at the enthusiasm he was powerless to understand. he was inclined to think that practical mrs. jeffson was right, and that her husband was a little "daft" upon some matters. the boy returned his humble friend's affection with a steady, honest regard, that richly compensated the gardener, whose love was not of a nature to need much recompense, since its growth was as spontaneous and unconscious as that of the wild flowers amongst the long grass. george returned william jeffson's affection, but he could not return it in kind. the poetry of friendship was not in his nature. he was honest, sincere, and true, but not sympathetic or assimilative; he preserved his own individuality wherever he went, and took no colour from the people amongst whom he lived. mr. gilbert would have been very lonely now that his father was gone, had it not been for this honest couple, who managed his house and garden, his stable and paddocks, and watched his interests as earnestly as if he had been indeed their son. whenever he had a spare half-hour, the young man strolled into the old-fashioned kitchen, and smoked his cigar in the chimney-corner, where he had passed so much of his boyhood. "when i sit here, jeff," he said sometimes, "i seem to go back to the old school-days again, and i fancy i hear brown molly's hoofs upon the frosty road, and my father's voice calling to you to open the gate." mr. jeffson sighed, as he looked up from the mending of a bridle or the patching of a horse-cloth. "them was pleasant days, master jarge," he said, regretfully. he was thinking that the schoolboy had been more to him and nearer to him than the young surgeon could ever be. they had been children together, these two, and william had never grown weary of his childhood. he was left behind now that his companion had grown up, and the happy childish days were all over. there was a gigantic kite on a shelf in the back-kitchen; a kite that mr. jeffson had made with his own patient hands. george gilbert would have laughed now if that kite had been mentioned to him; but william jeffson would have been constant to the same boyish sports until his hair was grey, and would have never known weariness of spirit. "you'll be marrying some fine lady, maybe now, master jarge," mrs. jeffson said; "and she'll look down upon our north-country ways, and turn us out of the old place where we've lived so long." but george protested eagerly that, were he to marry the daughter of the queen of england, which was not particularly likely, that royal lady should take kindly to his old servants, or should be no wife of his. "when i marry, my wife must love the people i love," said, the surgeon, who entertained those superb theories upon the management of a wife which are peculiar to youthful bachelors. george further informed his humble friends that he was not likely to enter the holy estate of matrimony for many years to come, as he had so far seen no one who at all approached his idea of womanly perfection. he had very practical views upon this subject, and meant to wait patiently until some faultless young person came across his pathway; some neat-handed, church-going damsel, with tripping feet and smoothly-banded hair; some fair young sage, who had never been known to do a foolish act or say an idle word. sometimes the image of isabel sleaford trembled faintly upon the magic mirror of the young man's reveries, and he wondered whether, under any combination of circumstances, she would ever arrive at this standard. oh, no, it was impossible. he looked back to the drowsy summer-time, and saw her lolling in the garden-chair, with the shadows of the branches fluttering upon her tumbled muslin dress, and her black hair pushed anyhow away from the broad low brow. "i hope that foolish sigismund won't meet miss sleaford again," george thought, very gravely; "he might be silly enough to marry her, and i'm sure she'd never make a good wife for any man." george gilbert's father died in the autumn of ' ; and early in the following spring the young man received a letter from his friend mr. smith. sigismund wrote very discursively about his own prospects and schemes, and gave his friend a brief synopsis of the romance he had last begun. george skimmed lightly enough over this part of the letter; but as he turned the leaf by-and-by, he saw a name that brought the blood to his face. he was vexed with himself for that involuntary blush, and sorely puzzled to know why he should be so startled by the unexpected sight of isabel sleaford's name. "you made me promise to tell you anything that turned up about the sleafords," sigismund wrote. "you'll be very much surprised to hear that miss sleaford came to me the other day here in my chambers, and asked me if i could help her in any way to get her living. she wanted me to recommend her as a nursery-governess, or companion, or something of that kind, if i knew of any family in want of such a person. she was staying at islington with a sister of her step-mother's, she told me; but she couldn't be a burthen on her any longer. mrs. sleaford and the boys have gone to live in jersey, it seems, on account of things being cheap there; and i have no doubt that boy horace will become an inveterate smoker. poor sleaford is dead. you'll be as much astounded as i was to hear this. isabel did not tell me this at first; but i saw that she was dressed in black, and when i asked her about her father, she burst out crying, and sobbed as if heart would break. i should like to have ascertained what the poor fellow died of, and all about it,--for sleaford was not an old man, and one of the most powerful-looking fellows i ever saw,--but i could not torture izzie with questions while she was in such a state of grief and agitation. 'i'm very sorry you've lost your father, my dear miss sleaford,' i said: and she sobbed out something that i scarcely heard, and i got her some cold water to drink, and it was ever so long before she came round again and was able to talk to me. well, i couldn't think of anybody that was likely to help her that day; but i took the address of her aunt's house at islington, and promised to call upon her there in a day or two. i wrote by that day's post to my mother, and asked her if she could help me; and she wrote back by return to tell me that my uncle, charles raymond, at conventford, was in want of just such a person as miss sleaford (of course i had endowed isabel with all the virtues under the sun), and if i really thought miss s. would suit, and i could answer for the perfect respectability of her connections and antecedents,--it isn't to be supposed that i was going to say anything about that three quarters' rent, or that i should own that isabel's antecedents were lolling in a garden-chair reading novels, or going on suspicious errands to the _jeweller_ ('o my prophetic soul!' _et cetera_) in the walworth road,--why, i was to engage miss s. at twenty pounds a year salary. i went up to islington that very afternoon, although i was a number and a half behind with 'the demon of the galleys' ('the d. of the g.' is a sequel to 'the brand upon the shoulder-blade;' the proprietor of the 'penny parthenon' insisted upon having a sequel, and i had to bring colonel montefiasco to life again, after hurling him over a precipice three hundred feet high),--and the poor girl began to cry when i told her i'd found a home for her. i'm afraid she's had a great deal of trouble since the sleafords left camberwell; for she isn't at all the girl she was. her step-mother's sister is a vulgar woman who lets lodgings, and there's only one servant--such a miserable slavey; and isabel went to the door three times while i was there. you know my uncle raymond, and you know what a dear jolly fellow he is; so you may guess the change will be a very pleasant one for poor izzie. by the bye, you might call and see her the first time you're in conventford, and write me word how the poor child gets on. i thought she seemed a little frightened at the idea of going among strangers. i saw her off at euston square the day before yesterday. she went by the parliamentary train; and i put her in charge of a most respectable family going all the way through, with six children, and a birdcage, and a dog, and a pack of cards to play upon a tea-tray on account of the train being slow." mr. gilbert read this part of his friend's letter three times over before he was able to realize the news contained in it. mr. sleaford dead, and isabel settled as a nursery-governess at conventford! if the winding wayverne had overflowed its sedgy banks and flooded all midlandshire, the young surgeon could have been scarcely more surprised than he was by the contents of his friend's letter. isabel at conventford--within eleven miles of graybridge; within eleven miles of him at that moment, as he walked up and down the little room, with his hair tumbled all about his flushed good-looking face, and sigismund's letter in his waistcoat! what was it to him that isabel sleaford was so near? what was she to him, that he should think of her, or be fluttered by the thought that she was within his reach? what did he know of her? only that she had eyes that were unlike any other eyes he had ever looked at; eyes that haunted his memory like strange stars seen in a feverish dream. he knew nothing of her but this: and that she had a pretty, sentimental manner, a pensive softness in her voice, and sudden flights and capricious changes of expression that had filled his mind with wonder. george went back to the kitchen and smoked another cigar in mr. jeffson's company. he went back to that apartment fully determined to waste no more of his thoughts upon isabel sleaford, who was in sober truth a frivolous, sentimental creature, eminently adapted to make any man miserable; but somehow or other, before the cigar was finished, george had told his earliest friend and confidant all about mr. sleaford's family, touching very lightly upon isabel's attractions, and speaking of a visit to conventford as a disagreeable duty that friendship imposed. "of course i shouldn't think of going all that way on purpose to see miss sleaford," he said, "though sigismund seems to expect me to do so; but i must go to conventford in the course of the week, to see about those drugs johnson promised to get me. they won't make a very big parcel, and i can bring them home in my coat-pocket. you might trim brown molly's fetlocks, jeff; she'll look all the better for it. i'll go on thursday; and yet i don't know that i couldn't better spare the time to-morrow." "to-morrow's market-day, master jarge. i was thinkin' of goin' t' conventford mysen. i might bring t' droogs for thee, and thoo couldst write a noate askin' after t' young leddy," mr. jeffson remarked, thoughtfully. george shook his head. "that would never do, jeff," he said; "sigismund asks me to go and see her." mr. jeffson relapsed into a thoughtful silence, out of which he emerged by-and-by with a slow chuckle. "i reckon miss sleaford'll be a pretty girl," he remarked, thoughtfully, with rather a sly glance at his young master. george gilbert found it necessary to enter into an elaborate explanation upon this subject. no; miss sleaford was not pretty. she had no colour in her cheeks, and her nose was nothing particular,--not a beautiful queenlike hook, like that of miss harleystone, the belle of graybridge, who was considered like the youthful members of the peerage,--and her mouth wasn't very small, and her forehead was low; and, in short, some people might think miss sleaford plain. "but thoo doesn't, master jarge!" exclaimed mr. jeffson, clapping his hand upon his knee with an intolerable chuckle; "thoo thinkst summoat of her. i'll lay; and i'll trim brown molly's fetlocks till she looks as genteel as a thoroughbred." "thoo'rt an old fondy!" cried mrs. jeffson, looking up from her needlework. "it isn't one of these london lasses as'll make a good wife for master jarge; and he'd never be that soft as to go running after nursery-governesses at conventford, when he might have miss burdock and all her money, and be one of the first gentlefolks in graybridge." "hold thy noise, tilly. thou knowst nowt aboot it. didn't i marry thee for loove, lass, when i might have had sarah peglock, as was only daughter to him as kept t' red lion in belminster; and didn't i come up to london, where thou wast in service, and take thee away from thy pleace; and wasn't sarah a'most wild when she heard it? master jarge 'll marry for loove, or he'll never marry at all. don't you remember her as wore the pink sash and shoes wi' sandals at the dancin' school, master jarge; and us takin' her a ploom-loaf, and a valentine, and sugar-sticks, and oranges, when you was home for th' holidays?" mr. jeffson had been the confidant of all george's boyish love-affairs, the innocent leporello of this young provincial juan; and he was eager to be trusted with new secrets, and to have a finger once more in the sentimental pie. but nothing could be more stern than mr. gilbert's denial of any romantic fancy for miss sleaford. "i should be very glad to befriend her in any way," he said gravely; "but she's the very last person in the world that i should ever dream of making my wife." this young man discussed his matrimonial views with the calm grandiosity of manner with which man, the autocrat, talks of his humble slaves before he has tried his hand at governing them,--before he has received the fiery baptism of suffering, and learned by bitter experience that a perfect woman is not a creature to be found at every street-corner waiting meekly for her ruler. chapter vi. too much alone. brown molly's fetlocks were neatly trimmed by mr. jeffson's patient hands. i fancy the old mare would have gone long without a clipping, had it not been george's special pleasure that the animal should be smartened up before he rode her to conventford. clipping is not a very pleasant labour: but there is no task so difficult that william jeffson would have shrunk from it, if its achievement could give george gilbert happiness. brown molly looked a magnificent creature when george came home, after a hurried round of professional visits, and found her saddled and bridled, at eleven o'clock, on the bright march morning which he had chosen for his journey to conventford. but though, the mare was ready, and had been ready for a quarter of an hour, there was some slight delay while george ran up to his room,--the room which he had slept in from his earliest boyhood (there were some of his toys, dusty and forgotten, amongst the portmanteaus and hat-boxes at the top of the painted deal wardrobe),--and was for some little time engaged in changing his neckcloth, brushing his hair and hat, and making other little improvements in his personal appearance. william jeffson declared that his young master looked as if he was going straight off to be married, as he rode away out of the stable-yard, with a bright eager smile upon his face and the spring breezes blowing amongst his hair. he looked the very incarnation of homely, healthy comeliness, the archetype of honest youth and simple english manhood, radiant with the fresh brightness of an unsullied nature, untainted by an evil memory, pure as a new-polished mirror on which no foul breath has ever rested. he rode away to his fate, self-deluded, and happy in the idea that his journey was a wise blending of the duties of friendship and the cares of his surgery. i do not think there can be a more beautiful road in all england than that between graybridge-on-the-wayverne and conventford, and i can scarcely believe that in all england there is an uglier town than conventford itself. i envy george gilbert his long ride on that bright march morning, when the pale primroses glimmered among the underwood, and the odour of early violets mingled faintly with the air. the country roads were long avenues, which might have made the glory of a ducal park; and every here and there, between a gap in the budding hedge, a white-walled country villa or grave old red-brick mansion peeped out of some nook of rustic beauty, with shining windows winking in the noontide sun. midway between graybridge and conventford there is the village of waverly; the straggling village street over whose quaint elizabethan roofs the ruined towers of a grand old castle cast their protecting shadows. john of gaunt was master and founder of the grandest of those old towers, and henry the eighth's wonderful daughter has feasted in the great banqueting-hall, where the ivy hangs its natural garlands round the stone mullions of the tudor window. the surgeon gave his steed a mouthful of hay and a drink of water before the waverly arms, and then sauntered at a foot-pace into the long unbroken arcade which stretches from the quiet village to the very outskirts of the bustling conventford. george urged brown molly into a ponderous kind of canter by-and-by, and went at a dashing rate till he came to the little turnpike at the end of the avenue, and left fair elizabethan midlandshire behind him. before him there was only the smoky, noisy, poverty-stricken town, with hideous factory chimneys blackening the air, and three tall spires rising from amongst the crowded roofs high up into the clearer sky. mr. gilbert drew rein on the green, which was quiet enough to-day, though such an uproarious spot in fair-time; he drew rein, and began to wonder what he should do. should he go to the chemist's in the market-place and get his drugs, and thence to mr. raymond's house, which was at the other end of the town, or rather on the outskirts of the country and beyond the town; or should he go first to mr. raymond's by quiet back lanes, which were clear of the bustle and riot of the market-people? to go to the chemist's first would be the wiser course, perhaps; but then it wouldn't be very agreeable to have drugs in his pocket, and to smell of rhubarb and camomile-flowers when he made his appearance before miss sleaford. after a good deal of deliberation, george decided on going by the back way to mr. raymond's house; and then, as he rode along the lanes and back slums, he began to think that mr. raymond would wonder why he called, and would think his interest in the nursery-governess odd, or even intrusive; and from that a natural transition of thought brought him to wonder whether it would not be better to abandon all idea of seeing miss sleaford, and to content himself with the purchase of the drugs. while he was thinking of this, brown molly brought him into the lane at the end of which mr. raymond's house stood, on a gentle eminence, looking over a wide expanse of grassy fields, a railway cutting, and a white high-road, dotted here and there by little knots of stunted trees. the country upon this side of conventford was bleak and bare of aspect as compared to that fair park-like region which i venture to call elizabethan midlandshire. if mr. raymond had resembled other people, i dare say he would have been considerably surprised--or, it may be, outraged--by a young gentleman in the medical profession venturing to make a morning call upon his nursery-governess; but as mr. charles raymond was the very opposite of everybody else in the world, and as he was a most faithful disciple of mr. george combe, and could discover by a glance at the surgeon's head that the young man was neither a profligate nor a scoundrel, he received george as cordially as it was his habit to receive every living creature who had need of his friendliness; and sent brown molly away to his stable, and set her master at his ease, before george had quite left off blushing in his first paroxysm of shyness. "come into my room," cried mr. raymond, in a voice that had more vibration in it than any other voice that ever rang out upon the air; "come into my room. you've had a letter from sigismund,--the idea of the absurd young dog calling himself sigismund!--and he's told you all about miss sleaford. very nice girl, but wants to be educated before she can teach; keeps the little ones amused, however, and takes them out in the meadows; a very nice, conscientious little thing; cautiousness very large; can't get anything out of her about her past life; turns pale and begins to cry when i ask her questions; has seen a good deal of trouble, i'm afraid. never mind; we'll try and make her happy. what does her past life matter to us if her head's well balanced? let me have my pick of the young people in field lane, and i'll find you an undeveloped archbishop of canterbury; take me into places where the crimes of mankind are only known by their names in the decalogue, and i'll find you an embryo greenacre. miss sleaford's a very good little girl; but she's got too much wonder and exaggerated ideality. she opens her big eyes when she talks of her favourite books, and looks up all scared and startled if you speak to her while she's reading." mr. raymond's room was a comfortable little apartment, lined with books from the ceiling to the floor. there were books everywhere in mr. raymond's house; and the master of the house read at all manner of abnormal hours, and kept a candle burning by his bedside in the dead of the night, when every other citizen of conventford was asleep. he was a bachelor, and the children whom it was miss sleaford's duty to educate were a couple of sickly orphans, left by a pale-faced niece of charles raymond's,--an unhappy young lady, who seemed only born to be unfortunate, and who had married badly, and lost her husband, and died of consumption, running through all the troubles common to womankind before her twenty-fifth birthday. of course mr. raymond took the children; he would have taken an accidental chimney-sweep's children, if it could have been demonstrated to him that there was no one else to take them. he buried the pale-faced niece in a quiet suburban cemetery, and took the orphans home to his pretty house at conventford, and bought black frocks for them, and engaged miss sleaford for their education, and made less fuss about the transaction than many men would have done concerning the donation of a ten-pound note. it was charles raymond's nature to help his fellow-creatures. he had been very rich once, the conventford people said, in those far-off golden days when there were neither strikes nor starvation in the grim old town; and he had lost a great deal of money in the carrying out of sundry philanthropic schemes for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and was comparatively poor in these latter days. but he was never so poor as to be unable to help other people, or to hold his hand when a mechanics' institution, or a working-men's club, or an evening-school, or a cooking-dépôt, was wanted for the benefit and improvement of conventford. and all this time,--while he was the moving spirit of half-a-dozen committees, while he distributed cast-off clothing, and coals, and tickets for soup, and orders for flannel, and debated the solemn question as to whether betsy scrubbs or maria tomkins was most in want of a wadded petticoat, or gave due investigation to the rival claims of mrs. jones and mrs. green to the largess of the soup kitchen,--he was an author, a philosopher, a phrenologist, a metaphysician, writing grave books, and publishing them for the instruction of mankind. he was fifty years of age; but, except that his hair was grey, he had no single attribute of age. that grey hair framed the brightest face that ever smiled upon mankind, and with the liberal sunshine smiled alike on all. george gilbert had seen mr. raymond several times before to-day. everybody in conventford, or within a certain radius of conventford, knew mr. charles raymond; and mr. charles raymond knew everybody. he looked through the transparent screen which shrouded the young surgeon's thoughts: he looked down into the young man's heart, through depths that were as clear as limpid water, and saw nothing there but truth and purity. when i say that mr. raymond looked into george gilbert's heart, i use a figure of speech, for it was from the outside of the surgeon's head he drew his deductions; but i like the old romantic fancy, that a good man's heart is a temple of courage, love, and piety--an earthly shrine of all the virtues. mr. raymond's house was a pretty gothic building, half villa, half cottage, with bay windows opening into a small garden, which was very different from the garden at camberwell, inasmuch as here all was trimly kept by an indefatigable gardener and factotum. beyond the garden there were the meadows, only separated from mr. raymond's lawn by a low privet hedge; and beyond the meadows the roofs and chimneys of conventford loomed darkly in the distance. charles raymond took george into the drawing-room by-and-by, and from the bay window the young man saw isabel sleaford once more, as he had seen her first, in a garden. but the scene had a different aspect from that other scene, which still lingered in his mind, like a picture seen briefly in a crowded gallery. instead of the pear-trees on the low disorderly grass-plat, the straggling branches green against the yellow sunshine of july, george saw a close-cropped lawn and trim flower-beds, stiff groups of laurel, amid bare bleak fields unsheltered from the chill march winds. against the cold blue sky he saw isabel's slight figure, not lolling in a garden-chair reading a novel, but walking primly with two pale-faced children dressed in black. a chill sense of pain crept through the surgeon's breast as he looked at the girlish figure, the pale joyless face, the sad dreaming eyes. he felt that some inexplicable change had come to isabel sleaford since that july day on which she had talked of her pet authors, and glowed and trembled with childish love for the dear books out of whose pages she took the joys and sorrows of her life. the three pale faces, the three black dresses, had a desolate look in the cold sunlight. mr. raymond tapped at the glass, and beckoned to the nursery-governess. "melancholy-looking objects, are they not?" he said to george, as the three girls came towards the window. "i've told my housekeeper to give them plenty of roast meat, not too much done; meat's the best antidote for melancholy." he opened the window and admitted isabel and her two pupils. "here's a friend come to see you, miss sleaford," he said; "a friend of sigismund's; a gentleman who knew you in london." george held out his hand, but he saw something like terror in the girl's face as she recognized him; and he fell straightway into a profound gulf of confusion and embarrassment. "sigismund asked me to call," he stammered. "sigismund told me to write and tell him how you were." miss sleaford's eyes filled with tears. the tears came unbidden to her eyes now with the smallest provocation. "you are all very good to me," she said. "there, you children, go out into the garden and walk about," cried mr. raymond. "you go with them, gilbert, and then come in and have some stilton cheese and bottled beer, and tell us all about your graybridge patients." mr. gilbert obeyed his kindly host. he went out on to the lawn, where the brown shrubs were putting forth their feeble leaflets to be blighted by the chill air of march. he walked by isabel's side, while the two orphans prowled mournfully here and there amongst the evergreens, and picked the lonely daisies that had escaped the gardener's scythe. george and isabel talked a little; but the young man was fain to confine himself to a few commonplace remarks about conventford, and mr. raymond, and miss sleaford's new duties; for he saw that the least allusion to the old camberwell life distressed and agitated her. there was not much that these two could talk about as yet. with sigismund smith, isabel would have had plenty to say; indeed, it would have been a struggle between the two as to which should do all the talking; but in george gilbert's company isabel sleaford's fancies folded themselves like delicate buds whose fragile petals are shrivelled by a bracing northern breeze. she knew that mr. gilbert was a good young man kindly disposed towards her, and, after his simple fashion, eager to please her; but she felt rather than knew that he did not understand her, and that in that cloudy region where her thoughts for ever dwelt he could never be her companion. so, after a little of that deliciously original conversation which forms the staple talk of a morning call amongst people who have never acquired the supreme accomplishment called small-talk, george and isabel returned to the drawing-room, where mr. raymond was ready to preside over a banquet of bread-and-cheese and bottled ale; after which refection the surgeon's steed was brought to the door. "come and see us again, gilbert, whenever you've a day in conventford," mr. raymond said, as he shook hands with the surgeon. george thanked him for his cordial invitation, but he rode away from the house rather depressed in spirit, notwithstanding. how stupid he had been during that brief walk on mr. raymond's lawn; how little he had said to isabel, or she to him! how dismally the conversation had died away into silence every now and then, only to be revived by some lame question, some miserable remark apropos to nothing,--the idiotic emanation of despair! mr. gilbert rode to an inn near the market-place, where his father had been wont to take his dinner whenever he went to conventford. george gave brown molly into the ostler's custody, and then walked away to the crowded pavement, where the country people were jostling each other in front of shop-windows and open stalls; the broad stony market-place, where the voices of the hawkers were loud and shrill, where the brazen boastings of quack-medicine vendors rang out upon the afternoon air. he walked through the crowd, and rambled away into a narrow back street leading to an old square, where the great church of conventford stood amidst a stony waste of tombstones, and where the bells that played a hymn tune when they chimed the hour were booming up in the grand old steeple. the young man went into the stony churchyard, which was lonely enough even on a market-day, and walked about among the tombs, whiling away the time--for the benefit of brown molly, who required considerable rest and refreshment before she set out on the return journey--and thinking of isabel sleaford. he had only seen her twice, and yet already her image had fastened itself with a fatal grip upon his mind, and was planted there--an enduring picture, never again to be blotted out. that evening at camberwell had been the one romantic episode of this young man's eventless life; isabel sleaford the one stranger who had come across his pathway. there were pretty girls, and amiable girls, in graybridge: but then he had known them all his life. isabel came to him in her pale young beauty, and all the latent sentimentality--without which youth is hideous--kindled and thrilled into life at the magic spell of her presence. the mystic venus rises a full-blown beauty from the sea, and man the captive bows down before his divine enslaver. who would care for a venus whose cradle he had rocked, whose gradual growth he had watched, the divinity of whose beauty had perished beneath the withering influence of familiarity? it was dusk when george gilbert went to the chemist and received his parcels of drugs. he would not stop to dine at the white lion, but paid his eighteenpence for brown molly's accommodation, and took a hasty glass of ale at the bar before he sprang into the saddle. he rode homeward through the solemn avenue, the dusky cathedral aisle, the infinite temple, fashioned by the great architect nature. he rode through the long ghostly avenue, until the twinkling lights at waverly glimmered on him faintly between the bare branches of the trees. isabel sleaford's new life was a very pleasant one. there was no butter to be fetched, no mysterious errands to the walworth road. everything was bright and smooth and trim in mr. raymond's household. there was a middle-aged housekeeper who reigned supreme, and an industrious maidservant under her sway. isabel and her sickly charges had two cheerful rooms over the drawing-room, and took their meals together, and enjoyed the delight of one another's society all day long. the children were rather stupid, but they were very good. they too had known the sharp ills of poverty, the butter-fetching, the blank days in which there was no bright oasis of dinner, the scraps of cold meat and melancholy cups of tea. they told isabel their troubles of an evening; how poor mamma had cried when the sheriff's officer came in, and said he was very sorry for her, but must take an inventory, and wouldn't leave even papa's picture or the silver spoons that had been grandmamma's. miss sleaford put her shoulder to the wheel very honestly, and went through pinnock's pleasant abridgments of modern and ancient history with her patient pupils. she let them off with a very slight dose of the heptarchy and the normans, and even the early plantagenet monarchs; but she gave them plenty of anne boleyn and mary queen of scots,--fair princess mary, queen of france, and wife of thomas brandon,--marie antoinette and charlotte corday. the children only said "lor'!" when they heard of mademoiselle corday's heroic adventure; but they were very much interested in the fate of the young princes of the house of york, and amused themselves by a representation of the smothering business with the pillows on the school-room sofa. it was not to be supposed that mr. charles raymond, who had all the interests of conventford to claim his attention, could give much time or trouble to the two pupils or the nursery-governess. he was quite satisfied with miss sleaford's head, and was content to entrust his orphan nieces to her care. "if they were clever children, i should be afraid of her exaggerated ideality," he said; "but they're too stupid to be damaged by any influence of that kind. she's got a very decent moral region--not equal to that young doctor at graybridge, certainly--and she'll do her duty to the little ones very well, i dare say." so no one interfered with isabel or her pupils. the education of association, which would have been invaluable to her, was as much wanting at conventford as it had been at camberwell. she lived alone with her books and the dreams which were born of them, and waited for the prince, the ernest maltravers, the henry esmond, the steerforth--it was steerforth's proud image, and not simple-hearted david's gentle shadow, which lingered in the girl's mind when she shut the book. she was young and sentimental, and it was not the good people upon whom her fancy fixed itself. to be handsome and proud and miserable, was to possess an indisputable claim to miss sleaford's worship. she sighed to sit at the feet of a byron, grand and gloomy and discontented, baring his white brow to the midnight blast, and raving against the baseness and ingratitude of mankind. she pined to be the chosen slave of some scornful creature, who should perhaps ill-treat and neglect her. i think she would have worshipped an aristocratic bill sykes, and would have been content to die under his cruel hand, only in the ruined chamber of some gothic castle, by moonlight, with the distant alps shimmering whitely before her glazing eyes, instead of in poor nancy's unromantic garret. and then the count guilliaume de syques would be sorry, and put up a wooden cross on the mountain pathway, to the memory of--, Ã�nÃ�tkh; and he would be found some morning stretched at the foot of that mysterious memorial, with a long black mantle trailing over his king-like form, and an important blood-vessel broken. there is no dream so foolish, there is no fancy however childish, that did not find a lodgment in isabel sleaford's mind during the long idle evenings in which she sat alone in her quiet school-room, watching the stars kindle faintly in the dusk, and the darkening shadows gathering in the meadows, while feeble lights began to twinkle in the distant streets of conventford. sometimes, when her pupils were fast asleep in their white-curtained beds, izzie stole softly down, and went out into the garden to walk up and down in the fair moonlight; the beautiful moonlight in which juliet had looked more lovely than the light of day to romeo's enraptured eyes; in which hamlet had trembled before his father's ghostly face. she walked up and down in the moonlight, and thought of all her dreams; and wondered when her life was going to begin. she was getting quite old; yes--she thought of it with a thrill of horror--she was nearly eighteen! juliet was buried in the tomb of the capulets before this age, and haughty beatrix had lived her life, and florence dombey was married and settled, and the story all over. a dull despair crept over this foolish girl as she thought that perhaps her life was to be only a commonplace kind of existence, after all; a blank flat level, along which she was to creep to a nameless grave. she was so eager to be _something_. oh, why was not there a revolution, that she might take a knife in her hand and go forth to seek the tyrant in his lodging, and then die; so that people might talk of her, and remember her name when she was dead? i think isabel sleaford was just in that frame of mind in which a respectable, and otherwise harmless, young person aims a bullet at some virtuous sovereign, in a paroxysm of insensate yearning for distinction. miss sleaford wanted to be famous. she wanted the drama of her life to begin, and the hero to appear. vague, and grand, and shadowy, there floated before her the image of the prince; but, oh, how slow he was to come! would he ever come? were there any princes in the world? were there any of those beings whose manners and customs her books described to her, but whose mortal semblances she had never seen? the sleeping beauty in the woods slumbered a century before the appointed hero came to awaken her. beauty must wait, and wait patiently, for the coming of her fate. but poor isabel thought she had waited so long, and as yet there was not even the distant shimmer of the prince's plumes dimly visible on the horizon. there were reasons why isabel sleaford should shut away the memory of her past life, and solace herself with visions of a brighter existence. a little wholesome drudgery might have been good for her, as a homely antidote against the sentimentalism of her nature; but in mr. raymond's house she had ample leisure to sit dreaming over her books, weaving wonderful romances in which she was to be the heroine, and the hero--? the hero was the veriest chameleon, inasmuch as he took his colour from the last book miss sleaford had been reading. sometimes he was ernest maltravers, the exquisite young aristocrat, with violet eyes and silken hair. sometimes he was eugene aram, dark, gloomy, and intellectual, with that awkward little matter of mr. clarke's murder preying upon his mind. at another time he was steerforth, selfish and haughty and elegant, sometimes, when the orphans were asleep. miss sleaford let down her long black hair before the little looking-glass, and acted to herself in a whisper. she saw her pale face, awful in the dusky glass, her lifted arms, her great black eyes, and she fancied herself dominating a terror-stricken pit. sometimes she thought of leaving friendly mr. raymond, and going up to london with a five-pound note in her pocket, and coming out at one of the theatres as a tragic actress. she would go to the manager, and tell him that she wanted to act. there might be a little difficulty at first, perhaps, and he would be rather inclined to be doubtful of her powers; but then she would take off her bonnet, and let down her hair, and would draw the long tresses wildly through her thin white fingers--so; she stopped to look at herself in the glass as she did it,--and would cry, "i am not mad; this hair i tear is mine!" and the thing would be done. the manager would exclaim, "indeed, my dear young lady, i was not prepared for such acting as this. excuse my emotion; but really, since the days of miss o'neil, i don't remember to have witnessed anything to equal your delivery of that speech. come to-morrow evening and play constance. you don't want a rehearsal?--no, of course not; you know every syllable of the part. i shall take the liberty of offering you fifty pounds a night to begin with, and i shall place one of my carriages at your disposal." isabel had read a good many novels in which timid young heroines essay their histrionic powers, but she had never read of a dramatically-disposed heroine who had not burst forth a full-blown mrs. siddons without so much as the ordeal of a rehearsal. sometimes miss sleaford thought that her destiny--she clung to the idea that she had a destiny--designed her to be a poet, an l.e.l.; oh, above all she would have chosen to be l.e.l.; and in the evening, when she had looked over the children's copy-books, and practised a new style of capital b, in order to infuse a dash of variety into the next day's studies, she drew the candles nearer to her, and posed herself, and dipped her pen into the ink, and began to pour forth some melancholy plaint upon the lonely blankness of her life, or some vague invocation of the unknown prince. she rarely finished either the plaint or the invocation, for there was generally some rhythmical difficulty that brought her poetic musings to a dead lock; but she began a great many verses, and spoiled several quires of paper with abortive sonnets, in which "stars" and "streamlets," "dreams" and "fountains," recurred with a frequency which was inimical to originality or variety of style. the poor lonely untaught child looked right and left for some anchorage on the blank sea of life, and could find nothing but floating masses of ocean verdure, that drifted her here and there at the wild will of all the winds of heaven. behind her there was a past that she dared not look back upon or remember; before her lay the unknown future, wrapped in mysterious shadow, grand by reason of its obscurity. she was eager to push onward, to pierce the solemn veil, to tear aside the misty curtain, to penetrate the innermost chamber of the temple. late in the night, when the lights of conventford had died out under the starlit sky, the girl lay awake, sometimes looking up at those mystical stars, and thinking of the future; but never once, in any dream or reverie, in any fantastic vision built out of the stories she loved, did the homely image of the graybridge surgeon find a place. george gilbert thought of her, and wondered about her, as he rode brown molly in the winding midlandshire lanes, where the brown hedge-rows were budding, and the whitethorn bursting into blossom. he thought of her by day and by night, and was angry with himself for so thinking; and then began straightway to consider when he could, with any show of grace, present himself once more before mr. raymond's gothic porch at conventford. chapter vii. on the bridge. while george gilbert was thinking of isabel sleaford's pale face and black eyes; while, in his long rides to and fro among the cottages of his parish patients, he solemnly debated as to whether he ought to call upon mr. raymond when next he went to conventford, or whether he ought to go to conventford for the express purpose of paying his respects to mr. raymond,--the hand of fate turned the wavering balance; and the makeweight which she threw into the scale was no heavier than the ordinary half-ounce of original composition which government undertakes to convey, not exactly from indus to the pole, but from the land's end to the highlands, for the small charge of a penny. while george gilbert hesitated and doubted, and argued and debated with himself, after the manner of every prudent home-bred young man who begins to think that he loves well, and sadly fears that he may not love wisely,--destiny, under the form of a friend, gave him a push, and he went souse over head and ears into the roaring ocean, and there was nothing left for him but to swim as best he might towards the undiscovered shore upon the other side. the letter from sigismund was dated oakbank, conventford, may rd, . "dear george," wrote the author of "the brand upon the shoulder-blade," "i'm down here for a few days with my uncle charles; and we've arranged a picnic in lord hurstonleigh's grounds, and we want you to join us. so, if your patients are not the most troublesome people in the world, you can give yourself a holiday, and meet us on wednesday morning, at twelve, if fine, at the waverly road lodge-gate to hurstonleigh park. mrs. pidgers--pidgers is my uncle's housekeeper; a regular old dear, and _such_ a hand at pie-crusts!--is going to pack up a basket,--and i know what pidgers's baskets are,--and we shall bring plenty of sparkling, because, when my uncle does this sort of thing, he _does_ do it; and we're to drink tea at one of lord hurstonleigh's model cottages, in his model village, with a model old woman, who's had all manner of prizes for the tidiest dust-holes, and the whitest hearth-stones, and the neatest knife-boards, and all that kind of thing; and we're going to make a regular holiday of it; and i shall forget that there's such a creature as 'the demon of the galleys' in the world, and that i'm a number behind with him,--which i am,--and the artist is waiting for a subject for his next cut. "the orphans are coming, of course, and miss sleaford; and, oh, by the bye, _i_ want you to tell me all about poisoning by strychnine, because i think i shall do a case or two in 'the d. of the g.' "twelve o'clock, sharp time, remember! we come in a fly. you can leave your horse at waverly.--yours, s.s." * * * * * yes; fate, impatient perhaps of any wavering of the balance in so insignificant a matter as george gilbert's destiny, threw this penny-post letter into the scale, and, lo! it was turned. the young man read the letter over and over again, till it was crumpled and soiled with much unfolding and refolding, and taking out of, and putting back into, his waistcoat-pocket. a picnic! a picnic in the hurstonleigh grounds, with isabel sleaford! other people were to be of the party; but george gilbert scarcely remembered that. he saw himself, with isabel by his side, wandering along the winding pathways, straying away into mysterious arcades of verdure, where the low branches of the trees would meet above their heads, and shut them in from all the world. he fancied himself talking to mr. sleaford's daughter as he never had talked, nor was ever likely to talk, with any voice audible to mortal ears; he laid out and arranged that day as we are apt to arrange the days that are to come, and which--heaven help our folly and presumption!--- are so different when they do come from the dreams we have dreamed about them. mr. gilbert lived that may holiday over and over again between the monday afternoon on which he received sigismund's letter, and the appointed wednesday morning. he lay awake at night, when his day's work was done, thinking of isabel, and what she would say to him, and how she would look at him, until those fancied words and looks thrilled him to the heart's core, and he was deluded by the thought that it was all a settled thing, and that his love was returned. his love! did he love her, then, already--this pale-faced young person, whom he had only seen twice; who might be a florence nightingale, or a madame de laffarge, for all that he knew either one way or the other? yes, he loved her; the wondrous flower that never yet "thrived by the calendar" had burst into full bloom. he loved this young woman, and believed in her, and was ready to bring her to his simple home whenever she pleased to come thither; and had already pictured her sitting opposite to him in the little parlour, making weak tea for him in a britannia-metal teapot, sewing commonplace buttons upon his commonplace shirts, debating with mrs. jeffson as to whether there should be roast beef or boiled mutton for the two o'clock dinner, sitting up alone in that most uninteresting little parlour when the surgeon's patients were tiresome and insisted upon being ill in the night, waiting to preside over little suppers of cold meat and pickles, bread-and-cheese and celery. yes; george pictured miss sleaford the heroine of such a domestic story as this, and had no power to divine that there was any incongruity in the fancy; no fineness of ear to discover the dissonant interval between the heroine and the story. alas, poor izzie! and are all your fancies, all the pretty stories woven out of your novels, all your long day-dreams about marie antoinette and charlotte corday, edith dombey and ernest maltravers,--all your foolish pictures of a modern byron, fever-stricken at missolonghi, and tended by you; a new napoleon, exiled to st. helena, and followed, perhaps liberated, by you,--are they all come to this? are none of the wonderful things that happen to women ever to happen to you? are you never to be charlotte corday, and die for your country? are you never to wear ruby velvet, and diamonds in your hair, and to lure some recreant carker to a foreign hostelry, and there denounce and scorn him? are all the pages of the great book of life to be closed upon you--you, who seem to yourself predestined, by reason of so many dreams and fancies, to such a wonderful existence? is all the mystic cloudland of your dreams to collapse and shrivel into this,--a commonplace square-built cottage at graybridge-on-the-wayverne, with a commonplace country surgeon for your husband? george gilbert was waiting at the low white gate before the ivy-coloured lodge on the waverly road when the fly from conventford drove up, with sigismund smith sitting beside the coachman, and questioning him about a murder that had been committed in the neighbourhood ten years before; and mr. raymond, miss sleaford, and the orphans inside. the surgeon had been waiting at the gate for a quarter of an hour, and he had been up ever since six o'clock that morning, riding backwards and forwards amongst his patients, doing a day's work in a few hours. he had been home to dress, of course, and wore his newest and most fashionable clothes, and was, in fact, a living realization of one of the figures in a fly-blown fashion-plate for june , still exhibited in the window of a graybridge tailor. he wore a monthly rosebud in his button-hole, and he carried a bunch of spring flowers,--jonquils and polyanthuses, pink hawthorn, peonies, and sweet-brier,--which mr. jeffson had gathered and tied up, with a view to their presentation to isabel,--although there were better flowers in mr. raymond's garden, as george reminded his faithful steward. "don't thee tew thyself about that, master jarge," said the yorkshireman; "th' young wench 'll like the flowers if thoo givest 'em til her." of course it never for a moment entered into mr jeffson's mind that his young master's attentions could be otherwise than welcome and agreeable to any woman living, least of all to a forlorn young damsel who was obliged to earn her bread amongst strangers. "i'd like to see miss sleaford, master jarge," mr. jeffson said, in an insinuating manner, as george gathered up the reins and patted brown molly's neck, preparatory to riding away from the low white gate of his domain. george blushed like the peonies that formed the centre of his nosegay. "i don't know why you should want to see miss sleaford any more than other girls, jeff," he said. "well, never you mind why, master jarge; i _should_ like to see her; i'd give a deal to see her." "then we'll try and manage it, jeff. we're to drink tea at hurstonleigh; and we shall be leaving there, i suppose, as soon as it's dark--between seven and eight o'clock, i dare say. you might ride the grey pony to waverly, and bring brown molly on to hurstonleigh, and stop at the alehouse--there's an alehouse, you know, though it _is_ a model village--until i'm ready to come home; and you can leave the horses with the ostler, you know, and stroll about the village,--and you're sure to find us." "yes, yes, master jarge; i'll manage it." so george was at his post a quarter of an hour before the fly drove up to the gate. he was there to open the door of the vehicle, and to give his hand to isabel when she alighted. he felt the touch of her fingers resting briefly on his arm, and trembled and blushed like a girl as he met the indifferent gaze of her great black eyes. nobody took any notice of his embarrassment. mr. raymond and his nephew were busy with the hampers that had been stowed under the seats of the fly, and the orphans were employed in watching their elders,--for to them the very cream of the picnic was in those baskets. there was a boy at the lodge who was ready to take the basket whithersoever mr. raymond should direct; so all was settled very quickly. the driver received his instructions respecting the return journey, and went rumbling off to hurstonleigh to refresh himself and his horse. the lad went on before the little party, with the baskets swinging on either side of him as he went; and in the bustle of these small arrangements george gilbert found courage to offer isabel his arm. she took it without hesitation, and sigismund placed himself on the other side of her. mr. raymond went on before with the orphans, who affected the neighbourhood of the baskets; and the three young people followed, walking slowly over the grass. isabel had put off her mourning. she had never had but one black dress, poor child; and that being worn out, she was fain to fall back upon her ordinary costume. if she had looked pretty in the garden at camberwell, with tumbled hair and a dingy dress, she looked beautiful to-day, in clean muslin, fresh and crisp, fluttering in the spring breezes as she walked, and with her hair smoothly banded under a broad-leaved straw hat. her face brightened with the brightness of the sunshine and the charm of the landscape; her step grew light and buoyant as she walked upon the springing turf. her eyes lit up by-and-by, when the little party came to a low iron gate, beyond which there was a grove, a winding woodland patch, and undulating glades, and craggy banks half hidden under foliage, and, in a deep cleft below, a brawling waterfall for ever rushing over moss-grown rockwork, and winding far away to meet the river. "oh, how beautiful it is!" cried isabel; "how beautiful!" she was a cockney, poor child, and had spent the best part of her life amidst the suburban districts of camberwell and peckham. all this midlandshire beauty burst upon her like a sudden revelation of paradise. could the garden of eden have been more beautiful than this woodland grove?--where the ground was purple with wild hyacinths that grew under beeches and oaks centuries old; where the sunlight and shadows flickered on the mossy pathways; where the guttural warble of the blackbirds made perpetual music in the air. george looked wonderingly at the girl's rapt countenance, her parted lips, that were faintly tremulous with the force of her emotion. "i did not think there could be any place in england so beautiful," she said by-and-by, when george disturbed her with some trite remark upon the scene. "i thought it was only in italy and in greece, and those sort of places--where childe harold went--that it was beautiful like this. it makes one feel as if one could never go back to the world again, doesn't it?" she asked naïvely. george was fain to confess that, although the grove was very beautiful, it inspired him with no desire to turn hermit, and take up his abode therein. but isabel hardly heard what he said to her. she was looking away into mysterious vistas of light and shadow, and thinking that in such a spot as this the hero of a woman's life might appear in all his shining glory. if she could meet him now, this wonderful unknown being--the childe harold, the lara, of her life! what if it was to be so? what if she was to meet him now, and the story was appointed to begin to-day,--this very day,--and all her life henceforth was to be changed? the day was like the beginning of a story, somehow, inasmuch as it was unlike the other days of her life. she had thought of the holiday, and dreamt about it even more foolishly than george had done; for there had been some foundation for the young man's visions, while hers had been altogether baseless. what if lord hurstonleigh should happen to be strolling in his grove, and should see her and rescue her from death by drowning, or a mad bull, or something of that sort, and thereupon fall in love with her? nothing was more life-like or likely, according to izzie's experience of three-volume novels. unhappily she discovered from mr. raymond that lord hurstonleigh was an elderly married man, and was, moreover, resident in the south of france; so _that_ bright dream was speedily shattered. but there is no point of the compass from which a hero may not come. there was hope yet; there was hope that this bright spring-day might not close as so many days had closed upon the same dull record, the same empty page. mr. raymond was in his highest spirits to-day. he liked to be with young people, and was younger than the youngest of them in his fresh enjoyment of all that is bright and beautiful upon earth. he devoted himself chiefly to the society of his orphan _protégées_, and contrived to impart a good deal of information to them in a pleasant easy-going manner, that took the bitterness out of those pierian waters, for which the orphans had very small affection. they were stupid and unimpressionable; but, then, were they not the children of that unhappy consumptive niece of his, who had acquired, by reason of her many troubles, a kind of divine right to become a burden upon happy people? "if she had left me such an orphan as that girl isabel, i would have thanked her kindly for dying," mr. raymond mused "that girl has mental imitation,--the highest and rarest faculty of the human brain,--ideality, and comparison. what could i not make of such a girl as that? and yet--" mr. raymond only finished the sentence with a sigh. he was thinking that, after all, these bright faculties might not be the best gifts for a woman. it would have been better, perhaps, for isabel to have possessed the organ of pudding-making and stocking-darning, if those useful accomplishments are represented by an organ. the kindly phrenologist was thinking that perhaps the highest fate life held for that pale girl with the yellow tinge in her eyes was to share the home of a simple-hearted country surgeon, and rear his children to be honest men and virtuous women. "i suppose that _is_ the best," mr. raymond said to himself. he had dismissed the orphans now, and had sent them on to walk with sigismund smith, who kindly related to them the story of "lilian the deserted," with such suppressions and emendations as rendered the romance suitable to their tender years. the philosopher of conventford had got rid of the orphans, and was strolling by himself in those delicious glades, swinging his stick as he went, and throwing up his head every now and then to scent all the freshness of the warm spring air. "poor little orphan child!" he mused, "will anybody ever fathom her fancies or understand her dreams? will she marry that good, sheepish country surgeon, who has fallen in love with her? he can give her a home and a shelter; and she seems such a poor friendless little creature, just the sort of girl to get into some kind of mischief if she were left to herself. perhaps it's about the best thing that could happen to her. i should like to have fancied a brighter fate for her, a life with more colour in it. she's so pretty--_so_ pretty; and when she talks, and her face lights up, a sort of picture comes into my mind of what she would be in a great saloon, with clusters of lights about her, and masses of shimmering colour, making a gorgeous background for her pale young beauty; and brilliant men and women clustering round her, to hear her talk and see her smile. i can see her like this; and then, when i remember what her life is likely to be, i begin to feel sorry for her, just as if she were some fair young nun, foredoomed to be buried alive by-and-by. sometimes i have had a fancy that if _he_ were to come home and see her--but that's an old busybody's dream. when did a matchmaker ever create anything but matrimonial confusion and misery? i dare say beatrice kept her word, and _did_ make benedick wretched. no; miss sleaford must marry whom she may, and be happy or miserable, according to the doctrine of averages; and as for _him_--" mr. raymond stopped; and seeing the rest of the party happily engaged in gathering hyacinths under the low branches of the trees, he seated himself upon a clump of fallen timber, and took a book out of his pocket. it was a book that had been sent by post, for the paper wrapper was still about it. it was a neat little volume, bound in glistening green cloth, with uncut edges, and the gilt-letter title on the back of the volume set forth that the book contained "an alien's dreams." an alien's dreams could be nothing but poetry; and as the name of the poet was not printed under the title, it was perhaps only natural that mr. raymond should, not open the book immediately, but should sit turning and twisting the volume about in his hands, and looking at it with a contemptuous expression of countenance. "an alien!" he exclaimed; "why, in the name of all the affectations of the present day, should a young man with fifteen thousand a year, and one of the finest estates in midlandshire, call himself an alien? 'an alien's dreams'--and such dreams! i had a look at them this morning, without cutting the leaves. it's always a mistake to cut the leaves of young people's poetry. such dreams! surely no alien could have been afflicted with anything like them, unless he was perpetually eating heavy suppers of underdone pork, or drinking bad wine, or neglecting the ventilation of his bedroom. imperfect ventilation has a good deal to do with it, i dare say. to think that roland lansdell should write such stuff--such a clever young man as he is, too--such a generous-hearted, high-minded young fellow, who might be--" mr. raymond opened the volume in a very gingerly fashion, almost as if he expected something unpleasant might crawl out of it, and looked in a sideways manner between the leaves, muttering the first line or so of a poem, and then skipping on to another, and giving utterance to every species of contemptuous ejaculation between whiles. "imogen!" he exclaimed; "'to imogen!' as if anybody was ever called imogen out of shakespeare's play and monk lewis's ballad! 'to imogen:' 'do you ever think of me, proud and cruel imogen, as i think, ah! sadly think, of thee-- when the shadows darken on the misty lea, imogen, and the low light dies behind the sea?' 'broken!' 'shattered!' 'blighted!' lively titles to tempt the general reader! here's a nice sort of thing: 'like an actor in a play, like a phantom in a dream, like a lost boat left to stray rudderless adown the stream,-- this is what my life has grown, ida lee, since thy false heart left me lone, ida lee. and i wonder sometimes when the laugh is loud, and i wonder at the faces of the crowd, and the strange fantastic measures that they tread, till i think at last i must be dead-- till i half believe that i am dead.' and to think that roland lansdell should waste his time in writing this sort of thing! and here's his letter, poor boy!--his long rambling letter,--in which he tells me how he wrote the verses, and how writing them was a kind of consolation to him, a safety-valve for so much passionate anger against a world that doesn't exactly harmonize with the utopian fancies of a young man with fifteen thousand a year and nothing to do. if some rightful heir would turn up, in the person of one of roland's gamekeepers, now, and denounce my young friend as a wrongful heir, and turn him out of doors bag and baggage, and with very little bag and baggage, after the manner of those delightful melodramas which hold the mirror up to nature so exactly, what a blessing it would be for the author of 'an alien's dreams!' if he could only find himself without a sixpence in the world, what a noble young soldier in the great battle of life, what a triumphant hero, he might be! but as it is, he is nothing better than a colonel of militia, with a fine uniform, and a long sword that is only meant for show. my poor roland! my poor roland!" mr. raymond murmured sadly, as he dropped the little volume back into his pocket; "i am so sorry that you too should be infected with the noxious disease of our time, the fatal cynicism that transforms youth into a malady for which age is the only cure." but he had no time to waste upon any regretful musings about mr roland lansdell, sole master of lansdell priory, one of the finest seats in midlandshire, and who was just now wandering somewhere in greece, upon a byronic kind of tour that had lasted upwards of six months, and was likely to last much longer. it was nearly three o'clock now, and high time for the opening of the hampers, mr. raymond declared, when he rejoined the rest of the party, much to the delight of the orphans, who were always hungry, and who ate so much, and yet remained so pale and skeleton-like of aspect, that they presented a pair of perpetual phenomena to the eye of the physiologist. the baskets had been carried to a little ivy-sheltered arbour, perched high above the waterfall; and here mr. raymond unpacked them, bringing out his treasures one after another; first a tongue, then a pair of fowls, a packet of anchovy sandwiches, a great poundcake (at sight of which the eyes of the orphans glistened), delicate caprices in the way of pastry, semi-transparent biscuits, and a little block of stilton cheese, to say nothing of sundry bottles of madeira and sparkling burgundy. perhaps there never was a merrier party. to eat cold chicken and drink sparkling burgundy in the open air on a bright may afternoon is always an exhilarating kind of thing, though the scene of your picnic may be the bleakest of the sussex downs, or the dreariest of the yorkshire wolds; but to drink the sparkling wine in that little arbour of hurstonleigh, with the brawling of the waterfall keeping time to your laughter, the shadows of patriarchal oaks sheltering you from all the outer world, is the very acme of bliss in the way of a picnic. and then mr. raymond's companions were so young! it was so easy for them to leave all the past on the threshold of that lovely grove, and to narrow their lives into the life of that one bright day. even isabel forgot that she had a destiny, and consented to be happy in a simple girlish way, without a thought of the prince who was so long coming. it may be that the sparkling burgundy had something to do with george gilbert's enthusiasm; but, by and bye, after the débris of the dinner had been cleared away, and the little party lingered round the rustic table, talking with that expansion of thought and eloquence of language which is so apt to result from the consumption of effervescing wines in the open air, the young surgeon thought that all the earth could scarcely hold a more lovely creature than the girl who sat opposite to him, with her head resting against the rustic wood-work of the arbour, and her hat lying on her knee. she did not say very much, in comparison with sigismund and mr. raymond, who were neither of them indifferent hands at talking; but when she spoke, there was generally something vague and dreamy in her words,--something that set george wondering about her anew, and made him admire her more than ever. he forgot all the dictates of prudence now; he was false to all the grand doctrines of young manhood; he only remembered that isabel sleaford was the loveliest creature upon earth; he only knew that he loved her, and that his love, like all true love, was mingled with modest doubtfulness of his own merits, and exaggerated deference for hers. he loved her as purely and truly as if he had been able to express his passion in the noblest poem ever written; but not being able to express it, his love and himself seemed alike tame and commonplace. i must not dwell too long on this picnic, though it seemed half a lifetime to george gilbert, for he walked with isabel through the lanes between hurstonleigh grove and hurstonleigh village, and he loitered with her in the little churchyard at hurstonleigh, and stood upon the bridge beneath which the wayverne crept like a riband of silver, winding in and out among the rushes. he lingered there by her side while the orphans and sigismund and mr. raymond were getting tea ready at the model cottage, and putting the model old woman's wits into such a state of "flustrification," as she herself expressed it, that she could scarcely hold the tea-kettle, and was in imminent peril of breaking one of her best "chaney" saucers, produced from a corner cupboard in honour of her friend and patron, charles raymond. george loitered on the little stone bridge with isabel, and somehow or other, still emboldened by the sparkling burgundy, his passion all of a sudden found a voice, and he told her that he loved her, and that his highest hope upon earth was the hope of winning her for his wife. i suppose that simple little story must be a pretty story, in its way; for when a woman hears it for the first time, she is apt to feel kindly disposed to the person who recites it, however poorly or tamely he may tell his tale. isabel listened with a most delightful complacency; not because she reciprocated george's affection for her, but because this was the first little bit of romance in her life, and she felt that the story was beginning all at once, and that she was going to be a heroine. she felt this; and with this a kind of grateful liking for the young man at her side, through whose agency all these pleasant feelings came to her. and all this time george was pleading with her, and arguing, from her blushes and her silence, that his suit was not hopeless. emboldened by the girl's tacit encouragement, he grew more and more eloquent, and went on to tell her how he had loved her from the first; yes, from that first summer's afternoon--when he had seen her sitting under the pear-trees in the old-fashioned garden, with the low yellow light behind her. "of course i didn't know then that i loved you, isabel--oh, may i call you isabel? it is such a pretty name. i have written it over and over and over on the leaves of a blotting-book at home, very often without knowing that i was writing it. i only thought at first that i admired you, because you are so beautiful, and so different from other beautiful women; and then, when i was always thinking of you, and wondering about you, i wouldn't believe that it was because i loved you. it is only to-day--this dear, happy day--that has made me understand what i have felt all along; and now i know that i have loved you from the first, isabel, dear isabel, from the very first." all this was quite as it should be. isabel's heart fluttered like the wings of a young bird that essays its first flight. "this is what it is to be a heroine," she thought, as she looked down at the coloured pebbles, the floating river weeds, under the clear rippling water; and yet knew all the time, by virtue of feminine second-sight, that george gilbert was gazing at her and adoring her. she didn't like _him_, but she liked him to be there talking to her. the words she heard for the first time were delightful to her because of their novelty, but they took no charm from the lips that spoke them. any other good-looking, respectably-dressed young man would have been quite as much to her as george gilbert was. but then she did not know this. it was so very easy for her to mistake her pleasure in the "situation;" the rustic bridge, the rippling water, the bright spring twilight, even the faint influence of that one glass of sparkling burgundy, and, above all, the sensation of being a heroine for the first time in her life--it was so terribly easy to mistake all these for that which she did not feel,--a regard for george gilbert. while the young man was still pleading, while she was still listening to him, and blushing and glancing shyly at him out of those wonderful tawny-coloured eyes, which seemed black just now under the shadow of their drooping lashes, sigismund and the orphans appeared at the distant gate of the churchyard whooping and hallooing, to announce that the tea was all ready. "oh, isabel!" cried george, "they are coming, and it maybe ever so long before i see you again alone. isabel, dear isabel! do tell me that you will make me happy--tell me that you will be my wife!" he did not ask her if she loved him; he was too much in love with her--too entirely impressed with her grace and beauty, and his own inferiority--to tempt his fate by such a question. if she would marry him, and let him love her, and by-and-by reward his devotion by loving him a little, surely that would be enough to satisfy his most presumptuous wishes. "dear isabel, you will marry me, won't you? you can't mean to say no,--you would have said it before now. you would not be so cruel as to let me hope, even for a minute, if you meant to disappoint me." "i have known you--you have known me--such a short time," the girl murmured. "but long enough to love you with a love that will last all my life," george answered eagerly. "i shall have no thought except to make you happy, isabel. i know that you are so beautiful that you ought to marry a very different fellow from me,--a man who could give you a grand house, and carriages and horses, and all that sort of thing; but he could never love you better than i, and he mightn't love you as well, perhaps; and i'll work for you, isabel, as no man ever worked before. you shall never know what poverty is, darling, if you will be my wife." "i shouldn't mind being poor," isabel answered, dreamily. she was thinking that walter gay had been poor, and that the chief romance of florence's life had been the quiet wedding in the little city church, and the long sea voyage with her young husband. this sort of poverty was almost as nice as poor edith's miserable wealth, with diamonds flung about and trampled upon, and ruby velvet for every-day wear. "i shouldn't mind so much being poor," repeated the girl; for she thought, if she didn't marry a duke or a dombey, it would be at least something to experience the sentimental phase of poverty. george gilbert seized upon the words. "ah, then, you will marry me, dearest isabel? you will marry me, my own darling, my beautiful wife?" he was almost startled by the intensity of his own feelings, as he bent down and kissed the little ungloved hand lying on the moss-grown stonework of the bridge. "oh, isabel, if you could only know how happy you have made me! if you could only know--" she looked at him with a startled expression in her face. was it all settled, then, so suddenly--with so little consideration? yes, it was all settled; she was beloved with one of those passions that endure for a lifetime. george had said something to that effect. the story had begun, and she was a heroine. "good gracious me!" cried mr. smith, as he bounded on the parapet of the little bridge, and disported himself there in the character of an amateur blondin; "if the model old woman who has had so many prizes--we've been looking at her diplomas, framed and glazed, in a parlour that i couldn't have believed to exist out of "lilian the deserted" (who begins life as the cottager's daughter, you know, and elopes with the squire in top-boots out of a diamond-paned window--and i've been trying the model old woman's windows, and lilian couldn't have done it),--but i was about to remark, that if the old woman hasn't had a prize for a model temper, you two will catch it for keeping the tea waiting. why, izzie, what's the matter? you and george are both looking as spooney as--is it, eh?--yes, it is: isn't it? hooray! didn't i see it from the first?" cried mr. smith, striking an attitude upon the balustrade, and pointing down to the two blushing faces with a triumphant finger. "when george asked me for your letter, izzie,--the little bit of a letter you wrote me when you left camberwell,--didn't i see him fold it up as gingerly as if it had been a fifty-pound note and slip it into his waistcoat-pocket, and then try to look as if he hadn't done it? do you think i wasn't fly, then? a pretty knowledge of human nature i should have, if i couldn't see through that. the creator of octavio montefiasco, the demon of the galleys, flatters himself that he understands the obscurest diagnostic of the complaint commonly designated 'spoons.' don't be downhearted, george," exclaimed sigismund, jumping suddenly off the parapet of the bridge, and extending his hand to his friend. "accept the congratulations of one who, with a heart long ber-lighted by the ber-lasting in-fer-luence of ker-rime, can-er yet-er feel a generous ther-rob in unison with virr-tue." after this they all left the bridge, and went straight to the little cottage, where mr. raymond had been holding a species of yankee levée, for the reception of the model villagers, every one of whom knew him, and required his advice on some knotty point of law, medicine, or domestic economy. the tea was laid upon a little round table, close to the window, in the full light of the low evening sun. isabel sat with her back to that low western light, and george sat next to her, staring at her in a silent rapture, and wondering at himself for his own temerity in having asked her to be his wife. that tiresome sigismund called mr. raymond aside, before sitting down to tea, on the pretence of showing him a highly-coloured representation of joseph and his brethren, with a strong family likeness between the brethren; and told him in a loud whisper what had happened on the little bridge. so it was scarcely wonderful that poor george and isabel took their tea in silence, and were rather awkward in the handling of their teacups. but they were spared any further congratulations from sigismund, as that young gentleman found it was as much as he could do to hold his own against the orphans in the demolition of the poundcake, to say nothing of a lump of honeycomb which the model old woman produced for the delectation of the visitors. the twilight deepened presently, and the stars began to glimmer faintly in an opal-tinted sky. mr. raymond, sigismund, and the orphans, employed themselves in packing the baskets with the knives, plates, and glasses which had been used for the picnic. the fly was to pick them all up at the cottage. isabel stood in the little doorway, looking dreamily out at the village, the dim lights twinkling in the casement windows, the lazy cattle standing in the pond upon the green, and a man holding a couple of horses before the door of the little inn. "that man with the horses is jeffson, my father's gardener; i scarcely like to call him a servant, for he is a kind of connection of my poor mother's family," george said, with a little confusion; for he thought that perhaps miss sleaford's pride might take alarm at the idea of any such kindred between her future husband and his servant; "and he is _such_ a good fellow! and what do you think, isabel?" the young man added, dropping his voice to a whisper; "poor jeffson has come all the way from gray bridge on purpose to see you, because he has heard me say that you are very beautiful; and i think he guessed ever so long ago that i had fallen in love with you. would you have any objection to walk over yonder and see him, isabel, or shall i call him here?" "i'll go to him, if you like; i should like very much to see him," the girl answered. she took the arm george offered her. of course it was only right that she should take his arm. it was all a settled thing now. "miss sleaford has come to see you, jeff," the young man said, when they came to where the yorkshireman was standing. poor jeff had very little to say upon this rather trying occasion. he took off his hat, and stood bareheaded, smiling and blushing--as george spoke of him and praised him--yet all the while keeping a sharp watch upon isabel's face. he could see that pale girlish face very well in the evening light, for miss sleaford had left her hat in the cottage, and stood bareheaded, with her face turned towards the west, while george rambled on about jeff and his old school-days, when jeff and he had been such friends and playfellows. but the fly from conventford came rumbling out of the inn-yard as they stood there, and this was a signal for isabel to hurry back to the cottage. she held out her hand to mr. jeffson as she wished him good night, and then went back, still attended by george, who handed her into the fly presently, and wished her good night in a very commonplace manner; for he was a young man whose feelings hid themselves from indifferent eyes, and, indeed, only appeared under the influence of extreme emotion. chapter viii. about poor joe tillet's young wife. george went back to the seven stars, where mr. jeffson was waiting with the horses. he went back, after watching the open vehicle drive away; he went back with his happiness which was so new and strange, he thought a fresh life was to begin for him from this day, and would have almost expected to find the diseases of his patients miraculously cured, and a new phase of existence opening for them as well as for himself. he was going to be married; he was going to have this beautiful young creature for his wife. he thought of her; and the image of this pale-faced girl, sitting in the little parlour at graybridge, waiting to receive him when he came home from his patients, was such an overpowering vision, that his brain reeled as he contemplated it. was it true--could it be true--that all this inexpressible happiness was to be his? by-and-by, when he was riding brown molly slowly along the shadowy lanes that lie between hurstonleigh and waverly, his silent bliss overflowed his heart and sought to utter itself in words. william jeffson had always been george's confidant; why should he not be so now, when the young man had such need of some friendly ear to which to impart his happiness? somehow or other, the yorkshireman did not seem so eager as usual to take his part in his master's pleasure; he had seemed to hang back a little; for, under ordinary circumstances, george would have had no occasion to break the ice. but to-night mr. jeffson seemed bent on keeping silence, and george was obliged to hazard a preliminary question. "what do you think of her, jeff?" he asked. "what do i think to who, master jarge?" demanded the yorkshireman, in his simple vernacular. "why, isa--miss sleaford, of course," answered george, rather indignantly: was there any other woman in the world whom he could possibly think of or speak of to-night? mr. jeffson was silent for some moments, as if the question related to so profound a subject that he had to descend into the farthest depths of his mind before he could answer it. he was silent; and the slow trampling of the horses' hoofs along the lane, and the twittering of some dissipated bird far away in the dim woodland, were the only sounds that broke the evening stillness. "she's rare an' pretty, master jarge," the philosopher said at last, in a very thoughtful tone; "i a'most think i never see any one so pretty; though it isn't that high-coloured sort of prettiness they think so much to in graybridge. she's still and white, somehow, like the images in york minster; and her eyes seem far away as you look at her. yes, she is rare an' pretty." "i've told her how i love her; and--and you like her, jeff, don't you?" asked george, in a rapture of happiness that was stronger than his native shyness. "you like her, and she likes you, jeff, and will like you better as she comes to know you more. and she's going to be my wife, old jeff!" the young man's voice grew tremulous as he made this grand announcement. whatever enthusiasm there was in his nature seemed concentrated in the emotions of this one day. he had loved for the first time, and declared his love. his true and constant heart, that wondrous aloe which was to bear a single flower, had burst into sudden blossom, and all the vigour of the root was in that one bright bloom. the aloe-flower might bloom steadily on for ever, or might fade and die; but it could never know a second blossoming. "she's going to be my wife, jeff," he repeated, as if to say these words was in itself to taste an overpowering happiness. but william jeffson seemed very stupid to-night. his conversational powers appeared to have undergone a kind of paralysis. he spoke slowly, and made long pauses every now and then. "you're going to marry her, master jarge?" he said. "yes, jeff. i love her better than any living creature in this world--better than the world itself, or my own life; for i think, if she had answered me differently to-day, i should have died. why, you're not surprised, are you, jeff? i thought you guessed at the very first--before i knew it myself even--that i was in love with isabel. isabel! isabel! what a pretty name! it sounds like a flower, doesn't it?" "no; i'm not surprised, master jarge," the yorkshireman said, thoughtfully. "i knew you was in love with miss sleaford, regular fond about her, you know; but i didn't think--i didn't think--as you'd ask her to marry you so soon." "but why not, jeff?" cried the young man. "what should i wait for? i couldn't love her better than i do if i knew her for years and years, and every year were to make her brighter and lovelier than she is now. i've got a home to bring her to, and i'll work for her--i'll work for her as no man ever worked before to make a happy home for his wife." he struck out his arm, with his fist clenched, as if he thought that the highest round on the ladder of fortune was to be reached by any young surgeon who had the desire to climb. "why shouldn't i marry at once, jeff?" he demanded, with some touch of indignation. "i can give my wife as good a home as that from which i shall take her." "it isn't that as i was thinkin' of, master jarge," william jeffson answered, growing slower of speech and graver of tone with every word he spoke; "it isn't that. but, you see, you know so little of miss sleaford; you know naught but that she's different, somehow, to all the other lasses you've seen, and that she seems to take your fancy like, because of that. you know naught about her, master jarge; and what's still worse--ever so much worse than that--you don't know that she loves you. you don't know that, master jarge. if you was only sure of _that_, the rest wouldn't matter so much; for there's scarcely anything in this world as true love can't do; and a woman that loves truly can't be aught but a good woman at heart. i see miss sleaford when you was standin' talkin' by the seven stars, master jarge, and there wasn't any look in her face as if she knew what you was sayin', or thought about it; but her eyes looked ever so far away like: and though there was a kind of light in her face, it didn't seem as if it had anything to do with you. and, lor' bless your heart, master jarge, you should have seen my tilly's face when she come up the airey steps in the square where she was head-housemaid, and see me come up to london on purpose to surprise her. why, it was all of a shine like with smiles and brightness, at the sight o' _me_, master jarge; and i'm sure _i'm_ no great shakes to look at," added mr. jeffson, in a deprecating tone. the reins, lying loose upon brown molly's neck, shook with the sudden trembling of the hand that held them. george gilbert was seized with a kind of panic as he listened to his mentor's discourse. he had not presumed to solicit any confession of love from isabel sleaford; he had thought himself more than blest, inasmuch as she had promised to become his wife; yet he was absolutely terror-stricken at mr. jeffson's humiliating suggestion, and was withal very angry at his old playmate's insolence. "you mean that she doesn't love me?" he said sharply. "oh, master jarge, to be right down truthful with you, that's just what i do mean. she _doan't_ love you; as sure as i've seen true love lookin' out o' my tilly's face, i see somethin' that wasn't love lookin' out o' hearn to-night. i see just such a look in miss sleaford's eyes as i see once in a pretty young creetur that married a mate o' mine down home; a young man as had got a little bit o' land and cottage, and everything comfortable, and it wasn't the young creetur herself that was in favour o' marryin' him; but it was her friends that worried and bothered her till she said yes. she was a poor foolish young thing, that didn't seem to have the strength to say no. and i was at joe tillet's weddin',--his name was joe tillet,--and i see the pretty young creetur standin', like as i saw miss sleaford to-night, close alongside her husband while he was talkin', and lookin' prettier nor ever in her straw bonnet and white ribands; but her eyes seemed to fix themselves on somethin' far away like; and when her husband turned of a sudden and spoke to her, she started, like as if she was waked out of a dream. i never forgot that look o' hearn, master jarge; and i saw the same kind o' look to-night." "what nonsense you're talking, jeff!" george answered, with considerable impatience. "i dare say your friend and his wife were very happy?" "no, master jarge, they wasn't. and that's just the very thing that makes me remember the pretty young creetur's look that summer's day, as she stood, dresssed out in her wedding-clothes, by her loving husband's side. he was very fond of her, and for a good two year or so he seemed very happy, and was allus tellin' his friends he'd got the best wife in the three ridin's, and the quietest and most industrious; but she seemed to pine like; and by-and-by there was a young soldier came home that had been to the indies, and that was her first cousin, and had lived neighbours with her family when she was a bit of a girl. i won't tell you the story, master jarge; for it isn't the pleasantest kind o' thing to tell, nor yet to hear; but the end of it was, my poor mate joe was found one summer's morning--just such a day as that when he was married--hanging dead behind the door of one of his barns; and as for the poor wretched young creetur as had caused his death, nobody ever knew what came of her. and yet," concluded mr. jeffson, in a meditative tone, "i've heard that poor chap joe tell me so confident that his wife would get to love him dearly by-and-by, because he loved her so true and dear." george gilbert, made no answer to all this. he rode on slowly, with his head drooping. the yorkshireman kept an anxious watch upon his master; he could not see the expression of the young man's face, but he could see by his attitude that the story of joseph tillet's misadventure had not been without a depressing influence upon him. "si'thee noo. master jarge," said william jeffson, laying his hand upon the surgeon's wrist, and speaking in a voice that was almost solemn, "marryin' a pretty girl seems no more than gatherin' a wild rose out of the hedge to some men, they do it so light and careless-like,--just because the flower looks pretty where it's growin'. i'd known my tilly six year before i asked her to be my wife, master jarge; and it was only because she'd been true and faithful to me all that time, and because i'd never, look at her when i might, seen anything but love in her face, that i ventured at last to say to mysen, 'william jeffson, there's a lass that'll make thee a true wife.' doan't be in a hurry, master jarge; doan't! take the advice of a poor ignorant chap as has one great advantage over all your learnin', for he's lived double your time in the world. doan't be in a hurry. if miss sleaford loves ye true to-night, she'll love ye ten times truer this night twelvemonths, and truer still this time ten years. if she _doan't_ love you, master jarge, keep clear of her as you would of a venomous serpent; for she'll bring you worse harm than ever that could do, if it stung you to the heart, and made an end of you at once. i see joe tillet lyin' dead after the inquest that was held upon him, master jarge; and the thought that the poor desperate creeter had killed hisself warn't so bad to me as the sight of the suffering on his poor dead face,--the suffering that he'd borne nigh upon two year, master jarge, _and had held his tongue about_." chapter ix. miss sleaford's engagement. isabel sleaford was "engaged." she remembered this when she woke on the morning after that pleasant day in hurstonleigh grove, and that henceforward there existed a person who was bound to be miserable because of her. she thought this as she stood before the modest looking-glass, rolling the long plaits of hair into a great knot, that seemed too heavy for her head. her life was all settled. she was not to be a great poetess or an actress. the tragic mantle of the siddons might have descended on her young shoulders, but she was never to display its gloomy folds on any mortal stage. she was not to be anything great. she was only to be a country surgeon's wife. it was very commonplace, perhaps; and yet this lonely girl--this untaught and unfriended creature--felt some little pride in her new position. after all, she had read many novels in which the story was very little more than this,--three volumes of simple love-making, and a quiet wedding at the end of the chapter. she was not to be an edith dombey or a jane eyre. oh, to have been jane eyre, and to roam away on the cold moorland and starve,--wouldn't _that_ have been delicious! no, there was to be a very moderate portion of romance in her life; but still some romance. george gilbert would be very devoted, and would worship her always, of course. she gave her head a little toss as she thought that, at the worst, she could treat him as edith treated dombey, and enjoy herself that way; though she was doubtful how far edith dombey's style of treatment might answer without the ruby velvet, and diamond coronet, and other "properties" appertaining to the rôle. in the meanwhile, miss sleaford performed her duties as best she could, and instructed the orphans in a dreamy kind of way, breaking off in the middle of the preterperfect tense of a verb to promise them that they should come to spend a day with her when she was married, and neglecting their fingering of the overture to "masaniello" while she pondered on the colour of her wedding-dress. and how much did she think of george gilbert all this time? about as much as she would have thought of the pages who were to support the splendid burden of her trailing robes, if she had been about to be crowned queen of england. he was the bridegroom, the husband; a secondary character in the play of which she was the heroine. poor george's first love-letter came to her on the following day--a vague and rambling epistle, full of shadowy doubts and fears; haunted, as it were, by the phantom of the poor dead-and-gone joe tillet, and without any punctuation whatever: "but oh dearest ever dearest isabel for ever dear you will be to me if you cast me from you and i should go to america for life in graybridge would be worse than odious without you oh isabel if you do not love me i implore you for pity sake say so and end my misery i know i am not worthy of your love who are so beautiful and accomplished but oh the thought of giving you up is so bitter unless you yourself should wish it and oh there is no sacrifice on earth i would not make for you." the letter was certainly not as elegant a composition as isabel would have desired it to be; but then a love-letter is a love-letter, and this was the first miss sleaford had ever received. george's tone of mingled doubt and supplication was by no means displeasing to her. it was only right that he should be miserable: it was only proper that he should be tormented by all manner of apprehensions. they would have to quarrel by-and-by, and to bid each other an eternal farewell, and to burn each other's letters, and be reconciled again. the quietest story could not be made out without such legitimate incidents in the course of the three volumes. although isabel amused herself by planning her wedding-dress, and changed her mind very often as to the colour and material she had no idea of a speedy marriage. were there not three volumes of courtship to be gone through first? * * * * * sigismund went back to town after the picnic which had been planned for his gratification, and isabel was left quite alone with her pupils. she walked with them, and took her meals with them, and was with them all day; and it was only of a sunday that she saw much of mr. raymond. that gentleman was very kind to the affianced lovers. george gilbert rode over to conventford every alternate sunday, and dined with the family at oakbank. sometimes he went early enough to attend isabel and the orphans to church. mr. raymond himself was not a church-goer, but he sent his grand-nieces to perform their devotions, as he sent them to have their hair clipped by the hairdresser, or their teeth examined by the dentist. george plunged into the wildest extravagance in the way of waistcoats, in order to do honour to these happy sundays; and left off mourning for his father a month or so earlier than he had intended, in order to infuse variety into his costume. everything he wore used to look new on these sundays; and isabel, sitting opposite to him in the square pew would contemplate him thoughtfully when the sermon was dull, and wonder, rather regretfully, why his garments never wore themselves into folds, but always retained a hard angular look, as if they had been originally worn by a wooden figure, and had never got over that disadvantage. he wore a watch-chain that his father had given him,--a long chain that went round his neck, but which he artfully twisted and doubled into the semblance of a short one; and on this chain he hung a lucky sixpence and an old-fashioned silver vinaigrette; which trifles, when seen from a distance, looked almost like the gold charms which the officers stationed at conventford wore dangling on their waistcoats. and so the engagement dawdled on through all the bright summer months; and while the leaves were falling in the woods of midlandshire, george still entreating that the marriage might speedily take place, and isabel always deferring that ceremonial to some indefinite period. every alternate sunday the young man's horse appeared at mr. raymond's gate. he would have come every sunday, if he had dared, and indeed had been invited to do so by isabel's kind employer; but he had sensitive scruples about eating so much beef and mutton, and drinking so many cups of tea, for which he could make no adequate return to his hospitable entertainer. sometimes he brought a present for one of the orphans,--a work-box or a desk, fitted with scissors that wouldn't cut, and inkstands that wouldn't open (for there are no parkins and gotto in graybridge or its vicinity), or a marvellous cake, made by matilda jeffson. once he got up a little entertainment for his betrothed and her friends, and gave quite a dinner, with five sweets, and an elaborate dessert, and with the most plum-coloured of ports, and the brownest of sherries, procured specially from the cock at graybridge. but as the orphans, who alone did full justice to the entertainment, were afflicted with a bilious attack on the following day, the experiment was not repeated. but the dinner at graybridge was not without its good effect. isabel saw the house that was to be her home; and the future began to take a more palpable shape than it had worn hitherto. she looked at the little china ornaments on the mantel-piece, the jar of withered rose-leaves, mingled with faint odours of spices--the scent was very faint now, for the hands of george's dead mother had gathered the flowers. george took isabel through the little rooms, and showed her an old-fashioned work-table, with a rosewood box at the top, and a well of fluted silk, that had once been rose-coloured, underneath. "my mother used to sit at this table working, while she waited for my father; i've often heard him say so. you'll use the old work-box, won't you, izzie?" george asked, tenderly. he had grown accustomed to call her izzie now, and was familiar with her, and confided in her, as in a betrothed wife, whom no possible chance could alienate from him. he had ceased to regard her as a superior being, whom it was a privilege to know and worship. he loved her as truly as he had ever loved her; but not being of a poetical or sentimental nature, the brief access of romantic feeling which he had experienced on first falling in love speedily wore itself out, and the young man grew to contemplate his approaching marriage with perfect equanimity. he even took upon himself to lecture isabel, on sundry occasions, with regard to her love of novel-reading, her neglect of plain needlework, and her appalling ignorance on the subject of puddings. he turned over her leaves, and found her places in the hymn-book at church; he made her follow the progress of the lessons, with the aid of a church service printed in pale ink and a minute type; and he frowned at her sternly when he caught her eyes wandering to distant bonnets during the sermon. all the young man's old notions of masculine superiority returned now that he was familiar with miss sleaford; but all this while he loved her as only a good man can love, and supplicated all manner of blessings for her every night when he said his prayers. isabel sleaford improved very much in this matter-of-fact companionship, and in the exercise of her daily round of duty. she was no longer the sentimental young lady, whose best employment was to loll in a garden-chair reading novels, and who was wont to burst into sudden rhapsodies about george gordon lord byron and napoleon the first upon the very smallest provocation. she had tried george on both these subjects, and had found him entirely wanting in any special reverence for either of her pet heroes. talking with him on autumn sunday afternoons in the breezy meadows near conventford, with the orphans loitering behind or straggling on before, miss sleaford had tested her lover's conversational powers to the utmost; but as she found that he neither knew nor wished to know anything about edith dombey or ernest maltravers, and that he regarded the poems of byron and shelley as immoral and blasphemous compositions, whose very titles should be unknown to a well-conducted young woman, isabel was fain to hold her tongue about all the bright reveries of her girlhood, and to talk to mr. gilbert about what he did understand. he had read cooper's novels, and a few of lever's; and he had read sir walter scott and shakespeare, and was fully impressed with the idea that he could not over-estimate these latter writers; but when isabel began to talk about edgar ravenswood and lucy, with her face all lighted up with emotion, the young surgeon could only stare wonderingly at his betrothed. oh, if he had only been like edgar ravenswood! the poor, childish, dissatisfied heart was always wishing that he could be something different from what he was. perhaps during all that engagement the girl never once saw her lover really as he was. she dressed him up in her own fancies, and deluded herself by imaginary resemblances between him and the heroes in her books. if he was abrupt and disagreeable in his manner to her, he was rochester; and she was jane eyre, tender and submissive. if he was cold, he was dombey; and she feasted on her own pride, and scorned him, and made much of one of the orphans during an entire afternoon. if he was clumsy and stupid, he was rawdon crawley; and she patronized him, and laughed at him, and taunted him with little scraps of french with the albany-road accent, and played off all green-eyed becky's prettiest airs upon him. but in spite of all this the young man's sober common sense exercised a beneficial influence upon her; and by-and-by, when the three volumes of courtship had been prolonged to the uttermost, and the last inevitable chapter was close at hand, she had grown to think affectionately of her promised husband, and was determined to be very good and obedient to him when she became his wife. but for the pure and perfect love which makes marriage thrice holy,--the love which counts no sacrifice too great, no suffering too bitter,--the love which knows no change but death, and seems instinct with such divinity that death can be but its apotheosis,--such love as this had no place in isabel sleaford's heart. her books had given her some vague idea of this grand passion, and on comparing herself with lucy ashton and zuleika, with amy robsart and florence dombey and medora, she began to think that the poets and novelists were all in the wrong, and that there were no heroes or heroines upon this commonplace earth. she thought this, and she was content to sacrifice the foolish dreams of her girlhood, which were doubtless as impossible as they were beautiful. she was content to think that her lot in life was fixed, and that she was to be the wife of a good man, and the mistress of an old-fashioned house in one of the dullest towns in england. the time had slipped so quietly away since that spring twilight on the bridge at hurstonleigh, her engagement had been taken so much as a matter of course by every one about her, that no thought of withdrawal therefrom had ever entered into her mind. and then, again, why should she withdraw from the engagement? george loved her; and there was no one else who loved her. there was no wandering jamie to come home in the still gloaming and scare her with the sight of his sad reproachful face. if she was not george gilbert's wife, she would be nothing--a nursery-governess for ever and ever, teaching stupid orphans, and earning five-and-twenty pounds a year. when she thought of her desolate position, and of another subject which was most painful to her, she clung to george gilbert, and was grateful to him, and fancied that she loved him. the wedding-day came at last,--one bleak january morning, when conventford wore its barest and ugliest aspect; and mr. raymond gave his nursery-governess away, after the fashion of that simple protestant ceremonial, which is apt to seem tame and commonplace when compared with the solemn grandeur of a roman catholic marriage. he had given her the dress she wore, and the orphans had clubbed their pocket-money to buy their preceptress a bonnet as a surprise, which was a failure, after the usual manner of artfully-planned surprises. isabel sleaford pronounced the words that made her george gilbert's wife; and if she spoke them somewhat lightly, it was because there had been no one to teach her their solemn import. there was no taint of falsehood in her heart, no thought of revolt or disobedience in her mind; and when she came out of the vestry, leaning on her young husband's arm, there was a smile of quiet contentment on her face. "joe tillet's wife could never have smiled like that," thought george, as he looked at his bride. the life that lay before isabel was new; and, being little more than a child as yet, she thought that novelty must mean happiness. she was to have a house of her own, and servants, and an orchard and paddock, two horses, and a gig. she was to be called mrs. gilbert: was not her name so engraved upon the cards which george had ordered for her, in a morocco card-case, that smelt like new boots, and was difficult to open, as well as on those wedding-cards which the surgeon had distributed among his friends? george had ordered envelopes for these cards with his wife's maiden name engraved inside; but, to his surprise, the girl had implored him, ever so piteously, to counter-order them. "oh, don't have my name upon the envelopes, george," she said; "don't send my name to your friends; don't ever tell them what i was called before you married me." "but why not, izzie?" "because i hate my name," she answered, passionately. "i hate it; i hate it! i would have changed it if i could when--when--i first came here; but sigismund wouldn't let me come to his uncle's house in a false name. i hate my name; i hate and detest it." and then suddenly seeing wonderment and curiosity plainly expressed in her lover's face, the girl cried out that there was no meaning in what she had been saying, and that it was only her own romantic folly, and that he was to forgive her, and forget all about it. "but am i to send your name, or not, isabel?" george asked, rather coolly. he did not relish these flights of fancy on the part of the young lady he was training with a view to his own ideal of a wife. "you first say a thing, and then say you don't mean it. am i to send the envelopes or not?" "no, no, george; don't send them, please; i really do dislike the name. sleaford is such an ugly name, you know." chapter x. a bad beginning. mr. gilbert took his young wife to an hotel at murlington for a week's honeymoon--to a family hotel; a splendid mansion, isabel thought, where there was a solemn church-like stillness all day long, only broken by the occasional tinkling of silver spoons in the distance, or the musical chime of fragile glasses carried hither and thither on salvers of electro-plate. isabel had never stayed at an hotel before; and she felt a thrill of pleasure when she saw the glittering table, the wax-candles in silver branches, the sweeping crimson curtains drawn before the lofty windows, and the delightful waiter, whose manner was such a judicious combination of protecting benevolence and obsequious humility. mrs. george gilbert drew a long breath as she trifled with the shining damask napkin, so wondrously folded into a bishop's mitre, and saw herself reflected in the tall glass on the opposite side of the room. she wore her wedding-dress still; a sombre brown-silk dress, which had been chosen by george himself because of its homely merit of usefulness, rather than for any special beauty or elegance. poor isabel had struggled a little about the choice of that dress, for she had wanted to look like florence dombey on her wedding-day; but she had given way. her life had never been her own yet, and never was to be her own, she thought; for now that her step-mother had ceased to rule over her by force of those spasmodic outbreaks of violence by which sorely-tried matrons govern their households, here was george, with his strong will and sound common sense,--oh, how isabel hated common sense!--and she must needs acknowledge him as her master. but she looked at her reflection in the glass, and saw that she was pretty. was it only prettiness, or was it something more, even in spite of the brown dress? she saw her pale face and black hair lighted up by the wax-candles; and thought, if this could go on for ever,--the tinkling silver and glittering glass, the deferential waiter, the flavour of luxury and elegance, not to say edith dombeyism, that pervaded the atmosphere,--she would be pleased with her new lot. unhappily, there was only to be a brief interval of this aristocratic existence, for george had told his young wife confidentially that he didn't mean to go beyond a ten-pound note; and by-and-by, when the dinner-table had been cleared, he amused himself by making abstruse calculations as to how long that sum would hold out against the charges of the family hotel. * * * * * the young couple stayed for a week at murlington. they drove about the neighbourhood in an open fly, conscientiously admiring what the guide-books called the beauties of the vicinity; and the bleak winds of january tweaked their young noses as they faced the northern sky. george was happy--ah, how serenely happy!--in that the woman he so dearly loved was his wife. the thought of any sorrow darkling in the distance now, now that the solemn vows had been spoken, never entered into his mind. he had thought of william jeffson's warning sometimes, it is true, but only to smile in superb contempt of the simple creature's foolish talk. isabel loved him; she smiled at him when he spoke to her, and was gentle and obedient to his advice: he was, perhaps, a shade too fond of advising her. she had given up novel-reading, and employed her leisure in the interesting pursuit of plain needlework. her husband watched her complacently by the light of the wax-candles while she hemmed a cambric handkerchief, threading and unthreading her needle very often, and boggling a little when she turned the corners, and stopping now and then to yawn behind her pretty little pink fingers; but then she had been out in the open air nearly all day, and it was only natural that she should be sleepy. perhaps it might have been better for george gilbert if he had not solicited mr. pawlkatt's occasional attendance upon the parish patients, and thus secured a week's holiday in honour of his young wife. perhaps it would have been better if he had kept his ten-pound note in his pocket, and taken isabel straight to the house which was henceforth to be her home. that week in the hotel at murlington revealed one dreadful fact of these young people; a fact which the sunday afternoon walks at conventford had only dimly foreshadowed. they had very little to say to each other. that dread discovery, which should bring despair whenever it comes, dawned upon isabel, at least, all at once; and a chill sense of weariness and disappointment crept into her breast, and grew there, while she was yet ignorant of its cause. she was very young. she had not yet parted with one of her delusions, and she ignorantly believed that she could keep those foolish dreams, and yet be a good wife to george gilbert. he talked to her of his school-days, and then branched away to his youth, his father's decline and death, his own election to the parish duties, his lonely bachelorhood, his hope of a better position and larger income some day. oh, how dull and prosaic it all sounded to that creature, whose vague fancies were for ever wandering towards wonderful regions of poetry and romance! it was a relief to her when george left off talking, and left her free to think her own thoughts, as she laboured on at the cambric handkerchief, and pricked the points of her fingers, and entangled her thread. there were no books in the sitting-room at the family hotel; and even if there had been, this honeymoon week seemed to isabel a ceremonial period. she felt as if she were on a visit, and was not free to read. she sighed as she passed the library on the fashionable parade, and saw the name of the new novels exhibited on a board before the door; but she had not the courage to say how happy three cloth-covered volumes of light literature would have made her. george was not a reading man. he read the local papers and skimmed the "times" after breakfast; and then, there he was, all day long. there were two wet days during that week at murlington; and the young married people had ample opportunity of testing each other's conversational powers, as they stood in the broad window, watching occasional passers-by in the sloppy streets, and counting the rain-drops on the glass. the week came to an end at last; and on a wet saturday afternoon george gilbert paid his bill at the family hotel. the ten-pound note had held out very well; for the young bridegroom's ideas had never soared beyond a daily pint of sherry to wash down the simple repast which the discreet waiter provided for those humble guests in pitiful regard to their youth and simplicity. mr. gilbert paid his bill, while isabel packed her own and her husband's things; oh, what uninteresting things!--double-soled boots, and serviceable garments of grey woollen stuff. then, when all was ready, she stood in the window watching for the omnibus which was to carry her to her new home. murlington was only ten miles from graybridge, and the journey between the two places was performed in an old-fashioned stunted omnibus,--a darksome vehicle, with a low roof, a narrow door, and only one small square of glass on each side. isabel breathed a long sigh as she watched for the appearance of this vehicle in the empty street. the dull wet day, the lonely pavement, the blank empty houses to let furnished--for it was not the murlington season now--were not so dull or empty as her own life seemed to her this afternoon. was it to be for ever and for ever like this? yes; she was married, and the story was all over; her destiny was irrevocably sealed, and she was tired of it already. but then she thought of her new home, and all the little plans she had made for herself before her marriage,--the alterations and improvements she had sketched out for the beautification of her husband's house. somehow or other, even these ideas, which had beguiled her so in her maiden reveries, seemed to melt and vanish now. she had spoken to george, and he had received her suggestions doubtfully, hinting at the money which would be required for the carrying out of her plans,--though they were very simple plans, and did not involve much expense. was there to be nothing in her life, then? she was only a week married; and already, as she stood at the window listening to the slop-slop of the everlasting rain, she began to think that she had made a mistake. the omnibus came to the door presently, and she was handed into it, and her husband seated himself, in the dim obscurity, by her side. there was only one passenger--a wet farmer, wrapped in so many greatcoats that being wet outside didn't matter to him, as he only gave other people cold. he wiped his muddy boots on isabel's dress, the brown-silk wedding-dress which she had worn all the week; and mrs. gilbert made no effort to save the garment from his depredations. she leaned her head back in the corner of the omnibus, while the luggage was being bumped upon the roof above her, and let down her veil. the slow tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled down her pale cheeks. it was a mistake,--a horrible and irreparable mistake,--whose dismal consequences she must bear for ever and ever. she felt no dislike of george gilbert. she neither liked nor disliked him--only he could not give her the kind of life she wanted; and by her marriage with him she was shut out for ever from the hope of such a life. no prince would ever come now; no accidental duke would fall in love with her black eyes, and lift her all at once to the bright regions she pined to inhabit. no; it was all over. she had sold her birthright for a vulgar mess of potage. she had bartered all the chances of the future for a little relief to the monotony of the present,--for a few wedding-clothes, a card-case with a new name on the cards contained in it, the brief distinction of being a bride. george spoke to her two or three times during the journey to graybridge; but she only answered him in monosyllables. she had a "headache," she said,--that convenient feminine complaint which is an excuse for anything. she never once looked out of the window, though the road was new to her. she sat back in the dusky vehicle, while george and the farmer talked local politics; and their talk mingled vaguely with her own misery. the darkness grew thicker in the low-roofed carriage; the voices of george and the farmer died drowsily away; and by-and-by there was snoring, whether from george or the farmer isabel did not care to think. she was thinking of byron and of napoleon the first. ah, to have lived in his time, and followed him, and slaved for him, and died for him in that lonely island far out in the waste of waters! the tears fell faster as all her childish dreams came back upon her, and arrayed themselves in cruel contrast with her new life. mr. buckstone's bright irish heroine, when she has been singing her song in the cold city street,--the song which she has dreamt will be the means of finding her lost nursling,--sinks down at last upon a snow-covered doorstep, and sobs aloud because "it all seems so _real_!" life seemed "so real" now to isabel. she awakened suddenly to the knowledge that all her dreams were only dreams after all, and never had been likely to come true. as it was, they could never come true; she had set a barrier against the fulfilment of those bright visions, and she must abide by her own act. it was quite dark upon that wintry afternoon when the omnibus stopped at the cock at graybridge; and then there was more bumping about of the luggage before isabel was handed out upon the pavement to walk home with her husband. yes; they were to walk home. what was the use of a ten-pound note spent upon splendour in murlington, when the honeymoon was to close in degradation such as this? they walked home. the streets were sloppy, and there was mud in the lane where george's house stood; but it was only five or ten minutes' walk, as he said, and nobody in graybridge would have dreamed of hiring a fly. so they walked home, with the luggage following on a truck; and when they came to the house, there was only a dim glimmer in the red lamp over the surgery-door. all the rest was dark, for george's letter to mr. jeffson had been posted too late, and the bride and bridegroom were not expected. everybody knows the cruel bleakness which that simple fact involves. there were no fires in the rooms; no cheery show of preparation; and there was a faint odour of soft-soap, suggestive of recent cleaning. mrs. jeffson was up to her elbows in a flour-tub when the young master pulled his own door-bell; and she came out, with her arms white and her face dirty, to receive the newly-married pair. she set a flaring tallow-candle on the parlour-table, and knelt down to light the fire, exclaiming and wondering all the while at the unexpected arrival of mr. gilbert and his wife. "my master's gone over to conventford for some groceries, and we're all of a moodle like, ma'am," she said; "but we moost e'en do th' best we can, and make all coomfortable. master jarge said moonday as plain as words could speak when he went away, and th' letter's not coom yet; so you may joost excuse things not bein' straight." mrs. jeffson might have gone on apologizing for some time longer: but she jumped up suddenly to attend upon isabel, who had burst into a passion of hysterical sobbing. she was romantic, sensitive, impressionable--selfish, if you will; and her poor untutored heart revolted against the utter ruin of her dreams. "it is _so_ miserable!" she sobbed; "it all seems so miserable!" george came in from the stables, where he had been to see brown molly, and brought his wife some sal-volatile, in a wineglass of water; and mrs. jeffson comforted the poor young creature, and took her up to the half-prepared bedroom, where the carpets were still up, and where the whitewashed walls--it was an old-fashioned house, and the upper rooms had never been papered--and the bare boards looked cheerless and desolate in the light of a tallow-candle. mrs. jeffson brought her young mistress a cup of tea, and sat down by the bedside while she drank it, and talked to her and comforted her, though she did not entertain a very high opinion of a young lady who went into hysterics because there was no fire in her sitting-room. "i dare say it _did_ seem cold and lonesome and comfortless like," mrs. jeffson said, indulgently; "but we'll get things nice in no time." isabel shook her head. "you are very kind," she said; "but it wasn't that made me cry." she closed her eyes, not because she was sleepy, but because she wanted mrs. jeffson to go away and leave her alone. then, when the good woman had retired with cautious footsteps, and closed the door, mrs. george gilbert slowly opened her eyes, and looked at the things on which they were to open every morning for all her life to come. there was nothing beautiful in the room, certainly. there was a narrow mantel-piece, with a few blocks of derbyshire spar and other mineral productions; and above them there hung an old-fashioned engraving of some scriptural subject, in a wooden frame painted black. there was a lumbering old wardrobe--or press, as it was called--of painted wood, with a good deal of the paint chipped off; there was a painted dressing-table, a square looking-glass, with brass ornamentation about the stand and frame,--a glass in which george gilbert's grandfather had looked at himself seventy years before. isabel stared at the blank white walls, the gaunt shadows of the awkward furniture, with a horrible fascination. it was all so ugly, she thought, and her mind revolted against her husband, as she remembered that he could have changed all this, and yet had left it in its bald hideousness. and all this time george was busy in his surgery, grinding his pestle in so cheerful a spirit that it seemed to fall into a kind of tune, and thinking how happy he was now that isabel sleaford was his wife. chapter xi. "she only said, 'my life is weary!'" when the chill discomfort of that first evening at graybridge was past and done with, isabel felt a kind of remorseful regret for the mute passion of discontent and disappointment that had gone along with it. the keen sense of misery passed with the bad influence of the day and hour. in the sunlight her new home looked a little better, her new life seemed a little brighter. yes, she would do her duty; she would be a good wife to dear george, who was so kind to her, and loved her with such a generous devotion. she went to church with him at graybridge for the first time on the morning after that dreary wet saturday evening; and all through the sermon she thought of her new home, and what she would do to make it bright and pretty. the rector of graybridge had chosen one of the obscurest texts in st. paul's epistle to the hebrews for his sermon that morning, and isabel did not even try to understand him. she let her thoughts ramble away to carpets and curtains, and china flower-pots and venetian blinds, and little bits of ornamentation, which should transform george's house from its square nakedness into a bowery cottage. oh, if the trees had only grown differently! if there had been trailing parasites climbing up to the chimneys, and a sloping lawn, and a belt of laurels, and little winding pathways, and a rustic seat half-hidden under a weeping willow, instead of that bleak flat of cabbages and gooseberry-bushes, and raw clods of earth piled in black ridges across the dreary waste! after church there was an early dinner of some baked meat, prepared by mrs. jeffson. isabel did not take much notice of what she ate. she was at that early period of fife when a young person of sentimental temperament scarcely knows roast beef from boiled veal; but she observed that there were steel forks on the surgeon's table,--steel forks with knobby horn handles suggestive of the wildest species of deer,--and a metal mustard-pot lined with blue glass, and willow-pattern plates, and a brown earthenware jug of home-brewed beer; and that everything was altogether commonplace and vulgar. after dinner mrs. gilbert amused herself by going over the house with her husband. it was a very tolerable house, after all; but it wasn't pretty; it had been inhabited by people who were fully satisfied so long as they had chairs to sit upon, and beds to sleep on, and tables and cups and plates for the common purposes of breakfast, dinner, and supper, and who would have regarded the purchase of a chair that was not intended to be sat upon, or a cup that was never designed to be drunk out of, as something useless and absurd, or even, in an indirect manner, sinful, because involving the waste of money that might be devoted to a better use. "george," said isabel, gently, when she had seen all the rooms, "did you never think of re-furnishing the house?" "re-furnishing it! how do you mean, izzie?" "buying new furniture, i mean, dear. this is all so old-fashioned." george the conservative shook his head. "i like it all the better for that, izzie," he said; "it was my father's, you know, and his father's before him. i wouldn't change a stick of it for the world. besides, it's such capital substantial furniture; they don't make such chairs and tables nowadays." "no," izzie murmured with a sigh; "i'm very glad they don't." then she clasped her hands suddenly upon his arm, and looked up at him with her eyes opened to their widest extent, and shining with a look of rapture. "oh, george," she cried, "there was an ottoman in one of the shops at conventford with seats for three people, and little stands for people to put their cups and saucers upon, and a place in the middle for flowers! and i asked the price of it,--i often ask the price of things, for it's almost like buying them, you know,--and it was only eleven pounds ten, and i dare say they'd take less; and oh, george, if you'd make the best parlour into a drawing-room, and have that ottoman in the centre, and chintz curtains lined with rose-colour, and a white watered paper on the walls, and venetian shutters outside--" george put his hand upon the pretty mouth from which the eager words came so rapidly. "why, izzie," he said, "you'd ruin me before the year was out. all that finery would make a hole in a hundred pounds. no, no, dear; the best parlour was good enough for my father and mother, and it ought to be good enough for you and me. by-and-by, when my practice extends, izzie, as i've every reason to hope it will, we'll talk about a new kidderminster carpet,--a nice serviceable brown ground with a drab spot, or something of that kind,--but until then--" isabel turned away from him with a gesture of disgust. "what do i care about new carpets?" she said; "i wanted it all to look pretty." yes; she wanted it to look pretty; she wanted to infuse some beauty into her life--something which, in however remote a degree, should be akin to the things she read of in her books. everything that was beautiful gave her a thrill of happiness; everything that was ugly gave her a shudder of pain; and she had not yet learned that life was never meant to be all happiness, and that the soul must struggle towards the upper light out of a region of pain and darkness and confusion, as the blossoming plant pushes its way to the sunshine from amongst dull clods of earth. she wanted to be happy, and enjoy herself in her own way. she was not content to wait till her allotted portion of joy came to her; and she mistook the power to appreciate and enjoy beautiful things for a kind of divine right to happiness and splendour. to say that george gilbert did not understand his wife is to say very little. nobody, except perhaps sigismund smith, had ever yet understood isabel. she did not express herself better than other girls of her age; sometimes she expressed herself worse; for she wanted to say so much, and a hopeless confusion would arise every now and then out of that entanglement of eager thought and romantic rapture which filled her brain. in miss sleaford's own home people had been a great deal too much occupied with the ordinary bustle of life to trouble themselves about a young lady's romantic reveries. mrs. sleaford had thought that she had said all that was to be said about isabel when she had denounced her as a lazy, selfish thing, who would have sat on the grass and read novels if the house had been blazing, and all her family perishing in the flames. the boys had looked upon their half-sister with all that supercilious mixture of pity and contempt with which all boys are apt to regard any fellow-creature who is so weak-minded as to be a girl. mr. sleaford had been very fond of his only daughter; but he had loved her chiefly because she was pretty, and because of those dark eyes whose like he had never seen except in the face of that young broken-hearted wife so early lost to him. nobody had ever quite understood isabel; and least of all could george gilbert understand the woman whom he had chosen for his wife. he loved her and admired her, and he was honestly anxious that she should be happy; but then he wanted her to be happy according to his ideas of happiness, and not her own. he wanted her to be delighted with stiff little tea-parties, at which the misses pawlkatt, and the misses burdock, and young mrs. henry palmer, wife of mr. henry palmer junior, solicitor, discoursed pleasantly of the newest patterns in crochet, and the last popular memoir of some departed evangelical curate. isabel did not take any interest in these things, and could not make herself happy with these people. unluckily she allowed this to be seen; and, after a few tea-parties, the graybridge aristocracy dropped away from her, only calling now and then, out of respect for george, who was heartily compassionated on account of his most mistaken selection of a wife. so isabel was left to herself, and little by little fell back into very much the same kind of life as that which she had led at camberwell. she had given up all thought of beautifying the house which was now her home. after that struggle about the ottoman, there had been many other struggles in which isabel had pleaded for smaller and less expensive improvements, only to be blighted by that hard common sense with which mr. george gilbert was wont--on principle--to crush his wife's enthusiasm. he had married this girl because she was unlike other women; and now that she was his own property, he set himself conscientiously to work to smooth her into the most ordinary semblance of every-day womanhood, by means of that moral flat-iron called common sense. of course he succeeded to admiration. isabel abandoned all hope of making her new home pretty, or transforming george gilbert into a walter gay. she had made a mistake, and she accepted the consequences of her mistake; and fell back upon the useless dreamy life she had led so long in her father's house. the surgeon's duties occupied him all day long, and isabel was left to herself. she had none of the common distractions of a young matron. she had no servants to scold, no china to dust, no puddings or pies or soups or hashes to compound for her husband's dinner. mrs. jeffson did all that kind of work, and would have bitterly resented any interference from the "slip of a girl" whom mr. gilbert had chosen for his wife. isabel did as she liked; and this meant reading novels all day long, or as long as she had a novel to read, and writing unfinished verses of a lachrymose nature on half-sheets of paper. when the spring came she went out--alone; for her husband was away among his patients, and had no time to accompany her. she went for long rambles in that lovely elizabethan midlandshire, and thought of the life that never was to be hers. she wandered alone in the country lanes where the hedgerows were budding; and sat alone, with her book on her lap, among the buttercups and daisies in the shady angle of a meadow, where the untrimmed hawthorns made a natural bower above her head. stray pedestrians crossing the meadows near graybridge often found the doctor's young wife sitting under a big green parasol, with a little heap of gathered wild-flowers fading on the grass beside her, and with an open book upon her knees. sometimes she went as far as thurston's crag, the midlandshire seat of lord thurston; a dear old place, an island of mediæval splendour amidst a sea of green pasture-land, where, under the very shadow of a noble mansion, there was a waterfall and a miller's cottage that was difficult to believe in out of a picture. there was a wooden bridge across that noisiest of waterfalls, and a monster oak, whose spreading branches shadowed all the width of the water; and it was on a rough wooden bench under this dear old tree that isabel loved best to sit. the graybridge people were not slow to remark upon mrs. gilbert's habits, and hinted that a young person who spent so much of her time in the perusal of works of fiction could scarcely be a model wife. before george had been married three months, the ladies who had been familiar with him in his bachelorhood had begun to pity him, and had already mapped out for him such a career of domestic wretchedness as rarely falls to the lot of afflicted man. mrs. gilbert was _not_ pretty. the graybridge ladies settled that question at the very first tea-party from which george and his wife were absent. she was not pretty--when you looked into her. that was the point upon which the feminine critics laid great stress. at a distance, certainly, mrs. gilbert might look showy. the lady who hit upon the adjective "showy" was very much applauded by her friends. at a distance isabel might be called showy; always provided you like eyes that are so large as only by a miracle to escape from being goggles, and lips that are so red as to be unpleasantly suggestive of scarlet-fever. but _look into_ mrs. gilbert, and even this show of beauty vanished, and you only saw a sickly young person, with insignificant features and coarse black hair--so coarse and common in texture, that its abnormal length and thickness--of which isabel was no doubt inordinately proud--were very little to boast of. but while the graybridge ladies criticised his wife and prophesied for him all manner of dismal sufferings, george gilbert, strange to say, was very happy. he had married the woman he loved, and no thought that he had loved unwisely or married hastily ever entered his mind. when he came home from a long day's work, he found a beautiful creature waiting to receive him--a lovely and lovable creature, who put her arms around his neck and kissed him, and smiled at him. it was not in his nature to see that the graceful little embrace, and the welcoming kiss, and the smile, were rather mechanical matters that came of themselves. he took his dinner, or his weak tea, or his supper, as the case might be, and stretched his long legs across the familiar hearth-rug, and talked to his wife, and was happy. if she had an open book beside her plate, and if her eyes wandered to the page every now and then while he was talking to her, she had often told him that she could listen and read at the same time; and no doubt she could do so. what more than sweet smiles and gentle looks could the most exacting husband demand? and george gilbert had plenty of these; for isabel was very grateful to him, because he never grumbled at her idleness and novel-reading, or worried and scolded as her step-mother had done. she was fond of him, as she would have been fond of a big elder brother, who let her have a good deal of her own way; and so long as he left her unassailed by his common sense, she was happy, and tolerably satisfied with her life. yes; she was satisfied with her life, which was the same every day, and with the dull old town, where no change ever came. she was satisfied as an opium-eater is satisfied with the common every-day world; which is only the frame that holds together all manner of splendid and ever-changing pictures. she was content with a life in which she had ample leisure to dream of a different existence. oh, how she thought of that other and brighter life! that life in which there was passion, and poetry, and beauty, and rapture, and despair! here among these meadows, and winding waters, and hedgerows, life was a long sleep: and one might as well be a brown-eyed cow, browsing from week's end to week's end in the same pastures, as a beautiful woman with an eager yearning soul. mrs. gilbert thought of london--that wonderful west-end, may-fair london, which has no attribute in common with all the great metropolitan wilderness around and about it. she thought of that holy of holies, that inner sanctuary of life, in which all the women are beautiful and all the men are wicked, in which existence is a perpetual whirlpool of balls and dinner-parties and hothouse flowers and despair. she thought of that untasted life, and pictured it, and thrilled with a sense of its splendour and brightness, as she sat by the brawling waterfall, and heard the creaking wheel of the mill, and the splashing of the trailing weeds. she saw herself amongst the light and music of that other world; queen of a lamplit boudoir, where loose patches of ermine gleamed whitely upon carpets of velvet-pile; where, amid a confusion of glitter and colour, she might sit, nestling among the cushions of a low gilded chair, and listening contemptuously (she always imagined herself contemptuous) to the eloquent compliments of a wicked prince. and then the row! she saw herself in the row sometimes, upon an arab--a black arab--that would run away with her at the most fashionable time in the afternoon, and all but kill her; and then she would rein him up as no mortal woman ever reined in an arab steed before, and would ride slowly back between two ranks of half-scared, half-admiring faces, with her hair hanging over her shoulders and her eyelashes drooping on her flushed cheeks. and then the wicked prince, goaded by an unvarying course of contemptuous treatment, would fall ill, and be at the point of death; and one night, when she was at a ball, with floating robes of cloud-like lace and diamonds glimmering in her hair, he would send for her--that wicked, handsome, adorable creature would send his valet to summon her to his deathbed, and she would see him there in the dim lamplight, pale and repentant, and romantic and delightful; and as she fell on her knees in all the splendour of her lace and diamonds, he would break a blood-vessel and die! and then she would go back to the ball, and would be the gayest and most beautiful creature in all that whirlpool of elegance and beauty. only the next morning, when her attendants came to awaken her, they would find her--_dead_! amongst the books which mrs. gilbert most often carried to the bench by the waterfall was the identical volume which charles raymond had looked at in such a contemptuous spirit in hurstonleigh grove--the little thin volume of poems entitled "an alien's dreams." mr. raymond had given his nursery-governess a parcel of light literature soon after her marriage, and this poor little book of verses was one of the volumes in the parcel; and as isabel knew her byron and her shelley by heart, and could recite long melancholy rhapsodies from the works of either poet by the hour together, she fastened quite eagerly upon this little green-covered volume by a nameless writer. the alien's dreams seemed like her own fancies, somehow; for they belonged to that bright _other_ world which she was never to see. how familiar the alien was with that delicious region; and how lightly _he_ spoke of the hothouse flowers and diamonds, the ermine carpets and arab steeds! she read the poems over and over again in the drowsy june weather, sitting in the shabby little common parlour when the afternoons were too hot for out-door rambles, and getting up now and then to look at her profile in the glass over the mantel-piece, and to wonder whether she was like any of those gorgeous but hollow-hearted creatures upon whom the alien showered such torrents of melodious abuse. who was the alien? isabel had asked mr. raymond that question, and had been a little crashed by the reply. the alien was a midlandshire squire, mr. raymond had told her; and the word 'squire' suggested nothing but a broad-shouldered, rosy-faced man, in a scarlet coat and top-boots. surely no squire could have written those half-heartbroken, half-cynical verses, those deliciously scornful elegies upon the hollowness of lovely woman and things in general! isabel had her own image of the writer--her own ideal poet, who rose in all his melancholy glory, and pushed the red-coated country squire out of her mind when she sat with the "alien's dreams" in her lap, or scribbled weak imitations of that gentleman's poetry upon the backs of old envelopes and other scraps of waste paper. sometimes, when george had eaten his supper, isabel would do him the favour of reading aloud one of the most spasmodic of the alien's dreams. but when the alien was most melodiously cynical, and the girl's voice tremulous with sudden exaltation of feeling, her eyes, wandering by chance to where her husband sat, would watch him yawning behind his glass of ale, or reckoning a patient's account on the square tips of his fingers. on one occasion poor george was terribly perplexed to behold his wife suddenly drop her book upon her lap and burst into tears. he could imagine no reason for her weeping, and he sat aghast, staring at her for some moments before he could utter any word of consolation. "you don't care for the poetry, george," she cried, with the sudden passion of a spoiled child. "oh, why do you let me read to you, if you don't care for the poetry?" "but i do care for it, izzie, dear," mr. gilbert murmured, soothingly,--"at least i like to hear you read, if it amuses _you_." isabel flung the "alien" into the remotest corner of the little parlour, and turned from her husband as if he had stung her. "you don't understand me," she said; "you don't understand me." "no, my dear isabel," returned mr. gilbert, with dignity (for his common sense reasserted itself after the first shock of surprise); "i certainly do _not_ understand you when you give way to such temper as this without any visible cause." he walked over to the corner of the room, picked up the little volume, and smoothed the crumpled leaves; for his habits were orderly, and the sight of a book lying open upon the carpet was unpleasant to him. of course poor george was right, and isabel was a very capricious, ill-tempered young woman when she flew into a passion of rage and grief because her husband counted his fingers while she was reading to him. but then such little things as these make the troubles of people who are spared from the storm and tempest of life. such sorrows as these are the scotch mists, the drizzling rains of existence. the weather doesn't appear so very bad to those who behold it from a window; but that sort of scarcely perceptible drizzle chills the hapless pedestrian to the very bone. i have heard of a lady who was an exquisite musician, and who, in the dusky twilight of a honeymoon evening, played to her husband,--played as some women play, pouring out all her soul upon the keys of the piano, breathing her finest and purest thoughts in one of beethoven's sublime sonatas. "that's a very _pretty tune_," said the husband, complacently. she was a proud reserved woman, and she closed the piano without a word of complaint or disdain; but she lived to be old, and she never touched the keys again. chapter xii. something like a birthday. it happened that the very day after isabel's little outbreak of passion was a peculiar occasion in george gilbert's life. it was the nd of july, and it was his wife's birthday,--the first birthday after her marriage; and the young surgeon had planned a grand treat and surprise, quite an elaborate festival, in honour of the day. he had been, therefore, especially wounded by isabel's ill-temper. had he not been thinking of her and of her pleasure at the very moment when she had upbraided him for his lack of interest in the alien? he did _not_ care about the alien. he did not appreciate "clotilde, clotilde, my dark clotilde! with the sleepy light in your midnight glance. we let the dancers go by to dance; but we stayed out on the lamplit stair, and the odorous breath of your trailing hair swept over my face as your whispers stole like a gush of melody through my soul; clotilde, clotilde, my own clotilde!" but he loved his wife, and was anxious to please her; and he had schemed and plotted to do her pleasure. he had hired a fly--an open fly--for the whole day, and mrs. jeffson had prepared a basket with port and sherry from the cock, and all manner of north-country delicacies; and george had written to mr. raymond, asking that gentleman, with the orphans of course, to meet himself and his wife at warncliffe castle, the show-place of the county. this mr. raymond had promised to do; and all the arrangements had been carefully planned, and had been kept profoundly secret from isabel. she was very much pleased when her husband told her of the festival early on that bright summer morning, while she was plaiting her long black hair at the little glass before the open lattice. she ran to the wardrobe to see if she had a clean muslin dress. yes, there it was; the very lavender-muslin which she had worn at the hurstonleigh picnic. george was delighted to see her pleasure; and he sat on the window-sill watching her as she arranged her collar and fastened a little bow of riband at her throat, and admired herself in the glass. "i want it to be like that day last year, izzie; the day i asked you to marry me. mr. raymond will bring the key of hurstonleigh grove, and we're to drive there after we've seen the castle, and picnic there as we did before; and then we're to go to the very identical model old woman's to tea; and everything will be exactly the same." ah, mr. george gilbert, do you know the world so little as to be ignorant that no day in life ever has its counterpart, and that to endeavour to bring about an exact repetition of any given occasion is to attempt the impossible? it was a six-mile drive from graybridge to warncliffe, the grave old country-town,--the dear old town, with shady pavements, and abutting upper stories, pointed gables, and diamond-paned casements; the queer old town, with wonderful churches, and gloomy archways, and steep stony streets, and above all, the grand old castle, the black towers, and keep, and turrets, and gloomy basement dungeons, lashed for ever and for ever by the blue rippling water. i have never seen warncliffe castle except in the summer sunshine, and my hand seems paralyzed when i try to write of it. it is easy to invent a castle, and go into raptures about the ivied walls and mouldering turrets; but i shrink away before the grand reality, and can describe nothing; i see it all too plainly, and feel the tameness of my words too much. but in summer-time this elizabethan midlandshire is an english paradise, endowed with all the wealth of natural loveliness, enriched by the brightest associations of poetry and romance. mr. raymond was waiting at the little doorway when the fly stopped, and he gave isabel his arm and led her into a narrow winding alley of verdure and rockwork, and then across a smooth lawn, and under an arch of solid masonry to another lawn, a velvety grass-plat, surrounded by shrubberies, and altogether a triumph of landscape gardening. they went into the castle with a little group of visitors who have just collected on the broad steps before the door; and they were taken at once under the convoy of a dignified housekeeper in a rustling silk gown, who started off into a _vivâ-voce_ catalogue of the contents of the castle-hall, a noble chamber with armour-clad effigies of dead-and-gone warriors ranged along the walls, with notched battle-axes, and cloven helmets, and monster antlers, and indian wampum, and canadian wolf-skins, and australian boomerangs hanging against the wainscot, with carved oak and ebony muniment-chests upon the floor, and with three deep embayed windows overhanging the brightest landscape, the fairest streamlet in england. while the housekeeper was running herself down like a musical box that had been newly wound up, and with as much animation and expression in her tones as there is in a popular melody interpreted by a musical box, mr. raymond led isabel to the window, and showed her the blue waters of the wayverne bubbling and boiling over craggy masses of rockwork, green boulders, and pebbles that shimmered in the sunlight, and then, playing hide-and-seek under dripping willows, and brawling away over emerald moss and golden sand, to fall with a sudden impetus into the quiet depths beneath the bridge. "look at that, my dear," said mr. raymond; "that isn't in the catalogue. i'll tell you all about the castle: and we'll treat the lady in the silk dress as they treat the organ boys in london. we'll give her half-a-crown to move on, and leave us to look at the pictures, and the boomerangs, and the armour, and the tapestry, and the identical toilet-table and pin-cushion in which her gracious majesty stuck the pin she took out of her bonnet-string when she took luncheon with lord warncliffe a year or two ago. that's the gem of the catalogue in the housekeeper's opinion, i know. we'll look at the pictures by ourselves, mrs. gilbert, and i'll tell you all about them." to my mind, warncliffe castle is one of the pleasantest show-places in the kingdom. there are not many rooms to see, nor are they large rooms. there are not many pictures; but the few in every room are of the choicest, and are hung on a level with the eye, and do not necessitate that straining of the spinal column which makes the misery of most picture galleries. warncliffe castle is like an elegant little dinner; there are not many dishes, and everything is so good that you wish there were more. and at warncliffe the sunny chambers have the extra charm of looking as if people lived in them. you see not only murillos and titians, lelys and vandykes upon the walls; you see tables scattered with books, and women's handiwork here and there; and whichever way you turn, there is always the noisy wayverne brawling and rippling under the windows, and the green expanse of meadow and the glory of purple woodland beyond. isabel moved through the rooms in a silent rapture; but yet there was a pang of anguish lurking somewhere or other amid all that rapture. her dreams were all true, then; there were such places as this, and people lived in them. happy people, for whom life was all loveliness and poetry, looked out of those windows, and lolled in those antique chairs, and lived all their lives amidst caskets of florentine mosaic, and portraits by vandyke, and marble busts of roman emperors, and gobelin tapestries, and a hundred objects of art and beauty, whose very names were a strange language to isabel. for some people life was like this; and for her--! she shuddered as she remembered the parlours at graybridge,--the shabby carpet, the faded moreen curtains edged with rusty velvet, the cracked jars and vases on the mantel-piece; and even if george had given her all that she had asked--the ottoman, and the venetian blind, and the rose-coloured curtains--what would have been the use? her room would never have looked like _this_. she gazed about her in a sort of walking dream, intoxicated by the beauty of the place. she was looking like this when mr. raymond led her into one of the larger rooms, and showed her a little picture in a corner, a tintoretto, which he said was a gem. she looked at the tintoretto in a drowsy kind of way. it was a very brown gem, and its beauties were quite beyond mrs gilbert's appreciation. she was not thinking of the picture. she was thinking if, by some romantic legerdemain, she could "turn out" to be the rightful heiress of such a castle as this, with a river like the wayverne brawling under her windows, and trailing willow-branches dipping into the water. there were some such childish thoughts as these in her mind while mr. raymond was enlarging upon the wonderful finish and modelling of the venetian's masterpiece; and she was aroused from her reverie not by her companion's remarks, but by a woman's voice on the other side of the room. "you so rarely see that contrast of fair hair and black eyes," said the voice; "and there is something peculiar in those eyes." there was nothing particular in the words: it was the tone in which they were spoken that caught isabel gilbert's ear--the tone in which lady clara vere de vere herself might have spoken; a tone in winch there was a lazy hauteur softened by womanly gentleness,--a drawling accent which had yet no affectation, only a kind of liquid carrying on of the voice, like a _legato_ passage in music. "yes," returned another voice, which had all the laziness and none of the hauteur, "it is a pretty face. joanna of naples, isn't it? she was an improper person, wasn't she? threw some one out of a window, and made herself altogether objectionable." mr. raymond wheeled round as suddenly as if he had received an electric shock, and ran across the room to a gentleman who was lounging in a half-reclining attitude upon one of the broad window-seats. "why, roland, i thought you were at corfu!" the gentleman got up, with a kind of effort and the faintest suspicion of a yawn; but his face brightened nevertheless, as he held out his hand to isabel's late employer. "my dear raymond, how glad i am to see you! i meant to ride over to-morrow morning, for a long day's talk. i only came home last night, to please my uncle and cousin, who met me at baden and insisted on bringing me home with them. you know gwendoline? ah, yes, of course you do." a lady with fair banded hair and an aquiline nose--a lady in a bonnet which was simplicity itself, and could only have been produced by a milliner who had perfected herself in the supreme art of concealing her art--dropped the double eye-glass through which she had been looking at joanna of naples, and held out a hand so exquisitely gloved that it looked as if it had been sculptured out of grey marble. "i'm afraid mr. raymond has forgotten me," she said "papa and i have been so long away from midlandshire." "and lowlands was beginning to look quite a deserted habitation. i used to think of hood's haunted house whenever i rode by your gates, lady gwendoline. but you have come home for good now? as if _you_ could come for anything _but_ good," interjected mr. raymond, gallantly. "you have come with the intention of stopping, i hope." "yes," lady gwendoline answered, with something like a sigh; "papa and i mean to settle in midlandshire; he has let the clarges street house for a time; sold his lease, at least, i think; or something of that sort. and we know every nook and corner of the continent. so i suppose that really the best thing we can do is to settle at lowlands. but i suppose we sha'n't keep roland long in the neighbourhood. he'll get tired of us in a fortnight, and run away to the pyrenees, or cairo, or central africa; 'anywhere, anywhere, out of the world!'" "it isn't of _you_ that i shall get tired, gwendoline," said the gentleman called roland, who had dropped back into his old lounging attitude on the window-seat. "it's myself that bores me; the only bore a man can't cut. but i'm not going to run away from midlandshire. i shall go in for steam-farming, and agricultural implements, and drainage. i should think drainage now would have a very elevating influence upon a man's mind; and i shall send my short-horns to smithfield next christmas. and you shall teach me political economy, raymond; and we'll improve the condition of the farm-labourer; and we'll offer a prize for the best essay on, say, classical agriculture as revealed to us in the writings of virgil--that's the sort of thing for the farm-labourer, i should think--and gwendoline shall give the prizes: a blue riband and a gold medal, and a frieze coat, or a pair of top-boots." isabel still lingered by the tintoretto. she was aghast at the fact that mr. raymond knew, and was even familiar with, these beings. yes; beings--creatures of that remote sphere which she only knew in her dreams. standing near the tintoretto, she ventured to look very timidly towards these radiant creatures. what did she see? a young man half reclining in the deep embrasure of a window, with the summer sunshine behind him, and the summer breezes fluttering his loose brown hair--that dark rich brown which is only a warmer kind of black. she saw a man upon whom beneficent or capricious nature, in some fantastic moment, had lavished all the gifts that men most covet and that women most admire. she saw one of the handsomest faces ever seen since napoleon, the young conqueror of italy, first dazzled regenerated france; a kind of face that is only familiar to us in a few old italian portraits; a beautiful, dreamy, perfect face, exquisite alike in form and colour. i do not think that any words of mine can realize roland lansdell's appearance; i can only briefly catalogue the features, which were perfect in their way, and yet formed so small an item in the homogeneous charm of this young man's appearance. the nose was midway betwixt an aquiline and a grecian, but it was in the chiselling of the nostril, the firmness and yet delicacy of the outline, that it differed from other noses; the forehead was of medium height, broad, and full at the temples; the head was strong in the perceptive faculties, very strong in benevolence, altogether wanting in destructiveness; but mr. raymond could have told you that veneration and conscientiousness were deficient in roland lansdell's cranium,--a deficiency sorely to be lamented by those who knew and loved the young man. his eyes and mouth formed the chief beauty of his face; and yet i can describe neither, for their chief charm lay in the fact that they were indescribable. the eyes were of a nondescript colour; the mouth was ever varying in expression. sometimes you looked at the eyes, and they seemed to you a dark bluish-grey; sometimes they were hazel; sometimes you were half beguiled into fancying them black. and the mouth was somehow in harmony with the eyes; inasmuch as looking at it one minute you saw an expression of profound melancholy in the thin flexible lips; and then in the next a cynical smile. very few people ever quite understood mr. lansdell, and perhaps this was his highest charm. to be puzzled is the next thing to being interested; to be interested is to be charmed. yes, capricious nature had showered her gifts upon roland lansdell. she had made him handsome, and had attuned his voice to a low melodious music, and had made him sufficiently clever; and, beyond all this, had bestowed upon him that subtle attribute of grace, which she and she alone can bestow. he was always graceful. involuntarily and unconsciously he fell into harmonious attitudes. he could not throw himself into a chair, or rest his elbow upon a table, or lean against the angle of a doorway, or stretch himself full-length upon the grass to fall asleep with his head upon his folded arms, without making himself into a kind of picture. he looked like a picture just now as he lounged in the castle window, with his face turned towards mr. raymond. the lady, who was called lady gwendoline, put up her eye-glass to look at another picture; and in that attitude isabel had time to contemplate her, and saw that she too was graceful, and that in every fold of her simple dress--it was only muslin, but quite a different fabric from isabel's muslin--there was an indescribable harmony which stamped her as the creature of that splendid sphere which the girl only knew in her books. she looked longer and more earnestly at lady gwendoline than at roland lansdell, for in this elegant being she saw the image of herself, as she had fancied herself so often--the image of a heartless aristocratic divinity, for whose sake people cut their throats, and broke blood-vessels, and drowned themselves. george came in while his wife was looking at lady gwendoline, and mr. raymond suddenly remembered the young couple whom he had taken upon himself to chaperone. "i must introduce you to some new friends of mine, roland," he said; "and when you are ill you must send for mr. gilbert of graybridge, who, i am given to understand, is a very clever surgeon, and whom i _know_ to have the best moral region i ever had under my hand. gilbert, my dear boy, this is roland lansdell of mordred priory; lady gwendoline, mrs. gilbert--mr. lansdell. but you know something about my friend roland, i think, don't you, isabel?" mrs. gilbert bowed and smiled and blushed in a pleasant bewilderment. to be introduced, to two beings in this off-hand manner was almost too much for mr. sleaford's daughter. a faint perfume of jasmine and orange-blossom floated towards her from lady gwendoline's handkerchief, and she seemed to see the fair-haired lady who smiled at her, and the dark-haired gentleman who had risen at her approach, through an odorous mist that confused her senses. "i think you know something of my friend roland," mr. raymond repeated; "eh, my dear?" "oh, n--no indeed," isabel stammered; "i never saw--" "you never saw _him_ before to-day," answered mr. raymond, laying his hand on the young man's shoulder with a kind of protecting tenderness in the gesture. "but you've read his verses; those pretty drawing-room byronics, that refined and anglicised alfred-de-musset-ism, that you told me you are so fond of:--don't you remember asking me who wrote the verses, mrs. gilbert? i told you the alien was a country squire; and here he is--a midlandshire squire of high degree, as the old ballad has it." isabel's heart gave a great throb, and her pale face flushed all over with a faint carnation. to be introduced to a being was something, but to be introduced to a being who was also a poet, and the very poet whose rhapsodies were her last and favourite idolatry! she could not speak. she tried to say something--something very commonplace, to the effect that the verses were very pretty, and she liked them very much, thank you--but the words refused to come, and her lips only trembled. before she could recover her confusion, mr. raymond had hooked his arm through that of roland lansdell, and the two men had walked off together, talking with considerable animation; for charles raymond was a kind of adopted father to the owner of mordred priory, and was about the only man whom roland had ever loved or trusted. isabel was left by the open window with lady gwendoline and george, whose common sense preserved him serene and fearless in the presence of these superior creatures. "you like my cousin's poetry, then, mrs. gilbert?" said lady gwendoline. her cousin! the dark-haired being was cousin to this fair-haired being in the parisian bonnet,--a white-chip bonnet, with just one feathery sprig of mountain heather, and broad thick white-silk strings, tied under an aristocratic chin--a determined chin, mr. raymond would have told isabel. mrs. gilbert took heart of grace now that roland lansdell was out of hearing, and said, "oh, yes; she was very, very fond of the 'alien's dreams;' they were so sweetly pretty." "yes, they are pretty." lady gwendoline said, seating herself by the window, and playing with her bonnet-strings as she spoke; "they are very graceful. do sit down, mrs. gilbert; these show-places are so fatiguing. i am waiting for papa, who is talking politics with some midlandshire people in the hall. i am very glad you like roland's verses. they're not very original; all the young men write the same kind of poetry nowadays--a sort of mixture of tennyson, and edgar poe, and alfred de musset. it reminds me of balfe's music, somehow; it pleases, and one catches the melody without knowing how or why. the book made quite a little sensation. the 'westminster' was very complimentary, but the 'quarterly' was dreadful. i remember roland reading the article and laughing at it; but he looked like a man who tries to be funny in tight boots, and he called it by some horrible slang term--'a slate,' i think he said." isabel had nothing to say to this. she had never heard that the "quarterly" was a popular review; and, indeed, the adjective "quarterly" had only one association for her, and that was rent, which had been almost as painful a subject as taxes in the camberwell household. lady gwendoline's papa came in presently to look for his daughter. he was angus pierrepoint aubrey amyott pomphrey, earl of ruysdale; but he wore a black coat and grey trousers and waistcoat, just like other people, and had thick boots, and didn't look a bit like an earl, isabel thought. he said, "haw, hum--yes, to be sure, my dear," when lady gwendoline told him she was ready to go home; "been talking to witherston--very good fellow, witherston--wants to get his son returned for conventford, gen'ral 'lection next year, lib'ral int'rest--very gentlemanly young f'ler, the son;" and then he went to look for roland, whom he found in the next room with charles raymond; and then lady gwendoline wished isabel good morning, and said something very kind, to the effect that they should most likely meet again before long, lowlands being so near graybridge; and then the earl offered his arm to his daughter. she took it, but she looked back at her cousin, who was talking to mr. raymond, and glancing every now and then in a half-amused, half-admiring way at isabel. "i am so glad to think you like my wretched scribble, mrs. gilbert," he said, going up to her presently. isabel blushed again, and said, "oh, thank you; yes, they are very pretty;" and it was as much as she could do to avoid calling mr. lansdell "sir" or "your lordship." "you are coming with us, i suppose, roland?" lady gwendoline said. "oh, yes,--that is to say. i'll see you to the carriage." "i thought you were coming to luncheon." "no; i meant to come, but i must see that fellow percival, the lawyer, you know, gwendoline, and i want to have a little more talk with raymond. you'll go on and show mrs. gilbert the murillo in the next room, raymond? and i'll run and look for my cousin's carriage, and then come back." "we can find the carriage very well without you, roland," lady gwendoline answered quickly. "come, papa." the young man stopped, and a little shadow darkened over his face. "did you really ask me to luncheon?" he said. "you really volunteered to come, after breakfast this morning, when you proposed bringing us here." "did i? oh, very well; in that case i shall let the percival business stand over; and i shall ride to oakbank to-morrow morning, raymond, and lie on the grass and talk to you all day long, if you'll let me waste your time for once in a way. good-bye; good morning, mrs. gilbert. by the bye, how do you mean to finish the day, raymond?" "i'm going to take mr. and mrs. gilbert to hurstonleigh grove; or rather they take me, for they've brought a basket that reminds one of the derby-day. we're going to picnic in the grove, and drink tea at a cottage in honour of isabel's--mrs. gilbert's--birthday." "you must come and picnic at mordred some day. it's not as pretty as hurstonleigh, but we'll manage to find a rustic spot. if you care for partridges, mr. gilbert, you'll find plenty in the woods round mordred next september." the young man put on his hat, and went after his cousin and her father. isabel saw him walk along the bright vista of rooms, and disappear in a burst of sunshine that flooded the great hall when the door was opened. the beings were gone. for a brief interval she had been breathing the poetry of life; but she fell back now into the sober prose, and thought that half the grandeur of the castle was gone with those aristocratic visitors. "and how do you like my young kinsman?" mr. raymond asked presently. isabel looked at him with surprise. "he is your relation--mr. lansdell?" "yes. my mother was a lansdell. there's a sort of cousin-ship between roland and me. he's a good fellow--a very noble-hearted, high-minded young fellow; but--" but what? mr. raymond broke off with so deep a sigh, that isabel imagined an entire romance upon the strength of the inspiration. had he done anything wicked? that dark beautiful creature, who only wanted the soul-harrowing memory of a crime to render him perfect. had he fled his country, like byron? or buried a fellow-creature in a cave, like mr. aram? isabel's eyes opened to their widest extent; and charles raymond answered that inquiring glance. "i sigh when i speak of roland," he said, "because i know the young man is not happy. he stands quite alone in the world, and has more money than he knows how to spend; two very bad things for a young man. he's handsome and fascinating,--another disadvantage; and he's brilliant without being a genius. in short, he's just the sort of man to dawdle away the brightest years of his life in the drawing-rooms of a lot of women, and take to writing cynical trash about better men in his old age. i can see only one hope of redemption for him, and that is a happy marriage; a marriage with a sensible woman, who would get the whip-hand of him before he knew where he was. all the luckiest and happiest men have been henpecked. look at the fate of the men who won't be henpecked. look at swift: he was a lord of the creation, and made the women fear him; look at him drivelling and doting under the care of a servant-maid. look at sterne; and byron, who outraged his wife in fact, and satirized her in fiction. were their lives so much the better because they scorned the gentle guidance of the apron-string? depend upon it, mrs. gilbert, the men who lead great lives, and do noble deeds, and die happy deaths, are married men who obey their wives. i'm a bachelor; so of course i speak without prejudice. i do most heartily wish that roland lansdell may marry a good and sensible woman." "a good and sensible woman!" isabel gave an involuntary shudder. surely, of all the creatures upon this over-populated earth, a sensible woman was the very last whom roland lansdell ought to marry. he should marry some lovely being in perpetual white muslin, with long shimmering golden hair,--the dark men always married fair women in isabel's novels,--a creature who would sit at his feet, and watch with him, as astarte watched with manfred, till dismal hours in the silent night; and who should be consumptive, and should die some evening--promiscuously, as mrs. gamp would say--with flowers upon her breast, and a smile upon her face. isabel knew very little more of the pictures, or the men in armour, or the cannon in the chambers that yet remained to be seen at warncliffe castle. she was content to let mr. raymond and her husband talk. george admired the cannon, and the old-fashioned locks and keys, and the model of a cathedral made by a poor man out of old champagne corks, and a few other curiosities of the same order; and he enjoyed himself, and was happy to see that his wife was pleased. he could tell that, by the smile upon her lips, though she said so little. the drive from warncliffe to hurstonleigh grove was as beautiful as the drive from graybridge to warncliffe; for this part of midlandshire is a perpetual park. isabel sat back in the carriage, and thought of lady gwendoline's aristocratic face and white-chip bonnet, and wondered whether she was the sensible woman whom roland lansdell would marry. they would be a very handsome couple. mrs. gilbert could fancy them riding arabs--nobody worth speaking of ever rode anything but arab horses, in isabel's fancy--in rotten row. she could see lady gwendoline with a cavalier hat and a long sweeping feather, and roland lansdell bending over her horse's neck to talk to her, as they rode along. she fancied them in that glittering saloon, which was one of the stock scenes always ready to be pushed on the stage of her imagination. she fancied them in the midst of that brilliant supernumerary throng who wait upon the footsteps of heroes and heroines. she pictured them to herself going down to the grave through an existence of dinner-parties, and rotten row, and balls, and ascot cups. ah, what a happy life! what a glorious destiny! the picnic seemed quite a tame thing after these reveries in the carriage. the orphans met their uncle at the lodge-gate; and they all went across the grass, just as they had gone before, to the little low iron gate which mr. raymond was privileged to open with a special key; and into the grove, where the wonderful beeches and oaks made a faint summer darkness. was it the same grove? to isabel it looked as if it had been made smaller since that other picnic; and the waterfall, and the woodland vistas, and the winding paths, and the arbour where they were to dine,--it was all very well for the orphans to clap their hands, and disport themselves upon the grass, and dart off at a tangent every now and then to gather inconvenient wild-flowers; but, after all, there was nothing so very beautiful in hurstonleigh grove. isabel wandered a little way by herself, while mr. raymond and george and the orphans unpacked the basket. she liked to be alone, that she might think of lady gwendoline and her cousin. lady gwendoline pomphrey--oh, how grand it sounded! why, to have such a name as that would alone be bliss; but to be called gwendoline pomphrey, and to wear a white-chip bonnet with that heavenly sprig of heather just trembling on the brim, and those broad, carelessly tied, unapproachable strings! and then, like the sudden fall of a curtain in a brilliant theatre, the scene darkened, and isabel thought of her own life--the life to which she must go back when it was dark that night: the common parlour, or the best parlour,--what was the distinction, in their dismal wretchedness, that one should be called better than the other?--- the bread-and-cheese, the radishes,--and, oh, how george could eat radishes, crunch, crunch, crunch!--till madness would have been relief. this unhappy girl felt a blank despair as she thought of her commonplace home,--her home for ever and ever,--unbrightened by a hope, unsanctified by a memory; her home, in which she had a comfortable shelter, and enough to eat and to drink, and decent garments with which to cover herself; and where, had she been a good or a sensible young woman, she ought of course to have been happy. but she was not happy. the slow fever that had been burning so long in her veins was now a rapid and consuming fire. she wanted a bright life, a happy life, a beautiful life; she wanted to be like lady gwendoline, and to live in a house like warncliffe castle. it was not that she envied lord ruysdale's daughter, remember; envy had no part in her nature. she admired gwendoline pomphrey too much to envy her. she would like to have been that elegant creature's youngest sister, and to have worshipped her and imitated her in a spirit of reverence. she had none of the radical's desire to tear the trappings from the bloated aristocrat; she only wanted to be an aristocrat too, and to wear the same trappings, and to march through life to the same music. george came presently, very much out of breath, to take her back to the arbour where there was a lobster salad, and that fine high-coloured graybridge sherry, and some pale german wine which mr. raymond contributed to the feast. the orphans and the two gentlemen enjoyed themselves very much. mr. raymond could talk about medicine as well as political economy; and he and george entered into a conversation in which there were a great many hard words. the orphans ate--to do that was to be happy; and isabel sat in a corner of the arbour, looking dreamily out at the shadows on the grass, and wondering why fate had denied her the privilege of being an earl's daughter. the drowsy atmosphere of the hot summer's afternoon, the rhine wine, and the sound of his companion's voice, had such a pleasant influence upon mr. raymond, that he fell asleep presently while george was talking; and the young man, perceiving this, produced a midlandshire newspaper, which he softly unfolded, and began to read. "will you come and gather some flowers, izzie?" whispered one of the orphans. "there are wild roses and honeysuckle in the lane outside. do come!" mrs. gilbert was very willing to leave the arbour. she wandered away with the two children along those lonely paths, which now sloped downwards into a kind of ravine, and then wound upwards to the grove. the orphans had a good deal to say to their late governess. they had a new instructress, and "she isn't a bit like you, dear mrs. gilbert," they said; "and we love you best, though she's very kind, you know, and all that; but she's old, you know, very old,--more than thirty; and she makes us hem cambric frills, and does _go on so_ if we don't put away our things; and makes us do such horrid sums; and instead of telling us stories when we're out with her, as you used,--oh, don't you remember telling us pelham? how i love pelham, and dombey!--about the little boy that died, and florence--she teaches us botany and jology" (the orphans called it 'jology'), "and tertiary sandstone, and old red formations, and things like that; and oh, dear izzie, i wish you never had been married." isabel smiled at the orphans, and kissed them, when they entwined themselves about her. but she was thinking of the alien's dreams, and whether lady gwendoline was the "duchess! with the glittering hair and cruel azure eyes," regarding whom the alien was cynical, not to say abusive. mrs. gilbert felt as if she had never read the alien half enough. she had seen him, and spoken to him,--a real poet, a real, living, breathing poet, who only wanted to lame himself, and turn his collars down, to become a byron. she was walking slowly along the woodland pathway, with the orphans round about her, like a modern laocoon family without the serpents, when she was startled by a rustling of the branches a few paces from her, and looking up, with a sudden half-frightened glance, she saw the tall figure of a man between her and the sunlight. the man was mr. roland lansdell, the author of "an alien's dreams." "i'm afraid i startled you, mrs. gilbert," he said, taking off his hat and standing bareheaded, with the shadows of the leaves flickering and trembling about him like living things. "i thought i should find mr. raymond here, as he said you were going to picnic, and i want so much to talk to the dear old boy. so, as they know me at the lodge, i got them to let me in." isabel tried to say something; but the orphans, who were in no way abashed by the stranger's presence, informed mr. lansdell that their uncle charles was asleep in the arbour where they had dined.--"up there." the elder orphan pointed vaguely towards the horizon as she spoke. "thank you; but i don't think i shall find him very easily. i don't know half the windings and twistings of this place." the younger orphan informed mr. lansdell that the way to the arbour was quite straight,--he couldn't miss it. "but you don't know how stupid i am," the gentleman answered, laughing. "ask your uncle if i'm not awfully deficient in the organ of locality. would you mind--but you were going the other way, and it seems so selfish to ask you to turn back; yet if you would take compassion upon my stupidity, and show me the way--?" he appealed to the orphans, but he looked at isabel. he looked at her with those uncertain eyes,--blue with a dash of hazel, hazel with a tinge of blue,--eyes that were always half hidden under the thick fringe of their lashes, like a glimpse of water glimmering athwart overshadowing rushes. "oh, yes, if you like," the orphans cried simultaneously; "we don't mind going back a bit." they turned as they spoke, and isabel turned with them. mr. lansdell put on his hat, and walked amongst the long grass beside the narrow pathway. the orphans were very lively, and fraternized immediately with mr. lansdell. they were mr. raymond's nieces? then they were his poor cousin rosa harlow's children, of whom he had heard so much from that dear good raymond? if so, they were almost cousins of his, mr. lansdell went on to say, and they must come and see him at mordred. and they must ask mrs. gilbert to come with them, as they seemed so fond of her. the girls had plenty to say for themselves. yes; they would like very much to come to mordred priory; it was very pretty; their uncle charles had shown them the house one day when he took them out for a drive. it would be capital fun to come, and to have a picnic in the grounds, as mr. lansdell proposed. the orphans were ready for anything in the way of holiday-making. and for isabel, she only blushed, and said, "thank you," when roland lansdell talked of her visiting mordred with her late charges. she could not talk to this grand and beautiful creature, who possessed in his own person all the attributes of her favourite heroes. how often this young dreamer of dreams had fancied herself in such companionship as this; discoursing with an incessant flow of brilliant persiflage, half scornful, half playful; holding her own against a love-stricken marquis; making as light of a duke as mary queen of scots ever made of a presumptuous chastelar! and now that the dream was realized; now that this splendid byronic creature was by her side, talking to her, trying to make her answer him, looking at her athwart those wondrous eyelashes,--she was stricken and dumbfounded; a miserable, stammering school-girl; a pamela, amazed and bewildered by the first complimentary address of her aristocratic persecutor. she had a painful sense of her own deficiency; she knew all at once that she had no power to play the part she had so often fancied herself performing to the admiration of supernumerary beholders. but with all this pain and mortification there mingled a vague delicious happiness. the dream had come true at last. _this_ was romance--_this_ was life. she knew now what a pallid and ghastly broker's copy of a picture that last year's business had been; the standing on the bridge to be worshipped by a country surgeon; the long tedious courtship; the dowdy, vulgar, commonplace wedding,--she knew now how poor and miserable a mockery all that had been. she looked with furtive glances at the tall figure bending now and then under the branches of the trees; the tall figure in loose garments, which, in the careless perfection of their fashion, were so unlike anything she had ever seen before; the wonderful face in which there was the mellow fight and colour of a guido. she stole a few timid glances at mr. lansdell, and made a picture of him in her mind, which, like or unlike, must be henceforth the only image by which she would recognize or think of him. did she think of him as what he was,--a young english gentleman, idle, rich, accomplished, and with no better light to guide his erratic wanderings than an uncertain glimmer which he called honour? had she thought of him thus, she would have been surely wiser than to give him so large a place in her mind, or any place at all. but she never thought of him in this way. he was all this; he was a shadowy and divine creature, amenable to no earthly laws. he was here now, in this brief hour, under the flickering sunlight and trembling shadows, and to-morrow he would melt away for ever and ever into the regions of light, which were his every-day habitation. what did it matter, then, if she was fluttered and dazed and intoxicated by his presence? what did it signify if the solid earth became empyrean air under this foolish girl's footsteps? mrs. gilbert did not even ask herself these questions. no consciousness of wrong or danger had any place in her mind. she knew nothing, she thought nothing; except that a modern lord byron was walking by her side, and that it was a very little way to the arbour. chapter xiii. "oh, my cousin, shallow-hearted!" roland lansdell dined with his uncle and cousin at lowlands upon the day after the picnic; but he said very little about his afternoon ramble in hurstonleigh grove. he lounged upon the lawn with his cousin gwendoline, and played with the dogs, and stared at the old pictures in the long dreary billiard-room, where the rattle of the rolling balls had been unheard for ages; and he entered into a languid little political discussion with lord ruysdale, and broke off--or rather dropped out of it--in the middle with a yawn, declaring that he knew very little about the matter, and was no doubt making a confounded idiot of himself, and would his uncle kindly excuse him, and reserve his admirable arguments for some one better qualified to appreciate them? the young man had no political enthusiasm. he had been in the great arena, and had done his little bit of wrestling, and had found himself baffled, not by the force of his adversaries, but by the _vis inerticæ_ of things in general. eight or nine years ago roland lansdell had been very much in earnest,--too much in earnest, perhaps,--for he had been like a racehorse that goes off with a rush and makes running for all the other horses, and then breaks down ignominiously midway betwixt the starting-post and the judge's chair. there was no "stay" in this bright young creature. if the prizes of life could have been won by that fiery rush, he would have won them; but as it was, he was fain to fall back among the ranks nameless, and let the plodders rush on towards the golden goal. thus it was that roland lansdell had been a kind of failure and disappointment. he had begun so brilliantly, he had promised so much. "if this young man is so brilliant at one-and-twenty," people had said to one another, "what will he be by the time he is forty-five?" but at thirty roland was nothing. he had dropped out of public life altogether, and was only a drawing-room favourite; a lounger in gay continental cities; a drowsy idler in fair grecian islands; a scribbler of hazy little verses about pretty women, and veils, and fans, and daggers, and jealous husbands, and moonlit balconies, and withered orange-flowers, and poisoned chalices, and midnight revels, and despair; a beautiful useless, purposeless creature; a mark for manoeuvring mothers; a hero for sentimental young ladies,--altogether a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. this was the man whom lady gwendoline and her father had found at baden baden, losing his money _pour se distraire_. gwendoline and her father were on their way back to england. they had gone abroad for the benefit of the earl's income; but continental residence is expensive nowadays, and they were going back to lowlands, lord ruysdale's family seat, where at least they would live free of house-rent, and where they could have garden-stuff and dairy produce, and hares and partridges, and silvery trout from the fish-ponds in the shrubberies, for nothing: and where they could have long credit from the country tradesfolk, and wax or composition candles for something less than tenpence apiece. lord ruysdale persuaded roland to return with them, and the young man assented readily enough. he was tired of the cantinent; he was tired of england too, for the matter of that; but those german gaming-places, those grecian islands, those papist cities where the bells were always calling the faithful to their drowsy devotions in darksome old cathedrals, were his last weariness, and he said, yes; he should be glad to see mordred again; he should enjoy a month's shooting; and he could spend the winter in paris. paris was as good as any other place in the winter. he had so much money and so much leisure, and so little knew what to do with himself. he knew that his life was idle and useless; but he looked about him, and saw that very little came of other men's work; he cried with the preacher, the son of david, king in jerusalem, "behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit, and there is no profit under the sun: that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered: the thing that has been, it is that which shall be." do you remember that saying of mirabeau's which mr. lewes has put upon the title-page of his wonderful life of robespierre: "this man will do great things," said the statesman,--i quote loosely from memory,--"for he believes in himself?" roland lansdell did not believe in himself; and lacking that grand faculty of self-confidence, he had grown to doubt and question all other things, as he doubted and questioned himself. "i will do my best to lead a good life, and be useful to my fellow-creatures," mr. lansdell said, when he left magdalen college, oxford, with a brilliant reputation, and the good wishes of all the magnates of the place. he began life with this intention firmly implanted in his mind. he knew that he was a rich man, and that there was a great deal expected of him. the parable of the talents was not without its import to him, though he had no belief in the divinity of the teacher. there was no great enthusiasm in his nature, but he was very sincere; and he went into parliament as a progressive young liberal, and set to work honestly to help his fellow-creatures. alas for poor humanity! he found the task more wearisome than the labour of sisyphus, or the toil of the daughters of danäus. the stone was always rolling back upon the labourer; the water was perpetually pouring out of the perforated buckets. he cultivated the working man, and founded a club for him, where he might have lectures upon geology and astronomy, and where, after twelve hours' bricklaying or road-making, he might improve his mind with the works of stuart mill or m'culloch, and where he could have almost anything; except those two simple things which he especially wanted,--a pint of decent beer and a quiet puff at his pipe. roland lansdell was the last man to plan any institution upon puritanical principles; but he _did not believe in himself_, so he took other people's ideas as the basis of his work; and by the time he opened his eyes to the necessity of beer and tobacco, the workman had grown tired and had abandoned him. this was only one of many schemes which mr. lansdell attempted while he was still very young, and had a faint belief in his fellow-creatures: but this is a sample of the rest. roland's schemes were not successful; they were not successful because he had no patience to survive preliminary failure, and wade on to ultimate success through a slough of despond and discouragement. he picked his fruit before it was ripe, and was angry when he found it sour, and would hew down the tree that bore so badly, and plant another. his fairest projects fell to the ground, and he left them there to rot; while he went away somewhere else to build new schemes and make fresh failures. moreover, mr. lansdell was a hot-headed, impulsive young man, and there were some things which he could not endure. he could bear ingratitude better than most people, because he was generous-minded, and set a very small price upon the favours he bestowed; but he could not bear to find that the people whom he sought to benefit were bored by his endeavours to help them. he had no ulterior object to gain, remember. he had no solemn conviction of a sacred duty to be performed at any cost to himself, in spite of every hindrance, in the face of every opposition. he only wanted to be useful to his fellow-creatures; and when he found that they repudiated his efforts, he fell away from them, and resigned himself to be useless, and to let his fellow-creatures go their own wilful way. so, almost immediately after making a brilliant speech about the poor-laws, at the very moment when people were talking of him as one of the most promising young liberals of his day, mr. lansdell abruptly turned his back upon st. stephen's, accepted the chiltern hundreds, and went abroad. he had experienced another disappointment besides the failure of his philanthropic schemes,--a disappointment that had struck home to his heart, and had given him an excuse for the cynical indifference, the hypochondriacal infidelity, which grew upon him from this time. mr. lansdell had been his own master from his earliest manhood, for his father and mother had died young. the lansdells were not a long-lived race; indeed, there seemed to be a kind of fatality attached to the masters of mordred priory: and in the long galleries where the portraits of dead-and-gone lansdells looked gravely down upon the frivolous creatures of to-day, the stranger was apt to be impressed by the youth of all the faces--the absence of those grey beards and bald foreheads which give dignity to most collections of family portraits. the lansdells of mordred were not a long-lived race, and roland's father had died suddenly when the boy was away at eton; but his mother, lady anna lansdell, only sister of the present earl of ruysdale, lived to be her son's companion and friend in the best and brightest years of his life. his life seemed to lose its brightness when he lost her; and i think this one great grief, acting upon a naturally pensive temperament, must have done much to confirm that morbid melancholy which overshadowed mr. lansdell's mind. his mother died; and the grand inducement to do something good and great, which might have made her proud and happy, died with her. roland said that he left the purest half of his heart behind him in the protestant cemetery at nice. he went back to england, and made those brilliant speeches of which i have spoken; and was not too proud to seek for sympathy and consolation from the person whom he loved next best to her whom he had lost,--that person was lady gwendoline pomphrey, his betrothed wife, the beloved niece of his dead mother. there had been so complete a sympathy between lady anna lansdell and her son, that the young man had suffered himself, half unconsciously, to be influenced by his mother's predilections. she was very fond of gwendoline; and when the two families were in midlandshire, gwendoline spent the greater part of her life with her aunt. she was two years older than roland, and she was a very beautiful young woman. a fragile-looking, aristocratic beauty, with a lofty kind of gracefulness in all her movements, and with cold blue eyes that would have frozen the very soul of an aspiring young lawrence. she was handsome, self-possessed, and accomplished; and lady anna lansdell was never tired of sounding her praises. so young roland, newly returned from oxford, fell--or imagined himself to have fallen--desperately in love with her; and while his brief access of desperation lasted, the whole thing was arranged, and mr. lansdell found himself engaged. he was engaged, and he was very much in love with his cousin. that two years' interval between their ages gave gwendoline an immense advantage over her lover; she practised a thousand feminine coquetries upon this simple generous lad, and was proud of her power over him, and very fond of him after her own fashion, which was not a very warm one. she was by no means a woman to consider the world well lost for love. her father had told her all about roland's circumstances, and that the settlements would be very handsome. she was only sorry that poor roland was a mere nobody, after all; a country gentleman, who prided himself upon the length of his pedigree and the grandeur of his untitled race; but whose name looked very insignificant when you saw it at the tail of a string of dukes and marquises in the columns of the "morning post." but then he might distinguish himself in parliament. there was something in that; and lady gwendoline brought all her power to bear upon the young man's career. she fanned the faint flames of his languid ambition with her own fiery breath. this girl, with her proud saxon beauty, her cold blue eyes, her pale auburn hair, was as ardent and energetic as joan of arc or elizabeth of england. she was a grand ambitious creature, and she wanted to marry a ruler, and to rule him; and she was discontented with her cousin because a crown did not drop on to his brows the moment he entered the arena. his speeches had been talked about; but, oh, what languid talk it had been! gwendoline wanted all europe to vibrate with the clamour of the name that was so soon to be her own. at the end of his second session roland went abroad with his dying mother. he came back alone, six weeks after his mother's death, and went straight to gwendoline for consolation. he found her in deep mourning; all a-glitter with bracelets and necklaces of shining jet; looking very fair and stately in her trailing black robes; but he found her drawing-room filled with callers, and he left her wounded and angry. he thought her so much a part of himself, that he had expected to find her grief equal to his own. he went to her again, in a passionate outbreak of grief and anger; told her that she was cold-hearted and ungrateful, and that she had never loved the aunt who had been almost a mother to her. lady gwendoline was the last woman in the world to submit to any such reproof. she was astounded by her lover's temerity. "i loved my aunt very dearly, mr. lansdell," she said; "so dearly that i could endure a great deal for her sake; but i can _not_ endure the insolence of her son." and then the earl of ruysdale's daughter swept out of the room, leaving her cousin standing alone in a sunlit window, with the spring breezes blowing in upon him, and the shrill voice of a woman crying primroses sounding in the street below. he went home, dispirited, disheartened, doubtful of himself, doubtful of lady gwendoline, doubtful of all the world; and early the next morning he received a letter from his cousin coolly releasing him from his engagement. the experience of yesterday had proved that they were unsuited to each other, she said; it was better that they should part now, while it was possible for them to part friends. nothing could be more dignified or more decided than the dismissal. mr. lansdell put the letter in his breast; the pretty perfumed letter, with the ruysdale arms emblazoned on the envelope, the elegant ladylike letter, which recorded his sentence without a blot or a blister, without one uncertain line to mark where the hand had trembled. the hand may have trembled, nevertheless; for lady gwendoline was just the woman to write a dozen copies of her letter rather than send one that bore the faintest evidence of her weakness. roland put the letter in his breast, and resigned himself to his fate. he was a great deal too proud to appeal against his cousin's decree; but he had loved her very sincerely, and if she had recalled him, he would have gone back to her and would have forgiven her. he lingered in england for a week or more after all the arrangements for his departure had been made; he lingered in the expectation that his cousin would recall him: but one morning, while he was sitting in the smoking-room at his favourite club, with his face hidden behind the pages of the "post," he burst into a harsh strident laugh. "what the deuce is the matter with you, lansdell?" asked a young man who had been startled by that sudden outbreak of unharmonious hilarity. "oh, nothing particular; i was looking at the announcement of my cousin gwendoline's approaching marriage with the marquis of heatherland. i'm rejoiced to see that our family is getting up in the world." "oh, yes, that's been in the wind a long time," the lounger answered, coolly. "everybody saw that heatherland was very far gone six months ago. he's been mooning about your cousin ever since they met at the bushes, sir francis luxmoor's leicestershire place. they used to say you were rather sweet in that quarter; but i suppose it was only a cousinly flirtation." "yes," said mr. lansdell, throwing down the paper, and taking out his cigar-case; "i suppose it was only what gwendoline would call a flirtation. you see, i have been abroad six months attending the deathbed of my mother. i could scarcely expect to be remembered all that time. will you give me a light for my cigar?" the faces of the two young men were very close together as roland lighted his cigar. mr. lansdell's pale-olive complexion had blanched a little, but his hand was quite steady, and he smoked half his trabuco before he left the club-room. the blow was sharp and unexpected, but lady gwendoline's lover bore it like a philosopher. "i am unhappy because i have lost her," he thought; "but should i have been happy with her, if i had married her? have i ever been happy in my life, or is there such a thing as happiness upon this unequally divided earth? i have played all my cards, and lost the game. philanthropy, ambition, love, friendship--i have lost upon every one of them. it is time that i should begin to enjoy myself." thus it was that mr. lansdell accepted the chiltern hundreds, and turned his back upon a country in which he had never been especially happy. he had plenty of friends upon the continent; and being rich, handsome, and accomplished, was fêted and caressed wherever he went. he was very much admired, and he might have been beloved; but that first disappointment had done its fatal work, and he did not believe that there was in all the world any such thing as pure and disinterested affection for a young man with a landed estate and fifteen thousand a year. so he lounged and dawdled away his time in drawing-rooms and boudoirs, on moonlit balconies, in shadowy orange-groves, beside the rippling arno, in the colonnades of venice, on the parisian boulevards, under the lime-trees of berlin, in any region where there was life and colour and gaiety, and the brightness of beautiful faces, and where a man of a naturally gloomy temperament might forget himself and be amused. he started with the intention of doing no harm; but with no better guiding principle than the intention to be harmless, a man can contrive to do a good deal of mischief. mr. lansdell's life abroad was neither a good nor a useful one. it was an artificial kind of existence, with spurious pleasures, spurious brilliancy,--a life whose brightest moments but poorly compensated for the dismal reaction that followed them. and in the meanwhile lady gwendoline did not become marchioness of heatherland; for, only a month before the day appointed for the wedding, young lord heatherland broke his neck in an irish steeple-chase. it was a terrible and bitter disappointment; but lady gwendoline showed her high breeding and her philosophy at the same time. she retired from the world in which her career had been hitherto so brilliantly successful, and bore her sorrow in silence. she, too, had played her best card, and had lost; and now that the marquis was dead, and rowland lansdell far away, people began to say that the lady had jilted her cousin, and that the loss of her titled lover was heaven's special judgment upon her iniquity,--though why poor lord heatherland should be sacrificed to lady gwendoline pomphrey's sin is rather a puzzling question. it may be that lord ruysdale's daughter hoped her cousin would return when he heard of the marquis's death. she knew that roland had loved her: and what was more likely than that he should come back to her, now that he knew she was once more free to be his wife? lady gwendoline kept the secrets of her own heart, and no one knew which of her two lovers had been dearest to her. she kept her own secrets; and, by-and-by, when she reappeared in the world, people saw that her beauty had suffered very little from her sorrow for her disappointment. she was still very handsome, but her prestige was gone. impertinent young _débutantes_ of eighteen called this splendid creature of four-and-twenty "quite old." wasn't she engaged to a mr. lansdell ever so long ago, and then to the marquis of heatherland? poor thing, how very sad! they wondered she did not go over to rome, or join miss sellon's sisterhood, or something of that kind. lady gwendoline's portrait still held its place in books of beauty, and she could see herself smiling in west-end printshops, with a preternaturally high forehead, and very long ringlets; but she felt that she was old--very old. gossipping dowagers talked aristocratic scandal openly before her, and said, "we don't mind _your_ hearing it, gwendoline dear, for of course you know the world, and that such things _do_ happen;" and a woman has seen the last of her youth when people say that sort of thing to her. she felt that she was very old. she had led a high-pressure kind of existence, in which a year stands for a decade; and now in her lonely old age she discovered that her father was very poor, and that his estates were mortgaged, and that henceforth her existence must be a wretched hand-to-mouth business, unless some distant relation, from whom lord ruysdale had expectations, would be good enough to die. the distant relation had died within the last twelve months, and the fortune inherited from him, though by no means a large one, had set the earl's affairs tolerably straight; so he had returned to lowlands, after selling the lease and furniture of his town-house. it was absurd to keep the town-house any longer for the sake of gwendoline, who was two-and-thirty years of age, and never likely to marry. lord ruysdale argued. so he had paid his debts, and had released his estate from some of its many incumbrances, and had come back to the home of his boyhood, to set up as a model farmer and country gentleman. so, in the bright july sunshine, gwendoline and her cousin lounged upon the lawn, and talked of old pleasures and old acquaintances, and the things that happened to them when they were young. if the lady ever cherished any hope that roland would return to his allegiance, that hope has now utterly vanished. he has forgiven her for all the past, and they are friends and first-cousins again; but there is no room for hope that they can ever be again what they have been. a man who can forgive so generously must have long ceased to love: that strange madness, so nearly allied to hatred, and jealousy, and rage, and despair, has no kindred with forgiveness. lady gwendoline knew that her chance was gone. she knew this; and there was a secret bitterness in her heart when she thought of it, and she was jealous of her cousin's regard, and exacting in her manner to him. he bore it all with imperturbable good temper. he had been hot-headed and fiery-tempered long ago, when he was young and chivalrous, and eager to be useful to his fellow-creatures; but now he was only a languid loiterer upon the earth, and his creed was the creed of the renowned american who has declared that "there is nothing new, and nothing true; and it don't signify." what did it matter? the crooked sticks would never be straight: that which was wanting would never be numbered. roland lansdell suffered from a milder form of that disease in a wild paroxysm of which swift wrote "gulliver," and byron horrified society with "don juan." he suffered from that moody desperation of mind which came upon hamlet after his mother's wedding, and neither man nor woman delighted him. but do not suppose that this young man gave himself melancholy or byronic airs upon the strength of the aching void at his own weary heart. he was a sensible young man; and he did not pose himself _à la_ lara, or turn down his collars, or let his beard grow. he only took life very easily, and was specially indulgent to the follies and vices of people from whom he expected so very little. he had gone back to midlandshire because he was tired of his continental wanderings; and now he was tired of mordred already, before he had been back a week. lady gwendoline catechised him rather closely as to what he had done with himself upon the previous afternoon; and he told her very frankly that he had strolled into hurstonleigh grove to see mr. raymond, and had spent an hour or two talking with his old friend, while mr. and mrs. gilbert and the children enjoyed themselves, and prepared a rustic tea, which would have been something like watteau, if watteau had been a dutchman. "it was very pretty, gwendoline, i assure you," he said. "mrs. gilbert made tea, and we drank it in a scalding state; and the two children were all of a greasy radiance with bread-and-butter. the doctor seems to be an excellent fellow; his moral region is something tremendous, raymond tells me, and he entertained us at tea with a most interesting case of fester." "oh, the doctor? that's mr. gilbert, is it not?" said lady gwendoline; "and what do you think of his wife, roland? you must have formed some opinion upon that subject, i should think, by the manner in which you stared at her." "did i stare at her?" cried mr. lansdell, with supreme carelessness. "i dare say i did; i always stare at pretty women. why should a man go into all manner of stereotyped raptures about a raffaelle or a guido, and yet feel no honest thrill of disinterested admiration when he looks at a picture fresh from the hands of the supreme painter, nature? who, by the way, makes as many failures, and is as often out of drawing, as any other artist. yes, i admire mrs. gilbert, and i like to look at her. i don't suppose she's any better than other people, but she's a great deal prettier. a beautiful piece of animated waxwork, with a little machinery inside, just enough to make her say, 'yes, if you please,' and 'no, thank you.' a lovely non-entity with yellow-black eyes. did you observe her eyes?" "no!" lady gwendoline answered, sharply; "i observed nothing except that she was a very dowdy-looking person. what, in heaven's name, is mr. raymond's motive for taking her up? he's always taking up some extraordinary person." "but mrs. gilbert is not an extraordinary person: she's very stupid and commonplace. she was nursery-maid, or nursery-governess, or something of that kind, to that dear good raymond's penniless nieces." there was no more said about mr. and mrs. gilbert. lady gwendoline did not care to talk about these common people, who came across her dull pathway, and robbed her of some few accidental rays of that light which was now the only radiance upon earth for her,--the light of her cousin's presence. ah, me! with what a stealthy step, invisible in the early sunshine, pitiless nemesis creeps after us, and glides past us, and goes on before to wait for us upon the other side of the hill, amidst the storm-clouds and the darkness! from the very first gwendoline had loved her cousin roland better than any other living creature upon this earth: but the chance of bringing down the bird at whose glorious plumage so many a fair fowler had levelled her rifle had dazzled and tempted her. the true wine of life was not that mawkish, sickly-sweet compound of rose-leaves and honey called love, but an effervescing, intoxicating beverage known as success, lady gwendoline thought: and in the triumph of her splendid conquest it seemed such an easy thing to resign the man she loved. but now it was all different. she looked back, and remembered what her life might have been: she looked forward, and saw what it was to be: and the face of nemesis was very terrible to look upon. thus it was that lady gwendoline was exacting of her cousin's attention, impatient of his neglect. oh, if she could have brought him back! if she could have kindled a new flame in the cold embers! alas! she knew that to do that would be to achieve the impossible. she looked in the glass, and saw that her aristocratic beauty was pale and faded; she felt that the story of her life was ended. the sea might break against the crags for ever and for ever; but the tender grace of a day that was dead could never return to her. "he loved me once," she thought, as she sat in the summer twilight, watching her cousin strolling on the lawn, smoking his after-dinner cigar, and looking so tired--so tired of himself and everything in the world. "he loved me once; it is something to remember that." the day was very dull at lowlands, mr. lansdell thought. there was a handsome house, a little old and faded, but very handsome notwithstanding; and there was a well-cooked dinner, and good wines; and there was an elegant and accomplished woman always ready to talk to him and amuse him;--and yet, somehow, it was all flat, stale, and unprofitable to this young man, who had lived the same kind of life for ten years, and had drained its pleasures to the very dregs. "we should laugh at a man who went on writing epic poems all his life, though people refused to read a line of his poetry; and no man can be expected to go on trying to improve the position of people who don't want to be improved. i've tried my hand at the working-man, and he has rejected me as an intrusive nuisance. i've no doubt he was 'in his right.' how should i like a reformer who wanted to set _me_ straight, and lay out my leisure hours by line and rule, and spend my money for me, and show me how to get mild turkish, and german wines, in the best and cheapest market?" mr. lansdell often thought about his life. it is not natural that a man, originally well disposed, should lead a bad and useless life without thinking of it. mr. lansdell was subject to gloomy fits of melancholy, in which the present seemed a burden, and the future a blank,--a great blank desert, or a long dreary bridge, like that which the genius showed to mirza in his morning vision, with dreadful pitfalls every here and there, down which unwary foot-passengers sank, engulfed in the dreadful blackness of a bottomless ocean. chapter xiv. under lord thurston's oak. while mr. lansdell remembered isabel gilbert as a pretty automaton, who had simpered and blushed when he spoke to her, and stammered shyly when she was called upon to answer him, the doctor's wife walked up and down the flat commonplace garden at graybridge-on-the-wayverne, and thought of her birthday afternoon, whose simple pleasures had been embellished by the presence of a demigod. yes, she walked up and down between two rows of straggling gooseberry-bushes, in a rapturous day-dream; a dangerous day-dream, in which roland lansdell's dark face shone dazzling and beautiful. was it wrong to think of him? she never asked herself that question. she had read sentimental books all her life, and had been passionately in love with heroes in three volumes, ever since she could remember. what did it matter whether she was in love with sir reginald glanville or mr. roland lansdell? one passion was as hopeless as the other, and as harmless therefore. she was never likely to see the lord of mordred priory again. had she not heard him tell mr. raymond that he should spend the winter in paris? mrs. gilbert counted the months upon her fingers. was november the winter? if so, mr. lansdell would be gone in four months' time. and in all those four months what likelihood was there that she should see him,--she, who was such a low degraded wretch as compared with this splendid being and those with whom it was his right to associate? never, no, never until now had she understood the utter hideousness and horror of her life. the square miserable parlour, with little stunted cupboards on each side of the fireplace, and shells and peacocks' feathers, and penny-bottles of ink, and dingy unpaid bills, upon the mantel-piece. she sat there with the july sun glaring in upon her through the yellow-white blind; she sat there and thought of her life and its squalid ugliness, and then thought of lady gwendoline at lowlands, and rebelled against the unkindness of a providence that had not made her an earl's daughter. and then she clasped her hands upon her face, and shut out the vulgar misery of that odious parlour--a _parlour_!--the very word was unknown in those bright regions of which she was always dreaming--and thought of roland lansdell. she thought of him, and she thought what her life might have been--if---- if what? if any one out of a hundred different visions, all equally childish and impossible, could have been realized. if she had been an earl's daughter, like lady gwendoline! if she had been a great actress, and roland lansdell had seen her and fallen in love with her from a stage-box! if he had met her in the walworth road two or three years ago; she fancied the meeting,--he in a cab, with the reins lightly held between the tips of his gloved fingers, and a tiny tiger swinging behind; and she standing on the kerbstone waiting to cross the road, and not out to fetch anything vulgar, only going to pay a water-rate, or to negotiate some mysterious "backing" of the spoons, or some such young-ladylike errand. and then she got up and went to the looking-glass to see if she really was pretty; or if her face, as she saw it in her day-dreams, was only an invention of her own, like the scenery and the dresses of those foolish dreams. she rested her elbows on the mantel-piece, and looked at herself, and pushed her hair about, and experimented with her mouth and eyes, and tried to look like edith dombey in the grand carker scene, and acted the scene in a whisper. no, she wasn't a bit like edith dombey; she was more like juliet, or desdemona. she lowered her eyelids, and then lifted them slowly, revealing a tender penetrating glance in the golden black eyes. "i'm _very_ sorry that you are not well!" she whispered. yes, she would do for desdemona. oh, if instead of marrying george gilbert, she had only run away to london, and gone straight to that enterprising manager, who would have been so sure to engage her! if she had done this, she might have played desdemona, and mr. lansdell might have happened to go to the theatre, and might have fallen desperately in love with her on the spot. she took a dingy volume of the immortal william's from a dusty row of books on one of the cupboards, and went up to her room and locked the door, and pleaded for cassio, and wept and protested opposite the looking-glass, before which three matter-of-fact generations of gilberts had shaved themselves. she was only nineteen, and she was a child, with all a child's eagerness for something bright and happy. it seemed only a very short time since she had longed for a gaily-dressed doll that adorned one of the walworth road shop-windows. her married life had not as yet invested her with any matronly dignity. she had no domestic cares or duties; for the simple household was kept in order by mrs. jeffson, who would have resented any interference from the young mistress. isabel went into the kitchen sometimes, when she was very much at a loss as to what she should do with herself, and sat in an old rocking-chair swinging languidly backwards and forwards, and watching kind-hearted tilly making a pie. there are some young women who take kindly to a simple domestic life, and have a natural genius for pies and puddings, and cutting and contriving, in a cheery, pleasant way, that invests poverty with a grace of its own; and when a gentleman wishes to marry on three hundred a year, he should look out for one of those bright household fairies. isabel had no liking for these things; to her the making of pastry was a wearisome business. it was all very well for ruth pinch to do it for once in a way, and to be admired by john westlock, and marry a rich and handsome young husband offhand. no doubt miss pinch knew instinctively that mr. westlock would come that morning while the beef-steak pudding was in progress. but to go on making puddings for tom pinch for ever and ever, with no john westlock! isabel left the house affairs to mrs. jeffson, and acted shakespearian heroines and edith dombey before her looking-glass, and read her novels, and dreamed her dreams, and wrote little scraps of poetry, and drew pen-and-ink profile portraits of mr. lansdell--always looking from right to left. she gave him very black eyes with white blanks in the centre, and streaky hair; she drew lady gwendoline and the chip bonnet also very often, if not quite as often as the gentleman; so there was no harm in it. mrs. gilbert was strictly punctilious with herself, even in the matter of her thoughts. she only thought of what _might_ have happened if mr. lansdell had met her long ago before her marriage. it is not to be supposed that she forgot roland's talk of some picnic or entertainment at mordred. she thought of it a great deal, sometimes fancying that it was too bright a thing to come to pass: at other times thinking that mr. lansdell was likely to call at any moment with a formal invitation for herself and her husband. the weather was very warm just now, and the roads very dusty; so mrs. gilbert stayed at home a good deal. he might come,--he might come at any unexpected moment. she trembled and turned hot at the sound of a double knock, and ran to the glass to smooth her disordered hair: but only the most commonplace visitors came to mr. gilbert's mansion; and isabel began to think that she would never see roland lansdell again. and then she plunged once more into the hot-pressed pages of the "alien," and read mr. lansdell's plaints, on toned paper, with long _s_'s that looked like _f_'s. and she copied his verses, and translated them into bad french. they were very difficult: how was she to render even such a simple sentence as "my own clotilde?" she tried such locutions as, "_ma propre clotilde_," "_ma clotilde particulière_;" but she doubted if they were quite academically correct. and she set the alien to tunes that he didn't match, and sang him in a low voice to the cracked notes of an old harpsichord which george's mother had imported from yorkshire. one day when she was walking with george,--one dreary afternoon, when george had less to do than usual, and was able to take his wife for a nice dusty walk on the high-road,--mrs. gilbert saw the man of whom she had thought so much. she saw a brown horse and a well-dressed rider sweep past her in a cloud of dust; and she knew, when he had gone by, that he was roland lansdell. he had not seen her any more than if there was no such creature upon this earth. he had not seen her. for the last five weeks she had been thinking of him perpetually, and he rode by and never saw that she was there. no doubt lord byron would have passed her by in much the same manner if he had lived: and would have ridden on to make a morning call upon that thrice-blessed italian woman, whose splendid shame it was to be associated with him. was it not always so? the moon is a cold divinity, and the brooks look up for ever and win no special radiance in recompense for their faithful worship: the sunflower is always turning to the sun, and the planet takes very little notice of the flower. did not napoleon snub madame de staël? and if isabel could have lived thirty years earlier, and worked her passage out to st. helena as ship's needle-woman, or something of that kind, and expressed her intention of sitting at the exile's feet for the rest of her natural life, the hero would have doubtless sent her back by the first homeward-bound vessel with an imperially proportioned flea in her ear. no, she must be content to worship after the manner of the brooks. no subtle power of sympathy was engendered out of her worship. she drew rather fewer profile views of mr. lansdell after that wretched dusty afternoon, and she left off hoping that he would call and invite her to mordred. she resumed her old habits, and went out again with shelley and the "alien," and the big green parasol. one day--one never-to-be-forgotten day, which made a kind of chasm in her life, dividing all the past from the present and the future--she sat on her old seat under the great oak-tree, beside the creaking mill-wheel and the plashing water; she sat in her favourite spot, with shelley on her lap and the green parasol over her head. she had been sitting there for a long time in the drowsy midday atmosphere, when a great dog came up to her, and stared at her, and snuffed at her hands, and made friendly advances to her; and then another dog, bigger, if anything, than the first, came bouncing over a stile and bounding towards her; and then a voice, whose sudden sound made her drop her book all confused and frightened, cried, "hi, frollo! this way, frollo." and in the next minute a gentleman, followed by a third dog, came along the narrow bridge that led straight to the bench on which she was sitting. her parasol had fallen back as she stooped to pick up her book, and roland lansdell could not avoid seeing her face. he thought her very pretty, as we know, but he thought her also very stupid; and he had quite forgotten his talk about her coming to mordred. "let me pick up the book, mrs. gilbert," he said. "what a pretty place you have chosen for your morning's rest! this is a favourite spot of mine." he looked at the open pages of the book as he handed it to her, and saw the title; and glancing at another book on the seat near her, he recognized the familiar green cover and beveled edges of the "alien." a man always knows the cover of his own book, especially when the work has hung rather heavily on the publisher's hands. "you are fond of shelley," he said. (he was considerably surprised to find that this pretty nonentity beguiled her morning walks with the perusal of the "revolt of islam.") "oh yes, i am very, very fond of him. wasn't it a pity that he was drowned?" she spoke of that calamity as if it had been an event of the last week or two. these things were nearer to her than all that common business of breakfast and dinner and supper which made up her daily life. mr. lansdell shot a searching glance at her from under cover of his long lashes. was this feminine affectation, provincial rosa-matilda-ism? "yes, it was a pity," he said; "but i fancy we're beginning to get over the misfortune. and so you like all that dreamy, misty stuff?" he added, pointing to the open book which isabel held in her hands. she was turning the leaves about, with her eyes cast down upon the pages. so would she have sat, shy and trembling, if sir reginald glanville, or eugene aram, or the giaour, or napoleon the great, or any other grand melancholy creature, could have been conjured into life and planted by her side. but she could not tolerate the substantive "stuff" as applied to the works of the lamented percy bysshe shelley. "i think it is the most beautiful _poetry_ that was ever written," she said. "better than byron's?" asked mr. lansdell; "i thought most young ladies made byron their favourite." "oh yes, i love byron. but then he makes one so unhappy, because one feels that he was so unhappy when he wrote. fancy his writing the 'giaour' late at night, after being out at parties where everybody adored him; and if he hadn't written it, he would have gone mad," said mrs. gilbert, opening her eyes very wide. "reading shelley's poetry seems like being amongst birds and flowers and blue rippling water and summer. it always seems summer in his poetry. oh, i don't know which i like best." was all this affectation, or was it only simple childish reality? mr. lansdell was so much given to that dreadful disease, disbelief, that he was slow to accept even the evidence of those eloquent blushes, the earnestness in those wonderful eyes, which could scarcely be assumed at will, however skilled in the light comedy of every-day life mrs. gilbert might be. the dogs, who had no misanthropical tendencies, had made friends with izzie already, and had grouped themselves about her, and laid their big paws and cold wet noses on her knee. "shall i take them away?" asked mr. lansdell. "i am afraid they will annoy you." "oh no, indeed; i am so fond of dogs." she bent over them and caressed them with her ungloved hands, and dropped shelley again, and was ashamed of her awkwardness. would edith dombey have been perpetually dropping things? she bent over a big black retriever till her lips touched his forehead, and he was emboldened to flap his great slimy tongue over her face in token of his affection. _his_ dog! yes, it had come to that already. mr. lansdell was that awful being, the mysterious "lui" of a thousand romances. roland had been standing upon the bridge all this time; but the bridge was very narrow, and as a labouring man came across at this moment with a reaping-hook across his shoulder, mr. lansdell had no choice except to go away, or else sit down on the bench under the tree. so he sat down at a respectful distance from mrs. gilbert, and picked up shelley again; and i think if it had not been for the diversion afforded by the dogs, isabel would have been likely to drop over into the brawling mill-stream in the intensity of her confusion. he was there by her side, a real living hero and poet, and her weak sentimental little heart swelled with romantic rapture; and yet she felt that she ought to go away and leave him. another woman might have looked at her watch, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, and gathered up her books and parasol, and departed with a sweeping curtsey and a dignified adieu to mr. lansdell. but isabel was planted to the spot, held by some fearful but delicious charm,--a magic and a mystic spell,--with which the plashing of the water, and the slow creaking of the mill-wheel, and a faint fluttering of leaves and flowers, the drowzy buzz of multitudinous insects, the thrilling song of shelley's own skylark in the blue heavens high above her head, blended in one sweet confusion. i acknowledge that all this was very hard upon the honest-hearted parish doctor, who was at this moment sitting in the faint atmosphere of a cottage chamber, applying fresh layers of cotton wool to the poor tortured arm of a sunday-school pupil, who had been all but burnt to death in the previous week. but then, if a man chooses to marry a girl because her eyes are black and large and beautiful, he must be contented with the supreme advantage he derives from the special attribute for which he has chosen her: and so long as she does not become a victim to cataract, or aggravated inflammation of the eyelids, or chronic ophthalmia, he has no right to complain of his bargain. if he selects his wife from amongst other women because she is true-hearted and high-minded and trustworthy, he has ample right to be angry with her whenever she ceases to be any one of these things. mr. lansdell and his dogs lingered for some considerable time under the shadow of the big oak. the dogs were rather impatient, and gave expression to their feelings by sundry yawns that were like half-stifled howls, and by eager pantings, and sudden and purposeless leaps, and short broken-off yelps or snaps; but roland lansdell was in no hurry to leave the region of thurston's crag. mrs. gilbert was not stupid, after all; she was something better than a pretty waxen image, animated by limited machinery. that pretty head was tilled with a quaint confusion of ideas, half-formed childish fancies, which charmed and amused this elegant loiterer, who had lived in a world where all the women were clever and accomplished, and able to express all they thought, and a good deal more than they thought, with the clear precision and self-possession of creatures who were thoroughly convinced of the infallibility of their own judgment. yes, mr. lansdell was amused by isabel's talk; and he led her on very gently, till her shyness vanished, and she dared to look up at his face as she spoke to him; and he attuned his own talk to the key of hers, and wandered with her in the valhalla of her heroes, from eugene aram to napoleon buonaparte. but in the midst of all this she looked all in a hurry at the little silver watch that george had given her, and found that it was past three. "oh, i must go, if you please," she said; "i have been out ever since eleven o'clock, and we dine at half-past four." "let me carry your books a little way for you, then," said mr. lansdell. "but are you going that way?" "yes, that is the very way i am going." the dogs were all excitement at the prospect of a move; they barked and careered about isabel, and rushed off as if they were going to run ten miles at a stretch, and then wheeled round with alarming suddenness and flew back to mrs. gilbert and their master. the nearest way to graybridge lay across all that swelling sea of lovely meadow-land, and there were a good many stiles to be crossed and gates to be opened and shut, so the walk occupied some time; and mr. lansdell must have had business to transact in the immediate neighbourhood of graybridge, for he walked all the way through those delicious meadows, and only parted with isabel at a gate that opened into the high-road near the entrance of the town. "i suppose you often stroll as far as thurston's crag?" mr. lansdell said. "oh yes, very often. it isn't too long a walk, and it is so pretty." "it is pretty. mordred is quite as near to you, though, and i think that you would like the garden at mordred; there are ruins, you know, and it's altogether very romantic. i will give you and mr. gilbert a key, if you would like to come there sometimes. oh, by the bye, i hope you haven't forgotten your promise to come to luncheon and see the pictures, and all that sort of thing." no, isabel had not forgotten; her face flushed suddenly at the thought of this rapturous vista opening before her. she was to see _him_ again, once more, in his own house, and then--and then it would be november, and he would go away, and she would never see him again. no, isabel had not forgotten; but until this moment all recollection of that invitation to the priory had been blotted out of mr. lansdell's mind. it flashed back upon him quite suddenly now, and he felt that he had been unduly neglectful of these nice simple-hearted gilberts, in whom his dear good raymond was so much interested. "i dare say you are fond of pictures?" he said, interrogatively. "oh yes, i am very, very fond of them." this was quite true. she was fond of everything that was beautiful,--ready to admire everything with ignorant childish enthusiasm,--pictures, and flowers, and fountains, and moonlit landscapes, and wonderful foreign cities, and everything upon this earth that was romantic, and different from her own life. "then will you ask mr. gilbert to accept an unceremonious invitation, and to bring you to the priory to luncheon,--say next tuesday, as that will give me time to invite my cousin gwendoline, and your old friend mr. raymond, and the two little girls who are so fond of you?" isabel murmured something to the effect that she would be very happy, and she was sure her husband would be very happy. she thought that no creature in the world could be otherwise than enraptured by such an invitation: and then she began to think of what she would wear, and to remember that there were greasy streaks and patches upon her brown silk wedding-dress, which was the best and richest garment her wardrobe contained. oh, if george would only give her a pale pearly-coloured silk that she had seen in a shop-window at murlington, and a black silk mantle, and white bonnet, and pearly gloves and boots and parasol to match the dress! there were people in the world rich enough to have all these things, she thought,--thrice-blessed creatures, who always walked in silk attire. mr. lansdell begged her to write him a line to say if tuesday would suit mr. gilbert. they were at the last gate by this time, and he lifted his hat with one hand while he held out the other to isabel. she touched it very lightly, with fingers that trembled a little at the thrilling contact. her gloves were rolled up in a little ball in her pocket. she was at an age when gloves are rather a nuisance than otherwise; it is only when women come to years of discretion that they are learned as to the conflicting merits of houbigant and piver. "good-bye. i shall see gwendoline this afternoon; and i shall rely upon you for tuesday. hi, frollo, quasimodo, caspar!" he was gone, with his dogs and a cloud of dust about his heels. even the dust imparted a kind of grandeur to him. he seemed a being who appeared and disappeared in a cloud, after the manner of some african genii. graybridge church clock chimed the half-hour after four, and mrs. gilbert hurried home, and went into the common parlour, where dinner was laid, with her face a little flushed, and her dress dusty. george was there already, whistling very loudly, and whittling a stick with a big knobby-handled clasp-knife. "why, izzie," he said, "what _have_ you been doing with yourself?" "_oh_, george!" exclaimed mrs. gilbert, in a tone of mingled triumph and rapture, "i have met mr. lansdell, and he was so polite, and he stopped and talked to me _ever_ so long; and we're to go there on tuesday, and lady gwendoline pomphrey is to be there to meet us,--only think of that!" "where?" cried george. "why, at mordred priory, of course. we're to go to luncheon: and, oh, george, remember you must _never_ call it 'lunch.' and i'm to write and say if you'll go; but of _course_ you will go, george." "humph!" muttered mr. gilbert, reflectively; "tuesday's an awkward day, rather. but still, as you say, izzie, it's a splendid connection, and a man oughtn't to throw away such a chance of extending his practice. yes, i think i'll manage it, my dear. you may write to say we'll go." and this was all; no rapture, no spark of enthusiasm. to tell the truth, the surgeon was hungry, and wanted his dinner. it came in presently, smelling very savoury,--but, oh, so vulgar! it was irish stew,--a horrible, plebeian dinner, such as hibernian labourers might devour after a day's bricklaying. isabel ate very little, and picked out all the bits of onion and put them aside on her plate. come what might, she would never, never eat onions again. _that_ degradation, at least, it was in her own power to avoid. after dinner, while george was busy in the surgery, mrs. gilbert set to work to compose her letter to mr. lansdell. she was to write to him--to him! it was to be only a ceremonious letter, very brief and commonplace: "mr. and mrs. gilbert present their compliments to mr. lansdell, and will be happy to," &c, &c. but even such a letter as this was a critical composition. in that sublime region in which mr. lansdell lived, there might be certain words and phrases that were indispensable,--there might be some arbitrary mode of expression, not to know which would argue yourself unknown. isabel looked into "dombey," but there was no help for her there. she would have been very glad if she could have found "mrs. grainger presents her compliments to mr. dombey," or "miss f. dombey has the pleasure to inform mr. gay--" or something of that kind, anywhere amongst those familiar pages. however, she was obliged to write her letter as best she might, on a sheet of paper that was very thick and slippery, and strongly impregnated with patchouli; and she sealed the envelope with a profile of lord byron imprinted upon white wax, the only stick that was to be had in graybridge, and to find which good-natured mr. jeffson scoured the town, while isabel was writing her letter. _roland lansdell, esqre.,_ _mordred priory._ to write such an address was in itself a pleasure. it was dark by the time mrs. gilbert had finished her letter, and then she began to think of her dress,--her dress for tuesday,--the tuesday which was henceforth to stand out from amongst all the other days in her life. would george give her a new silk dress? no; that was impossible. he would give her a sovereign, and she might "do up" the old one. she was fain to be content and thankful for so much; and she went up-stairs with a candle, and came down presently with two or three dresses on her arm. among them there was a white muslin, a good deal the worse for wear, but prettier than the silk; a soft transparent fabric, and with lace about it. mrs. gilbert determined upon wearing this dress; and early the next morning she went out and consulted with a little dressmaker, and brought the young woman home with her, and sat down with her in the sunny parlour to unpick and refashion and improve this white muslin robe. she told the dressmaker that she was going on a visit to mordred priory, and by nightfall almost everybody in graybridge knew that mr. and mrs. gilbert had received an invitation from mr. lansdell. chapter xv. roland says, "amen." isabel had met mr. lansdell on thursday; and by saturday night all her preparations were made, and the white dress, and a white muslin mantle to match it, were in the hands of mrs. jeffson, who was to get them up in the highest style of clear-starching. the sovereign had done a great deal. isabel had bought a new riband for her straw hat and a pair of pale straw-coloured gloves, and all manner of small matters necessary to the female toilet upon gala occasions. and now that everything was done, the time between saturday night and tuesday lay all before them,--a dreary blank, that must be endured somehow or other. i should be ashamed to say how very little of the rector's sermon isabel heard on sunday morning. she was thinking of mordred priory all the time she was in church, and the beautiful things that mr. lansdell would say to her, and the replies that she would make. she imagined it all, as was her habit to do. and on this summer sunday, this blessed day of quiet and repose, when there was no sound of the sickle in the corn-fields, and only the slow drip, drip, drip of the waterdrops from the motionless mill-wheel at thurston's crag, roland lansdell lounged all day in the library at mordred priory, reading a little, writing a little, smoking and pondering a great deal. what should he do with himself? that was the grand question which this young man found himself very often called upon to decide. he would stop at mordred till he was tired of mordred, and then he would go to paris; and when he was weary of that brilliant city, whose best delights familiarity had rendered indifferent to him, he would go rhine-ward, over all the old ground again, amongst all the old people. ten years is a very long time when you have fifteen thousand a year and nothing particular to do with yourself or your money. roland lansdell had used up all the delights of civilized europe; and the pleasures that seemed so freshly effervescent to other men were to him as champagne that has grown flat and vapid in the unemptied glasses on a deserted banquet-table. he sat to-day in the great window of the library--a deeply-embayed tudor window, jutting out upon a broad stone terrace, along whose balustrade a peacock stalked slowly in the sunshine. there were books on either side of the window; solid ranges of soberly-bound volumes, that reached from floor to ceiling on every side of the room; for the lansdells had been a studious and book-learned race time out of mind, and the library at mordred was worthy of its name. there was only one picture--a portrait by rembrandt, framed in a massive border of carved oak--above the high chimney-piece; a grave grand face, with solemn eyes that followed you wherever you went; a splendid earnest face, with the forehead mysteriously shadowed by the broad brim of a steeple-crowned hat. in the dark melancholy of that sombre countenance there was some vague resemblance to the face of the young man lounging in the sunny window this afternoon, smoking and pondering, and looking up now and then to call to the peacock on the balustrade. beyond that balustrade there was a fair domain, bounded far away by a battlemented wall; a lofty ivy-mantled wall, propped every here and there with mighty buttresses; a wall that had been built in the days when william of normandy enriched his faithful followers with the fairest lands of his newly-conquered realm. beyond that grand old boundary arose the square turret of the village church, coeval with the oldest part of mordred priory. the bells were swinging in the turret now, and the sound of them floated towards roland lansdell as he lounged in the open window. "only thirty years of age," he thought; "and how long it seems since i sat on my mother's knee in the shadowy, sleepy old pew yonder, and heard the vicar's voice humming under the sounding-board above our heads! thirty years--thirty profitless, tiresome years; and there is not a reaper in the fields, or a shock-headed country lad that earns sixpence a day by whooping to the birds amongst the corn, that is not of more use to his fellow-creatures than i am. i suppose though, at the worst, i'm good for trade. and i try my best not to do any harm--heaven knows i don't want to do any harm." it must have been a strange transition of ideas that at this moment led mr. lansdell to think of that chance meeting with the doctor's dark-eyed wife under the dense foliage of lord thurston's oak. "she's a pretty creature," he thought; "a pretty, inexperienced, shy little creature. just the sort of woman that a hardened profligate or a roué would try to pervert and entangle. there's something really bewitching in all that enthusiastic talk about byron and shelley. 'what a pity he was drowned!' and 'oh, if he had only fought for greece, and been victorious, like leonidas, you know,'--poor little thing! i wonder how much she knows about leonidas?--'how splendid that would have been! but, oh, to think that he should have a fever--a fever just such as kills common people--and die, just when he had proved himself so great and noble!' it's the newest thing to find all these silly school-girl fancies confusing the brain of a woman who ought to be the most practical person in graybridge,--a parish surgeon's wife, who should not, according to the fitness of things, have an idea above coarse charity flannels and camomile-tea and gruel. how she will open her eyes when she sees this room; and all the books in it! poor little thing! i shall never forget what a pretty picture she made sitting under the oak, with the greenish grey of the great knotted trunk behind her, and the blue water in the foreground." and then mr. lansdell's ideas, which seemed especially irrelevant this afternoon, broke off abruptly. "i hope i may never do any harm," he thought. "i am not a good man or a useful man; but i don't think i have ever done much harm." he lit another cigar, and strolled out upon the terrace, and from the terrace to the great quadrangular stable-yard. upon one side of the quadrangle there was a cool arched way that had once been a cloister; and i regret to say that the stone cells in which the monks of mordred had once spent their slow quiet days and meditative nights now did duty as loose-boxes for mr. lansdell's hunters. openings had been knocked through the dividing walls; for horses are more socially-disposed creatures than monks, and are apt to pine and sicken if entirely deprived of companionship with their kind. roland went into three or four of the boxes, and looked at the horses, and sighed for the time when the hunting season should commence and midlandshire might be tolerable. "i want occupation," he thought, "physical wear and tear, and all that sort of thing. i let my mind run upon all manner of absurd things for want of occupation." he yawned and threw away his cigar, and strode across the yard towards the open window of a harness-room, at which a man was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, and with a sunday paper before him. "you may bring the diver round in half-an-hour, christie," said mr. lansdell; "i shall ride over to conventford this afternoon." "yes, sir." roland lansdell did ride to conventford; galloping his hardest into waverly, to the scandal of the sober townspeople, who looked up from their tea-tables half-scared at the sound of the clattering hoofs upon the uneven pavement; and then dawdling at a foot-pace all along the avenue which extends in unbroken beauty from waverly to conventford. the streets of this latter town were crowded with gaily-dressed factory-girls, and the bells from three separate spires were clanging loudly in the summer air. mr. lansdell rode very slowly, thinking of "all manner of absurd things" as he went along; and he entered mr. raymond's pretty drawing-room at oakbank just in time to catch that gentleman drinking tea with the orphans. of course roland had forgotten that his friend dined at an early hour on sundays, and he had come to dine; but it wasn't of the least consequence, he would have some tea; yes, and cold beef, by all means, if there was cold beef. a side-table was laid for him, and a great sirloin was brought in. but mr. lansdell did not make much havoc with the joint. he and mr. raymond had a good deal to say to each other: and mr. lansdell took very kindly to the orphans, and asked them a good many questions about their studies and their present governess, who was a native of conventford, and had gone out that evening to drink tea with her friends: and then, somehow or other, the conversation rambled on to their late governess, isabel sleaford, and the orphans had a great deal to say about her. she was so nice, and she told them such pretty things: "eugene aram" and the "giaour"--how wicked black hassan was to tie his poor "sister" up in a sack and drown her, because he didn't wish her to marry the giaour! miss sleaford had modified the romantic story in deference to the tender ages of her pupils. yes, the young ladies said, they loved miss sleaford _dearly_. she was _so nice_; and sometimes, at night, when they begged her very, very hard, she would act (the orphans uttered this last word in an awfully distinct whisper); and, oh, that was beautiful! she would do hamlet and the ghost: when she stood one way, with a black cloak over her shoulder, she was hamlet; when she stood the other way, with a mahogany ruler in her hand, she was the ghost. and she acted the ghost so beautifully, that sometimes they were frightened, and wouldn't go outside the schoolroom-door without a candle, and somebody's hand to hold--tight. and then mr. raymond laughed, and told roland what he thought of isabel, phrenologically and otherwise. "poor little thing! i think there must be something sad about the story of her early life," he said; "for she so evidently shrinks from all allusion to it. it's the old story, i suppose,--an unkind step-mother and an uncomfortable home. under these circumstances, i was very glad to see her married to a well-disposed, honest-hearted young man." "she was very fond of mr. gilbert, i suppose,--very much in love with him?" said roland, after a little pause. "in love with him! not a bit of it. she was very fond of him, i dare say--not in the sentimental manner in which she discourses about her poets and her heroes; but she has every reason to be fond of him as a faithful protector and a good friend." mr. raymond looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon the face of his young kinsman. but it was dusk by this time; and in the dim light of the room charles raymond could not see the expression of roland's face; he could only see the attitude of his head, which drooped a little forward, supported by his hand. "i lent my voice to the bringing about of isabel gilbert's marriage," mr. raymond said, slowly; "and god grant that no man may ever be base enough or cruel enough to interpose himself between these two!" "amen!" answered roland lansdell, in a deep solemn voice. and then he walked to the window and looked out into the twilit garden, above which the faint summer moon had newly arisen. "if i could have believed in that splendid fable of a future life, that grand compensating balance for all the sorrows and mistakes of this lower world, what a good man i might have been!" he thought, as he stood there looking out, with his arm resting upon the broad wooden sash, and his head upon his arm. chapter xvi. mr. lansdell relates an adventure. the tuesday was a fine day. the august sunshine--the beautiful harvest-time sunshine which was rejoicing the hearts of all the farmers in midlandshire--awoke mrs. gilbert very early. she was going to mordred priory. for once she forgot to notice the ugliness of the shabby furniture, the bare whitewashed walls upon which her eyes opened. she was going to mordred priory. there are moments in our lives in which all the great expanse of the past and future seems as nothing compared with the consummate felicity of the present. it was very early; but not too early for her to get up, mrs. gilbert thought. she seated herself before the little glass at the open window, and brushed her long black hair; while the birds twittered and shook themselves in the sunshine, and the faint lowing of cattle came like a long drowsy murmur from the distant fields. the surgeon and his wife had held solemn conference with each other as to the hour at which they ought to arrive at mordred priory. luncheon might be eaten at any time from one until three. mr. gilbert said; and it was decided, therefore, that they should present themselves at the gates of the priory a short time before one o'clock. how pretty the village of mordred looked in the sleepy august atmosphere, the hazy, cuyp-like sunshine! how beautiful everything looked just at the entrance to the village, where there was a long straggling inn with a top-heavy roof, all dotted over with impossible little windows, a dear old red-tiled roof, with pouters and fantails brooding and cooing to themselves in the sunshine, and yellow stonecrop creeping here and there in patches of gold! to the right of the inn a shady road led away below the walls of the priory to the square-turreted church; and, grander than the church itself, the lofty gates of mordred dominated over all. isabel almost trembled as mr. gilbert got out of the gig and pulled the iron ring that hung at the end of a long chain on one side of those formidable oaken gates. it seemed like ringing at the door of the past, somehow; and the doctor's wife half expected to see quaintly-costumed servants, with long points to their shoes and strange parti-coloured garments, and a jester with a cap and bells, when those great gates were opened. but the person who opened the gates was only a very harmless old woman, who inhabited some stony chambers on one side of the ponderous archway. george drove slowly under that splendid norman gateway, and isabel looked with a shiver at the portcullis and the great rusty chains high above her head. if it should fall some day upon mr. lansdell, as he was riding out of his grand domain! her mind was like a voluminous picture-book, full of romantic incidents and dreadful catastrophes; and she was always imagining such events as these. brown molly jogged slowly along the winding drive,--oh, the beautiful shrubberies, and banks of verdure, and dark shining foliage, and spreading cedars, making solemn shadows yonder on the lawn, and peeps of glistening water in the distance; how beautiful! how beautiful!--and stopped before a gothic porch, a grey old ivy-covered porch, beneath which there was an open doorway that revealed a hall with armour on the walls, and helmed classic heads of white marble on black marble pedestals, and skins of savage beasts upon dark oak floors. isabel had only caught a brief glimpse of the dusky splendour of this interior, when a groom appeared from behind a distant angle of the house and ran forward to take george gilbert's horse; and in the next moment mr. lansdell came out of the porch, and bade his visitors welcome to mordred. "i am so glad to see you! what a lovely morning, is it not? i'm afraid you must have found the roads rather dusty, though. take care of mr. gilbert's horse, christie; you'd better put him into one of the loose-boxes. you see my dogs know you, mrs. gilbert." a liver-coloured pointer and a great black retriever were taking friendly notice of isabel. "will you come and see my pictures at once? i expect gwendoline and her father, and your friend mr. raymond, and the children, presently." there was no special brilliancy or eloquence in all this, but it sounded different from other people's talk, somehow. the languid, lingering tones were very cordial in spite of their languor; and then how splendid the speaker looked in his loose black velvet morning coat, which harmonized so exquisitely with the rembrandt hues of his complexion! there was a waxen-looking hothouse flower in his button-hole, and across that inspiration of a west-end tailor, his waistcoat, there glimmered a slender chain of very yellow gold, with onyx cameos and antique golden coins hanging to it,--altogether different from the clumsy yellow lockets and fusee-boxes which dangled on the padded chests of the officers at conventford, whom isabel had until lately so implicitly believed in. mr. lansdell led the way into a room, beyond which there were other rooms opening one into the other in a long vista of splendour and sunshine. isabel had only a very faint idea of what she saw in those beautiful rooms. it was all a confusion of brightness and colour, which was almost too much for her poor sentimental brain. it was all a splendid chaos, in which antique oak cabinets, and buhl and marqueterie, and carved ebony chairs, and filagree-work and ivory, old chelsea, battersea, copenhagen, vienna, dresden, sèvres, derby, and salopian china, majolica and palissy ware, pictures and painted windows, revolved like the figures in a kaleidoscope before her dazzled eyes. mr. lansdell was very kind, and explained the nature of some of these beautiful things as he loitered here and there with his guests. george walked softly, with his hat in his hand, as if he had been in church, and stared with equal reverence at everything. he was pleased with a vandevilde, because the sea was so nice and green, and the rigging so neatly made out; and he stopped a minute before a fyt to admire the whiskers of a hare; and he thought that a plump-shouldered divinity by greuze, with melting blue eyes and a grey satin gown, was rather a fine young woman; but he did not particularly admire the murillos or the spagnolettis, and thought that the models who sat to those two masters would have done better had they washed their faces and combed their hair before doing so. mr. gilbert was not enthusiastic about the pictures; but isabel's eyes wandered here and there in a rapture of admiration, and by-and-by those great dark eyes filled with tears before the gem of mr. lansdell's collection, a raffaelle, a picture of the man of sorrows half fainting under the cruel burden of his cross, sublime in resignation, unspeakably sorrowful and tender; an exquisite half-length figure, sharply defined against a vivid blue sky. "my father believed in that picture," said mr. lansdell; "but connoisseurs shrug their shoulders and tell me that it never stood upon the easel of raffaelle d'urbino." "but it is so beautiful," isabel answered in a low, awe stricken voice. she had been very inattentive to the rector's sermon on the previous sunday, but her heart filled with tender devotion as she looked at this picture. "does it matter much who painted it, if it is only beautiful?" and then mr. lansdell began to explain in what manner the picture differed from the best-authenticated productions of the prince of painters; but in the middle of his little lecture mr. raymond and the orphans came trooping through the rooms, and the conversation became general. soon after this lady gwendoline and her father made their appearance, and then a very neatly-dressed maid conducted the ladies to a dressing-room that had once belonged to roland's mother, where the window-curtains were sea-green silk, and the looking-glass was framed in sèvres-biscuit, and where there were ivory-backed brushes, and glittering bottles of rich yellow-looking perfume in a casket of gold and enamel. isabel took off her bonnet, and smoothed her hair with one of the brushes, and remembered her dressing-table at home, and a broken black brush of george's with all the unprotected wires sticking out at the back. she thought of the drawer in the looking-glass, with a few bent hair-pins, and her husband's razors with coloured bone handles, and a flat empty bottle that had once held lavender-water, all jostling one another when the drawer was pulled open. mrs. gilbert thought of these things while lady gwendoline removed her bonnet--another marvellous bonnet--and drew off the tightest coffee-with-plenty-of-milk-in-it-coloured gloves, and revealed long white hands, luminous with opals and diamonds. the doctor's wife had time to contemplate lady gwendoline's silk dress--that exquisitely-fitting dress, whose soft golden brown was only a little darker than the lady's hair; and the tiny embroidered collar, fitting closely to the long slender throat, and clasped by one big turquoise in a wide rim of lustreless gold, and the turquoise earrings just peeping out under rich bands of auburn hair. mrs. gilbert admired all these things, and she saw that lady gwendoline's face, which was so handsome in profile, was just a little faded and wan when you had a full view of it. the orphans took the gold tops off the bottles one by one, and sniffed energetically at the different perfumes, and disputed in whispers as to which was nicest. lady gwendoline talked very kindly to mrs. gilbert. she did not at all relish being asked to meet the doctor's wife, and she was angry with her cousin for noticing these people; but she was too well bred to be otherwise than kind to roland's visitor. they all went down-stairs presently, and were ushered into an oak-paneled room, where there was an oval table laid for luncheon, and where isabel found herself seated presently on mr. lansdell's right hand, and opposite to lady gwendoline pomphrey. this was life. there was a lance-like group of hothouse grapes and peaches, crowned with a pine-apple, in a high dresden basket in the centre of the table. isabel had never been in company with a pine-apple until to-day. there were flowers upon the table, and a faint odour of orange blossoms and apricots pervaded the atmosphere. there were starry white glasses, so fragile-looking that it seemed as if a breath would have blown them away; cup-shaped glasses, broad shallow glasses like water-lily leaves, glasses of the palest green, and here and there a glimpse of ruby glass flashing in the sunshine. mrs. gilbert had a very vague idea of the nature of the viands which were served to her at that wonderful feast. somebody dropped a lump of ice into the shallow glass, and filled it afterwards with a yellow bubbling wine, which had a faint flavour of jargonelle pears, and which some one said was moselle. mr. lansdell put some white creamy compound on her plate, which might or might not have been chicken: and one of the servants brought her an edifice of airy pastry, filled with some mysterious concoction in which there were little black lumps. she took a spoonful of the concoction, seeing that other people had done so; but she was very doubtful about the little black lumps, which she conjectured to be a mistake of the cook's. and then some one brought her an ice, a real ice,--just as if mordred priory had been a perpetual pastrycook's shop,--a pink ice in the shape of a pear, which she ate with a pointed gold spoon; and then the pine-apple was cut, and she had a slice of it, and was rather disappointed in it, as hardly realizing the promise of its appearance. but all the dishes in that banquet were of "such stuff as dreams are made of." so may have tasted the dew-berries which titania's attendants gave to bottom. to isabel there was a dream-like flavour in everything. was not _he_ by her side, talking to her every now and then? the subjects of which he spoke were commonplace enough, certainly, and he talked to other people as well as to her. he talked about the plans of the cabinet and the hunting season to lord ruysdale, and he talked of books and pictures with mr. raymond and lady gwendoline, and of parish matters with george gilbert. he seemed to know all about everything in the world, isabel thought. she could not say much. _how_ to admire was all the art she knew. as to the orphans, those young ladies sat side by side, and nudged each other when the sacrificial knife was plunged into any fresh viand, and discoursed together every now and then in rapturous whispers. no part of the banquet came amiss to these young persons, from rout-cakes and preserved ginger to lobster-salad or the wall of a fricandeau. it was four o'clock by the time the pine-apple had been cut, and the banquet concluded. the oak-painted room was lighted by one window--a great square window--which almost filled one side of the room; a splendid window, out of which you could walk into a square garden--an old-fashioned garden--divided from the rest of the grounds by cropped hedges of dense box; wonderful boundaries, that had taken a century or two to grow. the bees were humming in this garden all luncheon-time, and yellow butterflies shot backwards and forwards in the sunshine: tall hollyhocks flowered gorgeously in the prim beds, and threw straight shadows on the grass. "shall we go into the garden?" said lady gwendoline, as they rose from the table, and everybody assented: so presently isabel found herself amidst a little group upon the miniature lawn, in the centre of which there was a broad marble basin, filled with gold fish, and a feeble little fountain, that made a faint tinkling sound in the still august atmosphere. mr. raymond and roland lansdell both having plenty to say for themselves, and lord ruysdale and lady gwendoline being able to discourse pleasantly upon any possible subject, there had been no lack of animated conversation, though neither the doctor nor his wife had done much to keep the ball rolling. mr. lansdell and his guests had been talking of all manner of things; flying off at tangents to all kinds of unlikely subjects; till they had come, somehow or other, to discuss the question of length of days. "i can't say that i consider long life an inestimable blessing," said roland, who was amusing himself with throwing minute morsels of a macaroon to the gold fish. "they're not so interesting as sterne's donkey, are they, mrs. gilbert? no, i do _not_ consider long life an advantage, unless one can be 'warm and young' for ever, like our dear raymond. perhaps i am only depreciating the fruit because it hangs out of my reach, though; for everybody knows that the lansdells never live to be old." isabel's heart gave a bump as roland said this, and involuntarily she looked at him with just one sudden startled glance. of course he would die young; beings always have so died, and always must. a thrill of pain shot through her breast as she thought of this; yet i doubt if she would have had it otherwise. it would be almost better that he should break a blood-vessel, or catch a fever, or commit suicide, than that he should ever live to have grey hair, and wear spectacles and double-soled boots. brief as that sudden look of alarm had been, roland had seen it, and paused for a moment before he went on talking. "no; we are not a long-lived race. we have been consumptive; and we have had our heads cut off in the good old days, when to make a confidential remark to a friend was very often leze majesty, or high treason; and we have been killed in battle,--at flodden, to wit, and at fontenoy, and in the peninsula; and one of us was shot through the lungs in an irish duel, on the open sward of the 'phaynix.' in short, i almost fancy some fearful ban must have been set upon us in the dark ages, when one of our progenitors, a wicked prior of mordred, who had been a soldier and a renegade before he crept into the bosom of the church, appropriated some of the sanctified plate to make a dowry for his handsome daughter, who married sir anthony lansdell, knight, and thus became the mother of our race; and we are evidently a doomed race, for very few of us have ever lived to see a fortieth birthday." "and how is your doom to be brought about, roland?" asked lady gwendoline. "oh, _that's_ all settled," mr. lansdell answered. "i know my destiny." "it has been predicted to you?" "yes." "how very interesting!" exclaimed the lady, with a pretty silvery laugh. isabel's eyes opened wider and wider, and fixed themselves on roland lansdell's face. "pray tell us all about it," continued lady gwendoline. "we won't promise to be very much frightened, because the accessories are not quite the thing for a ghost story. if it were midnight now, and we were sitting in the oak room, with the lights burning low, and the shadows trembling on the wall, you might do what you liked with our nerves. and yet i really don't know that a ghost might not be more awful in the broad sunshine--a ghost that would stalk across the grass, and then fade slowly, till it melted into the water-drops of the fountain. come, roland, you must tell us all about the prediction; was it made by a pretty girl with a dove on her wrist, like the phantom that appeared to lord lyttleton? shall we have to put back the clock for an hour, in order to foil the designs of your impalpable foe? or was it a black cat, or a gentleman usher, or a skeleton; or all three?" "i dare say it was an abnormal state of the organs of form and colour," said mr. raymond. "that's the foundation of all ghost stories." "but it isn't by any means a ghost story," answered roland lansdell. "the gentleman who predicted my early death was the very reverse of a phantom; and the region of the prediction was a place which has never yet been invested with any supernatural horrors. amongst all the legends of the old bailey, i never heard of any ghostly record." "the old bailey!" exclaimed lady gwendoline. "yes. the affair was quite an adventure, and the only adventure i ever had in my life." "pray tell us the story." "but it's rather a long one, and not particularly interesting." "i insist upon hearing it," said mr. raymond; "you've stimulated our organs of wonder, and you're bound to restore our brains to their normal state by satisfying our curiosity." "most decidedly," exclaimed lady gwendoline, seating herself upon a rustic bench, with the shining folds of her silk dress spread round her like the plumage of some beautiful bird, and a tiny fringed parasol sloping a little backward from her head, and throwing all manner of tremulous pinky shadows upon her animated face. she was very handsome when she was animated; it was only when her face was in repose that you saw how much her beauty had faded since the picture with the high forehead and the long curls was first exhibited to an admiring public. it may be that lady gwendoline knew this, and was on that, account rather inclined to be animated about trifles. "well, i'll tell you the story, if you like," said roland, "but i warn you that there's not much in it. i don't suppose you--any of you--take much interest in criminal cases; but this one made rather a sensation at the time." "a criminal case?" "yes. i was in town on business a year or two ago. i'd come over from switzerland to renew some leases, and look into a whole batch of tiresome business matters, which my lawyer insisted upon my attending to in my own proper person, very much to my annoyance. while i was in london i dropped into the united joint-stock bank, temple-bar branch, to get circular notes and letters of credit upon their correspondent at constantinople, and so on. i was not in the office more than five minutes. but while i was talking to one of the clerks at the counter, a man came in, and stood close at my elbow while he handed in a cheque for eighty-seven pounds ten, or some such amount--i know it came very close upon the hundred--received the money, and went out. he looked like a groom out of livery. i left the bank almost immediately after him, and as he turned into a little alley leading down to the temple. i followed a few paces behind him, for i had business in paper buildings. at the bottom of the alley my friend the groom was met by a big black-whiskered man, who seemed to have been waiting for him, for he caught him suddenly by the arm, and said, 'well, did they do it?' 'yes,' the other man answered, and began fumbling in his waistcoat-pocket, making a chinking sound as he did so. i had seen him put his money, which he took in notes and gold, into this waistcoat-pocket. 'you needn't have pounced upon me so precious sharp,' he said, rather sulkily; 'i wasn't going to bolt with it, was i?' the black-whiskered man had seen me by this time, and he muttered something to his companion, which evidently meant that he was to hold his tongue, and then dragged him off without further ceremony in the opposite direction to that in which i was going. this was all i saw of the groom or the black-whiskered gentleman on that occasion. i thought their method of cashing a cheque was rather a queer one; but i thought no more about it, until three weeks afterwards, when i went into the temple-bar office of the united joint-stock again to complete my continental arrangements, and was told that the cheque for eighty-seven pounds ten, more or less, which had been cashed in my presence, was a forgery; one of a series of most audacious frauds, perpetrated by a gang whose plans had only just come to light, and none of whom had yet been arrested. 'they've managed to keep themselves dark in the most extraordinary manner,' the clerk told me; 'the cheques are supposed to have been all fabricated by one man, but three or four men have been employed to get hold of the original signatures of our customers, which they have obtained by a complicated system. no two cheques have been presented by the same person,--that's the point that has beaten the detectives; they don't know what sort of men to look for.' 'don't they?' said i; 'then i think i can assist them in the matter.' whereupon i told my little story of the black-whiskered gentleman." mr. lansdell paused to take breath, and stole a glance at isabel. she was pale always,--but she was very pale now, and was watching him with an eager breathless expression. "silly romantic little thing," he thought, "to be so intensely absorbed in my story." "you're getting interesting, roland," said lady gwendoline. "pray, go on." "the upshot of the matter was, that at eight o'clock that evening a grave little gentleman in a pepper-and-salt waistcoat came to me at mivart's, and cross-questioned me closely as to what i knew of the man who had cashed the cheque. 'you think you could recognize this man with the black whiskers?' he said. 'yes; most decidedly i could.' 'and you'll swear to him, if necessary?' 'with pleasure.' on this the detective departed, and came to me the next day, to tell me that he fancied he was on the track of the man he wanted, but he was at a loss for means of identification. he knew, or thought that he knew, who the man was; but he didn't know the man himself from adam. the gang had taken fright, and it was believed that they had all started for liverpool, with the intention of getting off to america by a vessel that was expected to sail at eight o'clock the following morning. the detective had only just got his information, and he came to me for help. the result of the business was, that i put on my great-coat, sent for a cab, and started for euston square with my friend the detective, with a view to identifying the black-whiskered gentleman. it was the first adventure i had ever had in my life, and i assure you i most heartily enjoyed it. "well, we travelled by the mail, got into liverpool in the dead of the night, and in the bleak early dawn of the next morning i had the supreme pleasure of pointing out my black-whiskered acquaintance, just as he was going to step on board the steamer that was to convey him to the _atalanta_ screw-steam-ship, bound for new york. he looked very black at first; but when he found that my companion was altogether _en règle_, he went away with him, meekly enough, declaring that it was all a mistake, and that it would be easily set right in town. i let the two go back together, and returned by a later train, very well pleased with my adventure. "i was not so well pleased, however, when i found that i was wanted as a witness at preliminary examinations, and adjourned examinations, and on and off through a trial that lasted four days and a half; to say nothing of being badgered and browbeaten by old-bailey practitioners,--who were counsel for the prisoner,--and who asked me if it was my friend's whiskers i recognized, or if i had never seen any other whiskers exactly like his? if i should know him without his whiskers? whether i could swear to the colour of his waistcoat? whether any member of my family had ever been in a lunatic asylum? whether i usually devoted my leisure time to travelling about with detective officers? whether i had been plucked at oxford? whether i should be able to recognize an acquaintance whom i had only seen once in twenty years? whether i was short-sighted? could i swear i was not short-sighted? would i be kind enough to read a verse or so from a diamond edition of the works of thomas moore? and so on. but question me as they would, the prisoner at the bar,--commonly known as jack the scribe, _alias_ jack the gentleman, _alias_ ever so many other names, which i have completely forgotten,--was the identical person whom i had seen meet the groom at the entrance to the temple. my evidence was only a single link in a long chain; but i suppose it was eminently damaging to my black-whiskered friend; for, when he and two of his associates had received their sentence--ten years' penal servitude--he turned towards where i was standing, and said: "'i don't bear any grudge against the gentlemen of the jury, and i don't bear any malice against the judge, though his sentence isn't a light one; but when a languid swell mixes himself up in business that doesn't concern him, he deserves to get it hot and strong. if ever i come out of prison alive, i'll _kill you_!'" "he shook his fist at me as he said it. there wasn't much in the words, but there was a good deal in the way in which they were spoken. he tried to say more; but the warders got hold of him and held him down, panting and gasping, and with his face all of a dull livid white. i saw no more of him; but if he does _live_ to come out of prison, i most firmly believe he'll keep his word." "izzie," cried george gilbert suddenly, "what's the matter?" all the point of mr. lansdell's story was lost; for at this moment isabel tottered and fell slowly backward upon the sward, and all the gold fish leaped away in a panic of terror as the doctor dipped his hat into the marble basin. he splashed the water into his wife's face, and she opened her eyes at last, very slowly, and looked round her. "did he say that----" she said,--"did he say that he'd kill----!" chapter xvii. the first warning. mrs. gilbert recovered very quickly from her fainting-fit. she had been frightened by mr. lansdell's story, she said, and the heat had made her dizzy. she sat very quietly upon a sofa, in the drawing-room, with one of the orphans on each side of her, while brown molly was being harnessed. lady gwendoline went away with her father, after bidding mrs. gilbert rather a cool good morning. the earl of ruysdale's daughter did not approve of the fainting-fit, which she was pleased to call mrs. gilbert's extraordinary demonstration. "if she were a single woman, i should fancy she was trying to fascinate roland," lady gwendoline said to her father, as they drove homewards. "what can possibly have induced him to invite those people to mordred? the man is a clod, and the woman a nonentity; except when she chooses to make an exhibition of herself by fainting away. that sort of person is always fainting away, and being knocked down by feathers, and going unexpectedly into impossible hysterics; and so on." but if lady gwendoline was unkind to the doctor's wife, roland was kind; dangerously, bewilderingly kind. he was _so_ anxious about isabel's health. it was his fault, entirely his fault, that she had fainted. he had kept her standing under the blazing sun while he told his stupid story. he should never forgive himself, he said. and he would scarcely accept george gilbert's assurance that his wife was all right. he rang the bell, and ordered strong tea for his visitors. with his own hands he closed the venetian shutters, and reduced the light to a cool dusky glimmer. he begged mr. gilbert to allow him to order a close carriage for his wife's return to graybridge. "the gig shall be sent home to you to-night," he said; "i am sure the air and dust will be too much for mrs. gilbert." but mr. raymond hereupon interfered, and said the fresh air was just the very thing that isabel wanted, to which opinion the lady herself subscribed. she did not want to cause trouble, she said: she would not for all the world have caused _him_ trouble, she thought: so the gig was brought round presently, and george drove his wife away, under the norman archway by which they had entered in the fresh noonday sun. the young man was in excellent spirits, and declared that he had enjoyed himself beyond measure--these undemonstrative people always declare that they enjoy themselves--but isabel was very silent and subdued; and when questioned upon the subject, said that she was tired. oh, how blank the world seemed after that visit to mordred priory! it was all over. this one supreme draught of bliss had been drained to the very dregs. it would be november soon, and roland lansdell would go away. he would go before november, perhaps: he would go suddenly, whenever the fancy seized him. who can calculate the arrangements of the giaour or sir reginald glanville? at any moment, in the dead darkness of the moonless night, the hero may call for his fiery steed, and only the thunder of hurrying hoofs upon the hard high-road may bear witness of his departure. mr. lansdell might leave mordred at any hour in the long summer day, isabel thought, as she stood at the parlour window looking out at the dusty lane, where mrs. jeffson's fowls were pecking up stray grains of wheat that had been scattered by some passing wain. he might be gone now,--yes, now, while she stood there thinking of him. her heart seemed to stop beating as she remembered this. why had he ever invited her to mordred? was it not almost cruel to open the door of that paradise just a little way, only to shut it again when she was half blinded by the glorious light from within? would he ever think of her, this grand creature with the dark pensive eyes, the tender dreamy eyes that were never the same colour for two consecutive minutes? was she anything to him, or was that musical lowering of his voice common to him when he spoke to women? again and again, and again and again, she went over all the shining ground of that day at mordred; and the flowers, and glass, and pictures, and painted windows, and hothouse fruit, only made a kind of variegated background, against which _he_ stood forth paramount and unapproachable. she sat and thought of roland lansdell, with some scrap of never-to-be-finished work lying in her lap. it was better than reading. a crabbed little old woman who kept the only circulating library in graybridge noted a falling-off in her best customer about this time. it was better than reading, to sit through all the length of a hot august afternoon thinking of roland lansdell. what romance had ever been written that was equal to this story; this perpetual fiction, with a real hero dominant in every chapter? there was a good deal of repetition in the book, perhaps; but isabel was never aware of its monotony. it was all very wicked of course, and a deep and cruel wrong to the simple country surgeon, who ate his dinner, and complained of the underdone condition of the mutton, upon one side of the table, while isabel read the inexhaustible volume on the other. it was very wicked; but mrs. gilbert had not yet come to consider the wickedness of her ways. she was a very good wife, very gentle and obedient; and she fancied she had a right to furnish the secret chambers of her mind according to her own pleasure. what did it matter if a strange god reigned in the temple, so long as the doors were for ever closed upon his awful beauty; so long as she rendered all due service to her liege lord and master? he was her lord and master, though his fingers were square at the tips, and he had an abnormal capacity for the consumption of spring-onions. spring-onions! all-the-year-round onions, isabel thought; for those obnoxious bulbs seemed always in season at graybridge. she was very wicked; and she thought perpetually of roland lansdell, as she had thought of eugene aram, and lara, and ernest maltravers--blue-eyed ernest maltravers. the blue-eyed heroes were out of fashion now, for was not _he_ dark of aspect? she was very wicked, she was very foolish, very childish. all her life long she had played with her heroines and heroes, as other children play with their dolls. now edith dombey was the favourite, and now dark-eyed zuleika, kneeling for ever at selim's feet, with an unheeded flower in her hand. left quite to herself through all her idle girlhood, this foolish child had fed upon three volume novels and sentimental poetry: and now that she was married and invested with the solemn duties of a wife, she could not throw off the sweet romantic bondage all at once, and take to pies and puddings. so she made no endeavour to banish mr. lansdell's image from her mind. if she had recognized the need of such an effort, she would have made it, perhaps. but she thought that he would go away, and her life would drop back to its dead level, and would be "all the same as if he had not been." but mr. lansdell did not leave mordred just yet. only a week after the never-to-be-forgotten day at the priory, he came again to thurston's crag, and found isabel sitting under the oak with her books in her lap. she started up as he approached her, looking rather frightened, and with her face flushed and her eyelids drooping. she had not expected him. demi-gods do not often drop out of the clouds. it is only once in a way that castor and pollux are seen fighting in a mortal fray. mrs. gilbert sat down again, blushing and trembling; but, oh, so happy, so foolishly, unutterably happy; and roland lansdell seated himself by her side and began to talk to her. he did not make the slightest allusion to that unfortunate swoon which had spoiled the climax of his story. that one subject, which of all others would have been most embarrassing to the doctor's wife, was scrupulously avoided by mr. lansdell. he talked of all manner of things. he had been a _flâneur_ pure and simple for the last ten years, and was a consummate master of the art of conversation; so he talked to this ignorant girl of books, and pictures, and foreign cities, and wonderful people, living and dead, of whom she had never heard before. he seemed to know everything, mrs gilbert thought. she felt as if she was before the wonderful gates of a new fairy-land, and mr. lansdell had the keys, and could open them for her at his will, and could lead her through the dim mysterious pathways into the beautiful region beyond. mr. lansdell asked his companion a good many questions about her life at graybridge, and the books she read. he found that her life was a very idle one, and that she was perpetually reading the same books,--the dear dilapidated volumes of popular novels that were to be had at every circulating library. poor little childish creature, who could wonder at her foolish sentimentality? out of pure philanthropy roland offered to lend her any of the books in his library. "if you can manage to stroll this way to-morrow morning, i'll bring you the 'life of robespierre,' and carlyle's 'french revolution.' i don't suppose you'll like carlyle at first; but he's wonderful when you get accustomed to his style--like a monster brass-band, you know, that stuns you at first with its crashing thunder, until, little by little, you discover the wonderful harmony, and appreciate the beauty of the instrumentation. shall i bring you lamartine's 'girondists' as well? that will make a great pile of books, but you need not read them laboriously; you can pick out the pages you like here and there, and we can talk about them afterwards." the french revolution was one of isabel's pet oases in the history of the universe. a wonderful period, in which a quiet country-bred young woman had only to make her way up to paris and assassinate a tyrant, and, lo, she became "a feature" throughout all time. mr. lansdell had discovered this special fancy in his talk with the doctor's wife, and he was pleased to let in the light of positive knowledge on her vague ideas of the chiefs of the mountain and the martyrs of the gironde. was it not an act of pure philanthropy to clear some of the sentimental mistiness out of that pretty little head? was it not a good work rather than a harmful one to come now and then to this shadowy resting-place under the oak, and while away an hour or so with this poor little half-educated damsel, who had so much need of some sounder instruction than she had been able to glean, unaided, out of novels and volumes of poetry? there was no harm in these morning rambles, these meetings, which arose out of the purest chance. there was no harm whatever: especially as mr. lansdell meant to turn his back upon midlandshire directly the partridge-shooting was over. he told isabel, indirectly, of this intended departure, presently. "yes," he said, "you must ask me for whatever books you would like to read: and by-and-by, when i have left mordred----" he paused for a moment, involuntarily, for he saw that isabel gave a little shiver. "when i leave mordred, at the end of october, you must go to the priory, and choose the books for yourself. my housekeeper is a very good woman, and she will be pleased to wait upon you." so mrs. gilbert began quite a new course of reading, and eagerly devoured the books which mr. lansdell brought her; and wrote long extracts from them, and made profile sketches of the heroes, all looking from right to left, and all bearing a strong family resemblance to the master of mordred priory. the education of the doctor's wife took a grand stride by this means. she sat for hours together reading in the little parlour at graybridge; and george, whose life was a very busy one, grew to consider her only in her normal state with a book in her hand, and was in nowise offended when she ate her supper with an open volume by the side of her plate, or responded vaguely to his simple talk. mr. gilbert was quite satisfied. he had never sought for more than this: a pretty little wife to smile upon him when he came home, to brush his hat for him now and then in the passage after breakfast, before he went out for his day's work, and to walk to church twice every sunday hanging upon his arm. if any one had ever said that such a marriage as this in any way fell short of perfect and entire union, mr. gilbert would have smiled upon that person as on a harmless madman. mr. lansdell met the doctor's wife very often: sometimes on the bridge beside the water-mill; sometimes in the meadow-land which surged in emerald billows all about graybridge and mordred and warncliffe. he met her very often. it was no new thing for isabel to ramble here and there in that lovely rustic paradise: but it was quite a new thing for mr. lansdell to take such a fancy for pedestrian exercise. the freak could not last long, though: the feast of st. partridge the martyr was close at hand, and then mr. lansdell would have something better to do than to dawdle away his time in country lanes and meadows, talking to the doctor's wife. upon the very eve of that welcome morning which was to set all the guns in midlandshire popping at those innocent red-breasted victims, george gilbert received a letter from his old friend and comrade, mr. sigismund smith, who wrote in very high spirits, and with a great many blots. "i'm coming down to stop a few days with you, dear old boy," he wrote, "to get the london smoke blown out of my hyacinthines, and to go abroad in the meadows to see the young lambs--are there any young lambs in september, by the bye? i want to see what sort of a matron you have made of miss isabel sleaford. do you remember that day in the garden when you first saw her? a palpable case of spoons there and then! k-k-c-k-k! as mr. buckstone remarks when he digs his knuckles into the walking gentleman's ribs. does she make puddings, and sew on buttons, and fill up the holes in your stockings with wonderful trellis-work? she never would do that sort of thing at camberwell. i shall give you a week, and i shall spend another week in the bosom of my family; and i shall bring a gun, because it looks well in the railway carriage, you know, especially if it doesn't go off, which i suppose it won't, if it isn't loaded; though, to my mind, there's always something suspicious about the look of fire-arms, and i should never be surprised to see them explode by spontaneous combustion, or something of that kind. i suppose you've heard of my new three-volume novel--a legitimate three-volume romance, with all the interest concentrated upon one body,--'the mystery of mowbray manor,'--pleasant alliteration of m's, eh?--which is taking the town by storm; that's to say, camden town, where i partial board, and have some opportunity of pushing the book myself by going into all the circulating libraries i pass, and putting my name down for an early perusal of the first copy. of course i never go for the book; but if i am the means of making any one simple-minded librarian take a copy of 'the m. of m. m.' more than he wants, i feel i have not laboured in vain." mr. smith arrived at warncliffe by an early train next morning, and came on to graybridge in an omnibus, which was quite spiky with guns. he was in very high spirits, and talked incessantly to isabel, who had stayed at home to receive him; who had stayed at home when there was just a faint chance that mr. lansdell might take his morning walk in the direction of lord thurston's crag,--only a faint chance, for was it not the st of september; and might not he prefer the slaughter of partridges to those lazy loiterings under the big oak? mrs. gilbert gave her old friend a very cordial welcome. she was fond of him, as she might have been of some big brother less objectionable than the ordinary run of big brothers. he had never seen mr. sleaford's daughter looking so bright and beautiful. a new element had been introduced into her life. she was happy, unutterably happy, on the mystical threshold of a new existence. she did not want to be edith dombey any longer. not for all the ruby-velvet gowns and diamond coronets in the world would she have sacrificed one accidental half-hour on the bridge under lord thurston's oak. she sat at the little table smiling and talking gaily, while the author of "the mystery of mowbray manor" ate about half a quartern of dough made up into puffy yorkshire cakes, and new-laid eggs and frizzled bacon in proportion. mr. smith deprecated the rampant state of his appetite by-and-by, and made a kind of apology for his ravages. "you see, the worst of going into society is _that_," he remarked vaguely, "they see one eat; and it's apt to tell against one in three volumes. it's a great pity that fiction is not compatible with a healthy appetite; but it isn't; and society is so apt to object to one, if one doesn't come up to its expectations. you've no idea what a lot of people have invited me out to tea--ladies, you know--since the publication of 'the mystery of mowbray manor.' i used to go at first. but they generally said to me, 'lor', mr. smith, you're not a bit like what i fancied you were! i thought you'd be tall, and dark, and haughty-looking, like montague manderville in 'the mystery of ---- ', &c, &c.; and that sort of thing is apt to make a man feel himself an impostor. and if a writer of fiction can't drink hot tea without colouring up as if he had just pocketed a silver spoon, and it was his guilty conscience, why, my idea is, he'd better stay at home. i don't think any man was ever as good or as bad as his books," continued sigismund, reflectively, scraping up a spoonful of that liquid grease which mrs. jeffson tersely entitled "dip." "there's a kind of righteous indignation, and a frantic desire to do something splendid for his fellow-creatures, like vaccinating them all over again, or founding a hospital for everybody, which a man feels when he's writing--especially late at night, when he's been keeping himself awake--with bitter ale--that seems to ooze away somehow when his copy has gone to the printers. and it's pretty much the same with one's scorn and hate and cynicism. nobody ever quite comes up to his books. even byron, but for turning down his collars, and walking lame, and dining on biscuits and soda-water, might have been a social failure. i think there's a good deal of horace walpole's inspired idiocy in this world. the morning sun shines, and the statue is musical; but all the day there is silence; and at night--in society, i suppose--the sounds are lugubrious. how i do talk, izzie, and _you_ don't say anything! but i needn't ask if you're happy. i never saw you looking so pretty." isabel blushed. was she pretty? oh, she wanted so much to be pretty! "and i think george may congratulate himself upon having secured the dearest little wife in all midlandshire." mrs. gilbert blushed a deeper red; but the happy smile died away on her lips. something, a very vague something as yet, was lurking in what mr. raymond would have called her "inner consciousness;" and she thought, perhaps, george had not such very great reason for self-gratulation. "i always do as he tells me,"' she said naïvely; "and he's kinder than mamma used to be, and doesn't mind my reading at meals. you know how ma used to go on about it. and i mend his socks--sometimes." she drew open a drawer, where there were some little bundles of grey woollen stuff, and balls of worsted with big needles stuck across them. "and, oh, sigismund," she exclaimed, rather inconsecutively, "we've been to mordred--to mordred priory--to a luncheon; quite a grand luncheon--pine-apple and ices, and nearly half-a-dozen different kinds of glasses for each person." she could talk to sigismund about mordred and the master of mordred. he was not like george, and he would sympathize with her enthusiasm about that earthly paradise. "do you know mordred?" she asked. she felt a kind of pleasure in calling the mansion "mordred," all short, as _he_ called it. "i know the village of mordred well enough," mr. smith answered, "and i _ought_ to know the priory precious well. the last mr. lansdell gave my father a good deal of business; and when roland lansdell was being coached-up in the classics by a private tutor, i used to go up to the priory and read with him. the governor was very glad to get such a chance for me; but i can't say i intensely appreciated the advantage myself, on hot summer afternoons, when there was cricketing on warncliffe meads." "you knew him--you knew mr. roland lansdell when he was a boy?" said isabel, with a little gasp. "i certainly did, my dear izzie; but i don't think there's anything wonderful in that. you couldn't open your eyes much wider if i'd said i'd known eugene aram when he was a boy. i remember roland lansdell," continued mr. smith, slapping his breakfast-napkin across his dusty boots, "and a very jolly young fellow he was; a regular young swell, with a chimney-pot hat and dandy boots, and a gold hunter in his waistcoat-pocket, and no end of pencil-cases, and cricket-bats, and drawing-portfolios, and single-sticks, and fishing-tackle. he taught me fencing," added sigismund, throwing himself suddenly into a position that covered one entire side of the little parlour, and making a postman's knock upon the carpet with the sole of his foot. "come, mrs. gilbert," he said, presently, "put on your bonnet, and come out for a walk. i suppose there's no chance of our seeing george till dinner-time." isabel was pleased to go out. all the world seemed astir upon this bright september morning; and out of doors there was always just a chance of meeting _him_. she put on her hat, the broad-leaved straw that cast such soft shadows upon her face, and she took up the big green parasol, and was ready to accompany her old friend in a minute. "i don't want the greetings in the market-place," mr. smith said, as they went out into the lane, where it was always very dusty in dry weather, and very muddy when there was rain. "i know almost everybody in graybridge; and there'll be a round of stereotyped questions and answers to go through as to how i'm getting on 'oop in london.' i can't tell those people that i earn my bread by writing 'the demon of the galleys,' or 'the mystery of mowbray manor.' take me for a country walk, izzie; a regular rustic ramble." mrs. gilbert blushed. that habit of blushing when she spoke or was spoken to had grown upon her lately. then, after a little pause, she said, shyly: "thurston's crag is a pretty place; shall we go there?" "suppose we do. that's quite a brilliant thought of yours, izzie. thurston's crag is a pretty place, a nice, drowsy, lazy old place, where one always goes to sleep, and wishes one had bottled beer. it reminds one of bottled beer, you know, the waterfall,--bottled beer in a rampant state of effervescence." isabel's face was all lighted up with smiles. "i am so glad you have come to see us, sigismund," she said. she was very glad. she might go to thurston's crag now as often as she could beguile sigismund thitherward, and that haunting sense of something wrong would no longer perplex her in the midst of her unutterable joy. it was unutterable! she had tried to write poetry about it, and had failed dismally, though her heart was making poetry all day long, as wildly, vaguely beautiful as solomon's song. she had tried to set her joy to music; but there were no notes on the harpsichord that could express such wondrous melody; though there was indeed one little simple theme, an old-fashioned air, arranged as a waltz, "'twere vain to tell thee all i feel," which isabel would play slowly, again and again, for an hour together, dragging the melody out in lingering legato notes, and listening to its talk about roland lansdell. but all this was very wicked, of course. to-day she could go to thurston's crag with a serene front, an unburdened conscience. what could be more intensely proper than this country walk with her mother's late partial boarder? they turned into the meadows presently, and as they drew nearer and nearer to the grassy hollow under the cliff, where the miller's cottage and the waterfall were nestled together like jewels in a casket of emerald velvet, the ground seemed to grow unsubstantial under her feet, as if thurston's crag had been a phantasmal region suspended in mid air. would he be there? her heart was perpetually beating out the four syllables of that simple sentence: would he be there? it was the st of september, and he would be away shooting partridges, perhaps. oh, was there even the remotest chance that he would be there? sigismund handed her across the stile in the last meadow, and then there was only a little bit of smooth verdure between them and the waterfall; but the overhanging branches of the trees intervened, and isabel could not see yet whether there was any one on the bridge. but presently the narrow winding path brought them to a break in the foliage. isabel's heart gave a tremendous bound, and then the colour, which had come and gone so often on her face, faded away altogether. he was there: leaning with his back against the big knotted trunk of the oak, and making a picture of himself, with one arm above his head, plucking the oak-leaves and dropping them into the water. he looked down at the glancing water and the hurrying leaves with a moody dissatisfied scowl. had he been anything less than a hero, one might have thought that he looked sulky. but when the light footsteps came rustling through the long grass, accompanied by the faint fluttering of a woman's garments, his face brightened as suddenly as if the dense foliage above his head had been swept away by a titan's axe, and all the sunshine let in upon him. that very expressive face darkened a little when mr. lansdell saw sigismund behind the doctor's wife; but the cloud was transient. the jealous delusions of a monomaniac could scarcely have transformed mr. smith into a cassio. desdemona might have pleaded for him all day long, and might have supplied him with any number of pocket-handkerchiefs hemmed and marked by her own fair hands, without causing the moor a single apprehensive pang. mr. lansdell did not recognize the youthful acquaintance who had stumbled a little way in the thorny path of knowledge by his side; but he saw that sigismund was a harmless creature; and after he had bared his handsome head before isabel, he gave mr. smith a friendly little nod of general application. "i have let the keepers shoot the first of the partridges," he said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he bent over mrs. gilbert, "and i have been here ever since ten o'clock." it was past one now. he had been there three hours, isabel thought, waiting for her. yes, it had gone so far as this already. but he was to go away at the end of october. he was to go away, it would all be over, and the world come to an end by the st of november. there was a little pile of books upon the seat under the tree. mr. lansdell pushed them off the bench, and tumbled them ignominiously among the long grass and weeds beneath it. isabel saw them fall; and uttered a little exclamation of surprise. "you have brought me--" she began; but to her astonishment roland checked her with a frown, and began to talk about the waterfall, and the trout that were to be caught in the season lower down in the stream. mr. lansdell was more worldly wise than the doctor's wife, and he knew that the books brought there for her might seem slightly suggestive of an appointment. there had been no appointment, of course; but there was always a chance of finding isabel under lord thurston's oak. had she not gone there constantly, long ago, when mr. lansdell was lounging in grecian islands, and eating ices under, the colonnades of venice? and was it strange that she should go there now? i should become very wearisome, were i to transcribe all that was said that morning. it was a very happy morning,--a long, idle sunshiny pause in the business of life. roland recognized an old acquaintance in sigismund smith presently, and the two young men talked gaily of those juvenile days at mordred. they talked pleasantly of all manner of things. mr. lansdell must have been quite ardently attached to sigismund in those early days, if one might judge of the past by the present; for he greeted his old acquaintance with absolute effusion, and sketched out quite a little royal progress of rustic enjoyment for the week sigismund was to stay at graybridge. "we'll have a picnic," he said: "you remember we talked about a picnic, mrs. gilbert. we'll have a picnic at waverly castle; there isn't a more delightfully inconvenient place for a picnic in all midlandshire. one can dine on the top of the western tower, in actual danger of one's life. you can write to your uncle raymond, smith, and ask him to join us, with the two nieces, who are really most amiable children; so estimably unintellectual, and no more in the way than a little extra furniture: you mayn't want it; but if you've space enough for it in your rooms, it doesn't in the least inconvenience you. this is thursday; shall we say saturday for my picnic? i mean it to be my picnic, you know; a bachelor's picnic, with all the most obviously necessary items forgotten, i dare say. i think the salad-dressing and the champagne-nippers are the legitimate things to forget, are they not? do you think saturday will suit you and the doctor, mrs. gilbert? i should like it to be saturday, because you must all dine with me at mordred on sunday, in order that we may drink success and a dozen editions to the--what's the name of your novel, smith? shall it be saturday, mrs. gilbert?" isabel only answered by deepening blushes and a confused murmur of undistinguishable syllables. but her face lighted up with a look of rapture that was wont to illuminate it now and then, and which, mr. lansdell thought was the most beautiful expression of the human countenance that he had ever seen, out of a picture or in one. sigismund answered for the doctor's wife. yes, he was sure saturday would do capitally. he would settle it all with george, and he would answer for his uncle raymond and the orphans; and he would answer for the weather even, for the matter of that. he further accepted the invitation to dine at mordred on sunday, for himself and his host and hostess. "you know you can, izzie," he said, in answer to mrs. gilbert's deprecating murmur; "it's mere nonsense talking about prior engagements in a place like graybridge, where nobody ever does go out to dinner, and a tea-party on a sunday is looked upon as wickedness. lansdell always was a jolly good fellow, and i'm not a bit surprised to find that he's a jolly good fellow still; because if you train up a twig in the way it's inclined, the tree will not depart from it, as the philosopher has observed. i want to see mordred again, most particularly; for, to tell you the truth, lansdell," said mr. smith, with a gush of candour, "i was thinking of taking the priory for the scene of my next novel. there's a mossy kind of gloom about the eastern side of the house and the old square garden, that i think would take with the general public; and with regard to the cellarage," cried sigismund, kindling with sudden enthusiasm, "i've been through it with a lantern, and i'm sure there's accommodation for a perfect regiment of bodies, which would be a consideration if i was going to do the story in penny numbers; for in penny numbers one body always leads on to another, and you never know, when you begin, how far you may be obliged to go. however, my present idea is three volumes. what do you think now, lansdell, of the eastern side of the priory; deepening the gloom, you know, and letting the gardens all run to seed, with rank grass and a blasted cedar or so, and introducing rats behind the panelling, and a general rottenness, and perhaps a ghostly footstep in the corridor, or a periodical rustling behind the tapestry? what do you say, now, to mordred, taken in connection with twin brothers hating each other from infancy, and both in love with the same woman, and one of them--the darkest twin, with a scar on his forehead--walling up the young female in a deserted room, while the more amiable twin without a scar devotes his life to searching for her in foreign climes, accompanied by a detective officer and a bloodhound? it's only a rough idea at present," concluded mr. smith, modestly; "but i shall work it out in railway trains and pedestrian exercise. there's nothing like railway travelling or pedestrian exercise for working out an idea of that kind." mr. lansdell declared that his house and grounds were entirely at the service of his young friend; and it was settled that the picnic should take place on saturday, and the dinner-party on sunday; and george gilbert's acquiescence in the two arrangements was guaranteed by his friend sigismund. and then the conversation wandered away into more fanciful regions; and roland and mr. smith talked of men and books, while isabel listened, only chiming in now and then with little sentimental remarks, to which the master of mordred priory listened as intently as if the speaker had been a madame de staël. she may not have said anything very wonderful; but those were wonderful blushes that came and went upon her pale face as she spoke, fluttering and fitful as the shadow of a butterfly's wing hovering above a white rose; and the golden light in her eyes was more wonderful than anything out of a fairy tale. but he always listened to her, and he always looked at her from a certain position which he had elected for himself in relation to her. she was a beautiful child; and he, a man of the world, very much tired and worn out by the ordinary men and women of the world, was half amused, half interested, by her simplicity and sentimentality. he did no wrong, therefore, by cultivating her acquaintance when accident threw her, as had happened so often lately, in his way. there was no harm, so long as he held firmly to the position he had chosen for himself; so long as he contemplated this young gushing creature from across all the width of his own wasted youth and useless days; so long as he looked at her as a bright unapproachable being, as much divided from him by the difference in their natures, as by the fact that she was the lawful wife of mr. george gilbert of graybridge-on-the-wayverne. mr. lansdell tried his uttermost to hold firmly to this self-elected position with regard to isabel. he was always alluding to his own age; an age not to be computed, as he explained to mrs. gilbert, by the actual number of years in which he had inhabited this lower world, but to be calculated rather by the waste of those wearisome years, and the general decadence that had fallen upon him thereby. "i suppose, according to the calendar, i am only your senior by a decade," he said to izzie one day; "but when i hear you talk about your books and your heroes, i feel as if i had lived a century." he took the trouble to make little speeches of this kind very often, for mrs. gilbert's edification; and there were times when the doctor's wife was puzzled, and even wounded, by his talk and his manner, which were both subject to abrupt transitions, that were perplexing to a simple person. mr. lansdell was capricious and fitful in his moods, and would break off in the middle of some delicious little bit of sentiment, worthy of ernest maltravers or eugene aram himself, with a sneering remark about the absurdity of the style of conversation into which he had been betrayed; and would sit moodily pulling his favourite retriever's long ears for ten minutes or so, and then get up and wish isabel an abrupt good morning. mrs. gilbert took these changes of manner very deeply to heart. it was her fault, no doubt; she had said something silly; or affected, perhaps. had not her brother horace been apt to jeer at her as a mass of affectation, because she preferred byron to "bell's life," and was more interested in edith dombey than in the favourite for the oaks? she had said something that had sounded affected, though uttered in all simplicity of heart; and mr. lansdell had been disgusted by her talk. contempt from _him_--she always thought of him in italics--was very bitter! she would never, never go to thurston's crag again. but then, after one of those abruptly-unpleasant "good mornings," mr. lansdell was very apt to call at graybridge. he wanted mr. gilbert to go and see one of the men on the home-farm, who seemed in a very bad way, poor fellow, and ought not to be allowed to go on any longer without medical advice. mr. lansdell was very fond of looking up cases for the graybridge surgeon. how good he was! isabel thought; he in whom goodness was in a manner a supererogatory attribute; since heroes who were dark, and pensive, and handsome, were not called upon to be otherwise virtuous. how good he was! he who was as scornfully depreciative of his own merits as if the bones of another mr. clarke had been bleaching in some distant cave in imperishable evidence of his guilt. how good he was! and he had not been offended or disgusted with her when he left her so suddenly; for to-day he was kinder to her than ever, and lingered for nearly an hour in the unshaded parlour, in the hope that the surgeon would come in. but when mr. lansdell walked slowly homeward after such a visit as this, there was generally a dissatisfied look upon his face, which was altogether inconsistent with the pleasure he had appeared to take in his wasted hour at graybridge. he was inconsistent. it was in his nature, as a hero, to be so, no doubt. there were times when he forgot all about that yawning chasm of years which was supposed to divide him from any possibility of sympathy with isabel gilbert; there were times when he forgot himself so far as to be very young and happy in his loitering visits at graybridge, playing idle scraps of extempore melody on the wizen old harpsichord, sketching little bunches of foliage and frail italian temples, and pretty girlish faces with big black eyes, not altogether unlike isabel's, or strolling out into the flat old-fashioned garden, where mr. jeffson lolled on his spade, and made a rustic figure of himself, between a middle distance of brown earth and a foreground of cabbage-plants. i am bound to say that mr. jeffson, who was generally courtesy itself to every living creature, from the pigs to whom he carried savoury messes of skim-milk and specky potatoes, to the rector of graybridge, who gave him "good evening" sometimes as he reposed himself in the cool twilight, upon the wooden gate leading into george gilbert's stable-yard,--i am bound to say that mr. jeffson was altogether wanting in politeness to roland lansdell, and was apt to follow the young man with black and evil looks as he strolled by izzie's side along the narrow walks, or stooped now and then to extricate her muslin dress from the thorny branches of a gooseberry-bush. once, and once only, did isabel gilbert venture to remonstrate with her husband's retainer on the subject of his surly manner to the master of mordred priory. her remonstrance was a very faint one, and she was stooping over a rose-bush while she talked, and was very busy plucking off the withered leaves, and now and then leaves that were not withered. "i am afraid you don't like mr. lansdell, jeff," she said. she had been very much attached to the gardener, and very confidential to him, before roland's advent, and had done a little amateur gardening under his instructions, and had told him all about eugene aram and the murder of mr. clarke "you seemed quite cross to him this morning when he called to see george, and to inquire about the man that had the rheumatic fever; i'm afraid you don't like him." she bent her face very low over the rose-bush; so low that her hair, which, though much tidier than of old, was never quite as neatly or compactly adjusted as it might have been, fell forward like a veil, and entangled itself among the spiky branches. "oh yes, mrs. george; i like him well enough. there's not a young gentleman that i ever set eyes on as i think nobler to look at, or pleasanter to talk to, than mr. lansdell, or more free and open-like in his manner to poor folk. but, like a many other good things, mrs. george, mr. lansdell's only good, to my mind, when he's in his place; and i tell you, frank and candid, as i think he's never more out of his place than when he's hanging about your house, or idling away his time in this garden. it isn't for me, mrs. george, to say who should come here, and who shouldn't; but there was a kind of relationship between me and my master's dead mother. i can see her now, poor young thing, with her bright fair face, and her fair hair blowing across it, as she used to come towards me along the very pathway on which you're standing now, mrs. george; and all that time comes back to me as if it was yesterday. i never knew any one lead a better or a purer life. i stood beside her deathbed, and i never saw a happier death, nor one that seemed to bring it closer home to a man's mind that there was something happier and better still to come afterwards. but there was never no mr. roland lansdell in those days, mrs. george, scribbling heads with no bodies to 'em, and trees without any stumps, on scraps of paper, or playing tunes, or otherwise dawdling like, while my master was out o' doors. and i remember, as almost the last words that sweet young creature says, was something about having done her duty to her dear husband, and never having known one thought as she could wish to keep hid from him or heaven." mrs. gilbert dropped down on her knees before the rose-bush, with her face still shrouded by her hair, and her hands still busy among the leaves. when she looked up, which was not until after a lapse of some minutes, mr. jeffson was ever so far off, digging potatoes, with his back turned towards her. there had been nothing unkind in his manner of speaking to her; indeed, there had even been a special kindness and tenderness in his tones, a sorrowful gentleness, that went home to her heart. she thought of her husband's dead mother a good deal that night, in a reverential spirit, but with a touch of envy also. was not the first mrs. gilbert specially happy to have died young? was it not an enormous privilege so to die, and to be renowned ever afterwards as having done something meritorious, when, for the matter of that, other people would be very happy to die young, if they could? isabel thought of this with some sense of injury. long ago, when her brothers had been rude to her, and her step-mother had upbraided her on the subject of a constitutional unwillingness to fetch butter, and "back" teaspoons, she had wished to die young, leaving a legacy of perpetual remorse to those unfeeling relatives. but the gods had never cared anything about her. she had kept on wet boots sometimes after "backing" spoons in bad weather, in the fond hope that she might thereby fall into a decline. she had pictured herself in the little bedroom at camberwell, fading by inches, with becoming hectic spots on her cheeks, and imploring her step-mother to call her early; which desire would have been the converse of the popular idea of the ruling passion, inasmuch as in her normal state of health miss sleaford was wont to be late of a morning, and remonstrate drowsily, with the voice of the sluggard, when roughly roused from some foolish dream, in which she wore a ruby-velvet gown that _wouldn't_ keep hooked, and was beloved by a duke who was always inconsistently changing into the young man at the butter-shop. all that evening isabel pondered upon the simple history of her husband's mother, and wished that she could be very, very good, like her, and die early, with holy words upon her lips. but in the midst of such thoughts as these, she found herself wondering whether the hands of mr. gilbert the elder were red and knobby like those of his son, whether he employed the same bootmaker, and entertained an equal predilection for spring-onions and cheshire cheese. and from the picture of her deathbed isabel tried in vain to blot away a figure that had no right to be there,--the figure of some one who would be fetched post-haste, at the last moment, to hear her dying words, and to see her die. chapter xviii. the second warning. mr. roland lansdell did not invite lady gwendoline or her father to that bachelor picnic which he was to give at waverly castle. he had a kind of instinctive knowledge that lord ruysdale's daughter would not relish that sylvan entertainment. "she'd object to poor smith. i dare say," roland said to himself, "with his sporting-cut clothes, and his slang phrases, and his perpetual talk about three-volume novels and penny numbers. no, i don't think it would do to invite gwendoline; she'd be sure to object to smith." mr. lansdell said this, or thought this, a good many times upon the day before the picnic; but it may be that there was a lurking idea in his mind that lady gwendoline might object to the presence of some one other than mr. smith in the little assembly that had been planned under lord thurston's oak. perhaps roland lansdell,--who hated hypocrisy as men who are by no means sinless are yet apt to hate the base and crawling vices of mankind,--had become a hypocrite all at once, and wanted to deceive himself; or it may be that the weak slope of his handsome chin, and the want of breadth in a certain region of his skull, were the outward and visible signs of such a weak and vacillating nature, that what was true with regard to him one minute was false the next; so that out of this perpetual changefulness of thought and purpose there grew a confusion in the young man's mind, like the murmur of many streamlets rushing into one broad river, along whose tide the feeble swimmer was drifted to the very sea he wanted so much to avoid. "the picnic will be a pleasant thing for young smith," mr. lansdell thought; "and it'll please the children to make themselves bilious amongst ruins; and that dear good raymond always enjoys himself with young and happy people. i cannot see that the picnic can be anything but pleasant; and for the matter of that, i've a good mind to send the baskets early by stephens, who could make himself useful all day, and not go at all myself. i could run up to town under pretence of particular business, and amuse myself somehow for a day or two. or, for that matter, i might go over to baden or hombourg, and finish the autumn there. heaven knows i don't want to do any harm." but, in spite of all this uncertainty and vacillation of mind, mr. lansdell took a great deal of interest in the preparations for the picnic. he did not trouble himself about the magnificent game-pie which was made for the occasion, the crust of which was as highly glazed as a piece of modern wedgwood. he did not concern himself about the tender young fowls, nestling in groves of parsley; nor the tongue, floridly decorated with vegetable productions chiselled into the shapes of impossible flowers; nor the york ham, also in a high state of polish, like fine spanish mahogany, and encircled about the knuckle by pure white fringes of cut paper. the comestibles to which mr. lansdell directed his attention were of a more delicate and fairy-like description, such as women and children are apt to take delight in. there must be jellies and creams, mr. lansdell said, whatever difficulty there might be in the conveyance of such compositions. there must be fruit; he attended himself to the cutting of hothouse grapes and peaches, the noblest pine-apple in the long range of forcing-houses, and picturesque pears with leaves still clinging to the stalk. he ordered bouquets to be cut, one a very pyramid of choice flowers, chiefly white and innocent-looking, and he took care to select richly-scented blossoms, and he touched the big nosegay caressingly with his slim white fingers, and looked at it with a tender smile on his dark face, as if the flowers had a language for him,--and so they had; but it was by no means that stereotyped dictionary of substantives and adjectives popularly called the language of flowers. it was nothing new for him to choose a bouquet. had he not dispensed a small fortune in the rue de la paix and in the faubourg st. honoré, in exchange for big bunches of roses and myosotis, and cape-jasmine and waxy camellias; which he saw afterwards lying on the velvet cushion of an opera-box, or withering in the warm atmosphere of a boudoir? he was not a good man,--he had not led a good life. pretty women had called him "enfant!" in the dim mysterious shades of lamplit conservatories, upon the curtain-shrouded thresholds of moonlit balconies. arch soubrettes in little parisian theatres, bewitching marthons and margots and jeannettons, with brooms in their hands and diamonds in their ears, had smiled at him, and acted at him, and sung at him, as he lounged in the dusky recesses of a cavernous box. he had not led a good life. he was not a good man. but he was a man who had never sinned with impunity. with him remorse always went hand-in-hand with wrong-doing. in all his life, i doubt if there was any period in which mr. lansdell had ever so honestly and truly wished to do aright as he did just now. his mind seemed to have undergone a kind of purification in the still atmosphere of those fair midlandshire glades and meads. there was even a purifying influence in the society of such a woman as isabel gilbert, so different from all the other women he had known, so deficient in the merest rudiments of worldly wisdom. mr. lansdell did not go to london. when the ponderous old fly from graybridge drove up a narrow winding lane and emerged upon the green rising ground below the gates of waverly castle, roland was standing under the shadow of the walls, with a big bunch of hothouse flowers in his hand. he was in very high spirits; for to-day he had cast care to the winds. why should he not enjoy this innocent pleasure of a rustic ramble with simple country-bred people and children? he laid some little stress upon the presence of the orphans. yes, he would enjoy himself for to-day; and then to-morrow--ah! by the bye, to-morrow mr. and mrs. gilbert and sigismund smith were to dine with him. after to-morrow it would be all over, and he would be off to the continent again, to begin the old wearisome rounds once more; to eat the same dinners at the same restaurants; the same little suppers after the opera, in stuffy entresol chambers, all crimson velvet, and gaslight, and glass, and gilding; to go to the same balls in the same gorgeous saloons, and to see the same beautiful faces shining upon him in their monotonous splendour. "i might have turned country gentleman, and have been good for something in this world," thought roland, "if----" mr. lansdell was not alone. charles raymond and the orphans had arrived; and they all came forward together to welcome isabel and her companions. mr. raymond had always been very kind to his nieces' governess, but he seemed especially kind to her to-day. he interposed himself between roland and the door of the fly, and assisted isabel to alight. he slipped her hand under his arm with a pleasant friendliness of manner, and looked with a triumphant smile at the rest of the gentlemen. "i mean to appropriate mrs. gilbert for the whole of this day," he said, cheerily; "and i shall give her a full account of waverly, looked upon from an archæological, historical, and legendary point of view. never mind your flowers now, roland; it's a very charming bouquet, but you don't suppose mrs. gilbert is going to carry it about all day? take it into the lodge yonder, and ask them to put it in water; and in the evening, if you're very good, mrs. gilbert shall take it home to ornament her parlour at graybridge." the gates were opened, and they went in; isabel arm-in-arm with mr. raymond. roland placed himself presently on one side of isabel; but mr. raymond was so very instructive about john of gaunt and the tudors, that all mrs. gilbert's attention was taken up in the effort to understand his discourse, which was very pleasant and lively, in spite of its instructive nature. george gilbert looked at the ruins with the same awful respect with which he had regarded the pictures at mordred. he was tolerably familiar with those empty halls, those roofless chambers, and open doorways, and ivy-festooned windows; but he always looked at them with the same reverence, mingled with a vague wonder as to what it was that people admired in ruins, seeing that they generally made such short work of inspecting them, and seemed so pleased to get away and take refreshment. ruins and copious refreshment ware associated in mr. gilbert's mind; and, indeed, there does seem to be a natural union between ivied walls and lobster-salad, crumbling turrets and cold chicken; just as the domes of greenwich hospital, the hilly park beyond, and the rippling water in the foreground, must be for ever and ever associated with floundered souchy and devilled whitebait. mr. sigismund smith was delighted with waverly. he had rambled amongst the ruins often enough in his boyhood; but to-day he saw everything from a new point of view, and he groped about in all manner of obscure corners, with a pencil and pocket-book in his hand, laying the plan of a thrilling serial, and making himself irrecognizable with dust. his friends found him on one occasion stretched at full length amongst crisp fallen leaves in a recess that had once been a fireplace, with a view to ascertain whether it was long enough to accommodate a body. he climbed fearful heights, and planned perilous leaps and "hairbreadth 'scapes," deadly dangers in the way of walks along narrow cornices high up above empty space; such feats as hold the reader with suspended breath, and make the continued expenditure of his weekly penny almost a certainty. the orphans accompanied mr. smith, and were delighted with the little chambers that they found in nooks and corners of the mouldering castle. how delightful to have chairs and tables and kitchen utensils, and to live there for ever and ever, and keep house for themselves! they envied the vulgar children who lived in the square tower by the gate, and saw ruins every day of their lives. it was a very pleasant morning altogether. there was a strangely mingled feeling of satisfaction and annoyance in roland lansdell's mind as he strolled beside isabel, and listened, or appeared to listen, to mr. raymond's talk. he would like to have had isabel's little hand lying lightly on his arm; he would like to have seen those wondering black eyes lifted to his face; he would like her to have heard the romantic legends belonging to the ruined walls and roofless banquet-chambers from him. and yet, perhaps, it was better as it was. he was going away very soon--immediately, indeed; he was going where that simple pleasure would be impossible to him, and it was better not to lull himself in soft delights that were so soon to be taken away from his barren life. yes, his barren life. he had come to think of his fate with bitter repining, and to look upon himself as, somehow or other, cruelly ill-used by providence. but, in spite of mr. raymond, he contrived to sit next isabel at dinner, which was served by-and-by in a lovely sheltered nook under the walls, where there was no chance of the salt being blown into the greengage tart, or the custard spilt over the lobster-salad. mr. lansdell had sent a couple of servants to arrange matters; and the picnic was not a bit like an ordinary picnic, where things are lost and forgotten, and where there is generally confusion by reason of everybody's desire to assist in the preparations. this was altogether a _recherché_ banquet; but scarcely so pleasant as those more rural feasts, in which there is a paucity of tumblers, and no forks to speak of. the champagne was iced, the jellies quivered in the sunlight, everything was in perfect order; and if mr. raymond had not insisted upon sending away the two men, who wanted to wait at table, with the gloomy solemnity of every-day life, it would scarcely have been worthy the name of picnic. but with the two solemn servants out of the way, and with sigismund, very red and dusty and noisy, to act as butler, matters were considerably improved. the sun was low when they left the ruins of the feast for the two solemn men to clear away. the sun was low, and the moon had risen, so pale as to be scarcely distinguishable from a faint summer cloud high up in the clear opal heaven. mr. raymond took isabel up by a winding staircase to the top of a high turret, beneath which spread green meads and slopes of verdure, where once had been a lake and pleasaunce. the moon grew silvery before they reached the top of the turret, where there was room enough for a dozen people. roland went with them, of course, and sat on one of the broad stone battlements looking out at the still night, with his profile defined as sharply as a cameo against the deepening blue of the sky. he was very silent, and his silence had a distracting influence on isabel, who made vain efforts to understand what mr. raymond was saying to her, and gave vague answers every now and then; so vague that charles raymond left off talking presently, and seemed to fall into as profound a reverie as that which kept mr. lansdell silent. to isabel's mind there was a pensive sweetness in that silence, which was in some way in harmony with the scene and the atmosphere. she was free to watch roland's face now that mr. raymond had left off talking to her, and she did watch it; that still profile whose perfect outline grew more and more distinct against the moonlit sky. if anybody could have painted his portrait as he sat there, with one idle hand hanging listless among the ivy-leaves, blanched in the moonlight, what a picture it would have made! what was he thinking of? were his thoughts far away in some foreign city with dark-eyed clotilde? or the duchess with the glittering hair, who had loved him and been false to him long ago, when he was an alien, and recorded the history of his woes in heart-breaking verse, in fitful numbers, larded with scraps of french and latin, alternately despairing and sarcastic? isabel solemnly believed in clotilde and the glittering duchess, and was steeped in self-abasement and humiliation when she compared herself with those vague and splendid creatures. roland spoke at last: if there had been anything common-place or worldly wise in what he said, there must have been a little revulsion in isabel's mind; but his talk was happily attuned to the place and the hour; incomprehensible and mysterious,--like the deepening night in the heavens. "i think there is a point at which a man's life comes to an end," he said. "i think there is a fitting and legitimate close to every man's existence, that is as palpable as the falling of a curtain when a play is done. he goes on living; that is to say, eating and drinking, and inhaling so many cubic feet of fresh air every day, for half a century afterwards, perhaps; but that is nothing. do not the actors live after the play is done, and the curtain has fallen? hamlet goes home and eats his supper, and scolds his wife and snubs his children; but the exaltation and the passion that created him prince of denmark have died out like the coke ashes of the green-room fire. surely that after-life is the penalty, the counter-balance, of brief golden hours of hope and pleasure. i am glad the lansdells are not a long-lived race, raymond; for i think the play is finished, and the dark curtain has dropped for me!" "humph!" muttered mr. raymond; "wasn't there something to that effect in the 'alien?' it's very pretty, roland,--that sort of dismal prettiness which is so much in fashion nowadays; but don't you think if you were to get up a little earlier in the morning, and spend a couple of hours amongst the stubble with your clogs and gun, so as to get an appetite for your breakfast, you might get over that sort of thing?" isabel turned a mutely reproachful gaze upon mr. raymond, but roland burst out laughing. "i dare say i talk like a fool," he said; "i feel like one sometimes." "when are you going abroad again?" "in a month's time. but why should i go abroad?" asked mr. lansdell, with a dash of fierceness in the sudden change of his tone; "why should i go? what is there for me to do there better than here? what good am i there more than i am here?" he asked these questions of the sky as much as of mr. raymond; and the philosopher of conventford did not feel himself called upon to answer them. mr. lansdell relapsed into the silence that so puzzled isabel; and nothing more was said until the voice of george gilbert sounded from below, deeply sonorous amongst the walls and towers, calling to isabel. "i must go," she said; "i dare say the fly is ready to take us back. goodnight, mr. raymond; goodnight, mr. lansdell." she held out her hand, as if doubtful to whom she should first offer it; roland had never changed his position until this moment, but he started up suddenly now, like a man awakened from a dream. "you are going?" he said; "so soon!" "so soon! it is very late, i think," mrs. gilbert answered; "at least, i mean we have enjoyed ourselves very much; and the time has passed so quickly." she thought it was her duty to say something of this kind to him, as the giver of the feast; and then she blushed and grew confused, thinking she had said too much. "good night, mr. lansdell." "but i am coming down with you to the gate," said roland; "do you think we could let you go down those slippery stairs by yourself, to fall and break your neck and haunt the tower by moonlight for ever afterwards, a pale ghost in shadowy muslin drapery? here's mr. gilbert," he added, as the top of george's hat made itself visible upon the winding staircase; "but i'm sure i know the turret better than he does, and i shall take you under my care." he took her hand as he spoke, and led her down the dangerous winding way as carefully and tenderly as if she had been a little child. her hand did not tremble as it rested in his; but something like a mysterious winged creature that had long been imprisoned in her breast seemed to break his bonds all at once, and float away from her towards him. she thought it was her long-imprisoned soul, perhaps, that so left her to become a part of his. if that slow downward journey could have lasted for ever--if she could have gone down, down, down with roland lansdell into some fathomless pit, until at last they came to a luminous cavern and still moonlit water, where there was a heavenly calm--and death! but the descent did not last very long, careful as roland was of every step; and there was the top of george's hat bobbing about in the moonlight all the time; for the surgeon had lost his way in the turret, and only came down at last very warm and breathless when isabel called to him from the bottom of the stairs. sigismund and the orphans appeared at the same moment. mr. raymond had followed roland and isabel very closely, and they all went together to the fly. "remember to-morrow," mr. lansdell said generally to the graybridge party as they took their seats. "i shall expect you as soon as the afternoon service is over. i know you are regular church-goers at graybridge. couldn't you come to mordred for the afternoon service, by the bye?--the church is well worth seeing." there was a little discussion; and it was finally agreed that mr. and mrs. george gilbert and sigismund should go to mordred church on the following afternoon; and then there was a good deal of hand-shaking before the carriage drove away, and disappeared behind the sheltering edges that screened the winding road. "i'll see you and the children off, raymond," mr. lansdell said, "before i go myself." "i'm not going away just this minute," mr. raymond answered gravely; "i want to have a little talk with you first. there's something i particularly want to say to you. mrs. primshaw," he cried to the landlady of a little inn just opposite the castle-gates, a good-natured rosy-faced young woman, who was standing on the threshold of her door watching the movements of the gentlefolks, "will you take care of my little girls, and see whether their wraps are warm enough for the drive home, while i take a moonlight stroll with mr. lansdell?" mrs. primshaw declared that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to see to the comfort of the young ladies. so the orphans skipped across the moonlit road, nowise sorry to take shelter in the pleasant bar-parlour, all rosy and luminous with a cosy handful of bright fire in the tiniest grate ever seen out of a doll's house. mr. lansdell and mr. raymond walked along the lonely road under the shadow of the castle wall, and for some minutes neither of them spoke. roland evinced no curiosity about, or interest in, that unknown something which mr. raymond had to say to him; but there was a kind of dogged sullenness in the carriage of his head, the fixed expression of his face, that seemed to promise badly for the pleasantness of the interview. perhaps mr. raymond saw this, and was rather puzzled how to commence the conversation; at any rate, when he did begin, he began very abruptly, taking what one might venture to call a conversational header. "roland," he said, "this won't do!" "what won't do?" asked mr. lansdell, coolly. "of course, i don't set up for being your mentor," returned mr. raymond, "or for having any right to lecture you, or dictate to you. the tie of kinsmanship between us is a very slight one: though, as far as that goes, god knows that i could scarcely love you better than i do, if i were your father. but if i were your father, i don't suppose you'd listen to me, or heed me. men never do in such matters as these. i've lived my life, roland, and i know too well how little good advice can do in such a case as this. but i can't see you going wrong without trying to stop you: and for that poor honest-hearted fellow yonder, for his sake, i must speak, roland. have you any consciousness of the mischief you're doing? have you any knowledge of the bottomless pit of sin, and misery, and shame, and horror that you are digging before that foolish woman's feet?" "why, raymond," cried mr. lansdell, with a laugh,--not a very hearty laugh, but something like that hollow mockery of merriment with which a man greets the narration of some old joe-millerism that has been familiar to him from his childhood,--"why, raymond, you're as obscure as a modern poet! what do you mean? who's the honest-hearted fellow? and who's the foolish woman? and what's the nature of the business altogether?" "roland, let us be frank with each other, at least. do you remember how you told me once that, when every bright illusion had dropped away from you one by one, honour still remained,--- a poor pallid star, compared to those other lights that had perished in the darkness, but still bright enough to keep you in the straight road? has that last light gone out with the rest, roland, my poor melancholy boy,--my boy whom i have loved as my own child?--will the day ever come when i shall have to be ashamed of anna lansdell's only son?" his mother's name had always something of a spell for roland. his head, so proudly held before, drooped suddenly, and he walked on in silence for some little time. mr. raymond was also silent. he had drawn some good augury from the altered carriage of the young man's head, and was loth to disturb the current of his thoughts. when roland did at last raise his head, he turned and looked his friend and kinsman full in the face. "raymond," he said, "i am not a good man;" he was very fond of making this declaration, and i think he fancied that in so doing he made some vague atonement for his short-comings: "i am not a good man, but i am no hypocrite; i will not lie to you, or prevaricate with you. perhaps there may be some justification for what you said just now, or there might be, if i were a different sort of man. but, as it is, i give you my honour you are mistaken. i have been digging no pit for a woman's innocent footsteps to stray into. i have been plotting no treachery against that honest fellow yonder. remember, i do not by any means hold myself blameless. i have admired mrs. gilbert just as one admires a pretty child, and i have allowed myself to be amused by her sentimental talk, and have lent her books, and may perhaps have paid her a little more attention than i ought to have done. but i have done nothing deliberately. i have never for one moment had any purpose in my mind, or mixed her image with so much as a dream of--of--any tangible form. i have drifted into a dangerous position, or a position that might be dangerous to another man; but i can drift out of it as easily as i drifted in. i shall leave midlandshire next month." "and to-morrow the gilberts dine with you at mordred; and all through this month there will be the chance of your seeing mrs. gilbert, and lending her more books, and paying her more attention; and so on. it is not so much that i doubt you, roland; i cannot think so meanly of you as to doubt your honour in this business. but you are doing mischief; you are turning this silly girl's head. it is no kindness to lend her books; it is no kindness to invite her to mordred, and to show her brief glimpses of a life that never can be hers. if you want to do a good deed, and to elevate her life out of its present dead level, make her your almoner, and give her a hundred a year to distribute among her husband's poor patients. the weak unhappy child is perishing for want of some duty to perform upon this earth; some necessary task to keep her busy from day to day, and to make a link between her husband and herself. roland, i do believe that you are as good and generous-minded a fellow as ever an old bachelor was proud of. my dear boy, let me feel prouder of you than i have ever felt yet. leave midlandshire to-morrow morning. it will be easy to invent some excuse for going. go to-morrow, roland." "i will," answered mr. lansdell, after a brief pause; "i will go, raymond," he repeated, holding out his hand, and clasping that of his friend. "i suppose i have been going a little astray lately; but i only wanted the voice of a true-hearted fellow like you to call me back to the straight road. i shall leave midlandshire to-morrow, raymond; and it may be a very long time before you see me back again." "heaven knows i am sorry enough to lose you, my boy," mr. raymond said with some emotion; "but i feel that it's the only thing for you to do. i used sometimes to think, before george gilbert offered to marry isabel, that you and she would have been suited to each other somehow; and i have wished that--" and here mr. raymond stopped abruptly, feeling that this speech was scarcely the wisest he could have made. but roland lansdell took no notice of that unlucky observation. "i shall go to-morrow," he repeated. "i'm very glad you've spoken to me, raymond; i thank you most heartily for the advice you have given me this night; and i shall go to-morrow." and then his mind wandered away to his boyish studies in mythical roman history; and he wondered how marcus curtius felt just after making up his mind to take the leap that made him famous. and then, with a sudden slip from ancient to modern history, he thought of poor tender-hearted louise la vallière running away and hiding herself in a convent, only to have her pure thoughts and aspirations scattered like a cluster of frail wood-anemones in a storm of wind--only to have her holy resolutions trampled upon by the ruthless foot of an impetuous young king. chapter xix. what might have been! mrs. gilbert spoke very little during the homeward drive through the moonlight. in her visions of that drive--or what that drive might be--she had fancied roland lansdell riding by the carriage-window, and going a few miles out of his way in order to escort his friends back to graybridge. "if he cared to be with us, he would have come," isabel thought, with a pensive reproachful feeling about mr. lansdell. it is just possible that roland might have ridden after the fly from graybridge, and ridden beside it along the quiet country roads, talking as he only in all the world could talk, according to mrs. gilbert's opinion. it is possible that, being so sorely at a loss as to what he should do with himself, mr. lansdell might have wasted an hour thus, had he not been detained by his old friend charles raymond. as it was, he rode straight home to mordred priory, very slowly, thinking deeply as he went along; thinking bitter thoughts about himself and his destiny. "if my cousin gwendoline had been true to me, i should have been an utterly different man," he thought; "i should have been a middle-aged steady-going fellow by this time, with a boy at eton, and a pretty fair-haired daughter to ride her pony by my side. i think i might have been good for something if i had married long ago, when my mother died, and my heart was ready to shelter the woman she had chosen for me. children! a man who has children has some reason to be good, and to do his duty. but to stand quite alone in a world that one has grown tired of; with every pleasure exhausted, and every faith worn threadbare; with a dreary waste of memory behind, a barren desert of empty years before;--to be quite alone in the world, the last of a race that once was brave and generous; the feeble, worn-out remnant of a lineage that once did great deeds, and made a name for itself in this world;--that indeed is bitter!" mr. lansdell's thoughts dwelt upon his loneliness to-night, as they had never dwelt before, since the day when his mother's death and cousin's inconstancy first left him lonely. "yes, i shall go abroad again," he thought presently, "and go over the whole dreary beat once more--like marryat's phantom captain turned landsman, like the wandering jew in a poole-built travelling dress. i shall eat fish at philippe's again, and buy more bouquets in the rue castiglione, and lose more money at hombourg, and shoot more crocodiles on the banks of the nile, and be laid up with another fever in the holy land. it will be all the same over again, except that it will be a great deal more tiresome this time." and then mr. lansdell began to think what his life might have been, if the woman he loved, or rather the woman for whom he had a foolish sentimental fancy,--he did not admit to himself that his predilection for isabel gilbert was more than this,--had been free to become his wife. he imagined himself returning from those tiresome continental wanderings a twelve-month earlier than he had actually returned. "ah, me!" he thought, "only one little year earlier, and all things would have been different!" he would have gone to conventford to see his dear old friend charles raymond, and there, in the sunny drawing-room, he would have found a pale-faced, dark-eyed girl bending over a child's lesson-book, or listening while a child strummed on the piano. he could fancy that scene,--he could see it all, like a beautiful cabinet picture; ah, how different, how different everything would have been then! it would have been no sin then to be inexplicably happy in that girlish presence; there would have been no vague remorseful pang, no sting of self-reproach, mingling with every pleasant emotion, contending with every thrill of mystic joy. and then--and then, some night in the twilit garden, when the stars were hovering dim about the city roofs still and hushed in the distance, he would have told her that he loved her; that, after a decade of indifference to all the brightest things of earth, he had found a pure unutterable happiness in the hope and belief that she would be his wife. he fancied her shy blushes, her drooping eyes suddenly tearful in the depth of her joy; and he fancied what his life might have been for ever afterwards, transformed and sublimated by its new purpose, its new delights; transfigured by a pure and exalted affection. he fancied all this as it all might have been; and turned and bowed his face before an image that bore his own likeness, and yet was not himself--the image of a good man, happy husband and father, true friend and gentle master, dwelling for ever and ever amidst that peaceful english landscape; beloved, respected, the centre of a happy circle, the key-stone of a fair domestic arch,--a necessary link in the grand chain of human love and life. "and, instead of all this, i am a wandering nomad, who never has been, and never can be, of any use in this world; who fills no place in life, and will leave no blank when he dies. when louis the well-beloved was disinclined for the chase, the royal huntsmen were wont to announce that to-day his majesty would do nothing. i have been doing nothing all my life, and cannot even rejoice in a stag-hunt." mr. lansdell beguiled his homeward way with many bitter reflections of this kind. but, inconsistent and vacillating in his thoughts, as he had been ever inconsistent and vacillating in his actions, he thought of himself at one time as being deeply and devotedly in love with isabel gilbert, and at another time as being only the victim of a foolish romantic fancy, which would perish by a death as speedy as its birth. "what an idiot i am for my pains!" he said to himself, presently. "in six weeks' time this poor child's pale face will have no more place in my mind than the snows of last winter have on this earth, or only in far-away nooks and corners of memory, like the alpine peaks, where the snows linger undisturbed by the hand of change. poor little girl! how she blushes and falters sometimes when she speaks to me, and how pretty she looks then! if they could get such an ingénue at the français, all paris would be mad about her. we are very much in love with each other, i dare say; but i don't think it's a passion to outlast six weeks' absence on either side, not on her side certainly, dear romantic child! i have only been the hero of a story-book; and all this folly has been nothing more than a page out of a novel set in action. raymond is very right. i must go away; and she will go back to her three-volume novels, and fall in love with a fair-haired hero, and forget me." he sighed as he thought this. it was infinitely better that he should be forgotten, and speedily; and yet it is hard to have no place in the universe--not even one hidden shrine in a foolish woman's heart. mr. lansdell was before the priory gates by this time. the old woman stifled a yawn as she admitted the master of the domain. he went in past the little blinking light in the narrow gothic window, and along the winding roadway between cool shrubberies that shed an aromatic perfume on the still night air. scared fawns flitted ghost-like away into deep recesses amid the mordred oaks; and in the distance the waterdrops of a cascade, changed by the moonbeams into showers of silver, fell with a little tinkling sound amongst great blocks of moss-grown granite and wet fern. mordred priory, seen in the moonlight, was not a place upon which a man would willingly turn his back. long ago roland lansdell had grown tired of its familiar beauties; but to-night the scene seemed transformed. he looked at it with a new interest; he thought of it with a sad tender regret, that stung him like a physical pain. as he had thought of what his life might have been under other circumstances, he thought now of what the place might have been. he fancied the grand old rooms resonant with the echoes of children's voices; he pictured one slender white-robed figure on the moonlit terrace; he fancied a tender earnest face turned steadily towards the path along which he rode; he felt the thrilling contact of a caressing arm twining itself shyly in his; he heard the low murmur of a loving voice--his wife's voice!--bidding him welcome home. but it was never to be! the watch-dog's honest bark--or rather the bark of several watch-dogs--made the night clamorous presently, when mr. lansdell drew rein before the porch; but there was no eye to mark his coming, and be brighter when he came; unless, indeed, it was the eye of his valet, which had waxed dim over the columns of the "morning post," and may have glimmered faintly, in evidence of that functionary's satisfaction at the prospect of being speedily released from duty. if it was so, the valet was doomed to disappointment; for mr. lansdell--usually the least troublesome of masters--wanted a great deal done for him to-night. "you may set to work at once with my portmanteau, jadis," he said, when he met his servant in the hall. "i must leave mordred to-morrow morning in time for the seven o'clock express from warncliffe. i want you to pack my things, and arrange for wilson to be ready to drive me over. i must leave here at six. perhaps, by the bye, you may as well pack one portmanteau for me to take with me, and you can follow with the rest of the luggage on monday." "you are going abroad, sir?" "yes, i am tired of mordred. i shall not stop for the hunting season. you can go up-stairs now and pack the portmanteau. don't forget to make all arrangements about the carriage; for six precisely. you can go to bed when you've finished packing. i've some letters to write, and shall be late." the man bowed and departed, to grumble, in an undertone, over mr. lansdell's shirts and waistcoats, while roland went into the library to write his letters. the letters which he had to write turned out to be only one letter, or rather a dozen variations upon the same theme, which he tore up, one after another, almost as soon as they were written. he was not wont to be so fastidious in the wording of his epistles, but to-night he could not be satisfied with what he wrote. he wrote to mrs. gilbert; yes, to her! why should he not write to her when he was going away to-morrow morning; when he was going to offer up that vague bright dream which had lately beguiled him, a willing sacrifice, on the altar of duty and honour? "i am not much good," he said: for ever excusing his shortcomings by his self-depreciation. "i never set up for being a good man; but i have some feeling of honour left in me at the worst." he wrote to isabel, therefore, rather than to her husband, and he destroyed many letters before he wrote what he fancied suitable to the occasion. did not the smothered tenderness, the regret, the passion, reveal itself in some of those letters, in spite of his own determination to be strictly conventional and correct? but the letter which he wrote last was stiff and commonplace enough to have satisfied the sternest moralist. "dear mrs. gilbert,--i much regret that circumstances, which only came to my knowledge after your party left last night, will oblige me to leave mordred early to-morrow morning. i am therefore compelled to forego the pleasure which i had anticipated from our friendly little dinner to-morrow evening; but pray assure smith that the priory is entirely at his disposal whenever he likes to come here, and that he is welcome to make it the scene of half-a-dozen fictions, if he pleases. i fear the old place will soon look gloomy and desolate enough to satisfy his ideas of the romantic, for it may be some years before i again see the midlandshire woods and meadows." ("the dear old bridge across the waterfall, the old oak under which i have spent such pleasant hours," mr. lansdell had written here in one of the letters which he destroyed.) "i hope you will convey to mr. gilbert my warmest thanks, with the accompanying cheque, for the kindness and skill which have endeared him to my cottagers. i shall be very glad if he will continue to look after them, and i will arrange for the carrying out of any sanitary improvements he may suggest to hodgeson, my steward. "the library will be always prepared for you whenever you feel inclined to read and study there, and the contents of the shelves will be entirely at the service of yourself and mr. gilbert. "with regards to your husband, and all friendly wishes for smith's prosperity and success, "i remain, dear mrs. gilbert, "yery truly yours, "roland lansdell. _"mordred priory, saturday night."_ "it may be some years before i again see the midlandshire woods and meadows!" this sentence was the gist of the letter, the stiff unmeaning letter, which was as dull and laboured as a schoolboy's holiday missive to his honoured parents. "my poor, innocent, tender-hearted darling! will she be sorry when she reads it?" thought mr. lansdell, as he addressed his letter. "will this parting be a new grief to her, a shadowy romantic sorrow, like her regret for drowned shelley, or fever-stricken byron? my darling, my darling! if fate had sent me here a twelvemonth earlier, you and i might have been standing side by side in the moonlight, talking of the happy future before us. only a year! and there were so many accidents that might have caused my return. only one year! and in that little space i lost my one grand chance of happiness." mr. lansdell had done his duty. he had given charles raymond a promise which he meant to keep; and having done so, he gave his thoughts and fancies a license which he had never allowed them before. he no longer struggled to retain the attitude from which he had hitherto endeavoured to regard mrs. gilbert. he no longer considered it his duty to think of her as a pretty, grown-up child, whose childish follies amused him for the moment. no; he was going away now, and had no longer need to set any restraint upon his thoughts. he was going away, and was free to acknowledge to himself that this love which had grown up so suddenly in his breast was the one grand passion of his life, and, under different circumstances, might have been his happiness and redemption. chapter xx. "oceans should divide us." mr. and mrs. gilbert went to church arm-in-arm as usual on the morning after the picnic; but sigismund stayed at home to sketch the rough outline of that feudal romance which he had planned among the ruins of waverly. the day was very fine,--a real summer day, with a blazing sun and a cloudless blue sky. the sunshine seemed like a good omen, mrs. gilbert thought, as she dressed herself in the white muslin robe that she was to wear at mordred. an omen of what? she did not ask herself that question; but she was pleased to think that the heavens should smile upon her visit to mordred. she was thinking of the dinner at the priory while she sat by her husband's side in church, looking demurely down at the prayer-book in her lap. it was a common thing for her now to be thinking of _him_ when she ought to have been attending to the sermon. to-day she did not even try to listen to the rector's discourse. she was fancying herself in the dusky drawing-room at mordred, after dinner, hearing _him_ talk. she saw his face turned towards her in the twilight--the pale dark face--the dreamy, uncertain eyes. when the congregation rose suddenly, at the end of the sermon, she sat bewildered for a moment, like a creature awakened from a dream; and when the people knelt, and became absorbed in silent meditation on the injunctions of their pastor, mrs. gilbert remained so long in a devotional attitude, that her husband was fain to arouse her by a gentle tap upon the shoulder. she had been thinking of _him_ even on her knees. she could not shut his image from her thoughts; she walked about in a perpetual dream, and rarely awakened to the consciousness that there was wickedness in so dreaming; and even when she did reflect upon her sin, it was very easy to excuse it and make light of it. _he_ would never know. in november he would be gone, and the dream would be nothing but a dream. it was only one o'clock, by the old-fashioned eight-day clock in the passage, when they went home after church. the gig was to be ready at a quarter before three, and at that hour they were to start for mordred. george meant to put up his horse at the little inn near the priory gates, and then they could walk quietly from the church to mr. lansdell's after the service. mr. gilbert felt that brown molly appeared rather at a disadvantage in roland's grand stables. sigismund was still sitting in the little parlour, looking very warm, and considerably the worse for ink. he had tried all the penny bottles in the course of his labours, and had a little collection of them clustered at his elbow. "i don't think any one ever imagined so many ink-bottles compatible with so little ink," he said, plaintively. "i've had my test ideas baulked by perpetual hairs in my pen, to say nothing of flies' wings, and even bodies. there's nothing like unlimited ink for imparting fluency to a man's language; you cut short his eloquence the moment you limit his ink. however, i'm down here for pleasure, old fellow," mr. smith added, cheerfully; "and all the printing-machines in the city of london may be waiting for copy for aught i care." an hour and three quarters must elapse before it would be time even to start for mordred. mrs. gilbert went up-stairs and rearranged her hair, and looked at herself in the glass, and wondered if she was pretty. _he_ had never told her so. he had never paid her any compliment. but she fancied, somehow, that he thought her pretty, though she had no idea whence that fancy was derived. she went down-stairs again, and out into the garden, whence mr. smith was calling to her--the little garden in front of the house, where there were a few common flowers blooming dustily in oval beds like dishes; and where, in a corner, there was an erection of shells and broken bits of coloured glass, which mr. jeffson fondly imagined to be the exact representation of a grotto. mr. smith had a good deal to say for himself, as indeed he had on all occasions; but as his discourse was entirely of a personal character, it may have been rather wanting in general interest. isabel strolled up and down the narrow pathway by his side, and turned her face politely towards him, and said, "yes," and "did you really!" and "well, how very strange!" now and then. but she was thinking as she had thought in church; she was thinking of the wonderful happiness that lay before her,--an evening in _his_ companionship, amongst pictures and hothouse flowers and marble busts and trailing silken curtains, and with glimpses of a moonlit expanse of lawn and shrubbery gleaming through every open window. she was thinking of this when a bell rang loud and shrill in her ear: and looking round suddenly, she saw a man in livery--a man who looked like a groom--standing outside the garden gate. she was so near the gate that it would have been a mere affectation to keep the man waiting there while mrs. jeffson made her way from the remote premises at the back of the house. the doctor's wife turned the key in the lock and opened the gate; but the man only wanted to deliver a letter, which he gave her with one hand while he touched the brim of his hat with the other. "from mr. lansdell, ma'am," he said. in the next moment he was gone, and the open gate and the white dusty lane seemed to reel before isabel gilbert's eyes. there had been no need for the man to tell her that the letter was from his master. she knew the bold dashing hand, in which she had read pencil annotations upon the margins of those books which mr. lansdell had lent her. and even if she had not known the hand, she would have easily guessed whence the letter came. who else should send her so grand-looking a missive, with that thick cream-coloured envelope (a big official-looking envelope), and the broad coat-of-arms with tall winged supporters on the seal? but why should he have written to her? it was to put off the dinner, no doubt. her lips trembled a little, like the lips of a child who is going to cry, as she opened the letter. she read it very hurriedly twice, and then all at once comprehended that roland was going away for some years,--for ever,--it was all the same thing; and that she would never, never, never, never,--the word seemed to repeat itself in her brain like the dreadful clanging of a bell,--never see him again! she knew that sigismund was looking at her, and asking her some question about the contents of the letter. "what did lansdell say? was it a put-off, or what?" mr. smith demanded; but isabel did not answer him. she handed him the open letter, and then, suddenly turning from him, ran into the house, up-stairs, and into her room. she locked the door, flung herself face downwards upon the bed, and wept as a woman weeps in the first great agony of her life. the sound of those passionate sobs was stifled by the pillows amidst which her face was buried, but the anguish of them shook her from head to foot. it was very wicked to have thought of him so much, to have loved him so dearly. the punishment of her sin came to her all at once, and was very bitter. mr. smith stood for some moments staring at the doorway through which isabel had disappeared, with the open letter in his hand, and his face a perfect blank in the intensity of his amazement. "i suppose it is a put-off," he said to himself; "and she's disappointed because we're not going. why, what a child she is still! i remember her behaving just like that once at camberwell, when i'd promised her tickets for the play, and couldn't get 'em. the manager of the t. r. d. l. said he didn't consider the author of 'the brand upon the shoulder-blade' entitled to the usual privilege. poor little izzie! i remember her running away, and not coming back for ever so long; and when she did make her appearance, her eyelids were red and swollen." mr. smith stooped to pick up a narrow slip of lavender-tinted paper from the garden-walk. it was the cheque which roland lansdell had written in payment of the doctor's services. sigismund read the letter, and reflected over it. "i'm almost as much disappointed as izzie, for the matter of that," he thought to himself; "we should have had a jolly good dinner at the priory, and any amount of sparkling; and chateau what's-its-name and clos de thingamy to follow, i dare say. i'll take george the letter and the cheque--it's just like izzie to leave the cheque on the ground--and resign myself to a dullish sunday." it was a dull sunday. the unacademical "ish" with which mr. smith had qualified the adjective was quite unnecessary. it was a very dull sunday. ah, reader, if providence has some desperate sorrow in store for you, pray that it may not befall you on a sunday, in the blazing sunshine, when the church bells are ringing on the still drowsy air. mr. gilbert went up-stairs by-and-by, when the bells were at their loudest, and, finding the door of his chamber locked, knocked on the panel, and asked isabel if she did not mean to go to church. but she told him she had a dreadful headache, and wanted to stay at home. he asked her ever so many questions, as to why her head ached, and how long it had ached, and wanted to see her, from a professional point of view. "oh, no, no!" she cried, from the bed upon which she was lying; "i don't want any medicine; i only want to rest my head; i was asleep when you knocked." ah, what a miserable falsehood that was! as if she could ever hope to sleep again! "but, izzie," remonstrated mr. gilbert, "you've had no dinner. there's cold lamb in the house, you know; and we're going to have that and a salad after church. you'll come down to dinner, eh?" "no, no; i don't want any dinner. please, leave me alone. i _only_ want to rest," she answered, piteously. poor honest george gilbert little knew how horrible an effort it had cost his wife to utter even these brief sentences without breaking down in a passion of sobbing and weeping. she buried her face in the pillows again as her husband's footsteps went slowly down the narrow stairs. she was very wretched, very foolish. it was only a dream--nothing more than a dream--that was lost to her. again, had she not known all along that roland lansdell would go away, and that all her bright dreams and fancies must go with him? had she not counted upon his departure? yes; but in november, not in september; not on the day that was to have been such a happy day. "oh, how cruel, how cruel!" she thought. "how cruel of him to go away like that! without even saying good-bye,--without even saying he was sorry to go. and i fancied that he liked to talk to me; i fancied that he was pleased to see me sometimes, and would be sorry when the time came for him to go away. but to think that he should go away two months before the time he spoke of,--to think that he should not even be sorry to go!" mrs. gilbert got up by-and-by, when the western sky was all one lurid glow of light and colour. she got up because there was little peace for a weary spirit in that chamber; to the door of which some considerate creature came every half-hour or so to ask isabel if her head was any better by this time, if she would have a cup of tea, if she would come down-stairs and lie on the sofa, and to torment her with many other thoughtful inquiries of the like nature. she was not to be alone with her great sorrow. sooner or later she must go out and begin life again, and face the blank world in which _he_ was not. better, since it must be so, that she should begin her dreary task at once. she bathed her face and head, she plaited her long black hair before the little glass, behind which the lurid sky glared redly at her. ah, how often in the sunny morning she had stood before that shabby old-fashioned glass thinking of him, and the chance of meeting him beside the mill-stream, under the flickering shadows of the oak-leaves at thurston's crag! and now it was all over, and she would never, never, never, never see him again! her life was finished. ah, how truly he had spoken on the battlements of the ruined tower! and how bitterly the meaning of his words came home to her to-day! her life was finished. the curtain had fallen, and the lights were out; and she had nothing more to do but to grope blindly about upon a darkened stage until she sank in the great vampire-trap--the grave. a pale ghost, with sombre shadowy hair, looked back at her from the glass. oh, if she could die, if she could die! she thought of the mill-stream. the wheel would be idle; and the water low down in the hollow beyond the miller's cottage would be still to-night, still and placid and glassy, shining rosy red in the sunset like the pavement of a cathedral stained with the glory of a painted window. why should she not end her sorrows for ever in the glassy pool, so deep, so tranquil? she thought of ophelia, and the miller's daughter on the banks of allan water. would she be found floating on the stream, with weeds of water-lilies tangled in her long dark hair? would she look pretty when she was dead? would _he_ be sorry when he heard of her death? would he read a paragraph in the newspapers some morning at breakfast, and break a blood-vessel into his coffee-cup? or would he read and not care? why should he care? if he had cared for her, he could never have gone away, he could never have written that cruel formal letter, with not a word of regret--no, not one. vague thoughts like these followed one another in her mind. if she could have the courage to go down to the water's brink, and to drop quietly into the stream where roland lansdell had once told her it was deepest. she went down-stairs by-and-by, in the dusk, with her face as white as the tumbled muslin that hung about her in limp and flabby folds. she went down into the little parlour, where george and sigismund were waiting for their tea, and where two yellow mould-candles were flaring in the faint evening breeze. she told them that her head was better; and then began to make the tea, scooping up vague quantities of congou and gunpowder with the little silver scollop-shell, which had belonged to mr. gilbert's grandmother, and was stamped with a puffy profile of george the third. "but you've been crying, izzie!" george exclaimed presently, for mrs. gilbert's eyelids looked red and swollen in the light of the candles. "yes, my head was so bad it made me cry; but please don't ask me any more about it," isabel pleaded, piteously. "i suppose it was the p-pic-nic"--she nearly broke down upon the word, remembering how good _he_ had been to her all through the happy day--"yesterday that made me ill." "i dare say it was that lobster-salad," mr. gilbert answered, briskly: "i ought to have told you not to eat it. i don't think there's anything more bilious than lobster-salad dressed with cream." sigismund smith watched his hostess with a grave countenance, while she poured out the tea and handed the cups right and left. poor isabel managed it all with tolerable steadiness; and then, when the miserable task was over, she sat by the window alone, staring blankly out at the dusty shrubs distinct in the moonlight, while her husband and his friend smoked their cigars in the lane outside. how was she to bear her life in that dull dusty lane--her odious life, which would go on and on for ever, like a slow barge crawling across dreary flats upon the black tideless waters of a canal? how was she to endure it? all its monotony, all its misery, its shabby dreariness, its dreary shabbiness, rose up before her with redoubled force; and the terror of that hideous existence smote her like a stroke from a giant's hand. it all came back. yes, it came back. for the last two months it had ceased to be; it had been blotted out--hidden, forgotten; there had been no such thing. an enchanter's wand had been waved above that dreary square-built house in the dusty lane, and a fairy palace had arisen for her habitation; a fairy-land of beauty and splendour had spread itself around her, a paradise in which she wandered hand in hand with a demigod. the image of roland lansdell had filled her life, to the exclusion of every other shape, animate or inanimate. but the fairy-land melted away all at once, like a mirage in the desert; like the last scene in a pantomime, the rosy and cerulean lights went out in foul sulphurous vapours. the mystic domes and minarets melted into thin air; but the barren sands remained real and dreary, stretching away for ever and for ever before the wanderer's weary feet. in all mrs. gilbert's thoughts there was no special horror or aversion of her husband. he was only a part of the dulness of her life; he was only one dreary element of that dreary world in which roland lansdell was not. he was very good to her, and she was vaguely sensible of his goodness, and thankful to him. but his image had no abiding place in her thoughts. at stated times he came home and ate his dinner, or drank his tea, with substantial accompaniment of bread and butter and crisp garden-stuff; but, during the last two months, there had been many times when his wife was scarcely conscious of his presence. she was happy in fairy-land, with the prince of her perpetual fairy tale, while poor george gilbert munched bread and butter and crunched overgrown radishes. but the fairy tale was finished now, with an abrupt and cruel climax; the prince had vanished; the dream was over. sitting by that open window, with her folded arms resting on the dusty sill, mrs. gilbert wondered how she was to endure her life. and then her thoughts went back to the still pool below the mill-stream. she remembered the happy, drowsy summer afternoon on which roland lansdell had stood by her side and told her the depth of the stream. she closed her eyes, and her head sank forward upon her folded arms, and all the picture came back to her. she heard the shivering of the rushes, the bubbling splash of a gudgeon leaping out of the water: she saw the yellow sunlight on the leaves, the beautiful sunlight creeping in through every break in the dense foliage; and she saw his face turned towards her with that luminous look, that bright and tender smile, which had only seemed another kind of sunshine. would he be sorry if he opened the newspaper and read a little paragraph in a corner to the effect that she had been found floating amongst the long rushes in that very spot? would he remember the sunny afternoon, and the things he had said to her? his talk had been very dreamy and indefinite; but there had been, or had seemed to be, an undercurrent of mournful tenderness in all he said, as vague and fitful, as faint and mysterious, as the murmuring of the summer wind among the rushes. the two young men came in presently, smelling of dust and tobacco smoke. they found isabel lying on the sofa, with her face turned to the wall. did her head still ache? yes, as badly as ever. george sat down to read his sunday paper. he was very fond of a sunday paper; and he read all the accidents and police reports, and the indignant letters from liberal-minded citizens, who signed themselves aristides, and diogenes, and junius brutus, and made fiery protests against the iniquities of a bloated aristocracy. while the surgeon folded the crackling newspaper and cut the leaves, he told isabel about roland lansdell's cheque. "he has sent me five-and-twenty pounds," he said. "it's very liberal; but of course i can't think of taking such a sum, i've been a good deal about amongst his farm-people,--for there's been so much low fever this last month,--but i've been looking over the account i'd made out against him, and it doesn't come to a five-pound note. i suppose he's been used to deal with physicians, who charge a guinea for every visit. i shall send him back his cheque." isabel shuddered as she listened to her husband's talk. how low and mean all this discussion about money seemed! had not the enclosure of the cheque in that cruel letter been almost an insult? what was her husband better than a tradesman, when there could be this question of accounts and payment between him and roland lansdell? and then she thought of clotilde and the duchess,--the duchess with her glittering hair and the cruel azure eyes. she thought of "marble pillars gleaming white against the purple of the night;" of "crimson curtains starred with gold, and high-bred beauty brightly cold." she thought of all that confusion of colour and glitter and perfume and music which was the staple commodity in mr. lansdell's poetic wares; and she wondered, in self-abasement and humiliation, how she could have ever for a moment deluded herself with the idea that he could feel one transient sentiment of regard or admiration for such a degraded being as herself. she thought of her scanty dresses, that never had the proper number of breadths in the skirt; she thought of her skimpy sleeves made in last year's fashion, her sunburnt straw hat, her green parasol faded like sickly grass at the close of a hot summer. she thought of the gulf between herself and the master of mordred, and wondered at her madness and presumption. * * * * * poor george gilbert was quite puzzled by his wife's headache, which was of a peculiarly obstinate nature, lasting for some days. he gave her cooling draughts, and lotions for her forehead, which was very hot under his calm professional hand. her pulse was rapid, her tongue was white, and the surgeon pronounced her to be bilious. he had not the faintest suspicion of any mental ailment lurking at the root of these physical derangements. he was very simple-minded, and, being incapable of wrong himself, measured all his decent fellow-creatures by a fixed standard. he thought that the good and the wicked formed two separate classes as widely apart as the angels of heaven and the demons of the fiery depths. he knew that there were, somewhere or other in the universe, wives who wronged their husbands and went into outer darkness, just as he knew that in dismal dens of crime there lurked robbers and murderers, forgers and pickpockets, the newspaper record of whose evil deeds made no unpleasant reading for quiet sunday afternoons. but of vague sentimental errors, of shadowy dangers and temptations, he had no conception. he had seen his wife pleased and happy in roland lansdell's society; and the thought that any wrong to himself, how small soever, could arise out of that companionship, had never entered his mind. mr. raymond had remarked of the young surgeon that a man with such a moral region was born to be imposed upon. the rest of the week passed in a strange dreary way for isabel. the weather was very fine, cruelly fine; and to mrs. gilbert the universe seemed all dust and sunshine and blankness. sigismund was very kind to her, and did his best to amuse her, reciting the plots of numerous embryo novels, which were to take camden town by storm in the future. but she sat looking at him without seeing him, and his talk sounded a harsh confusion on her ear. oh, for the sound of that other voice,--that other voice, which had attuned itself to such a tender melody! oh, for the beautiful cynical talk about the hollowness of life, and the wretchedness of things in general! poor simple-hearted mr. smith made himself positively hateful to isabel during that dismal week by reason of his efforts to amuse her. "if he would only let me alone!" she thought. "if people would only have mercy upon me and let me alone!" but that was just what every one seemed determined not to do. sigismund devoted himself exclusively to the society of his young hostess. william jeffson let the weeds grow high amongst the potatoes while he planted standard rose-bushes, and nailed up graceful creepers, and dug, and improved, and transplanted in that portion of the garden which made a faint pretence to prettiness. was it that he wished to occupy mrs. gilbert's mind, and to force her to some slight exertion? he did not prune a shrub, or trim a scrap of box, without consulting the doctor's wife upon the subject; and isabel was called out into the garden half-a-dozen times in an hour. and then during his visit sigismund insisted upon taking mrs. gilbert to warncliffe to dine with his mother and sisters. mr. smith's family made quite a festival for the occasion: there was a goose for dinner,--a vulgar and savoury bird; and a big damson pie, and apples and pears in green leaf-shaped dishes for dessert; and of course isabel's thoughts wandered away from that homely mahogany, with its crimson worsted d'oyleys and dark-blue finger-glasses, to the oval table at mordred and all its artistic splendour of glass and fruit and flowers. the smith family thought mrs. gilbert very quiet and insipid; but luckily sigismund had a great deal to say about his own achievements, past, present, and future; so isabel was free to sit in the twilight listening dreamily to the slow footsteps in the old-fashioned street outside--the postman's knock growing fainter and fainter in the distance--and the cawing of the rooks in a grove of elms on the outskirts of the town. mr. smith senior spent the evening in the bosom of his family, and was put through rather a sharp examination upon abstruse questions in chancery and criminal practice by his aspiring son, who was always getting into morasses of legal difficulty, from which he required to be extricated by professional assistance. the evening seemed a very long one to poor isabel; but it was over at last, and sigismund conducted her back to graybridge in a jolting omnibus; and during that slow homeward drive she was free to sit in a corner and think of _him_. mr. smith left his friends on the following day; and before going, he walked with isabel in the garden, and talked to her a little of her life. "i dare say it is a little dull at graybridge," he said, as if in answer to some remark of isabel's, and yet she had said nothing. "i dare say you do find it a little dull, though george is one of the best fellows that ever lived, and devoted to you; yes, izzie, devoted to you, in his quiet way. he isn't one of your demonstrative fellows, you know; can't go into grand romantic raptures, or anything of that kind. but we were boys together, izzie, and i know him thoroughly: and i know that he loves you dearly, and would break his honest heart if anything happened to you; or he was--anyhow to take it into his head that you didn't love him. but still, i dare say, you do find life rather slow work down here; and i can't help thinking that if you were to occupy yourself a little more than you do, you'd be happier. suppose, now," cried mr. smith, palpably swelling with the importance of his idea,--"suppose you were to write a novel! there! you don't know how happy it would make you. look at me. i always used to be sighing and lamenting, and wishing for this, that, or the other: wishing i had ten thousand a year, or a grecian nose, or some worldly advantage of that sort; but since i've taken to writing novels, i don't think i've a desire unsatisfied. there's nothing i haven't done--on paper. the beautiful women i've loved and married; the fortunes i've come into, always unexpectedly, and when i was at the very lowest ebb, with a tendency to throw myself into the serpentine in the moonlight; the awful vengeance i've wreaked upon my enemies; the murders i've committed would make the life of a napoleon buonaparte seem tame and trivial by comparison. i suppose it isn't i that steal up the creaking stair, with a long knife tightly grasped and gleaming blue in the moonbeams that creep through a chink in the shutter; but i'm sure i enjoy myself as much as if it was. and if i were a young lady," continued mr. smith, speaking with some slight hesitation, and glancing furtively at isabel's face,--"if i were a young lady, and had a kind of romantic fancy for a person i ought not to care about, i'll tell you what i'd do with him,--i'd put him into a novel, izzie, and work him out in three volumes; and if i wasn't heartily sick of him by the time i got to the last chapter, nothing on earth would cure me." this was the advice which sigismund gave to isabel at parting. she understood his meaning, and resented his interference. she was beginning to feel that people guessed her wickedness, and tried to cure her of her madness. yes; she was very wicked--very mad. she acknowledged her sin, but she could not put it away from her. and now that he was gone, now that he was far away, never to come back, never to look upon her face again, surely there could be no harm in thinking of him. she did think of him, daily and hourly; no longer with any reservation, no longer with any attempt at self-deception. eugene aram and ernest maltravers, the giaour and the corsair, were alike forgotten. the real hero of her life had come, and she bowed down before his image, and paid him perpetual worship. what did it matter? he was gone! he was as far away from her life now as those fascinating figments of the poetic brain, messrs. aram and maltravers. he was a dream, like all the other dreams of her life; only he could never melt away or change as they had done. chapter xxi. "once more the gate behind me falls." all through the autumnal months, all through the dreary winter, george gilbert's wife endured her existence, and hated it. the days were all alike, all "dark and cold and dreary;" and her life was "dark and cold and dreary" like the days. she did not write a novel. she did not accomplish any task, or carry out any intention; but she began a great many undertakings, and grew tired of them, and gave them up in despair. she wrote a few chapters of a novel; a wild weird work of fiction, in which mr. roland lansdell reigned paramount over all the rules of lindley murray, and was always nominative when he ought to have been objective, and _vice versa_, and did altogether small credit to the university at which he was described to have gained an impossible conglomeration of honours. mrs. gilbert very soon got tired of the novel, though it was pleasant to imagine it in a complete form taking the town by storm. _he_ would read it, and would know that she had written it. was there not a minute description of lord thurston's oak in the very first chapter? it was pleasant to think of the romance, neatly bound in three volumes. but mrs. gilbert never got beyond a few random chapters, in which the grand crisis of the work--the first meeting of the hero and heroine, the death of the latter by drowning and of the former by rupture of a blood-vessel, and so on--were described. she could not do the every-day work; she could erect a fairy palace, and scatter lavish splendour in its spacious halls; but she could not lay down the stair-carpets, or fit the window-blinds, or arrange the planned furniture. she tore up her manuscript; and then for a little time she thought that she would be very good; kind to the poor, affectionate to her husband, and attentive to the morning and afternoon sermons at graybridge church. she made a little book out of letter-paper, and took notes of the vicar's and the curate's discourses; but both those gentlemen had a fancy for discussing abstruse points of doctrine far beyond mrs. gilbert's comprehension, and the doctor's wife found the business of a reporter very difficult work. she made her poor little unaided effort to repent of her sins, and to do good. she cut up her shabbiest dresses and made them into frocks for some poor children, and she procured a packet of limp tracts from a conventford bookseller, and distributed them with the frocks; having a vague idea that no charitable benefaction was complete unless accompanied by a tract. alas for this poor sentimental child! the effort to be good, and pious, and practical did not sit well upon her. she got on very well with some of the cottagers' daughters, who had been educated at the national school, and were as fond of reading novels as herself; she fraternized with these damsels, and lent them odd volumes out of her little library, and even read aloud to them on occasion; and the vicar of graybridge, entering one day a cottage where she was sitting, was pleased to hear a humming noise, as of the human voice, and praised mrs. gilbert for her devotion to the good cause. he might not have been quite so well pleased had he heard the subject of her lecture, winch had relation to a gentleman of loose principles and buccaneering propensities--a gentleman who "left a corsair's name to other times, link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes." but even these feeble attempts to be good-ah! how short a time it seemed since isabel gilbert had been a child, subject to have her ears boxed by the second mrs. sleaford! how short a time since to "be good" meant to be willing to wash the teacups and saucers, or to darn a three-cornered rent in a hobbledehoy's jacket!--even these feeble efforts ceased by-and-by, and mrs. gilbert abandoned herself to the dull monotony of her life, and solaced herself with the thought of roland lansdell as an opium-eater beguiles his listless days with the splendid visions that glorify his besotted stupor. she resigned herself to her life, and was very obedient to her husband, and read novels as long as she could get one to read, and was for ever thinking of what might have been--if she had been free, and if roland lansdell had loved her. alas! he had only too plainly proved that he did not love her, and had never loved her. he had made this manifest by cruelly indisputable evidence at the very time when she was beginning to be unutterably happy in the thought that she was somehow or another nearer and dearer to him than she ought to have been. the dull autumn days and the dark winter days dragged themselves out, and mr. gilbert came in and went out, and attended to his duties, and ate his dinner, and rode brown molly between the leafless hedgerows, beside the frozen streams, as contentedly as he had done in the bright summer time, when his rides had lain through a perpetual garden. his was one of those happy natures which are undisturbed by any wild yearnings after the unattainable. he had an idea of exchanging his graybridge practice for a better one by-and-by, and he used to talk to isabel of this ambitious design, but she took little interest in the subject. she had evinced very little interest in it from the first, and she displayed less now. what would be the use of such a change? it could only bring her a new kind of dreariness; and it was something to stand shivering on the little bridge under lord thurston's oak, so bare and leafless now; it was something to see even the chimney-pots of mordred, the wonderful clusters of dark red-brick chimneys, warm against the chill december sky. mrs. gilbert did not forget that passage in roland lansdell's letter, in which he had placed the mordred library at her disposal. but she was very slow to avail herself of the privilege thus offered to her. she shrank away shyly from the thought of entering _his_ house, even though there was no chance of meeting him in the beautiful rooms; even though he was at the other end of europe, gay and happy, and forgetful of her. it was only by-and-by, when mr. lansdell had been gone some months, and when the dulness of her life had grown day by day more oppressive, that isabel gilbert took courage to enter the noble gates of mordred. of course she told her husband whither she was going--was it not her duty so to do?--and george good-naturedly approving--"though i'm sure you've got books enough already," he said; "for you seem to be reading all day"--she set out upon a wintry afternoon and walked alone to the priory. the old housekeeper received her very cordially. "i've been expecting to see you every day, ma'am, since mr lansdell left us," the worthy woman exclaimed: "for he said as you were rare and fond of books, and was to take away any that you fancied; and john's to carry them for you, ma'am; and i was to pay you every attention. but i was beginning to think you didn't mean to come at all, ma'am." there were fires in many of the rooms, for mr. lansdell's servants had a wholesome terror of that fatal blue mould which damp engenders upon the surface of a picture. the firelight glimmered upon golden frames, and glowed here and there in the ruby depths of rich bohemian glass, and flashed in fitful gleams upon rare porcelain vases and groups of stainless marble; but the rooms had a desolate look, somehow, in spite of the warmth and light and splendour. mrs. warman, the housekeeper, told isabel of mr. lansdell's whereabouts. he was at milan, lady gwendoline pomphrey had been good enough to tell mrs. warman; somewheres in italy that was, the housekeeper believed; and he was to spend the rest of the winter in rome, and then he was going on to constantinople, and goodness knows where! for there never was such a traveller, or any one so restless-like. "isn't it a pity he don't marry his cousin, lady gwendoline, and settle down like his pa?" said mrs. warman. "it do seem a shame for such a place as this to be shut up from year's end to year's end, till the very pictures get quite a ghastly way with them, and seem to stare at one reproachful-like, as if they was asking, over and over again, 'where is he? why don't he come home?'" isabel was standing with her back to the chill wintry sky outside the window, and the housekeeper did not perceive the effect of her discourse. that simple talk was very painful to mrs. gilbert. it seemed to her as if roland lansdell's image receded farther and farther from her in this grand place, where all the attributes of his wealth and station were a standing evidence of the great gulf between them. "what am i to him?" she thought. "what can such a despicable wretch as i am ever be to him? if he comes home it will be to marry lady gwendoline. perhaps he will tell her how he used to meet me by the mill-stream, and they will laugh together about me." had her conduct been shameless and unwomanly, and would he remember her only to despise her? she hoped that if roland lansdell ever returned to midlandshire it would be to find her dead. he could not despise her if she was dead. the only pleasant thought she had that afternoon was the fancy that mr. lansdell might come back to mordred, and engage himself to his cousin, and the marriage would take place at graybridge church; and as he was leading his bride along the quiet avenue, he would start back, anguish-stricken, at the sight of a newly-erected headstone--"to the memory of isabel gilbert, aged ." ! that seemed quite old, mrs. gilbert thought. she had always fancied that the next best thing to marrying a duke would be to fade into an early grave before the age of eighteen. the first visit to mordred made the doctor's wife very unhappy. was it not a reopening of all the old wounds? did it not bring too vividly back to her the happy summer day when _he_ had sat beside her at luncheon, and bent his handsome head and subdued his deep voice as he talked to her? having broken the ice, however, she went very often to the priory; and on one or two occasions even condescended to take an early cup of tea with mrs. warman, the housekeeper, though she felt that by so doing she in some small measure widened the gulf between mr. lansdell and herself. little by little she grew to feel quite at home in the splendid rooms. it was very pleasant to sit in a low easy-chair in the library,--_his_ easy-chair,--with a pile of books on the little reading-table by her side, and the glow of the great fire subdued by a noble screen of ground-glass and brazen scroll-work. mrs. gilbert was honestly fond of reading, and in the library at mordred her life seemed less bitter than elsewhere. she read a great deal of the lighter literature upon mr. lansdell's book-shelves,--poems and popular histories, biographies and autobiographies, letters, and travels in bright romantic lands. to read of the countries through which mr. lansdell wandered seemed almost like following him. as mrs. gilbert grew more and more familiar with the grand old mansion, and more and more friendly with mrs. warman the housekeeper, she took to wandering in and out of all the rooms at pleasure, sometimes pausing before one picture, sometimes sitting before another for half an hour at a time lost in reverie. she knew all the pictures, and had learned their histories from mrs. warman, and ascertained which of them were most valued by mr. lansdell. she took some of the noble folios from the lower shelves of the library, and read the lives of her favourite painters, and stiff translations of italian disquisitions on art. her mind expanded amongst all the beautiful things around her, and the graver thoughts engendered out of grave books pushed away many of her most childish fancies, her simple sentimental yearnings. until now she had lived too entirely amongst poets and romancers; but now grave volumes of biography opened to her a new picture of life. she read the stories of real men and women, who had lived and suffered real sorrows, prosaic anguish, hard commonplace trial and misery. do you remember how, when young caxton's heart had been wrung by youth's bitterest sorrows, the father sends his son to the "life of robert hall" for comfort? isabel, very foolish and blind as compared with the son of austin caxton, was yet able to take some comfort from the stories of good men's sorrows. the consciousness of her ignorance increased as she became less ignorant; and there were times when this romantic girl was almost sensible, and became resigned to the fact that roland lansdell could have no part in the story of her life. if the drowsy life, the quiet afternoons in the deserted chambers of the priory, could have gone smoothly on for ever, isabel gilbert might have, little by little, developed into a clever and sensible woman; but the current of her existence was not to glide with one dull motion to the end. there were to be storms and peril of shipwreck, and fear and anguish, before the waters flowed into a quiet haven, and the story of her life was ended. one day in march, one bleak day, when the big fires in the rooms at mordred seemed especially comfortable, mrs. gilbert carried her books into an inner apartment, half boudoir, half drawing-room, at the end of a long suite of splendid chambers. she took off her bonnet and shawl, and smoothed her dark hair before the glass. she had altered a little since the autumn, and the face that looked out at her to-day was thinner and older than that passionate tear-blotted face which she had seen in the glass on the night of roland lansdell's departure. her sorrow had not been the less real because it was weak and childish, and had told considerably upon her appearance. but she was getting over it. she was almost sorry to think that it was so. she was almost grieved to find that her grief was less keen than it had been six months ago, and that the splendour of roland lansdell's image was perhaps a trifle faded. but to-day mrs. warman was destined to undo the good work so newly effected by grave books, and to awaken all isabel's regrets for the missing squire of mordred. the worthy housekeeper had received a letter from her master, which she brought in triumph to mrs. gilbert. it was a very brief epistle, enclosing cheques for divers payments, and giving a few directions about the gardens and stables. "see that pines and grapes are sent to lord ruysdale's, whenever he likes to have them; and i shall be glad if you send hothouse fruit and flowers occasionally to mr. gilbert, the surgeon of graybridge. he was very kind to some of my people. be sure that every attention is shown to mrs. gilbert whenever she comes to mordred." isabel's eyes grew dim as she read this part of the letter. he thought of her far away--at the other end of the world almost, as it seemed to her, for his letter was dated from corfu; he remembered her existence, and was anxious for her happiness! the books were no use to her that day. she sat, with a volume open in her lap, staring at the fire, and thinking of _him_. she went back into the old italics again. his image shone out upon her in all its ancient splendour. oh, dreary, dreary life where he was not! how was she to endure her existence? she clasped her hands in a wild rapture. "oh, my darling, if you could know how i love you!" she whispered, and then started, confused and blushing. never until that moment had she dared to put her passion into words. the priory clocks struck three succeeding hours, but mrs. gilbert sat in the same attitude, thinking of roland lansdell. the thought of going home and facing her daily life again was unutterably painful to her. that fatal letter--so commonplace to a common reader--had revived all the old exaltation of feeling. once more isabel gilbert floated away upon the wings of sentiment and fancy, into that unreal region where the young squire of mordred reigned supreme, beautiful as a prince in a fairy tale, grand as a demigod in some classic legend. the french clock on the mantel-piece chimed the half-hour after four, and mrs. gilbert looked up, aroused for a moment from her reverie. "half-past four," she thought; "it will be dark at six, and i have a long walk home." home! she shuddered at the simple monosyllable which it is the special glory of our language to possess. the word is very beautiful, no doubt; especially so to a wealthy country magnate,--happy owner of a grand old english mansion, with fair lands and coverts, home-farm and model-farm buildings, shadowy park and sunlit pleasaunce, and wonderful dairies lined with majolica ware, and musical with the plashing of a fountain. but for mrs. gilbert "home" meant a square-built house in a dusty lane, and was never likely to mean anything better or brighter. she got up from her low seat, and breathed a long-drawn sigh as she took her bonnet and shawl from a table near her, and began to put them on before the glass. "the parlour at home always looks ugliest and barest and shabbiest when i have been here," she thought, as she turned away from the glass and moved towards the door. she paused suddenly. the door of the boudoir was ajar; all the other doors in the long range of rooms were open, and she heard a footstep coming rapidly towards her: a man's footstep! was it one of the servants? no; no servant's foot ever touched the ground with that firm and stately tread. it was a stranger's footstep, of course. who should come there that day except a stranger? _he_ was far away--at the other end of the world almost. it was not within the limits of possibility that _his_ foot-fall should sound on the floors of mordred priory. and yet! and yet! isabel stopped, with her heart beating violently, her hands clasped, her lips apart and tremulous. and in the next moment the step was close to the threshold, the door was pushed open, and she was face to face with roland lansdell; roland lansdell, whom she never thought to see again upon this earth! roland lansdell, whose face had looked at her in her dreams by day and night any time within these last six months! "isabel--mrs. gilbert!" he said, holding out both his hands, and taking hers, which were as cold as death. she tried to speak, but no sound came from her tremulous lips. she could utter no word of welcome to this restless wanderer, but stood before him breathless and trembling. mr. lansdell drew a chair towards her, and made her sit down. "i startled you," he said; "you did not expect to see me. i had no right to come to you so suddenly; but they told me you were here, and i wanted so much to see you,--i wanted so much to speak to you." the words were insignificant enough, but there was a warmth and earnestness in the tones that was new to isabel. faint blushes flickered into her cheeks, so deathly pale a few moments before; her eyelids fell over the dark unfathomable eyes; a look of sudden happiness spread itself upon her face and made it luminous. "i thought you were at corfu," she said. "i thought you would never, never, never come back again." "i have been at corfu, and in italy, and in innumerable places. i meant to stay away; but--but i changed my mind, and i came back. i hope you are glad to see me again." what could she say to him? her terror of saying too much kept her silent; the beating of her heart sounded in her ears, and she was afraid that he too must hear that tell-tale sound. she dared not raise her eyes, and yet she knew that he was looking at her earnestly, scrutinizingly even. "tell me that you are glad to see me," he said. "ah, if you knew why i went away--why i tried so hard to stay away--why i have come back after all--after all--so many resolutions made and broken--so many deliberations--so much doubt and hesitation! isabel! tell me you are glad to see me once more!" she tried to speak, and faltered out a word or two, and broke down, and turned away from him. and then she looked round at him again with a sudden impulse, as innocently and childishly us zuleika may have looked at selim; forgetful for a moment of the square-built house in the dusty lane, of george gilbert, and all the duties of her life. "i have been so unhappy," she exclaimed: "i have been so miserable; and you will go away again by-and-by, and i shall never, never see you any more!" her voice broke, and she burst into tears; and then, remembering the surgeon all in a moment, she brushed them hastily away with her handkerchief. "you frightened me so, mr. lansdell," she said: "and i'm very late, and i was just going home, and my husband will be waiting for me. he comes to meet me sometimes when he can spare time. good-bye." she held out her hand, looking at roland nervously as she did so. did he despise her very much? she wondered. no doubt he had come home to marry lady gwendoline pomphrey, and there would be a fine wedding in the bright may weather. there was just time to go into a consumption between march and may, mrs. gilbert thought; and her tombstone might be ready for the occasion, if the gods who bestow upon their special favourites the boon of early death would only be kind to her. "good-bye, mr. lansdell," she repeated. "let me walk with you a little way. ah, if you knew how i have travelled night and day; if you knew how i have languished for this hour, and for the sight of----" for the sight of what? roland lansdell was looking down at the pale face of the doctor's wife as he uttered that unfinished sentence. but amongst all the wonders that ever made the story of a woman's life wonderful, it could never surely come to pass that a demigod would descend from the ethereal regions which were his common habitation, on _her_ account, mrs. gilbert thought. she went home in the chill march twilight; but not through the bleak and common atmosphere which other people breathed that afternoon; for mr. lansdell walked by her side, and, not encountering the surgeon, went all the way to graybridge, and only left mrs. gilbert at the end of the dusty lane in which the doctor's red lamp already glimmered faintly in the dusk. would the master of mordred priory have been stricken with any sense of shame if he had met george gilbert? there was an air of decision in lansdell's manner which seemed like that of a man who acts upon a settled purpose, and has no thought of shame. chapter xxii. "my love's a noble madness." mr. lansdell did not seem in a hurry to make any demonstration of his return to mordred. he did not affect any secrecy, it is true; but he shut himself a good deal in his own rooms, and seldom went out except to walk in the direction of lord thurston's oak, whither mrs. gilbert also rambled in the chilly spring afternoons, and where mr. lansdell and the doctor's wife met each other very frequently: not quite by accident now; for, at parting, roland would say, with supreme carelessness, "i suppose you will be walking this way to-morrow,--it is the only walk worth taking hereabouts,--and i'll bring you the other volume." lord ruysdale and his daughter were still at lowlands; but mr. lansdell did not betake himself thither to pay his respects to his uncle and cousin, as he should most certainly have done in common courtesy. he did not go near the grey old mansion where the earl and his daughter vegetated in gloomy and economical state; but lady gwendoline heard from her maid that mr. lansdell had come home; and bitterly resented his neglect. she resented it still more bitterly by-and-by, when the maid, who was a little faded like her mistress, and perhaps a little spiteful into the bargain, let drop a scrap of news she had gleaned in the servants' hall. mr. lansdell had been seen walking on the graybridge road with mrs. gilbert, the doctor's wife; "and it wasn't the first time either; and people do say it looks odd when a gentleman like mr. lansdell is seen walking and talking oftentimes with such as her." the maid saw her mistress's face turn pale in the glass. no matter what the rank or station or sex of poor othello; he or she is never suffered to be at peace, or to be happy--knowing nothing. there is always "mine ancient," male or female, as the case may be, to bring home the freshest information about the delinquent. "i have no wish to hear the servants' gossip about my cousin's movements," lady gwendoline said, with supreme hauteur. "he is the master of his own actions, and free to go where he pleases and with whom he pleases." "i'm sure i beg pardon, my lady, and meant no offence," the maid answered, meekly. "but she don't like it for all that," the damsel thought, with an inward chuckle. roland lansdell kept himself aloof from his kindred; but he was not suffered to go his own way unmolested. the road to perdition is not quite so smooth and flower-bestrewn a path as we are sometimes taught to believe. a merciful hand often flings stumbling-blocks and hindering brambles in our way. it is our own fault if we insist upon clambering over the rocky barriers, and scrambling through the briery hedges, in a mad eagerness to reach the goal. roland had started upon the fatal descent, and was of course going at that rapid rate at which we always travel downhill; but the road was not all clear for him. charles raymond of conventford was amongst the people who heard accidentally of the young man's return; and about a week after roland's arrival, the kindly philosopher presented himself at the priory, and was fortunate enough to find his kinsman at home. in spite of mr. lansdell's desire to be at his ease, there was some restraint in his manner as he greeted his old friend. "i am very glad to see you, raymond," he said. "i should have ridden over to conventford in a day or two. i've come home, you see." "yes, and i am very sorry to see it. this is a breach of good faith, roland." "of what faith? with whom?" "with me," answered mr. raymond, gravely. "you promised me that you would go away." "i did; and i went away." "and now you have come back again." "yes," replied mr. lansdell, folding his arms and looking full at his kinsman, with an ominous smile upon his face,--"yes; the fact is a little too evident for the basis of an argument. i have come back." mr. raymond was silent for a minute or so. the younger man stood with his back against the angle of the embayed window, and he never took his eyes from his friend's face. there was something like defiance in the expression of his face, and even in his attitude, as he stood with folded arms leaning against the wainscot. "i hope, roland, that since you have come home, it is because the reason which took you away from this place has ceased to exist. you come back because you are cured. i cannot imagine it to be otherwise, roland; i cannot believe that you have broken faith with me." "what if i have come home because i find my disease is past all cure! what if i have kept faith with you, and have tried to forget, and come back at last because i cannot!" "roland!" "ah! it is a foolish fever, is it not? very foolish, very contemptible to the solemn-faced doctor who looks on and watches the wretched patient tossing and writhing, and listens to his delirious ravings. have you ever seen a man in the agonies of _delirium tremens_, catching imaginary flies, and shrieking about imps and demons capering on his counterpane? what a pitiful disease it is!--only the effect of a few extra bottles of brandy: but you can't cure it. you may despise the sufferer, but you shrink back terror-stricken before the might of the disease. you've done your duty, doctor: you tried honestly to cure my fever, and i submitted honestly to your remedies: but you're only a quack, after all: and you pretended--what all charlatans pretend--to be able to cure the incurable." "you have come back with the intention of remaining, then, roland?" "_c'est selon_! i have no present idea of remaining here very long." "and in the meantime you allow people to see you walking the graybridge road and loitering about thurston's crag with mrs. gilbert. do you know that already that unhappy girl's name is compromised? the graybridge people are beginning to couple her name with yours." mr. lansdell laughed aloud, but not with the pleasant laugh which was common to him. "did you ever look in a british atlas for graybridge-on-the-wayverne?" he asked. "there are some atlases which do not give the name of the place at all: in others you'll find a little black dot, with the word 'graybridge' printed in very small letters. the 'british gazetteer' will tell you that graybridge is interesting on account of its church, which, &c. &c.; that an omnibus plies to and fro between the village and warncliffe station; and that the nearest market-town is wareham. in all the literature of the world, that's about all the student can learn of graybridge. what an affliction it must be to a traveller in the upper pyrenees, or on the banks of the amazon, to know that people at graybridge mix his name sometimes with their tea-table gossip! what an enduring torture for a loiterer in fair grecian isles--an idle dreamer beside the blue depths of a southern sea--to know that graybridge disapproves of him!" "i had better go away, roland," mr. raymond said, looking at his kinsman with a sad reproachful gaze, and stretching out his hand to take up the hat and gloves he had thrown upon a chair near him; "i can do no good here." "you cannot separate me from the woman i love," answered roland, boldly. "i am a scoundrel, i suppose; but i am not a hypocrite. i might tell you a lie, and send you away hoodwinked and happy. no, raymond, i will not do that. if i am foolish and wicked, i have not sinned deliberately. i have striven against my folly and my wickedness. when you talked to me that night at waverly, you only echoed the reproaches of my own conscience. i accepted your counsel, and ran away. my love for isabel gilbert was only a brief infatuation, i thought, which would wear itself out like other infatuations, with time and absence. i went away, fully resolved never to look upon her face again; and then, and then only, i knew how truly and how dearly i loved her. i went from place to place; but i could no more fly from her image than from my own soul. in vain i argued with myself--as better men have done before my time--that this woman was in no way superior to other women. day by day i took my lesson deeper to heart. i cannot talk of these things to you. there is a kind of profanation in such a discussion. i can only tell you that i came back to england with a rooted purpose in my mind. do not thrust yourself upon me; you have done your duty, and may wash your hands of me with christian-like self-satisfaction; you have nothing further to do in this _galère_." "oh, roland, that you should ever come to talk to me like this! have you no sense of truth or honour? not even the common instinct of a gentleman? have you no feeling for that poor honest-hearted fellow who has judged you by his own simple standard, and has trusted you implicitly? have you no feeling for him, roland?"' "yes, i am very sorry for him; i am sorry for the grand mistake of his life. but do you think he could ever be happy with that woman? i have seen them together, and know the meaning of that grand word 'union' as applied to them. all the width of the universe cannot divide them more entirely than they are divided now. they have not one single sentiment in common. charles raymond, i tell you i am not entirely a villain; i do still possess some lingering remnant of that common instinct of which you spoke just now. if i had seen isabel gilbert happy with a husband who loved her, and understood her, and was loved by her, i would have held myself aloof from her pure presence; i would have stifled every thought that was a wrong to that holy union. i am not base enough to steal the lamp which lights a good man's home. but if i find a man who has taken possession of a peerless jewel, as ignorant of its value, and as powerless to appreciate its beauty, as a soldier who drags a raffaelle from the innermost shrine of some ransacked cathedral and makes a knapsack for himself out of the painted canvas; if i find a pig trampling pearls under his ruthless feet,--am i to leave the gems for ever in his sty, in my punctilious dread that i may hurt the feelings of the animal by taking his unvalued treasure away from him?" "other men have argued as you argue to-day, roland," answered mr. raymond. "other men have reasoned as you reason, roland; but they have not the less brought anguish and remorse upon themselves and upon the victims of their sin. did not rousseau declare that the first man who enclosed a lot of ground and called it 'mine' was the enemy of the human race? you young philosophers of our modern day twist the argument another way, and are ready to avow that the man who marries a pretty woman is the foe to all unmarried mankind. he should have held himself aloof, and waited till _the_ man arrived upon the scene,--the man with poetic sympathies and sublime appreciation of womanly grace and beauty, and all manner of hazy attributes which are supposed to be acceptable to sentimental womanhood. bah, roland! all this is very well on toned paper, in a pretty little hot-pressed volume published by messrs. moxon; but the universe was never organized for the special happiness of poets. there must be jog-trot existences, and commonplace contentment, and simple every-day households, in which husbands and wives love each other, and do their duty to each other in a plain prosaic manner. life can't be all rapture and poetry. ah, roland, it has pleased you of late years to play the cynic. let your cynicism save you now. is it worth while to do a great wrong, to commit a terrible sin, for the sake of a pretty face and a pair of black eyes--for the gratification of a passing folly?" "it is not a passing folly," returned mr. lansdell, fiercely. "i was willing to think that it was so last autumn, when i took your advice and went away from this place. i know better now. if there is depth and truth anywhere in the universe, there is depth and truth in my love for isabel gilbert. do not talk to me, raymond. the arguments which would have weight with other men, have no power with me. it is my fault or my misfortune that i cannot believe in the things in which other men believe. above all, i cannot believe in formulas. i cannot believe that a few words shuffled over by a parson at conventford last january twelvemonth can be strong enough to separate me for ever from the woman i love, and who loves me. yes, she loves me, raymond!" cried the young man, his face lighting up suddenly with a smile, which imparted a warmth to his dark complexion like the rich glow of a murillo. "she loves me, my beautiful unvalued blossom, that i found blooming all alone and unnoticed in a desert--she loves me. if i had discovered coldness or indifference, coquetry or pretence of any kind in her manner the other day when i came home, i would have gone back even then; i would have acknowledged my mistake, and would have gone away to suffer alone. my dear old raymond, it is your duty, i know, to lecture me and argue with me; but i tell you again it is only wasted labour; i am past all that. try to pity me, and sympathize with me, if you can. solitude is not such a pleasant thing, and people do not go through the world alone without some sufficient reason for their loneliness. there must have been some sorrow in your life, dear old friend, some mistake, some disappointment. remember that, and have pity upon me." mr. raymond was silent for some minutes; he sat with his face shaded with his hand, and the hand was slightly tremulous. "there was a sorrow in my life, roland," he said by-and-by, "a deep and lasting one; and it is the memory of that sorrow which makes you so dear to me; but it was a sorrow in which shame had no part. i am proud to think that i suffered, and suffered silently. i think you can guess, roland, why you have always been, and always must be, as dear to me as my own son." "i can," answered the young man, holding out his hand, "you loved my mother." "i did, roland, and stood aloof and saw her married to the man she loved. i held her in my arms and blessed her on her wedding-day in the church yonder; but never from that hour to this have i ceased to love and honour her. i have worshipped a shadow all my life; but her image was nearer and dearer to me than the living beauty of other women. i can sympathize with a wasted love, roland; but i cannot sympathize with a love that seeks to degrade its object." "degrade her!" cried roland; "degrade isabel! there can be no degradation in such a love as mine. but, you see, we think differently, we see things from a different point of view. you look through the spectacles of graybridge, and see an elopement, a scandal, a paragraph in the county papers. i recognize only the immortal right of two free souls, who know that they have been created for each other." "do you ever think of your mother, roland? i remember how dearly she loved you, and how proud she was of the qualities that made you worthy to be her son. do you ever think of her as a living presence, conscious of your sorrows, compassionate of your sins? i think, if you considered her thus, roland, as i do,--she has never been dead to me; she is the ideal in my life, and lifts my life above its common level,--if you thought of her as i do, i don't think you could hold to the bad purpose that has brought you back to this place." "if i believed what you believe," cried mr. lansdell, with sudden animation, "i should be a different man from what i am--a better man than you are, perhaps. i sometimes wonder at such as you, who believe in all the glories of unseen worlds, and yet are so eager and so worldly in all your doings upon this shabby commonplace earth. if _i_ believed, i think i should be blinded and intoxicated by the splendour of my heritage; i would turn trappist, and live in a dumb rapture from year's end to year's end. i would go and hide myself amid the mountain-tops, high up amongst the eagles and the stars, and ponder upon my glory. but you see it is my misfortune not to believe in that beautiful fable. i must take my life as it is; and if, after ten foolish, unprofitable years, fate brings one little chance of supreme happiness in my way, who shall tell me to withhold my hand? who shall forbid me to grasp my treasure?" mr. raymond was not a man to be easily put off. he stayed at mordred for the remainder of the day and dined with his young cousin, and sat talking with him until late at night; but he went away at last with a sad countenance and a heavy heart. roland's disease was past the cure of philosophy. what chance have friar lawrence and philosophy ever had against miss capulet's grecian nose and dark italian eyes, the balmy air of a warm southern night, the low harmonious murmur of a girlish voice, the gleaming of a white arm on a moonlit balcony? chapter xxiii. a little cloud. isabel was happy. he had returned; he had returned to her; never again to leave her! had he not said something to that effect? he had returned, because he had found existence unendurable away from her presence. mr. lansdell had told the doctor's wife all this, not once, but twenty times; and she had listened, knowing that it was wicked to listen, and yet powerless to shut her ears against the sweet insidious words. she was beloved; for the first time in her life really, truly, sentimentally beloved, like the heroine of a novel. she was beloved; despite of her shabby dresses, her dowdy bonnets, her clumsy country-made boots. all at once, in a moment, she was elevated into a queen, crowned with woman's noblest diadem, the love of a poet. she was beatrice, and roland lansdell was dante; or she was leonora, and he was tasso; she did not particularly care which. her ideas of the two poets and their loves were almost as vague as the showman's notion of the rival warriors of waterloo. she was the shadowy love of the poet, the pensive impossible love, who never could be more to him than a perpetual dream. this was how isabel gilbert thought of the master of mordred, who met her so often now in the chill spring sunshine. there was a kind of wickedness in these stolen meetings, no doubt, she thought; but her wickedness was no greater than that of the beautiful princess who smiled upon the italian poet. in that serene region of romance, that mystic fairy-land in which isabel's fancies dwelt, sin, as the world comprehends it, had no place. there was no such loathsome image in that fair kingdom of fountains and flowers. it was very wrong to meet mr. lansdell; but i doubt if the happiness of those meetings would have had quite such an exquisite flavour to isabel had that faint _soupçon_ of wickedness been wanting. did mrs. gilbert ever think that the road which seemed so pleasant, the blossoming pathway along which she wandered hand in hand with roland lansdell, was all downhill, and that there was a black and hideous goal hidden below in the farther-most valley? no; she was enraptured and intoxicated by her present happiness, blinded by the glory of her lover's face. it had been very difficult for her to realize the splendid fact of his love and devotion; but once believing, she was ready to believe for ever. she remembered a sweet sentimental legend of the rhineland: the story of a knight who, going away to the wars, was reported as dead: whereon his lady-love, despairing, entered a convent, and consecrated the sad remainder of her days to heaven. but by-and-by the knight, who had not been killed, returned, and finding that his promised bride was lost to him, devoted the remainder of _his_ days to constancy and solitude; building for himself a hermitage upon a rock high above the convent where his fair and faithful hildegonde spent her pure and pious days. and every morning with the earliest flush of light in the low eastern sky, and all day long, and when the evening-star rose pale and silvery beneath the purpling heavens, the hermit of love sat at the door of his cell gazing upon the humble casement behind which it pleased him to fancy his pure mistress kneeling before her crucifix, sometimes mingling his name with her prayers. and was not the name of the knight roland--_his_ name? it was such a love as this which isabel imagined she had won for herself. it is such a love as this which is the dearest desire of womankind,--a beautiful, useless, romantic devotion,--a wasted life of fond regretful worship. poor weak sentimental mary of scotland accepts chastelar's poetic homage, and is pleased to think that the poet's heart is breaking because of her grace and loveliness, and would like it to go on breaking for ever. but the love-sick poet grows weary of that distant worship, and would scale the royal heavens to look nearer at the brightness of his star; whence come confusions and troubles, and the amputation of that foolish half-demented head. so there was no thought of peril to herself or to others in mrs. gilbert's mind when she stood on the bridge above the mill-stream talking with roland lansdell. she had a vague idea that she was not exactly doing her duty to her husband; but poor george's image only receded farther and farther from her. did she not still obey his behests, and sit opposite to him at the little dinner-table, and pour out his tea at breakfast, and assist him to put on his overcoat in the passage before he went out? could she do more for him than that? no; he had himself rejected all further attention. she had tried to brush his hat once in a sudden gush of dutiful feeling; but she had brushed the nap the wrong way, and had incurred her husband's displeasure. she had tried to read poetry to him, and he had yawned during her lecture. she had put flowers on his dressing-table--white fragile-looking flowers--in a tall slender vase with a tendril of convolvulus twined artfully round the stem, like a garland about a classic column; and mr. gilbert had objected to the perfumed blossoms as liable to generate carbonic-acid gas. what could any one do for such a husband as this? the tender sentimental raptures, the poetic emotions, the dim aspirations, which isabel revealed to roland, would have been as unintelligible as the semitic languages to george. why should she not bestow this other half of her nature upon whom she chose? if she gave her duty and obedience to othello, surely cassio might have all the poetry of her soul, which the matter-of-fact moor despised and rejected. it was something after this wise that isabel reasoned when she did reason at all about her platonic attachment for roland lansdell. she was very happy, lulled to rest by her own ignorance of all danger, rather than by any deeply-studied design on the part of her lover. his manner to her was more tender than a father's manner to his favourite child,--more reverential than raleigh's to elizabeth of england,--but in all this he had no thought of deception. the settled purpose in his mind took a firmer root every day; and he fancied that isabel understood him, and knew that the great crisis of her life was fast approaching, and had prepared herself to meet it. one afternoon, late in the month, when the march winds were bleaker and more pitiless than usual, isabel went across the meadows where the hedgerows were putting forth timid little buds to be nipped by the chill breezes, and where here and there a violet made a tiny speck of purple on the grassy bank. mr. lansdell was standing on the bridge when isabel approached the familiar trysting-place, and turned with a smile to greet her. but although he smiled as he pressed the slender little hand that almost always trembled in his own, the master of mordred was not very cheerful this afternoon. it was the day succeeding that on which charles raymond had dined with him, and the influence of his kinsman's talk still hung about him and oppressed him. he could not deny that there had been truth and wisdom in his friend's earnest pleading; but he could not abandon his purpose now. long vacillating and irresolute, long doubtful of himself and all the world, he was resolved at last, and obstinately bent upon carrying out his resolution. "i am going to london, isabel," he said, after standing by mrs. gilbert for some minutes, staring silently at the water; "i am going to london to-morrow morning, isabel." he always called her isabel now, and lingered with a kind of tenderness upon the name. edith dombey would have brought confusion upon him for this presumption, no doubt, by one bright glance of haughty reproof; but poor isabel had found out long ago that she in no way resembled edith dombey. "going to london!" cried the doctor's wife, piteously; "ah, i knew, i knew that you would go away again, and i shall never see you any more." she clasped her hands in her sudden terror, and looked at him with a world of sorrow and reproach in her pale face. "i knew that it would be so!" she repeated; "i dreamt the other night that you had gone away, and i came here; and, oh, it seemed such a dreadful way to come, and i kept taking the wrong turnings, and going through the wrong meadows; and when i came, there was only some one--some stranger, who told me that you were gone, and would never come back." "but, isabel--my love--my darling!--" the tender epithets did not startle her; she was so absorbed by the fear of losing the god of her idolatry,--"i am only going to town for a day or two to see my lawyer--to make arrangements--arrangements of vital importance;--i should be a scoundrel if i neglected them, or incurred the smallest hazard by delaying them an hour. you don't understand these sort of things, isabel; but trust me, and believe that your welfare is dearer to me than my own. i must go to town; but i shall only be gone a day or two--two days at the most--perhaps only one. and when i come back, izzie, i shall have something to say to you--something very serious--something that had better be said at once--something that involves all the happiness of my future life. will you meet me here two days hence,--on wednesday, at three o'clock? you will, won't you, isabel? i know i do wrong in exposing you to the degradation of these stolen meetings. if i feel the shame so keenly, how much worse it must be for you--my own dear girl--my sweet innocent darling. but this shall be the last time, isabel,--the last time i will ask you to incur any humiliation for me. henceforward we will hold our heads high, my love; for at least there shall be no trickery or falsehood in our lives." mrs. gilbert stared at roland lansdell in utter bewilderment. he had spoken of shame and degradation, and had spoken in the tone of a man who had suffered, and still suffered, very bitterly. this was all isabel could gather from her lover's speech, and she opened her eyes in blank amazement as she attended to him. why should he be ashamed, or humiliated, or degraded? was dante degraded by his love for beatrice? was waller degraded by his devotion to saccharissa--for ever evidenced by so many charming versicles, and never dropping down from the rosy cloud-land of poetry into the matter-of-fact regions of prose? degraded! ashamed!--her face grew crimson all in a moment as these cruel words stung her poor sentimental heart. she wanted to run away all at once, and never see mr. lansdell again. her heart would break, as a matter of course; but how infinitely preferable to shame would be a broken heart and early death with an appropriate tombstone! the tears rolled down her flushed cheek, as she turned away her face from roland. she was almost stifled by mingled grief and indignation. "i did not think you were ashamed to meet me here sometimes," she sobbed out; "you asked me to come. i did not think that you were humiliated by talking to me--i----" "why, izzie--isabel darling!" cried roland, "can you misunderstand me so utterly? ashamed to meet you--ashamed of your society! can you doubt what would have happened had i come home a year earlier than it was my ill fortune to come? can you doubt for a moment that i would have chosen you for my wife out of all the women in the universe, and that my highest pride would have been the right to call you by that dear name? i was too late, izzie, too late; too late to win that pure and perfect happiness which would have made a new man of me, which would have transformed me into a good and useful man, as i think. i suppose it is always so; i suppose there is always one drop wanting in the cup of joy, that one mystic drop which would change the commonplace potion into an elixir. i came too late! why should i have everything in this world? why should i have fifteen thousand a year, and mordred priory, and the right to acknowledge the woman i love in the face of all creation, while there are crippled wretches sweeping crossings for the sake of a daily crust, and men and women wasting away in great prison-houses called unions, whose first law is the severance of every earthly tie? i came too late, and i suppose it was natural that i should so come. millions of destinies have been blighted by as small a chance as that which has blighted mine, i dare say. we must take our fate as we find it, isabel; and if we are true to each other, i hope and believe that it may be a bright one even yet--even yet." a woman of the world would have very quickly perceived that mr. lansdell's discourse must have relation to more serious projects than future meetings under lord thurston's oak, with interchange of divers volumes of light literature. but isabel gilbert was not a woman of the world. she had read novels while other people perused the sunday papers; and of the world out of a three-volume romance she had no more idea than a baby. she believed in a phantasmal universe, created out of the pages of poets and romancers; she knew that there were good people and bad people--ernest maltraverses and lumley ferrerses, walter gays and carkers; but beyond this she had very little notion of mankind; and having once placed mr. lansdell amongst the heroes, could not imagine him to possess one attribute in common with the villains. if he seemed intensely in earnest about these meetings under the oak, she was in earnest too; and so had been the german knight, who devoted the greater part of his life to watching the casement of his lady-love. "i shall see you sometimes," she said, with timid hesitation,--"i shall see you sometimes, shan't i, when you come home from town? not often, of course; i dare say it isn't right to come here often, away from george; and the last time i kept him waiting for his dinner; but i told him where i had been, and that i'd seen you, and he didn't mind a bit." roland lansdell sighed. "ah, don't you understand, isabel," he said, "that doubles our degradation? it is for the very reason that he 'doesn't mind,' it is precisely because he is so simple-hearted and trusting, that we ought not to deceive the poor fellow any longer. that's the degradation, izzie; the deception, not the deed itself. a man meets his enemy in fair fight and kills him, and nobody complains. the best man must always win, i suppose; and if he wins by fair means, no one need grudge him his victory. i mystify you, don't i, my darling, by all this rambling talk? i shall speak plainer on wednesday. and now let me take you homewards," added mr. lansdell, looking at his watch, "if you are to be at home at five." he knew the habits of the doctor's little household, and knew that five o'clock was mr. gilbert's dinner-hour. there was no conversation of any serious nature during the homeward walk--only dreamy talk about books and poets and foreign lands. mr. lansdell told isabel of bright spots in italy and greece, wonderful villages upon the borders of blue lakes deeply hidden among alpine slopes, and snow-clad peaks like stationary clouds--beautiful and picturesque regions which she must see by-and-by, roland added gaily. but mrs. gilbert opened her eyes very wide and laughed aloud. how should she ever see such places? she asked, smiling. george would never go there; he would never be rich enough to go; nor would he care to go, were he ever so rich. and while she was speaking, isabel thought that, after all, she cared very little for those lovely lands; much as she had dreamed about them and pined to see them, long ago in the camberwell garden, on still moonlight nights, when she used to stand on the little stone step leading from the kitchen, with her arms resting on the water-butt, like juliet's on the balcony, and fancy it was italy. now she was quite resigned to the idea of never leaving graybridge-on-the-wayverne. she was content to live there all her life, as long as she could see mr. lansdell now and then; so long as she could know that he was near her, thinking of her and loving her, and that at any moment his dark face might shine out of the dulness of her life. a perfect happiness had come to her--the happiness of being beloved by the bright object of her idolatry; nothing could add to that perfection; the cup was full to the very brim, filled with an inexhaustible draught of joy and delight. mr. lansdell stopped to shake hands with isabel when they came to the gate leading into the graybridge road. "good-bye," he said softly: "good-bye, until wednesday, isabel. isabel--what a pretty name it is! you have no other christian name?" "oh no." "only isabel--isabel gilbert. good-bye." he opened the gate and stood watching the doctor's wife as she passed out of the meadow, and walked at a rapid pace towards the town. a man passed along the road as mr. lansdell stood there, and looked at him as he went by, and then turned and looked after isabel. "raymond is right, then," thought roland; "they have begun to stare and chatter already. let them talk about me at their tea-tables, and paragraph me in their newspapers, to their hearts' content! my soul is as much above them as the eagle soaring sunward is above the sheep that stare up at him from the valleys. i have set my foot upon the fiery ploughshare, but my darling shall be carried across it scatheless, in the strong arms of her lover." mrs. gilbert went home to her husband, and sat opposite to him at dinner as usual; but roland's words, dimly as she had comprehended their meaning, had in some manner influenced her, for she blushed when george asked her where she had been that cold afternoon. mr. gilbert did not see the blush, for he was carving the joint as he asked the question, and indeed had asked it rather as a matter of form than otherwise. this time mrs. gilbert did not tell her husband that she had met roland lansdell. the words "shame and degradation" were ringing in her ears all dinner-time. she had tasted, if ever so little, of the fruit of the famous tree, and she found the flavour thereof very bitter. it must be wrong to meet roland under lord thurston's oak, since he said it was so; and the meeting on wednesday was to be the last; and yet their fate was to be a happy one; had he not said so, in eloquently mysterious words, whose full meaning poor isabel was quite unable to fathom? she brooded over what mr. lansdell said all that evening, and a dim sense of impending trouble crept into her mind. he was going away for ever, perhaps; and had only told her otherwise in order to lull her to rest with vain hopes, and thus spare himself the trouble of her lamentations. or he was going to london to arrange for a speedy marriage with lady gwendoline. poor isabel could not shake off her jealous fears of that brilliant high-bred rival, whom mr. lansdell had once loved. yes; he had once loved lady gwendoline. mr. raymond had taken an opportunity of telling isabel all about the young man's early engagement to his cousin; and he had added a hope that, after all, a marriage between the two might yet be brought about; and had not the housekeeper at mordred said very much the same thing? "he will marry lady gwendoline," isabel thought, in a sudden access of despair; "and that is what he is going to tell me on wednesday. he was different to-day from what he has been since he came back to mordred. and yet--and yet--" and yet what? isabel tried in vain to fathom the meaning of all roland lansdell's wild talk--now earnestly grave--now suddenly reckless--one moment full of hope, and in the next tinctured with despair. what was this simple young novel-reader to make of a man of the world, who was eager to defy the world, and knew exactly what a terrible world it was that he was about to outrage and defy? mrs. gilbert lay awake all that night, thinking of the meeting by the waterfall. roland's talk had mystified and alarmed her. the ignorant happiness, the unreflecting delight in her lover's presence, the daily joy that in its fulness had no room for a thought of the morrow, had vanished all at once like a burst of sunlight eclipsed by the darkening clouds that presage a storm. eve had listened to the first whispers of the serpent, and paradise was no longer entirely beautiful. chapter xxiv. lady gwendoline does her duty. mrs. gilbert stayed at home all through the day which succeeded her parting from roland lansdell. she stayed in the dingy parlour, and read a little, and played upon the piano a little, and sketched a few profile portraits of mr. lansdell, desperately inky and sentimental, with impossibly enormous eyes. she worked a little, wounding her fingers, and hopelessly entangling her thread; and she let the fire out two or three times, as she was accustomed to do very often, to the aggravation of mrs. jeffson. that hard-working and faithful retainer came into the parlour at two o'clock, carrying a little plate of seed-cake and a glass of water for her mistress's frugal luncheon; and finding the grate black and dismal for the second time that day, fetched a bundle of wood and a box of matches, and knelt down to rekindle the cavernous cinders in no very pleasant humour. "i'm sorry i've let the fire out again, mrs. jeffson," isabel said meekly. "i think there must be something wrong in the grate somehow, for the fire always _will_ go out." "it usen't to go out in master george's mother's time," mrs. jeffson answered, rather sharply, "and it was the same grate then. but my dear young mistress used to sit in yon chair, stitch, stitch, stitch at the doctor's cambric shirt-fronts, and the fire was always burning bright and pleasant when he came home. she was a regular stay-at-home, she was," added the housekeeper, in a musing tone; "and it was very rare as she went out beyond the garden, except on a summer's evening, when the doctor took her for a walk. she didn't like going out alone, poor dear; for there was plenty of young squires about graybridge as would have been glad enough to follow her and talk to her, and set people's malicious tongues chattering about her, if she'd have let 'em. but she never did; she was as happy as the day was long, sitting at home, working for her husband, and always ready to jump up and run to the door when she heard his step outside--god bless her innocent heart!" mrs. gilbert's face grew crimson as she bent over a sheet of paper on which the words "despair" and "prayer," "breath" and "death," were twisted into a heartrending rhyme. ah, this was a part of the shame and degradation of which roland had spoken. everybody had a right to lecture her, and at every turn the perfections of the dead were cast reproachfully in her face. as if _she_ did not wish to be dead and at rest, regretted and not lectured, deplored rather than slandered and upbraided. these vulgar people laid their rude hands upon her cup of joy, and changed its contents into the bitter waters of shame. these commonplace creatures set themselves up as the judges of her life, and turned all its purest and brightest poetry into a prosaic record of disgrace. the glory of the koh-i-noor would have been tarnished by the print of such base hands as these. how could these people read her heart, or understand her love for roland lansdell? very likely the serene lady of the rhineland, praying in her convent-cell, was slandered and misrepresented by vulgar boors, who, passing along the roadway beneath, saw the hermit-knight sitting at the door of his cell and gazing fondly at his lost love's casement. such thoughts as this arose in isabel's mind, and she was angry and indignant at the good woman who presumed to lecture her. she pushed away the plate of stale cake, and went to the window flushed and resentful. but the flush faded all in a moment from her face when she saw a lady in a carriage driving slowly towards the gate,--a lady who wore a great deal of soft brown fur, and a violet velvet bonnet with drooping features, and who looked up at the house as if uncertain as to its identity. the lady was lord ruysdale's daughter; and the carriage was only a low basket-phaeton, drawn by a stout bay cob, and attended by a groom in a neat livery of dark blue. but if the simple equipage had been the fairy chariot of queen mab herself, mrs. gilbert could scarcely have seemed more abashed and astounded by its apparition before her door. the groom descended from his seat at an order from his mistress, and rang the bell at the surgeon's gate; and then lady gwendoline, having recognized isabel at the window, and saluted her with a very haughty inclination of the head, abandoned the reins to her attendant, and alighted. mrs. jeffson had opened the gate by this time, and the visitor swept by her into the little passage, and thence into the parlour, where she found the doctor's wife standing by the table, trifling nervously with that scrap of fancy-work whose only progress was to get grimier and grimier day by day under isabel's idle fingers. oh, what a dingy shabby place that graybridge parlour was always! how doubly and trebly dingy it seemed to-day by contrast with that gorgeous millais-like figure of gwendoline pomphrey, rich and glorious in violet velvet and russian sable, with the yellow tints of her hair contrasted by the deep purple shadows under her bonnet. mrs. gilbert almost sank under the weight of all that aristocratic splendour. she brought a chair for her visitor, and asked in a tremulous voice if lady gwendoline would be pleased to sit. there was a taint of snobbishness in her reverential awe of the earl's handsome daughter. was not lady gwendoline the very incarnation of all her own foolish dreams of the beautiful? long ago, in the camberwell garden, she had imagined such a creature; and now she bowed herself before the splendour, and was stricken with fear and trembling in the dazzling presence. and then there were other reasons that she should tremble and turn pale. might not lady gwendoline have come to announce her intended marriage with mr. lansdell, and to smite the poor wretch before her with sudden madness and despair? isabel felt that some calamity was coming down upon her: and she stood pale and silent, meekly waiting to receive her sentence. "pray sit down, mrs. gilbert," said lady gwendoline; "i wish to have a little conversation with you. i am very glad to have found you at home, and alone." the lady spoke very kindly, but her kindness had a stately coldness that crept like melted ice through isabel's veins, and chilled her to the bone. "i am older than you, mrs. gilbert," said lady gwendoline, after a little pause, and she slightly winced as she made the confession; "i am older than you; and if i speak to you in a manner that you may have some right to resent as an impertinent interference with your affairs, i trust that you will believe i am influenced only by a sincere desire for your welfare." isabel's heart sank to a profounder depth of terror than before when she heard this. she had never in her life known anything but unpleasantness to come from people's desire for her welfare: from the early days in which her step-mother had administered salutary boxes on the ear, and salts and senna, with an equal regard to her moral and physical improvement. she looked up fearfully at lady gwendoline, and saw that the fair saxon face of her visitor was almost as pale as her own. "i am older than you, mrs. gilbert," repeated gwendoline, "and i know my cousin roland lansdell much better than you can possibly know him." the sound of the dear name, the sacred name, which to isabel's mind should only have been spoken in a hushed whisper, like a tender pianissimo passage in music, shot home to the foolish girl's heart. her face flushed crimson, and she clasped her hands together, while the tears welled slowly up to her eyes. "i know my cousin better than you can know him; i know the world better than you can know it. there are some women, mrs. gilbert, who would condemn you unheard, and who would consider their lips sullied by any mention of your name. there are many women in my position who would hold themselves aloof from you, content to let you go your own way. but i take leave to think for myself in all matters. i have heard mr. raymond speak very kindly of you; i cannot judge you as harshly as other people judge you; i cannot believe you to be what your neighbours think you." "oh, what, what can they think me?" cried isabel, trembling with a vague fear--an ignorant fear of some deadly peril utterly unknown to her, and yet close upon her; "what harm have i done, that they should think ill of me? what can they say of me? what can they say?" her eyes were blinded by tears, that blotted lady gwendoline's stern face from her sight. she was still so much a child, that she made no effort to conceal her terror and confusion. she bared all the foolish secrets of her heart before those cruel eyes. "people say that you are a false wife to a simple-hearted and trusting husband," lord ruysdale's daughter answered, with pitiless calmness; "a false wife in thought and intention, if not in deed; since you have lured my cousin back to this place; and are ready to leave it with him as his mistress whenever he chooses to say 'come.' that is what people think of you; and you have given them only too much cause for their suspicion. do you imagine that you could keep any secret from graybridge? do you think your actions or even your thoughts could escape the dull eyes of these country people, who have nothing better to do than watch the doings of their neighbours?" demanded lady gwendoline, bitterly. alas! she knew that her name had been bandied about from gossip to gossip; and that her grand disappointment in the matter of lord heatherland, her increasing years, and declining chances of a prize in the matrimonial lottery had been freely discussed at all the tea-tables in the little country town. "country people find out everything, mrs. gilbert," she said, presently. "you have been watched in your sentimental meetings and rambles with mr. lansdell; and you may consider yourself very fortunate if no officious person has taken the trouble to convey the information to your husband." isabel had been crying all this time, crying bitterly, with her head bent upon her clasped hands; but to lady gwendoline's surprise she lifted it now, and looked at her accuser with some show of indignation, if not defiance. "i told george every--almost every time i met mr. lansdell," she exclaimed; "and george knows that he lends me books; and he likes me to have books--nice, in-st-structive books," said mrs. gilbert, stifling her sobs as best she might; "and i n-never thought that anybody could be so wicked as to fancy there was any harm in my meeting him. i don't suppose any one ever said anything to beatrice portinari, though she was married, and dante loved her very dearly; and i only want to see him now and then, and to hear him talk; and he has been very, very kind to me." "kind to you!" cried lady gwendoline, scornfully. "do you know the value of such kindness as his? did you ever hear of any good coming of it? did such kindness ever bear any fruit but anguish and misery and mortification? you talk like a baby, mrs. gilbert, or else like a hypocrite. do you know what my cousin's life has been? do you know that he is an infidel, and outrages his friends by opinions which he does not even care to conceal? do you know that his name has been involved with the names of married women before to-day? are you besotted enough to think that his new fancy for you is anything more than the caprice of an idle and dissipated man of the world, who is ready to bring ruin upon the happiest home in england for the sake of a new sensation, a little extra aliment for the vanity which a host of foolish women have pampered into his ruling vice?" "vanity!" exclaimed mrs. gilbert; "oh, lady gwendoline, how can you say that _he_ is vain? it is you who do not know him. ah, if you could only know how good he is, how noble, how generous! i know that he would never try to injure me by so much as a word or a thought. why should i not love him; as we love the stars, that are so beautiful and so distant from us? why should i not worship him as helena worshipped bertram, as viola loved zanoni? the wicked graybridge people may say what they like; and if they tell george anything about me, i will tell him the truth; and then--and then, if i was only a catholic, i would go into a convent like hildegonde! ah, lady gwendoline, you do not understand such love as mine!" added isabel, looking at the earl's daughter with an air of superiority that was superb in its simplicity. she was proud of her love, which was so high above the comprehension of ordinary people. it is just possible that she was even a little proud of the slander which attached to her. she had all her life been pining for the glory of martyrdom, and lo, it had come upon her. the fiery circlet had descended upon her brow; and she assumed a dignified pose in order to support it properly. "i only understand that you are a very foolish person," lady gwendoline answered, coldly; "and i have been extremely foolish to trouble myself about you. i considered it my duty to do what i have done, and i wash my hands henceforward of you and your affairs. pray go your own way, and do not fear any further interference from me. it is quite impossible that i can have the smallest association with my cousin's mistress." she hurled the cruel word at the doctor's wife, and departed with a sound of silken rustling in the narrow passage. isabel heard the carriage drive away, and then flung herself down upon her knees, to sob and lament her cruel destiny. that last word had stung her to the very heart. it took all the poetry out of her life; it brought before her, in its fullest significance, the sense of her position. if she met roland under lord thurston's oak,--if she walked with him in the meadows that his footsteps beautified into the smooth lawns of paradise,--people, vulgar, ignorant people, utterly unable to comprehend her or her love, would say that she was his mistress. his mistress! to what people she had heard that word applied! and beatrice portinari, and viola, and leila, and gulnare, and zelica, what of them? the visions of all those lovely and shining creatures arose before her; and beside them, in letters of fire, blazed the odious word that transformed her fond platonic worship, her sentimental girlish idolatry, into a shame and disgrace. "i will see him to-morrow and say farewell to him," she thought. "i will bid him good-bye for ever and ever, though my heart should break,--ah, how i hope it may, as i say the bitter word!--and never, never will see him again. i know now what he meant by shame and humiliation; i can understand all he said now." * * * * * mrs. gilbert had another of her headaches that evening, and poor george was obliged to dine alone. he went up-stairs once or twice in the course of the evening to see his wife, and found her lying very quietly in the dimly-lighted room with her face turned to the wall. she held out her hand to him as he bent over her, and pressed his broad palm with her feverish fingers. "i'm afraid i've been neglectful of you sometimes, george," she said; "but i won't be so again. i won't go out for those long walks, and keep you waiting for dinner; and if you would like a set of new shirts made--you said the other day that yours were nearly worn out--i should like to make them for you myself. i used to help to make the shirts for my brothers, and i don't think i should pucker so much now; and, oh, george, mrs. jeffson was talking of your poor mother to-day, and i want you to tell me what it was she died of." mr. gilbert patted his wife's hand approvingly, and laid it gently down on the coverlet. "that's a melancholy subject, my love," he said, "and i don't think it would do either of us any good to talk about it. as for the shirts, my dear, it's very good of you to offer to make them; but i doubt if you'd manage them as well as the work-woman at wareham, who made the last. she's very reasonable; and she's lame, poor soul; so it's a kind of charity to employ her. good-bye for the present, izzie; try to get a nap, and don't worry your poor head about anything." he went away, and isabel listened to his substantial boots creaking down the stairs, and away towards the surgery. he had come thence to his wife's room, and he left a faint odour of drugs behind him. ah, how that odious flavour of senna and camomile flowers brought back a magical exotic perfume that had floated towards her one day from _his_ hair as he bent his head to listen to her foolish talk! and now the senna and camomile were to flavour all her life. she was no longer to enjoy that mystical double existence, those delicious glimpses of dreamland, which made up for all the dulness of the common world that surrounded her. if she could have died, and made an end of it all! there are moments in life when death seems the _only_ issue from a dreadful labyrinth of grief and horror. i suppose it is only very weak-minded people--doubtful vacillating creatures like prince hamlet of denmark--who wish to die, and make an easy end of their difficulties; but isabel was not by any means strong-minded, and she thought with a bitter pang of envy of the commonplace young women whom she had known to languish and fade in the most interesting pulmonary diseases, while she so vainly yearned for the healing touch which makes a sure end of all mortal fevers. but there was something--one thing in the world yet worth the weariness of existence--that meeting with _him_--that meeting which was to be also an eternal parting. she would see him once more; he would look down at her with his mysterious eyes--the eyes of zanoni himself could scarcely have been more mystically dark and deep. she would see him, and perhaps that strangely intermingled joy and anguish would be more fatal than earthly disease, and she would drop dead at his feet, looking to the last at the dark splendour of his face--dying under the spell of his low tender voice. and then, with a shudder, she remembered what lady gwendoline had said of her demi-god. dissipated and an infidel; vain, selfish! oh, cruel, cruel slander,--the slander of a jealous woman, perhaps, who had loved him and been slighted by him. the doctor's wife would not believe any treasonous whisper against her idol. only from his own lips could come the words that would be strong enough to destroy her illusions. she lay awake all that night thinking of her interview with lady gwendoline, acting the scene over and over again; hearing the cruel words repeated in her ears with dismal iteration throughout the dark slow hours. the pale cheerless spring daylight came at last, and mrs. gilbert fell asleep just when it was nearly time for her to think of getting up. the doctor breakfasted alone that morning, as he had dined the day before. he begged that isabel might not be disturbed, a good long spell of rest was the best thing for his wife's head, he told mrs. jeffson; to which remark that lady only replied by a suspicious kind of sniff, accompanied by a jerk of the head, and followed by a plaintive sigh, all of which were entirely lost upon the parish surgeon. "females whose headaches keep 'em a-bed when they ought to be seeing after their husband's meals hadn't ought to marry," mrs. jeffson remarked, with better sense than grammar, when she took george's breakfast paraphernalia back to the kitchen. "i heard down the street just now, as _he_ come back to the priory late last night, and i'll lay she'll be goin' out to meet him this afternoon, william." mr. jeffson, who was smoking his matutinal pipe by the kitchen fire, shook his head with a slow melancholy gesture as his wife made this remark. "it's a bad business, tilly," he said, "a bad business first and last. if _he_ was anything of a man, he'd keep away from these parts, and 'ud be above leadin' a poor simple little thing like that astray. them poetry-hooks and such like, as she's allus a-readin', has half turned her head long ago, and it only needs a fine chap like him to turn it altogether. i mind what i say to muster jarge the night as i fust see her; and i can see her face now, tilly, as i see it then, with the eyes fixed and lookin' far away like; and i knew then what i know better still now, my lass,--them two'll never get on together. they warn't made for one another. i wonder sometimes to see the trouble a man'll take before he gets a pair o' boots, to find out as they're a good fit and won't gall his foot when he comes to wear 'em; but t' same man'll go and get married as careless and off-hand like, as if there weren't the smallest chance of his wife's not suiting him. i was took by thy good looks, lass, i won't deny, when i first saw thee," mr. jeffson added, with diplomatic gallantry; "but it wasn't because of thy looks as i asked thee to be my true wife, and friend, and companion, throughout this mortal life and all its various troubles." chapter xxv. "for love himself took part against himself." it was eleven o'clock when isabel woke; and it was twelve when she sat down to make some pretence of eating the egg and toast which mrs. jeffson set before her. the good woman regarded her young mistress with a grave countenance, and mrs. gilbert shrank nervously from that honest gaze. shame and disgrace--she had denied the application of those hideous words to herself: but the cup which she had repudiated met her lips at every turn, and the flavour of its bitter waters was intermingled with everything she tasted. she turned away from mrs. jeffson, and felt angry with her. presently, when the faithful housekeeper was busy in the kitchen, mrs. gilbert went softly up-stairs to her room, and put on her bonnet and shawl. she was not to meet _him_ till three o'clock in the afternoon, and it was now only a little after twelve; but she could not stay in the house. a terrible fever and restlessness had taken possession of her lately. had not her life been altogether one long fever since roland lansdell's advent in midlandshire? she looked back, and remembered that she had lived once, and had been decently contented, in utter ignorance of this splendid being's existence. she had lived, and had believed in the shadowy heroes of books, and in great clumsy grey-coated officers stationed at conventford, and in a sickly curate at camberwell; and long, long ago--oh, unutterable horror!--in a sentimental-looking young chemist's apprentice in the walworth road, who had big watery-looking blue eyes, and was not so very unlike ernest maltravers, and who gave more liberal threepenny-worths of lavender-water or hair-oil than any other chemist on the surrey side of the water--to isabel! not to other people! miss sleaford sent one of the boys for the usual threepenny-worth on one occasion, and the chemist's measure was very different, and the young lady was not a little touched by this proof of her admirer's devotion. and looking back now she remembered these things, and wondered at them, and hated herself because of them. there was no low image of a chemist's assistant lurking dimly in the background of viola's life when she met her fate in the person of zanoni. all isabel's favourite heroines seemed to look out at her reproachfully from their cloudland habitations, as she remembered this portion of her existence. she had lived, and there had been no prophetic vision of _his_ face among all her dreams. and now there was nothing for her but to try to go back to the same dull life again, since to-day she was to part from him for ever. the day was a thorough march day--changeable in mood--now brightened by a sudden glimpse of the sun, now grey and threatening, dull and colourless as the life which lay before isabel gilbert when _he_ should be gone, and the sweet romance of her existence closed abruptly, like a story that is never to be finished. the doctor's wife shuddered as she went out into the lane, where the dust was blowing into eddying circles every now and then by a frolicsome north-easter. she closed the gate safely behind her and went away, and to-day for the first time she felt that her errand was a guilty one. she went into the familiar meadow pathway; she tried to walk slowly, but her feet seemed to carry her towards thurston's crag in spite of herself; and when she was far from graybridge, and looked at her watch, it was only one o'clock, and there were two long hours that must elapse before roland lansdell's coming. it was only a quarter past one when she came in sight of the miller's cottage--the pretty little white-walled habitation nestling low down under big trees, which made a shelter even in winter time. a girl was standing at a door feeding chickens and calling to them in a loud cheerful voice. there was no sorrowful love story in her life, mrs. gilbert thought, as she looked at the bouncing red-elbowed young woman. she would marry some floury-visaged miller's man, most likely, and be happy ever after. but it was only a momentary thrill of envy that shot through isabel's breast. better to die for roland lansdell than to live for a miller's man in thick clumpy boots and an elaborately-stitched smock-frock. better to have lived for the briefest summer time of joy and triumph, and then to stand aloof upon a rock for ever afterwards, staring at the wide expanse of waters, and thinking of the past, like napoleon at st. helena. "he has loved me!" thought isabel; "i ought never to be unhappy, when i remember that." she had brought shelley with her, and she seated herself upon the bench under the oak; but she only turned the leaves over and over, and listened to the brawling waters at her feet, and thought of roland lansdell. sometimes she tried to think of what her life would be after she had parted from him; but all the future after four o'clock that afternoon seemed to recede far away from her, beyond the limits of her understanding. she had a vague idea that after this farewell meeting she would be like louise de la vallière in the days of her seclusion and penitence. if father newman, or any other enthusiastic romanist, could have found her sitting by the brawling water that afternoon, he would have secured a willing convert to his tender sentimental creed. the poor bewildered spirit pined for the shadowy aisles of some conventual sanctuary, the low and solemn music, the glimmering shrines, the dreamy exaltation and rapture, the separation from a hard commonplace world. but no sympathetic stranger happened to pass that way while isabel sat there, watching the path by which roland lansdell must come. she took out her watch every now and then, always to be disappointed at the slow progress of the time; but at last--at last--just as a sudden gleam of sunshine lighted the waterfall, and flickered upon the winding pathway, a distant church clock struck three, and the master of mordred priory pushed open a little gate, and came in and out among the moss-grown trunks of the bare elms. in the next minute he was on the bridge; in the next moment, as it seemed, he was seated by isabel's side, and had taken her passive hand in his. for the last time--for the last time! she thought. involuntarily her fingers closed on his. how closely they seemed linked together now; they who so soon were to be for ever parted; they between whom all the expanse of the atlantic would have been only too narrow a barrier! mrs. gilbert looked up sadly and shrinkingly at roland's face, and saw that it was all flushed and radiant. there was just the faintest expression of nervous hesitation about his mouth; but his dark eyes shone with a resolute glance, and seemed more definite in colour than isabel had ever seen them yet. "my darling," he said, "i am very punctual, am i not? i did not think you would be here before me. you can never guess how much i have thought of our meeting to-day, isabel:--seriously; solemnly even. do you remember the garden-scene in 'romeo and juliet,' izzie? what pretty sportive boy-and-girl gallantry the love-making seems; and yet what a tragedy comes of it directly after! when i look at you to-day, isabel, and think of my sleepless nights, my restless weary days, my useless wanderings, my broken vows and wasted resolutions, i look back and remember our first meeting at warncliffe castle--our chance meeting. if i had gone away ten minutes sooner, i might not have seen you--i might never have seen you. i look back and see it all. i looked up so indifferently when poor raymond introduced you to us; it was almost a bore to get up and bow to you. i thought you were very pretty, a beautiful pale-faced automaton, with wonderful eyes that belonged of right to some italian picture, and not to a commonplace little person like you. and then--having so little to do, being altogether such an idle purposeless wretch, and being glad of any excuse for getting away from my stately cousin and my dear prosy old uncle--i must needs stroll to hurstonleigh grove, and meet you again under the changing shadows of the grand old trees. oh, what was it, isabel? why was it? was it only idle curiosity, as i believed, that took me there? or had the cruel arrow shot home already; was my destiny sealed even then? i don't know--i don't know. i am not a good man, izzie; but i am not utterly bad either. i went away from you, my dear; i _did_ try to avoid the great peril of my life; but--you remember the monk in hugo's 'notre dame.' it seems a grand story in that book, izzie, but it's the commonest story in all the world. some day--some careless day--we look out of the window and see the creature dancing in the sunshine, and from that moment every other purpose of our life is done with and forgotten; we can do nothing but go out and follow her wherever she beckons us. if she is a wicked siren, she may lure us into the dark recesses of her cave and pick our bones at her leisure. if she is undine, and plunges deep down into the blue water, we can only take a header and go to the bottom after her. but if she is a dear little innocent creature, worthy of our best love and worship, why should we not be happy with her ever afterwards, like the good people in the story-books? why should we not plan a bright life of happiness and fidelity? isabel, my darling, i want to talk very seriously to you to-day. the crisis has come in our lives, and i am to find out to-day whether you are the true woman i believe you to be, or only a pretty little village coquette, who has fooled me to the top of my bent, and who can whistle me off and let me down the wind to prey at fortune directly i become a nuisance. izzie, i want you to answer a serious question to-day, and all the happiness of my future life depends upon your answer." "mr. lansdell!" she looked up at him--very much frightened by his manner, but with her hand still clasping his. the link must so soon be broken for ever. only for a little while longer might she retain that dear hand in hers. half an hour more, and they would be parted for ever and ever. the pain of that thought was strangely mingled with the delicious joy of being with him, of hearing from his lips that she was beloved. what did she care for lady gwendoline now?--cruel jealous lady gwendoline, who had outraged and insulted the purity of her love. "isabel," roland said, very gravely, bending his head to a level with hers, as he spoke, but looking at the ground rather than at her, "it is time that we ended this farce of duty and submission to the world; we have tried to submit, and to rule our lives by the laws which other people have made for us. but we cannot--we cannot, my dear. we are only hypocrites, who try to mask our revolt under the pretence of submission. you come here and meet me, and we are happy together--unutterably and innocently happy. but you leave me and go home to your husband, and smile at him, and tell him that, while you were out walking, you met mr. lansdell, and so on; and you hoodwink and fool him, and act a perpetual lie for his delusion. all that must cease, isabel. that preacher, whom _i_ think the noblest reformer, the purest philosopher whose voice was ever heard upon this earth, said that we cannot serve two masters. you cannot go on living the life you have lived for the last three weeks, isabel. that is impossible. you have made a mistake. the world will tell you that, having made it, you must abide by it, and atone for your folly by a life of dissimulation. there are women brave enough--good enough, if you like--to do this, and to bear their burden patiently; but you are not one of them. you cannot dissimulate. your soul has flown to me like a bird out of a cage; it is mine henceforth and for ever; as surely as that i love you,--fatally, unaccountably, mysteriously, but eternally. i know the strength of my chain, for i have tried to break it. i have held aloof, and tested the endurance of my love. if i ask you now to accept that love, it is because i know that it is true and pure,--the true metal, izzie, the real virgin gold! i suppose a narrow vein of it runs through every man's nature; but it is only one woman's hand that has power to strike upon the precious ore. i love you, isabel; and i want you to make an end of your present life, and leave this place for ever. i have written to an agent to get me a little villa on the outskirts of naples. i went there alone, izzie, two months ago, and set up your image in the empty rooms, and fancied you hovering here and there in your white dress, upon the broad marble terrace, with the blue sea below you, and the mountains above. i have made a hundred plans for our life, izzie. there is not a whim or fancy of yours that i have not remembered. ah, what happiness! to show you wonderful things and beautiful scenes! what delicious joy to see your eyes open their widest before all the fairest pictures of earth! i fancy you with me, isabel, and, behold, my life is transformed. i have been so tired of everything in the world; and yet, with you by my side, all the world will be as fresh as eden was to adam on the first day of his life. isabel, you need have no doubt of me. i have doubted myself, and tested myself. mine is no light love, that time or custom can change or lessen: if it were, i would have done my duty, and stayed away from you for ever. i have thought of your happiness as well as my own, darling; and i ask you now to trust me, and leave this place for ever." something like a cry of despair broke from isabel's lips. "you ask me to go away with you!" she exclaimed, looking at roland as if she could scarcely believe the testimony of her own ears. "you ask me to leave george, and be your--mistress! oh, lady gwendoline only spoke the truth, then. you don't understand--no one understands--how i love you!" she had risen as she spoke, and flung herself passionately against the balustrade of the bridge, sobbing bitterly, with her face hidden by her clasped hands. "isabel, for heaven's sake, listen to me! can you doubt the purity of my love--the truth, the honesty of my intentions? i ask you to sign no unequal compact. give me your life, and i'll give you mine in exchange--every day--every hour. whatever the most exacting wife can claim of her husband, you shall receive from me. whatever the truest husband can be to his wife, i swear to be to you. it is only a question of whether you love me, isabel. you have only to choose between me and that man yonder." "oh, roland! roland! i have loved you so--and you could think that i----. oh, you must despise me--you must despise me very much, and think me very wicked, or you would never----" she couldn't say any more; but she still leant against the bridge, sobbing for her lost delusion. lady gwendoline had been right, after all,--this is what isabel thought,--and there had been no platonism, no poet-worship on roland lansdell's side; only the vulgar every-day wish to run away with another man's wife. from first to last she had been misunderstood; she had been the dupe of her own fancies, her own dreams. lady gwendoline's cruel words were only cruel truths. it was no dante, no tasso, who had wandered by her side; only a dissipated young country squire, in the habit of running away with other people's wives, and glorying in his iniquity. there was no middle standing-place which roland lansdell could occupy in this foolish girl's mind. if he was not a demi-god, he must be a villain. if he was not an exalted creature, full of poetic aspirations and noble fancies, he must be a profligate young idler, ready to whisper any falsehood into the ears of foolish rustic womanhood. all the stories of aristocratic villany that she had ever read flashed suddenly back upon mrs. gilbert's mind, and made a crowd of evidence against lady anna lansdell's son. if he was not the one grand thing which she had believed him to be--a poetic and honourable adorer--he was in nothing the hero of her dreams. she loved him still, and must continue to love him, in spite of all his delinquencies; but she must love him henceforward with fear and trembling, as a splendid iniquitous creature, who had not even one virtue to set against a thousand crimes. such thoughts as these crowded upon her, as she leaned sobbing on the narrow wooden rail of the bridge; while roland lansdell stood by, watching her with a grave and angry countenance. "is this acting, mrs. gilbert? is this show of surprise and indignation a little comedy, which you play when you want to get rid of your lovers? am i to accept my dismissal, and bid you good afternoon, and put up patiently with having been made the veriest fool that ever crossed this bridge?" "oh, roland!" cried isabel, lifting her head and looking piteously round at him, "i loved you so--i l-loved so!" "you love me so, and prove your love by fooling me with tender looks and blushes, till i believe that i have met the one woman in all the world who is to make my life happy. oh, isabel, i have loved you because i thought you unlike other women. am i to find that it is only the old story after all--falsehood, and trick, and delusion? it was a feather in your cap to have mr. lansdell of the priory madly in love with you; and now that he grows troublesome, you send him about his business. i am to think this, i suppose. it has all been coquetry and falsehood, from first to last." "falsehood! oh, roland, when i love you so dearly--so dearly and truly; not as you love me,--with a cruel love that would bring shame and disgrace upon me. you never can be more to me than you are now. we may part; but there is no power on earth that can part my soul from yours, or lessen my love. i came to you this afternoon to say good-bye for ever, because i have heard that cruel things have been said of me by people who do not understand my love. ah, how should those common people understand, when even you do not, roland? i came to say good-bye; and then, after to-day, my life will be finished. you know what you said that night: 'the curtain goes down, and all is over!' i shall think of you for ever and ever, till i die. ah, is there any kind of death that can ever make me forget you? but i will never come here again to see you. i will always try to do my duty to my husband." "your husband!" cried mr. lansdell, with a strident laugh; "had we not better leave _his_ name out of the question? oh, isabel!" he exclaimed, suddenly changing his tone, "so help me heaven, i cannot understand you. are you only an innocent child, after all, or the wiliest coquette that ever lived? you must be one or the other. you speak of your husband. my poor dear, it is too late in the day now to talk of him. you should have thought of him when we first met; when your eyelids first drooped beneath my gaze; when your voice first grew tremulous as you spoke my name. from the very first you have lured me on. i am no trickster or thief, to steal another man's property. if your heart had been your husband's when first i met you, the beauty of an angel in a cathedral fresco would not have been farther away from me than yours. depend upon it, eve was growing tired of eden when the serpent began to talk to her. if you had loved your husband, isabel, i should have bowed my head before the threshold of your home, as i would at the entrance to a chapel. but i saw that you did not love him; i very soon saw that you did love, or seemed to love, me. heaven knows how i struggled against the temptation, and only yielded at last when my heart told me that my love was true and honest, and worthy of the sacrifice i ask from you. i do ask that sacrifice; boldly, as a man who is prepared to give measure for measure. the little world to which you will say good-bye, isabel, is a world whose gates will close on me in the same hour. henceforth your life will be mine, with all its forfeitures. i am not an ambitious man, and have long ceased to care about making any figure in a world which has always seemed to me more or less like a show at a fair, with clanging cymbals and brazen trumpets, and promise and protestation, and boasting outside, and only delay and disappointment and vexation within. i do not give up very much, therefore, but what i have i freely resign. come with me, isabel, and i will take you away to the beautiful places you have been pleased to hear me talk about. all the world is ours, my darling, except this little corner of midlandshire. great ships are waiting to waft us away to far southern shores, and tropical paradises, and deep unfathomable forests. all the earth is organized for our happiness. the money that has been so useless to me until now shall have a new use henceforward, for it shall be dedicated to your pleasure. do you remember opening your eyes very wide the other day, isabel, and crying out that you would like to see rome, and poor keats's grave, and the colosseum,--byron's colosseum,--where the poetic gladiator thought of his wife and children, eh, izzie? i made such a dream out of that little childish exclamation. i know the balcony in which we will sit, darling, after dark nights, in carnival time, to watch the crowd in the streets below, and, on one grandest night of all, the big dome of st. peter's shining like a canopy of light, and all the old classic pediments and pillars blazing out of the darkness, as in a city of living fire. isabel, you cannot have been ignorant of the end to which our fate was chaffing us; you must have known that i should sooner or later say what i have said to-day." "oh, no, no, no!" cried mrs. gilbert, despairingly, "i never thought that you would ask me to be more to you than i am now: i never thought that it was wicked to come here and meet you. i have read of people, who by some fatality could never marry, loving each other, and being true to others for years and years--till death sometimes; and i fancied that you loved me like that: and the thought of your love made me so happy; and it was such happiness to see you sometimes, and to think of you afterwards, remembering every word you had said, and seeing your face as plainly as i see it now. i thought, till yesterday, that this might go on for ever, and never, never believed that you would think me like those wicked women who run away from their husbands." "and yet you love me?" "with all my heart." she looked at him with eyes still drowned in tears, but radiant with the truth of her sentimental soul, which had never before revealed itself so artlessly as now. fondly as she worshipped her idol, his words had little power to move her, now that he was false to his attributes, and came down upon common ground and wooed her as an every-day creature. if mr. lansdell had declared his intention of erecting a marble mausoleum in the grounds of mordred, and had requested isabel to commit suicide in order to render herself competent to occupy it with him immediately, she would have thought his request both appropriate and delightful, and would have assented on the spot. but his wild talk of foreign travel had no temptation for her. true, she saw as in a bright and changing vision a picture of what her life might be far away amidst wild romantic regions in that dear companionship. but between herself and those far-away visions there was a darkly-brooding cloud of shame and disgrace. the graybridge people might say what they chose of her: she could afford to hold her head high and despise their slanderous whispers: but she could _not_ afford to tarnish her love--her love which had no existence out of bright ideal regions wherein shame could never enter. roland lansdell watched her face in silence for some moments, and faintly comprehended the exaltation of spirit which lifted this foolish girl above him to-day. but he was a weak vacillating young man, who was unfortunate enough not to believe in anything, and he was, in his own fashion, truly and honestly in love,--too much in love to be just or reasonable,--and he was very angry with isabel. the tide of his feelings had gathered strength day by day, and had relentlessly swept away every impediment, to be breasted at last by a rocky wall; here, where he thought to meet only the free boundless ocean, ready to receive and welcome him. "isabel," he said at last, "have you ever thought what your life is to be, always, after this parting to-day? you are likely to live forty years, and even when you have got through them you will not be an old woman. have you ever contemplated those forty years, with three hundred and sixty-five days in every one of them; every day to be spent with a man you don't love--a man with whom you have not one common thought? think of that, isabel; and then, if you do love me, think of the life i offer you, and choose between them." "i can only make one choice," mrs. gilbert answered, in a low sad voice. "i shall be very unhappy, i dare say; but i will do my duty to my husband--and think of you." "so be it!" exclaimed mr. lansdell, with a long-drawn sigh. "in that case, good-bye." he held out his hand, and isabel was startled by the coldness of its touch. "you are not angry with me?" she asked, piteously. "i have no right to be angry with any one but myself. i do not suppose you meant any harm; but you have done me the deepest wrong a woman can do to a man. i have nothing to say to you except good-bye. for mercy's sake go away, and leave me to myself." she had no pretence for remaining with him after this, so she went away, very slowly, frightened and sorrowful. but when she had gone a few yards along the pathway under the trees, she felt all at once that she could not leave him thus. she must see his face once more: she must know for certain whether he was angry with her or not. she crept slowly back to the spot where she had left him, and found him lying at full length upon the grass, with his face hidden on his folded arms. with a sudden instinct of grief and terror she knew that he was crying, and falling down on her knees by his side, murmured amidst her sobs,-- "oh, pray forgive me! pray do not be angry with me! i love you so dearly and so truly! only say that you forgive me." roland lansdell lifted his face and looked at her. ah, what a reproachful look it was, and how long it lived in her memory and disturbed her peace! "i will forgive you," he answered, sternly, "when i have learnt to endure my life without you." he dropped his head again upon his folded arms, and isabel knelt by his side for some minutes watching him silently; but he never stirred and she was too much frightened and surprised by his anger; and remorsefully impressed with a vague sense of her own wrong-doing, to dare address him further. so at last she got up and went away. she began to feel that she had been, somehow or other, very wicked, and that her sin had brought misery upon this man whom she loved. chapter xxvi. a popular preacher. what could isabel gilbert do? the fabric of all her dreams was shivered like a cobweb in a sudden wind, and floated away from her for ever. everybody had misunderstood her. even _he_, who should have been a demi-god in power of penetration as in every other attribute,--even he had wronged and outraged her, and never again could she look trustfully upward to the dark beauty of his face; never again could her hand rest, oh, so lightly, for one brief instant on his arm; never again could she tell him in childish confidence all the vague yearnings, the innocently-sentimental aspirations, of her childish soul. never any more. the bright ideal of her life had melted away from her like a spectral cloud of silvery spray hovering above an alpine waterfall, and had left behind only a cynical man of the world, who boldly asked her to run away from her husband, and was angry with her because she refused to comply with his cruel demand. not for one moment did the doctor's wife contemplate the possibility of taking the step which roland lansdell had proposed to her. far off--as far away from her as some dim half-forgotten picture of fairy-land--there floated a vision of what her life might have been with him, if she had been clotilde, or the glittering duchess, or lady gwendoline, or some one or other utterly different from herself. but the possibility of deliberately leaving her husband to follow the footsteps of this other man, was as far beyond her power of comprehension as the possibility that she might steal a handful of arsenic out of one of the earthenware jars in the surgery, and mix it with the sugar that sweetened george gilbert's matutinal coffee. she wandered away from thurston's crag, not following the meadow pathway that would have taken her homeward; but going anywhere, half-unconscious, wholly indifferent where she went; and thinking with unutterable sadness of her broken dreams. she had been so childish, so entirely childish, and had given herself up so completely to that one dear day-dream. i think her childhood floated away from her for ever in company with that broken dream; and that the grey dawn of her womanhood broke upon her, cold and chill, as she walked slowly away from the spot where roland lansdell lay face downwards on the grass, weeping over the ruin of _his_ dream. it seemed as if in that hour she crossed mr. longfellow's typical rivulet and passed on to the bleak and sterile country beyond. well may the maiden linger ere she steps across that narrow boundary; for the land upon this hither side is very bare and desolate as compared with the fertile gardens and pleasant meads she abandons for ever. the sweet age of enchantment is over; the fairy companions of girlhood, who were loveliest even when most they deluded, spread their bright wings and flutter away; and the grave genius of common sense--a dismal-looking person, who dresses in grey woollen stuff, warranted not to shrink under the ordeal of the wash-tub, and steadfastly abjures crinoline--stretches out her hand, and offers, with a friendly but uncompromising abruptness, to be the woman's future guide and monitress. isabel gilbert was a woman all at once; ten years older by that bleak afternoon's most bitter discovery. since there was no one in the world who understood her, since even he so utterly failed to comprehend her, it must be that her dreams were foolish and impossible of comprehension to any one but herself. but those foolish dreams had for ever vanished. she could never think of roland lansdell again as she had thought of him. all her fancies about him had been so many fond and foolish delusions. he was not the true and faithful knight who could sit for ever at the entrance of his hermitage gazing fondly at the distant convent-casement, which might or might not belong to his lost love's chamber. no; he was quite another sort of person. he was the fierce dissolute cavalier, with a cross-handled sword a yard and a half long, and pointed shoes with long cruel spurs and steel chain-work jingling and clanking as he strode across his castle-hall. he was the false and wicked lover who would have scaled the wall of hildegonde's calm retreat some fatal night, and would have carried the shrieking nun away, to go mad and throw herself into the rhine on the earliest opportunity. he was a heartless faust, ready to take counsel of mephistopheles and betray poor trusting gretchen. he was robert the devil, about whose accursed footsteps a whole graveyard of accusing spirits might arise at any moment. it may be that isabel did not admire mr. lansdell less when she thought of him thus; but there was an awful shuddering horror mingled with her admiration. she was totally unable to understand him as he really was--a benevolently disposed young man, desirous of doing as little mischief in the world as might be compatible with his being tolerably happy himself; and fully believing that no great or irreparable harm need result from his appropriation of another man's wife. the tears rolled slowly down mrs. gilbert's pale cheeks as she walked along the midlandshire lanes that afternoon. she did not weep violently, or abandon herself to any wild passion of grief. as yet she was quite powerless to realize the blankness of her future life, now that her dream was broken for ever. her grief was not so bitter as it had been on the day of roland's sudden departure from mordred. he had loved her--she knew that now; and the supreme triumph of that thought supported her in the midst of her sorrow. he had loved her. his love was not the sort of thing she had so often read of, and so fondly believed in; it was only the destroying passion of the false knight, the cruel fancy of the wicked squire in top-boots, whom she had frequently seen--per favour of a newspaper-order--from the back boxes of the surrey theatre. but he _did_ love her! he loved her so well as to cast himself on the ground and weep because she had rejected him; and the wicked squire in top-boots had never gone so far as that, generally contenting himself with more practical evidences of his vexation, such as the levying of an execution on the goods and chattels of the heroine's father, or the waylaying and carrying off of the heroine herself by hired ruffians. how oddly it happens that the worthy farmer in the chintz waistcoat is _always_ in arrear with his rent, and always stands in the relation of tenant to the dissolute squire! would mr. lansdell do anything of that kind? isabel gave a little shiver as she glanced at the lonely landscape, and thought how a brace of hireling scoundrels might spring suddenly across the hedge, and bear her off to a convenient postchaise. were there any postchaises in the world now, isabel wondered. a strange confusion of thoughts filled her mind. she could not become _quite_ a woman all in a moment; the crossing of the mystic brook is not so rapid an operation as that. some remnants of the old delusions hung about her, and merely took a new form. she sat down on the lower step of a stile to rest herself by-and-by, and smoothed back her hair, which had been blown about her face by the march wind, and re-tied the strings of her bonnet, before she went out on the high-road, that lay on the other side of the stile. when she did emerge upon the road, she found herself ever so far from home, and close to the model village where mr. raymond had given his simple entertainment of tea and pound-cake, and in which george gilbert had stood by her side pleading to her with such profound humility. poor george! the quiet aspect of the village-green, the tiny cottages, trim and bright in the fading march sunshine; the low wooden gate opening into the churchyard,--all these, so strange and yet so familiar, brought back the memory of a time that seemed unspeakably far away now. it was passion-week,--for easter fell very late in march this year,--and the model village being a worthy model in the matter of piety as well as in all other virtues, there was a great deal of church-going among the simple inhabitants. the bells were ringing for evening service now, as mrs. gilbert lingered in the road between the village and the churchyard; and little groups of twos and threes, and solitary old women in black bonnets, passed her by, as she loitered quite at a loss whither to go, or what to do. they looked at her with solemn curiosity expressed in their faces. she was a stranger there, though graybridge was only a few miles away; she was a stranger, and that alone, in any place so circumscribed as the model village, was enough to excite curiosity; and it may be that, over and above this, there was something in the look of her pale face and heavy eyelids, and a certain absent expression in her downcast eyes, calculated to arouse suspicion. even in the midst of her trouble she could see that people looked at her suspiciously; and all in a moment there flashed back upon her mind the cruel things that lady gwendoline pomphrey had said to her. yes; all at once she remembered those bitter sentences. she had made herself a subject for slanderous tongues, and the story of her wicked love for roland lansdell was on every lip. if _he_, who should have known her--if he before whom she had bared all the secrets of her sentimental soul--if even he thought so badly of her as to believe that she could abandon her husband and become the thing that mr. dombey believed his wife to be when he struck his daughter on the stairs--the sort of creature whom grave judge brandon met one night under a lamp-post in a london street--how could she wonder that other people slandered and despised her? very suddenly had the gates of paradise closed upon her: very swiftly had she been dropped down from the fairy regions of her fancy to this cold, hard, cruel workaday world; and being always prone to exaggeration, she fancied it even colder, harder, and more cruel than it was. she fancied the people pointing at her in the little street at graybridge; the stern rector preaching at her in his sunday sermon. she pictured to herself everything that is most bitterly demonstrative in the way of scorn and contumely. the days were past in which solemn elders of graybridge could send her out to wander here and there with bare bleeding feet and a waxen taper in her hand. there was no scarlet letter with which these people could brand her as the guilty creature they believed her to be; but short of this, what could they not do to her? she imagined it all: her husband would come to know what was thought of her, and to think of her as others thought, and she would be turned out of doors. the groups of quiet people--almost all of them were women, and very few of them were young--melted slowly into the shadowy church-porch, like the dusky unsubstantial figures in a dioramic picture. the bells were still ringing in the chill twilight; but the churchyard was very lonely now; and the big solemn yew-trees looked weird and ghost-like against the darkening grey sky. only one long low line of pale yellow light remained of the day that was gone! the day in which isabel had said farewell to roland lansdell! it was a real farewell; no lovers' quarrel, wherefrom should spring that re-renewal of love so dismally associated with the eton latin grammar. it was an eternal parting: for had he not told her to go away from him--to leave him for ever? not being the wicked thing for which he had mistaken her, she was nothing in the world for him. he did not require perpetual worship; he did not want her to retire to a convent, in order that he might enjoy himself for the rest of his existence by looking up at her window; he did not want her to sit beside a brazier of charcoal with her hand linked in his--and die. he was not like that delightful henry von kleist, who took his henriette to a pleasant inn about a mile from potsdam, supped gaily with her, and then shot her and himself beside a lake in the neighbourhood. mr. lansdell wanted nothing that was poetical or romantic, and had not even mentioned suicide in the course of his passionate talk. she went into the churchyard, and walked towards the little bridge upon which she had stood with george gilbert by her side. the wayverne flowed silently under the solid moss-grown arch; the wind had gone down by this time, and there was only now and then a faint shiver of the long dark rushes, as if the footsteps of the invisible dead, wandering in the twilight, had stirred them. she stood on the bridge, looking down at the quiet water. the opportunity had come now, if she really wanted to drown herself. happily for weak mankind, self-destruction is a matter in which opportunity and inclination very seldom go together. the doctor's wife was very miserable; but she did not feel quite prepared to take that decisive plunge which might have put an end to her earthly troubles, would they hear the splash yonder in the church, if she dropped quietly in among the rushes from the sloping bank under the shadow of the bridge? would they hear the water surging round her as she sank, and wonder what the sound meant, and then go on with their prayers, indifferent to the drowning creature, and absorbed by their devotions? she wondered what these people were like, who kept their houses so tidily, and went to church twice a day in passion-week, and never fell in love with roland lansdell. long ago, in her childhood, when she went to see a play, she had wondered about the people she met in the street; the people who were not going to the theatre. were they very happy? did they know that she had a free admission to the upper boxes of the adelphi, and envy her? how would _they_ spend the evening,--they who were not going to weep with mr. benjamin webster, or miss sarah woolgar? now she wondered about people who were not miserable like herself--simple commonplace people, who had no yearnings after a life of poetry and splendour. she thought of them as a racer, who had just run second for the derby, might think of a quiet pack-horse plodding along a dusty road and not wanting to win any race whatsoever. "even if they knew him, they wouldn't care about him," she thought. they did know him, perhaps,--saw him ride by their open windows, on a summer's afternoon, gorgeous on a two-hundred-guinea hack, and did not feel the world to be a blank desert when he was gone. did she wish to be like these people? no! amid all her sorrow she could acknowledge, in the words of the poet, that it was better to have loved and lost him, than never to have loved him at all. had she not lived her life, and was she not entitled to be a heroine for ever and ever by reason of her love and despair? for a long time she loitered on the bridge, thinking of all these things, and thinking very little of how she was to go back to graybridge, where her absence must have created some alarm by this time. she had often kept the surgeon waiting for his dinner before to-day; but she had never been absent when he ate it. there was a station at the model village; but there was no rail to graybridge; there was only a lumbering old omnibus, that conveyed railway passengers thither. isabel left the churchyard, and went to the little inn before which george had introduced her to his gardener and factotum. a woman standing at the door of this hostelry gave her all needful information about the omnibus, which did not leave the station till half-past eight o'clock; until that time she must remain where she was. so she went slowly back to the churchyard, and being tired of the cold and darkness without, crept softly into the church. the church was very old and very irregular. there were only patches of yellow light here and there, about the pulpit and reading-desk, up in the organ-loft, and near the vestry-door. a woman came out of the dense obscurity as isabel emerged from the porch, and hustled her into a pew; scandalized by her advent at so late a stage of the service, and eager to put her away somewhere as speedily as possible. it was a very big pew, square and high, and screened by faded curtains, hanging from old-fashioned brass rods. there were a great many hassocks, and a whole pile of prayer and hymn books in the darkest corner; and isabel, sitting amongst these, felt as completely hidden as if she had been in a tomb. the prayers were just finished,--the familiar prayers, which had so often fallen like a drowsy cadence of meaningless words upon her unheeding ears, while her erring and foolish thoughts were busy with the master of mordred priory. she heard the footsteps of the clergyman coming slowly along the matted aisle--the rustling of his gown as he drew it on his shoulders; she heard the door of the pulpit closed softly, and then a voice, a low earnest voice, that sounded tender and solemn in the stillness, recited the preliminary prayer. there are voices which make people cry,--voices which touch too acutely on some hidden spring within us, and open the floodgates of our tears; and the voice of the curate of hurstonleigh was one of these. he was only a curate; but he was very popular in the model village, and the rumour of his popularity had already spread to neighbouring towns and villages. people deserted their parish churches on a sunday afternoon and came to hear mr. austin colborne preach one of his awakening sermons. he was celebrated for awakening sermons. the stolid country people wept aloud sometimes in the midst of one of his discourses. he was always in earnest; tenderly earnest, sorrowfully earnest, terribly earnest sometimes. his life, too, outside the church was in perfect harmony with the precepts he set forth under the shadow of the dark oaken sounding-board. there are some men who can believe, who can look forward to a prize so great and wonderful as to hold the pain and trouble of the race of very small account when weighed against the hope of victory. austin colborne was one of these men. the priestly robes he wore had not been loosely shuffled on by him because there was no other lot in life within his reach. he had assumed his sacred office with all the enthusiasm of a loyola or an irving, and he knew no looking back. it was such a man as this whom people came to hear at the little church beside the wandering wayverne. it was such a man as this whose deep-toned voice fell with a strange power upon isabel gilbert's ears to-night. ah, now she could fancy louise de la vallière low on her knees in the black shadow of a gothic pillar, hearkening to the cry of the priest who called upon her to repent and be saved. for some little time she only heard the voice of the preacher--the actual words of his discourse fell blankly on her ear. at first it was only a beautiful voice, a grand and solemn voice, rising and sinking on its course like the distant murmur of mighty waves for ever surging towards the shore. then, little by little, the murmurs took a palpable form, and isabel gilbert found that the preacher was telling a story. ah, that story, that exquisite idyl, that solemn tragedy, that poem so perfect in its beauty, that a sentimental frenchman has only to garnish it with a few flowery periods, and lo, all the world is set reading it on a sudden, fondly believing that they have found something new. mr. austin colborne was very fond of dwelling on the loveliness of that sublime history, and more frequently founded his discourse upon some divine incident in the records of the four evangelists than on any obscure saying in st. paul's epistles to the corinthians or the hebrews. this is no place in which to dwell upon mr. austin colborne, or the simple christian creed it was his delight to illustrate. he was a christian, according to the purest and simplest signification of the word. his sermons were within the comprehension of a rustic or a child, yet full and deep enough in meaning to satisfy the strictest of logicians, the sternest of critics. heaven knows i write of him and of his teaching in all sincerity, and yet the subject seems to have so little harmony with the history of a foolish girl's errors and shortcomings, that i approach it with a kind of terror. i only know that isabel gilbert, weeping silently in the dark corner of the curtained pew, felt as she had never felt in all her graybridge church-going; felt at once distressed and comforted. was it strange that, all at once, isabel gilbert should open her ears to the sublime story, which, in one shape or other, she had heard so often? surely the history of all popular preachers goes far to demonstrate that heaven gives a special power to some voices. when whitfield preached the gospel to the miners at kingswood,--to rugged creatures who were little better than so many savages, but who, no doubt, in some shape or other, had heard that gospel preached to them before,--the scalding tears ploughed white channels upon the black cheeks as the men listened. at last the voice of all others that had power to move them arose, and melted the stubborn ignorant hearts. is it inspiration or animal magnetism which gives this power to some special persons? or is it not rather the force of faith, out of which is engendered a will strong enough to take hold of the wills of other people, and bend them howsoever it pleases? when danton, rugged and gigantic, thundered his hideous demands for new hecatombs of victims, there must have been something in the revolutionary monster strong enough to trample out the common humanity in those who heard him, and mould a mighty populace to his own will and purpose as easily as a giant might fashion a mass of clay. surely mirabeau was right. there can be nothing impossible to the man who believes in himself. the masses of this world, being altogether incapable of lasting belief in anything, are always ready to be beaten into any shape by the chosen individual who _believes_, and is thus of another nature--something so much stronger than all the rest as to seem either a god or a demon. cromwell appears, and all at once a voice is found for the wrongs of a nation. see how the king and his counsellors go down like corn before the blast of the tempest, while the man with a dogged will, and a sublime confidence in his own powers, plants himself at the helm of a disordered state, and wins for himself the name of tiger of the seas. given mr. john law, with ample confidence in his own commercial schemes, and all france is rabid with a sudden madness, beating and trampling one another to death in the rue quincampoix. given a luther, and all the old papistical abuses are swept away like so much chaff before the wind. given a wesley, the believer, the man who is able to preach forty thousand sermons and travel a hundred thousand miles, and, behold, a million disciples exist in this degenerate day to bear testimony to his power. was it strange, then, that isabel gilbert, so dangerously susceptible of every influence, should be touched and melted by mr. colborne's eloquence? she had not been religiously brought up. in the camberwell household sunday had been a day on which people got up later than usual, and there were pies or puddings to be made. it had been a day associated with savoury baked meats, and a beer-stained "weekly dispatch" newspaper borrowed from the nearest tavern. it had been a day on which mr. sleaford slept a good deal on the sofa, excused himself from the trouble of shaving, and very rarely put on his boots. raffish-looking men had come down to camberwell in the sunday twilight, to sit late into the night smoking and drinking, and discoursing in a mysterious jargon known to the household as "business talk." sometimes of a summer evening, mrs. sleaford, awakened to a sense of her religious duties, would suddenly run a raid amongst the junior branches of the family, and hustle off isabel and one or two of the boys to evening service at the big bare church by the canal. but the spasmodic attendance at divine service had very little effect upon miss sleaford, who used to sit staring at the holes in her gloves; or calculating how many yards of riband, at how much per yard, would be required for the trimming of any special bonnet to which her fancy leaned; or thinking how a decent-looking young man up in the gallery might be a stray nobleman, with a cab and tiger waiting somewhere outside the church, who would perhaps fall in love with her before the sermon was finished. she had not been religiously brought up; and the church-going at graybridge had been something of a bore to her; or at best a quiet lull in her life, which left her free to indulge the foolish vagaries of her vagabond fancy. but now, for the first time, she was touched and melted; the weak sentimental heart was caught at the rebound. she was ready to be anything in the world except a commonplace matron, leading a dull purposeless life at graybridge. she wanted to find some shrine, some divinity, who would accept her worship; some temple lifted high above the sordid workaday earth, in which she might kneel for ever and ever. if not roland lansdell, why then christianity. she would have commenced her novitiate that night had she been in a roman catholic land, where convent-doors were open to receive such as her. as it was, she could only sit quietly in the pew and listen. she would have liked to go to the vestry when the service came to an end, and cast herself at the feet of the curate, and make a full confession of her sins; but she had not sufficient courage for that. the curate might misunderstand her, as roland lansdell had done. he might see in her only an ordinarily wicked woman, who wanted to run away from her husband. vague yearnings towards christian holiness filled her foolish breast; but as yet she knew not how to put them into any shape. when the congregation rose to leave the church, she lingered to the last, and then crept slowly away, resolved to come again to hear this wonderful preacher. she went to the little station whence the graybridge omnibus was to start at half-past eight; and after waiting a quarter of an hour took her place in a corner of the vehicle. it was nearly ten when she rang the bell at her husband's gate, and mrs. jeffson came out with a grave face to admit her. "mr. george had his dinner and tea alone, ma'am," she said in tones of awful reproof, while isabel stood before the little glass in the sitting-room taking off her bonnet; "and he's gone out again to see some sick folks in the lanes on the other side of the church. he was right down uneasy about you." "i've been to hurstonleigh, to hear mr. colborne preach," isabel answered, with a very feeble effort to appear quite at her ease. "i had heard so much about his preaching, and i wanted so to hear him." it was true that she had heard austin colborne talked of amongst her church-going acquaintance at graybridge; but it was quite untrue that she had ever felt the faintest desire to hear him preach. had not her whole life been bounded by a magic circle, of which roland lansdell was the resplendent centre? chapter xxvii. "and now i live, and now my life is done!" george gilbert accepted his wife's explanation of her prolonged absence on that march afternoon. she had carried her books to thurston's crag, and had sat there reading, while the time slipped by unawares, and it was too late to come back to dinner; and so she had bethought herself that there was evening service at hurstonleigh during passion-week, and she might hear mr. colborne preach. george gilbert received this explanation as he would have received any other statement from the lips in whose truth he believed. but mrs. jeffson treated her young mistress with a stately politeness that wounded isabel to the quick. she endured it very meekly, however; for she felt that she had been wicked, and that all her sufferings were the fruit of her own sin. she stayed at home for the rest of the week, except when she attended the good-friday's services at graybridge church with her husband; and on sunday afternoon she persuaded george to accompany her to hurstonleigh. she was making her feeble effort to be good; and if the enthusiasm awakened in her breast by mr. colborne's preaching died out a little after she left the church, there was at the worst something left which made her a better woman than she had been before. but did she forget roland lansdell all this time? no; with bitter anguish and regret she thought of the man who had been as powerless to comprehend her as he was intellectually her superior. "he knows so much, and yet did not know that i was not a wicked woman," she thought, in simple wonder. she did not understand roland's sceptical manner of looking at everything, which could perceive no palpable distinction between wrong and right. she could not comprehend that this man had believed himself justified in what he had done. but she thought of him incessantly. the image of his pale reproachful face--so pale, so bitterly reproachful--never left her mental vision. the sound of his voice bidding her leave him was perpetually in her ears. he had loved her: yes; however deep his guilt, he had loved her, and had wept because of her. there were times when the memory of his tears, flashing back upon her suddenly, nearly swept away all her natural purity, her earnest desire to be good; there were times when she wanted to go to him and fall at his feet, crying out, "oh, what am i, that my life should be counted against your sorrow? how can it matter what becomes of me, if you are happy?" there were times when the thought of roland lansdell's sorrow overcame every other thought in isabel gilbert's mind. until the day when he had thrown himself upon the ground in a sudden passion of grief, she had never realized the possibility of his being unhappy because of her. for him to love her in a patronizing far-off kind of manner was very much. was it not the condescension of a demigod, who smiles upon some earthly creature? was it not a reversal of the story of diana and endymion? it was not the goddess, but the god, who came down to earth. but that he should love her desperately and passionately, and be grief-stricken because he could not win her for his own,--this was a stupendous fact, almost beyond isabel gilbert's comprehension. sometimes she thought he was only the wicked squire who pretends to be very much in earnest in the first act, and flings aside his victim with scorn and contumely in the second. sometimes the whole truth burst upon her, sudden as a thunder-clap, and she felt that she had indeed done roland lansdell a great and cruel wrong. * * * * * and where was he all this time--the man who had judged isabel gilbert by a common standard, and had believed her quite ready to answer to his summons whenever he chose to call her to his side? who shall tell the bitter sinful story of his grief and passion? never once in all his anger against lady gwendoline pomphrey, when she jilted him for the sake of young lord heatherland, had he felt so desperate a rage, so deep an indignation, as that which now possessed him when he thought of isabel gilbert. wounded in his pride, his vanity; shaken in the self-confidence peculiar to a man of the world; he could not all at once forgive this woman who had so entirely duped and deceived him. he was mad with mingled anger and disappointment when he thought of the story of the last twelve-month. the bitterness of all his struggles with himself; his heroic resolutions--young and fresh in the early morning, old and grey and wasted before the brief day was done--came back to him; and he laughed aloud to think how useless all those perplexities and hesitations had been, when the obstacle, the real resistance, to his sinful yearnings was _here_--here, in the shape of a simple woman's will. there may be some men who would not have thought the story finished with that farewell under lord thurston's oak; but roland lansdell was not one of those men. he had little force of mind or strength of purpose with which to fight against temptation: but he had, on the other hand, few of the qualifications which make a tempter. so long as he had been uncertain of himself, and the strength of his love for isabel, he had indeed dissembled, so far as to make a poor show of indifference. so long as he meant to go away from midlandshire without "doing any harm," he had thought it a venial sin to affect some little friendship for the husband of the woman he loved. but from the moment in which all vacillation gave way before a settled purpose--from the hour of his return to midlandshire--he had made no secret of his feelings or intentions. he had urged this girl to do a dishonourable act, but he had used no dishonourable means. no words can tell how bitterly he felt his disappointment. for the first time in his life this favourite of bountiful nature, this spoiled child of fortune, found there was something in the world he could not have, something that was denied to his desire. it was such a very little time since he had bewailed the extinction of all youthful hope and ardour in pretty cynical little verses, all sparkling with scraps of french and latin, and spanish and italian, cunningly woven into the native pattern of the rhyme. it was only a few months since he had amused himself by scribbling melodious lamentations upon the emptiness of life in general, and that "mortal coldness of the soul" to which a young man of seven-and-twenty, with a great deal of money, and nothing particular to do, is especially subject. ah, how pitilessly he had laughed at other men's tenderest sentiments! what cruel aphorisms from scarron and rochefoucauld, and swift and voltaire, and wilkes and mirabeau, he had quoted upon the subject of love and woman! how resolutely he had refused to believe in the endurance of passion! how coldly he had sneered at the holy power of affection! he had given himself cynical airs upon the strength of his cousin's falsehood: and had declared there was no truth in woman, because lady gwendoline pomphrey had been true to the teaching of her life, and had tried to make the best market of her saxon face and her long ringlets. and now he was utterly false to his own creed. he was in love, passionately, earnestly in love, with a foolish sentimental little woman, whose best charm was--what? that was the question which he tried in vain to answer. he gnashed his teeth in an access of rage when he sought to discover why he loved this woman. other women more beautiful, and how much more accomplished, had spread enchanted webs of delicious flattery and tenderness about him; and he had broken through the impalpable meshes, and had gone away unscathed from the flashing glances of bright eyes, unmoved by the smiles for which other men were ready to peril so much. why was it that his heart yearned for this woman's presence? she was in no way his intellectual equal: she was not a companion for him, even at her best, when she murmured pretty little feminine truisms about shelley and byron. in all his loiterings by lord thurston's waterfall, he could recall no wise or witty saying that had ever fallen from those childish lips. and yet, and yet--she was something to him that no other woman had ever been, or, as he firmly believed, ever could become. oh, for one upward glance of those dark eyes, so shyly tender, so pensively serene! oh, for the deep delight of standing by her side upon the border of a still italian lake; for the pure happiness of opening all the wild realms of wisdom and poetry before those youthful feet! and then in after years, when she had risen little by little to the standard which the world would deem befitting his wife,--then, fate, or chance, the remote abstraction most men call providence, having favoured the truest and purest love upon this earth,--then he might proclaim the ownership of the prize he had won for himself; then he might exhibit before shallow, sceptical mankind, one bright and grand example of a perfect union. mr. lansdell's thoughts wandered very much after this fashion as he wore out the long dreary days in his solitary home. he went nowhere; he received no one. he gave the servants standing orders to say that he was out, or engaged, to whomsoever came to mordred. his portmanteaus were packed, and had been packed ever since the night of his last meeting with isabel gilbert. every day he gave fresh orders respecting his departure. he would have the carriage at such an hour, to catch a certain train: but when the hour came, the groom was sent back to the stables, and mr. lansdell lingered yet another day at mordred priory. he could not go away. in vain, in vain he wrestled with himself: most bitterly did he despise and hate himself for his unmanly weakness; but he could not go away. she would repent: she would write to summon him to another meeting beneath the bare old oak. with an imagination as ardent as her own, he could picture that meeting; he could almost hear her voice as he fancied the things she would say. "my love, my love!" she would cry, clasping those slender hands about his arm; "i cannot live without you: i cannot, i cannot!" the weeks went slowly by, and mr. lansdell's body-servant had what that individual was pleased to designate "a precious time of it." never was gentleman's gentleman so tormented by the whims and vagaries of his master. one day "we" were off to swisserland--mr. lansdell's valet always called it swisserland--and we were to go as fast as the railway service could carry us, and not get a wink of sleep anywheres, except in railway-carriages, until we got to paw or bas-el--the valet called it bas-el. another day we were going to st. petersburg, with our friend hawkwood, the queen's messenger; and a pretty rate we were going at, knocking the very lives out of us. sometimes we were for tearing across the balkan range, on those blessed turkish horses, that jolt a man's life half out of him; or we were going on a yachting-cruise in the mediterranean; or fishing in the wildest regions of norway. and all about a trumpery minx at graybridge! mr. lansdell's body-servant would wind up, with unmitigated contempt: all about a young person who was not fit to hold a candle to sarah jane the housemaid, or eliza in the laundry! alas for roland lansdell, the servants who waited upon him knew quite as well as he knew himself the nature of the fever which had made him so restless! they knew that he was in love with a woman who could never be his wife; and they despised him for his folly, and discussed all the phases of his madness over their ponderous meat-suppers in the servants' hall. the weeks went slowly by. to roland, the days were weary and the nights intolerable. he went up to london several times, always leaving mordred alone and at abnormal hours, and every time intending to remain away. but he could not: a sudden fever seized him as the distance grew wider between him and midlandshire. she would repent of her stern determination: she would write to him, avowing that she could not live without him. ah, how long he had expected that letter! she would grow suddenly unable to endure her life, perhaps, and would be rash and desperate enough to go to mordred in the hope of seeing him. this would happen while he was away: the chance of happiness would be offered to him, and he would not be there to seize it. she, his love, the sole joy and treasure of his life, would be there, trembling on his threshold, and he would not be near to welcome and receive her. the people at the clarendon thought that mr. lansdell had gone mad, so sudden were his flights from their comfortable quarters. and all this time he could hear nothing of the woman he loved. he could not talk to his servants, and he had closed his doors against all visitors. what was she doing? was she at graybridge still? was she leading the old quiet life, sitting in that shabby parlour, where he had sat by her side? he remembered the pattern of the kidderminster carpet, the limp folds of the muslin-curtains, the faded crimson silk that decorated the front of the piano upon which she had sometimes played to him, oh, so indifferently. day after day he haunted the bridge under lord thurston's oak; day after day he threw tribute of cigar-ends into the waterfall, while he waited in the faint hope that the doctor's wife might wander thither. oh, how cruel she was; how cruel! if she had ever loved him, she too would have haunted that spot. she would have come to the place associated with his memory: she would have come, as he came, in the hope of another meeting. sometimes mr. lansdell ventured to ride along the little street at graybridge and through the dusty lane in which the doctor's house stood. on horseback the master of mordred priory was almost on a level with the bedroom windows of george gilbert's habitation, and could look down into the little parlour where isabel was wont to sit. once and once only he saw her there, sitting before the table with some needlework in her hands, so deeply absorbed, as it seemed, in her commonplace labour that she did not see the cavalier who rode so slowly past her window. how should he know how often she had run eagerly to that very window--her face pale, her heart beating tempestuously--only to find that it was not his horse whose hoof she had heard in the lane? perhaps the sight of george gilbert's wife sitting at her needlework gave roland lansdell a sharper pang than he would have felt had he seen two mutes from wareham keeping guard at the gate, and mrs. gilbert's coffin being carried out at the door. she was not dead, then: she could live and be happy, while he----! well, he was not dead himself, certainly; but he was the very next thing to being dead; and he felt indignant at the sight of isabel's apparent composure. he walked to lowlands in the course of a week or so after this, and strolled into the drawing-rooms with some undefined intention of flirting desperately with his cousin gwendoline; of making her an offer of marriage, perhaps. why should he not marry? he could scarcely be more miserable than he was; and a marriage with gwendoline would be some kind of revenge upon isabel. he was inclined to do anything desperate and foolish, if by so doing he could sting that cruel, obdurate heart. was this generous? ah, no. but then, in spite of all that is said and sung in its honour, love is not such a very generous passion. roland found his cousin alone, in the long low morning-room looking out into her flower-garden. she was making wax flowers, and looked almost as tired of her employment as if she had been some poor little artisan toiling for scanty wages. "i'm very glad you have interrupted me, roland," she said, pushing away all the paraphernalia of her work; "they are very tiresome; and, after all, the roses are as stiff as camellias, and at the very best a vase of wax-flowers only reminds one of an hotel at a watering-place. they always have wax-flowers and bohemian-glass candelabra at sea-side hotels. and now tell me what you have been doing, roland; and why you have never come to us. we are so terribly dull." "and do you think my presence would enliven you?" demanded mr. lansdell, with a sardonic laugh. "no, gwendoline; i have lived my life, and i am only a dreary bore whom people tolerate in their drawing-rooms out of deference to the west-end tailor who gets me up. i am only so much old clothes, and i have to thank mr. poole for any position that i hold in the world. what is the use of me, gwendoline? what am i good for? do i ever say anything new, or think anything new, or do anything for which any human creature has cause to say, thank you? i have lived my life. does this kind of thing usually grow old, i wonder?" he asked, striking himself lightly on the breast. "does it wear well? shall i live to write gossiping old letters and collect china? will christie and manson sell my pictures when i am dead? and shall i win a posthumous reputation by reason of the prices given for my wines, especially tokay?--all connoisseurs go in for tokay. what is to become of me, gwendoline? will any woman have pity upon me and marry me, and transform me into a family man, with a mania for short-horned cattle and subsoil-drainage? is there any woman in all the world capable of caring a little for such a worn-out wretch as i?" it almost depended upon gwendoline pomphrey whether this speech should constitute an offer of marriage. a pretty lackadaisical droop of the head; a softly-murmured, "oh, roland, i cannot bear to hear you talk like this; i cannot bear to think such qualities as yours can be so utterly wasted;" any sentimental, womanly little speech, however stereotyped; and the thing would have been done. but lady gwendoline was a great deal too proud to practise any of those feminine arts affected by manoeuvring mothers. she might jilt a commoner for the chance of winning a marquis; but even that she would only do in a grand off-hand way befitting a daughter of the house of ruysdale. she looked at her cousin now with something like contempt in the curve of her thin upper lip. she loved this man perhaps as well as the doctor's wife loved him, or it may be even with a deeper and more enduring love; but she was of his world, and could see his faults and shortcomings as plainly as he saw them himself. "i am very sorry you have sunk so low as this, roland," she said, gravely. "i fancy it would be much better for you if you employed your life half as well as other men, your inferiors in talent, employ their lives. you were never meant to become a cynical dawdler in a country house. if i were a man, a fortnight in the hunting season would exhaust the pleasures of midlandshire for me; i would be up and doing amongst my compeers." she looked, not at roland, but across the flower-beds in the garden as she spoke, with an eager yearning gaze in her blue eyes. her beauty, a little sharp of outline for a woman, would have well become a young reformer, enthusiastic and untiring in a noble cause. there are these mistakes sometimes--these _mesalliances_ of clay and spirit. a bright ambitious young creature, with the soul of a pitt, sits at home and works sham roses in berlin wool; while her booby brother is thrust out into the world to fight the mighty battle. the cousins sat together for some time, talking of all manner of things. it was a kind of relief to roland to talk to some one--to some one who was not likely to lecture him, or to pry into the secrets of his heart. he did not know how very plainly those secrets were read by gwendoline pomphrey. he did not know that he had aroused a scornful kind of anger in that proud heart by his love for isabel gilbert. "have you seen anything of your friends lately-that graybridge surgeon and his wife, whom we met one day last summer at mordred?" lady gwendoline asked by-and-by, with supreme carelessness. she had no intention of letting roland go away with his wound unprobed. "no; i have seen very little of them," mr. lansdell answered. he was not startled by lady gwendoline's question: he was perpetually thinking of isabel, and felt no surprise at any allusion made to her by other people. "i have not seen mr. gilbert since i returned to england." "indeed! i thought he had inspired you with an actual friendship for him: though i must confess, for my own part, i never met a more commonplace person. my maid, who is an intolerable gossip, tells me that mrs. gilbert has been suddenly seized with a religions mania, and attends all the services at hurstonleigh. the midlandshire people seem to have gone mad about that mr. colborne. i went to hear him last sunday myself, and was very much pleased. i saw mr. gilbert's wife sitting in a pew near the pulpit, with her great unmeaning eyes fixed upon the curate's face all through the sermon. she is just the sort of person to fall in love with a popular preacher." mr. lansdell's face flushed a vivid scarlet, and then grew pale. "with her great unmeaning eyes fixed upon the curate's face." those wondrous eyes that had so often looked up at him, mutely eloquent, tenderly pensive. oh, had he been fooled by his own vanity? was this woman a sentimental coquette, ready to fall in love with any man who came across her path, learned in stereotyped schoolgirl phrases about platonic affection? lady gwendoline's shaft went straight home to his heart. he tried to talk about a few commonplace subjects with a miserable assumption of carelessness; and then, looking suddenly up at the clock on the chimney-piece, made a profuse apology for the length of his visit, and hurried away. it was four o'clock when he left the gates of lowlands, and the next day was sunday. "i will see for myself," he muttered, as he walked along a narrow lane, slashing the low hedge-rows with his stick as he went; "i will see for myself to-morrow." chapter xxviii. trying to be good. the sunday after roland lansdell's visit to his cousin was a warm may day, and the woodland lanes and meadows through which the master of mordred priory walked to hurstonleigh were bright with wild-flowers. nearly two months had gone by since he and the doctor's wife bad parted on the dull march afternoon which made a crisis in isabel's life. the warm breath of the early summer fanned the young man's face as he strolled through the long grass under the spreading branches of elm and beech. he had breakfasted early, and had set out immediately after that poor pretence of eating and drinking. he had set out from mordred in feverish haste; and now that he had walked two or three miles, he looked wan and pale in the vivid light of the bright may morning. to-day he looked as if his cynical talk about himself was not altogether such sentimental nonsense as genial, practical mr. raymond thought it. he looked tired, worn, mentally and physically, like a man who has indeed lived his life. looking at him this morning, young, handsome, clever, and prosperous though he was, there were very few people who would have ventured to prophesy for him a bright and happy existence, a long and useful career. he had a wan, faded, unnatural look in the summer daylight, like a lamp that has been left burning all night. he had only spoken the truth that day in the garden at mordred. the lansdells had never been a long-lived race; and a look that lurked somewhere or other in the faces of all the portraits at the priory might have been seen in the face of roland lansdell to-day. he was tired, very tired. he had lived too fast, and had run through his heritage of animal spirits and youthful enthusiasm like the veriest spendthrift who squanders a fortune in a few nights spent at a gaming-house. the nights are very brilliant while they last, riotous with a wild excitement that can only be purchased at this monstrous cost. but, oh, the blank grey mornings, the freezing chill of that cheerless dawn, from which the spendthrift's eyes shrink appalled when the night is done! roland lansdell was most miserably tired of himself, and all the world except isabel gilbert. life, which is so short when measured by art, science, ambition, glory; life, which always closes too soon upon the statesman or the warrior, whether he dies in the prime of life, like peel, or flourishes a sturdy evergreen like palmerston; whether he perishes like wolfe on the heights of quebec, or sinks to his rest like wellington in his simple dwelling by the sea: life, so brief when estimated by a noble standard, is cruelly long when measured by the empty pleasures of an idle worldling with fifteen thousand a year. emile angier has very pleasantly demonstrated that the world is much smaller for a rich man than it is for a poor one. my lord the millionaire rushes across wide tracts of varied landscape asleep in the padded corner of a first-class carriage, and only stops for a week or so here and there in great cities, to be bored almost to death by cathedrals and valhallas, picture-galleries and ruined roman baths, "done" in the stereotyped fashion. while the poorer traveller, jogging along out-of-the-way country roads, with his staff in his hand, and his knapsack on his shoulder, drops upon a hundred pleasant nooks in this wide universe, and can spend a lifetime agreeably in seeing the same earth that the millionaire, always booked and registered all the way through, like his luggage, grows tired of in a couple of years. we have only to read sterne's "sentimental journey" and dickens's "uncommercial traveller," in order to find out how much there is in the world for the wanderer who has eyes to see. read the story of mr. dickens's pedestrian rambles, and then read william beckford's delicious discontented _blasé_ letters, and see the difference between the great writer, for whom art is long and life is only too short, and the man of pleasure, who squandered all the wealth of his imagination upon the morbid phantasma of "vathek," and whose talent could find no higher exercise than the planning of objectionable towers. the lesson which mr. lansdell was called upon to learn just now was a very difficult one. for the first time in his life he found that there was something in the world that he could not have; for the first time he discovered what it was to wish wildly, madly for one precious treasure out of all the universe; and to wish in vain. this morning he was not such a purposeless wanderer as he usually was; he was going to hurstonleigh church, in the hope of seeing isabel gilbert, and ascertaining for himself whether there was any foundation for lady gwendoline's insinuation. he wanted to ascertain this; but above all, he wanted to _see_ her--only to see her; to look at the pale face and the dark eyes once more. yes, though she were the basest and shallowest-hearted coquette in all creation. mr. lansdell was doomed to be disappointed that morning, for the doctor's wife was not at hurstonleigh church. graybridge would have been scandalized if mr. and mrs. gilbert had not attended morning service in their own parish; so it was only in the afternoon or evening that isabel was free to worship at the feet of the popular preacher. the church was very full in the morning, and roland sat in a pew near the door, waiting patiently until the service concluded. isabel might be lurking somewhere in the rambling old edifice, though he had not been able to see her. he listened very attentively to the sermon, and bent his head approvingly once or twice during mr. colborne's discourse. he had heard so many bad sermons, delivered in divers languages, during his wandering existence, that he had no wish to depreciate a good one. when all was over, he stood at the door of his pew, watching the congregation file slowly and quietly out of the church, and looking for isabel. but she was not there. when the church was quite empty, he breathed a long regretful sigh, and then followed the rest of the congregation. "she will come in the afternoon, perhaps," he thought. "oh, how i love her! what a weak pitiful wretch i must be to feel like this; to feel this sinking at my heart because she is not here; to consider all the universe so much emptiness because her face is missing!" he went away into a secluded corner of the churchyard, a shadowy corner, where there was an angle in the old wall, below which the river crept in and out among the sedges. here the salutations of the congregation loitering about the church-door seemed only a low distant hum; here mr. lansdell could sit at his ease upon the bank, staring absently at the blue wayverne, and thinking of his troubles. the distant murmur of voices, the sound of footsteps, and the rustling of women's light garments in the summer breeze died away presently, and a death-like stillness fell upon the churchyard. all hurstonleigh was at dinner, being a pious village that took its sabbath meal early, and dined chiefly on cold meats and crisp salads. the place was very still: and roland lansdell, lolling idly with his back against the moss-grown wall, had ample leisure for contemplation. what did he think of during those two long hours in which he sat in the churchyard waiting for the afternoon service? what did he think of? his wasted life; the good things he might have done upon this earth? no! his thoughts dwelt with a fatal persistency upon one theme. he thought of what his life might have been, if isabel gilbert had not balked all his plans of happiness. he thought of how he might have been sitting, that very day, at that very hour, on one of the fairest islands in the mediterranean, with the woman he loved by his side: if she had chosen, if she had only chosen that it should be so. and he had been so mistaken in her, so deluded by his own fatuity, as to believe that any obstacle on her part was utterly out of the question. he had believed that it was only for him to weigh the matter in the balance and decide the turning of the scale. he sat by the water listening to the church bells as they rang slowly out upon the tranquil atmosphere. it was one of those bright summer days which come sometimes at the close of may, and the sky above hurstonleigh church was cloudless. when the bells had been ringing for a long time, slow footsteps sounded on the gravel walks upon the other side of the churchyard, with now and then the creaking of a gate or the murmur of voices. the people were coming to church. roland's heart throbbed heavily in his breast. was _she_ amongst them? ah, surely he would have recognized her lightest foot-fall even at that distance. should he go and stand by the gate, to make sure of seeing her as she came in? no, he could not make a show of himself before all those inquisitive country people; he would wait till the service began, and then go into the church. that half-hour, during which the bells swung to and fro in the old steeple with a weary monotonous clang, seemed intolerably long to roland lansdell; but at last, at last, all was quiet, and the only bell to be heard in the summer stillness was the distant tinkle of a sheep-bell far away in the sunlit meadows. mr. lansdell got up as the clock struck three, and walked at a leisurely pace to the church. mr. colborne was reading that solemn invitation to the wicked man to repent of his wickedness as the squire of mordred went into the low porch. the penetrating voice reached the remotest corners of the old building; and yet its tone was low and solemn as an exhortation by a dying man's bed. the church was not by any means so full as it had been in the morning; and there was none of that fluttering noise of bonnet-strings and pocket-handkerchiefs which is apt to disturb the quiet of a crowded edifice. the pew-opener--always on the lookout to hustle stray intruders into pews--pounced immediately upon mr. lansdell. "i should like to sit up-stairs," he whispered, dropping a half-crown into her hand; "can you put me somewhere up-stairs?" he had reflected that from the gallery he should be better able to see isabel, if she was in the church. the woman curtsied and nodded, and then led the way up the broad wooden stairs: where would she not have put mr. lansdell for such a donation as that which he had bestowed upon her! the gallery at hurstonleigh church was a very special and aristocratic quarter. it consisted only of half-a-dozen roomy old pews at one end of the church, immediately opposite the altar, and commanding an excellent view of the pulpit. the chief families of the neighbourhood occupied these six big open pews; and the common herd in the aisles below contemplated these aristocratic persons admiringly in the pauses of the service. as the grand families in the outskirts of hurstonleigh were not quite such unbating church-goers as the model villagers themselves, these gallery-pews were not generally filled of an afternoon; and it was into one of these that the grateful pew-opener ushered mr. lansdell. she was there; yes, she was there. she was alone, in a pew near the pulpit, on her knees, with her hands clasped and her eyes looking upwards. the high old-fashioned pew shut her in from the congregation about her, but mr. lansdell could look down upon her from his post of observation in the gallery. her face was pale and worn, and her eyes looked larger and brighter than when he had last seen her. was she in a consumption? ah, no; it was only the eager yearning soul which was always consuming itself; it was no physical illness, but the sharp pain of a purely mental struggle that had left those traces on her face. her lover watched her amidst the kneeling congregation; and a kind of holy exaltation in her face reminded him of pictures of saints and angels that he had seen abroad. was it real, that exalted expression of the pale still face? was it real, or had she begun a new flirtation, a little platonic sentimentalism in favour of the popular preacher? "the fellow has something in him, and is not by any means bad-looking," thought mr. lansdell; "i wonder whether she is laying traps for him with her great yellow-black eyes?" and then in the next moment he thought how, if that look in her pale face were real, and she was really striving to be good,--how then? had he any right to come into that holy place? for the place was holy, if only by virtue of the simple prayers so simply spoken by happy and pious creatures who were able to believe. had he any right to come there and trouble this girl in the midst of her struggle to forget him? "i think she loved me," he mused; "surely i could not be mistaken in that; surely i have known too many coquettes in my life to be duped by one at the last! yes, i believe she loved me." the earlier prayers and the psalms were over by this time; and mrs. gilbert was seated in her pew facing the gallery, but with the pulpit and reading-desk between. mr. colborne began to read the first lesson; and there was a solemn hush in the church. roland was seized with a sudden desire that isabel should see him. he wanted to see the recognition of him in her face. might he not learn the depth of her love, the strength of her regret, by that one look of recognition? a green serge curtain hung before him. he pushed the folds aside; and the brazen rings made a little clanging noise as they slipped along the rod. the sound was loud enough to startle the woman whom mr. lansdell was watching so intently. she looked up and recognized him. he saw a white change flit across her face; he saw her light muslin garments fluttered by a faint shiver; and then in the next moment she was looking demurely downwards at the book on her lap, something as she had looked on that morning when he first met her under lord thurston's oak. all through the service roland lansdell sat watching her. he made no pretence of joining in the devotions of the congregation; but he disturbed no one. he only sat, grim and sombre-looking, staring down at that one pale face in the pew near the pulpit. a thousand warring thoughts and passionate emotions waged in his breast. he loved her so much that he could not be chivalrous; he could not even be just or reasonable. all through the service he sat watching the face of the woman he loved. if austin colborne could have known how strangely his earnest, pleading words fell upon the ears of two of his listeners that afternoon! isabel gilbert sat very quietly under all the angry fire of that dark gaze. only now and then were her eyelids lifted; only now and then did her eyes steal one brief imploring glance at the face in the gallery. in all the church she could see nothing but that face. it absorbed and blotted out all else: and shone down upon her, grand and dazzling, as of old. she was trying to be good. for the last two months she had been earnestly trying to be good. there was nothing else for her in the world but goodness, seeing that he was lost to her--seeing that a romantic beatrice-portinari kind of existence was an impossibility. if she had been a dweller in a catholic country, she would have gone into a convent; as it was, she could only come to hurstonleigh to hear mr. colborne, whose enthusiasm answered to the vague aspirations of her own ignorant heart. she was trying to be good. she and worthy plain-spoken mrs. jeffson were on the best possible terms now, for the doctor's wife had taken to staying at home a great deal, and had requested honest tilly to instruct her in the art of darning worsted socks. would the sight of the wicked squire's dark reproachful face undo all the work of these two months? surely not. to meet him once more--to hear his voice--to feel the strong grasp of his hand--ah, what deep joy! but what good could come of such a meeting? she could never confide in him again. it would be only new pain--wasted anguish. besides, was there not some glory, some delight, in trying to be good? she felt herself a louise de la vallière standing behind a grating in the convent-parlour, while a kingly louis pleaded and stormed on the other side of the iron bars. some such thoughts as these sustained her all through that afternoon service. the sermon was over; the blessing had been spoken; the congregation began to disperse slowly and quietly. would he go now? would he linger to meet her and speak to her? would he go away at once? he did linger, looking at her with an appealing expression in his haggard face. he stood up, as if waiting until she should leave her pew, in order to leave his at the same moment. but she never stirred. ah, if louise de la vallière suffered as much as that! what wonder that she became renowned for ever in sentimental story! little by little the congregation melted out of the aisle. the charity boys from the neighbourhood of the organ-loft came clumping down the stairs. still mr. lansdell stood waiting and watching the doctor's wife in the pew below. still isabel gilbert kept her place, rigid and inflexible, until the church was quite empty! then mr. lansdell looked at her--only one look--but with a world of passion concentrated in its dark fury. he looked at her, slowly folding his arms, and drawing himself to his fullest height. he shrugged his shoulders, with one brief contemptuous movement, as if he flung some burden off him by the gesture, and then turned and left the pew. mrs. gilbert heard his firm tread upon the stairs, and she rose from her seat in time to see him pass out of the porch. it is very nice to have a place in romantic story: but there are some bitter pangs to be endured in the life of a mademoiselle de la vallière. chapter xxix. the first whisper of the storm. there was no omnibus to take mrs. gilbert back to graybridge after the service at hurstonleigh; but there had been some graybridge people at church, and she found them lingering in the churchyard talking to some of the model villagers, enthusiastic in their praises of mr. colborne's eloquence. amongst these graybridge people was miss sophronia burdock, the maltster's daughter, very radiant in a bright pink bonnet, so vivid as almost to extinguish her freckles, and escorted by young mr. pawlkatt, the surgeon's son, and his sister, a sharp-nosed, high-cheek-boned damsel, who looked polite daggers at the doctor's wife. was not mr. george gilbert a rising man in graybridge? and was it likely that the family of his rival should have any indulgence for the shortcomings of his pale-faced wife? but miss sophronia was in the humour to heap coals of fire on the head of the nursery-governess whom george gilbert had chosen to marry. sophronia was engaged, with her father's full consent, to the younger pawlkatt, who was to insure his life for the full amount of the fair damsel's dower, which was to be rigidly tied up for her separate use and maintenance, &c., and who looked of so sickly and feeble a constitution that the maltster may have reasonably regarded the matrimonial arrangement as a very fair speculation. sophronia was engaged, and displayed the little airs and graces that graybridge considered appropriate to the position of an engaged young lady. "the only way to make love _now_," said mr. nash to goldsmith, "is to take no manner of notice of the lady." and graybridge regarded the art of polite courtship very much in this fashion, considering that a well-bred damsel could not possibly be too contemptuously frigid in her treatment of the man whom she had chosen from all other men to be her partner for life. acting on this principle, miss burdock, although intensely affectionate in her manner to julia pawlkatt, and warmly gushing in her greeting of the doctor's wife, regarded her future husband with a stony glare, only disturbed by a scornful smile when the unfortunate young man ventured to make any remark. to reduce a lover to a state of coma, and exhibit him in that state to admiring beholders for an entire evening, was reckoned high art in graybridge. everybody in the little midlandshire town knew that miss burdock and mr. pawlkatt were engaged; and people considered that augustus pawlkatt had done a very nice thing for himself by becoming affianced to a young lady who was to have four thousand pounds tightly tied up for her separate use and maintenance. the consciousness of being engaged and having a fortune, combined to render sophronia especially amiable to everybody but the comatose "future." was isabel alone, and going to walk back? "oh, then, in that case you _must_ go with us!" cried miss burdock, with a view to the exhibition of the unfortunate augustus in peripatetic coma. what could mrs. gilbert say, except that she would be delighted to go home with them? she was thinking of _him_; she was looking to see his head towering above the crowd. of course it would tower above that crowd, or any crowd; but he was like the famous spanish fleet in the "critic," inasmuch as she could not see him because he was not to be seen. she went with miss burdock and her companions out of the churchyard, towards the meadow-path that led across country towards graybridge. they walked in a straggling, uncomfortable manner, for sophronia resolutely refused all offers of her future husband's arm; and he was fain to content himself with the cold comfort of her parasol, and a church-service of ruby velvet, with a great many ribands between the pages. the conversation during that sabbath afternoon walk was not very remarkable for liveliness or wisdom. isabel only spoke when she was spoken to, and even then like a bewildered creature newly awakened from a dream. miss julia pawlkatt, who was an intellectual young person, and prided herself upon not being frivolous, discoursed upon the botanical names and attributes of the hedge-blossoms beside the path, and made a few remarks on the science of medicine as adapted to female study, which would have served for the ground-work of a letter in a sunday paper. miss burdock, who eschewed intellectual acquirements, and affected to be a gushing thing of the dora spenlow stamp, entreated her future sister-in-law not to be "dreadful," and asked isabel's opinion upon several "dears" of bonnets exhibited that afternoon in hurstonleigh church; and the comatose future, who so rarely spoke that it seemed hard he should always commit himself when he did speak, ventured a few remarks, which were received with black and frowning looks by the idol of his heart. "i say, sophronia, weren't you surprised to see mr. lansdell in the gallery?" the young man remarked, interrupting his betrothed in a discussion of a bunch of artificial may on the top of a white-tulle bonnet so sweet and innocent-looking. "you know, dear, he isn't much of a church-goer, and people _do_ say that he's an atheist; yet there he was as large as life this afternoon, and i thought him looking very ill. i've heard my father say that all those lansdells are consumptive." miss burdock made frowning and forbidding motions at the unhappy youth with her pale-buff eyebrows, as if he had mentioned an improper french novel, or started some other immoral subject. poor isabel's colour went and came. consumptive! ah, what more likely, what more proper, if it came to that? these sort of people were intended to die early. fancy the giaour pottering about in his eightieth year, and boasting that he could read small print without spectacles! imagine the corsair on the parish; or byron, or keats, or shelley grown old, and dim, and grey! ah, how much better to be erratic and hapless shelley, drowned in an italian lake, than worthy respectable samuel rogers, living to demand, in feeble bewilderment, "and who are you, ma'am?" of an amiable and distinguished visitor! of course roland lansdell would die of consumption; he would fade little by little, like that delightful lionel in "rosalind and helen." isabel improved the occasion by asking, mr. augustus pawlkatt if many people died of consumption. she wanted to know what her own chances were. she wanted so much to die, now that she was good. the unhappy augustus was quite relieved by this sudden opening for a professional discourse, and he and his sister became scientific, and neglected sophronia, while they gave isabel a good deal of useful information respecting tubercular disease, phthisis, &c. &c.; whereon miss burdock, taking offence, lapsed into a state of sullen gloom highly approved by graybridge as peculiarly befitting an engaged, young lady who wished to sustain the dignity of her position. at last they came out of a great corn-field into the very lane in which george gilbert's house was situated; and isabel's friends left her at the gate. she had done something to redeem her character in graybridge by her frequent attendance at hurstonleigh church, which was as patent to the gossips as ever her visits to lord thurston's oak had been. she had been cured of running after mr. lansdell, people said. no doubt george gilbert had discovered her goings-on, and had found a means of clipping her wings. it was not likely that graybridge would credit her with any such virtue as repentance, or a wish to be a better woman than she had been. graybridge regarded her as an artful and presuming creature, whose shameful goings-on had been stopped by marital authority. she went into the parlour, and found the tea-things laid on the little table, and mr. gilbert lying on the sofa, which was too short for him by a couple of feet, and was eked out by a chair, on which his clumsy boots rested. isabel had never seen him give way to any such self-indulgence before; but as she bent over him, gently enough, if not tenderly, he told her that his head ached and he was tired, very tired; he had been in the lanes all the afternoon,--the people about there were very bad,--and he had been at work in the surgery since coming in. he put his hand in isabel's, and pressed hers affectionately. a very little attention from his pretty young wife gratified him and made him happy. "why, george," cried mrs. gilbert, "your hand is as hot as a burning coal!" yes, he was very warm, he told her; the weather was hot and oppressive; at least, he had found it so that afternoon. perhaps he had been hurrying too much, walking too fast; he had upset himself somehow or other. "if you'll pour out the tea. izzie, i'll take a cup, and then go to bed," he said; "i'm regularly knocked up." he took not one cup only, but four cups of tea, pouring the mild beverage down his throat at a draught; and then he went up to the room overhead, walking heavily, as if he were very tired. "i'm sure you're ill, george," isabel said, as he left the parlour; "do take something--some of that horrid medicine you give me sometimes." "no, my dear, there's nothing the matter with me. what should there be amiss with me, who never had a day's illness in my life? i must have an assistant, izzie; my work's too hard--that's what is the matter." mrs. gilbert sat in the dusk for a little while after her husband had left her, thinking of that last look which roland lansdell had given her in the church. heaven knows how long she might have sat thinking of him, if mrs. jeffson had not come in with those two miserable mould-candles, which were wont to make feeble patches of yellow haze, not light, in the doctor's parlour. after the candles had been brought isabel took a book from the top of the little chiffonier by the fireplace. it was a religious book. was she not trying to be good now, and was not goodness incompatible with the perusal of shelley's poetry on a sunday? it was a very dry religious book, being in fact a volume of tillotson's sermons, with more hard logic, and firstly, secondly, and thirdly, than ordinary human nature could support. isabel sat with the volume open before her, staring hopelessly at the pale, old-fashioned type, and going back a little way every now and then when she caught her thoughts far away from the reverend tillotson. she sat thus till after the clock had struck ten. she was all alone in the lower part of the house at that hour, for the jeffsons had gone clumping up-stairs to bed at half-past eight. she sat alone, a poor childish, untaught, unguided creature, staring at tillotson, and thinking of roland lansdell; yet trying to be good all the time in her own feeble way. she sat thus, until she was startled by a cautious single knock at the door. she started from her seat at the sound; but she went boldly enough, with the candle in her hand, to answer the summons. there was nothing uncommon in a late knocking at the doctor's door,--some one from the lanes wanted medicine, no doubt; the people in the lanes were always wanting medicine. mrs. gilbert opened the door, and looked out into the darkness. a man was standing there, a well-clad, rather handsome-looking man, with broad shoulders, bold black eyes, and a black beard that covered all the lower part of his face. he did not wait to be invited to enter, but walked across the threshold like a man who had a right to come into that house, and almost pushed isabel on one side as he did so. at first she only stared at him with a blank look of wonder, but all at once her face grew as white as the plaster on the wall behind her. "you!" she gasped, in a whisper; "you here!" "yes, me! you needn't stare as if you saw a ghost. there's nothing so very queer about me, is there? you're a nice young lady, i don't think, to stand there shivering and staring. where's your husband?" "up-stairs. oh, why, why did you come here?" cried the doctor's wife, piteously, clasping her hands like a creature in some extremity of fear and trouble; "how could you be so cruel as to come here; how could you be so cruel as to come?" "how could i be so--fiddlesticks!" muttered the stranger, with supreme contempt. "i came here because i had nowhere else to go, my lassie. you needn't whimper; for i shan't trouble you very long--this is not exactly the sort of place i should care to hang-out in: if you can give me a bed in this house for to-night, well and good; if not, you can give me a sovereign, and i'll find one elsewhere. while i am here, remember my name's captain morgan, and i'm in the merchant service,--just home from the mauritius." chapter xxx. the beginning of a great change. george gilbert was something more than "knocked up." there had been a great deal of typhoid fever amongst the poorer inhabitants of graybridge and the neighbouring villages lately--a bad infectious fever, which hung over the narrow lanes and little clusters of cottages like a black cloud; and the parish surgeon, working early and late, subject to sudden chills when his work was hottest, exposed to every variety of temperature at all times, fasting for long hours, and altogether setting at naught those very first principles of health, wherein it was his duty to instruct other people, had paid the common penalty to which all of his profession are, more or less, subject. george gilbert had caught a touch of the fever. mr. pawlkatt senior called early on monday morning,--summoned by poor terrified isabel, who was a stranger to sickness, and was frightened at the first appearance of the malady,--and spoke of his rival's illness very lightly, as a "touch of the fever." "i always said it was infectious," he remarked; "but your husband would have it that it wasn't. it was all the effect of dirty habits, and low living, he said, and not any special and periodical influence in the air. well, poor fellow, he knows now who is right. you must keep him very quiet. give him a little toast-and-water, and the lime-draughts i shall send you," and mr. pawlkatt went on to give all necessary directions about the invalid. unhappily for the patient, it was not the easiest matter in the world to keep him quiet. there was not so much in george gilbert, according to any poetic or sentimental standard; but there was a great deal in him, when you came to measure him by the far nobler standard of duty. he was essentially "thorough;" and in his own quiet way he was very fond of his profession. he was attached to those rough midlandshire peasants, whom it had been his duty to attend from his earliest manhood until now. never before had he known what it was to have a day's illness; and he could not lie tranquilly watching isabel sitting at work near the window, with the sunlight creeping in at the edges of the dark curtain that had been hastily nailed up to shut out the glaring day;--he could not lie quietly there, while there were mothers of sick children, and wives of sick husbands, waiting for hope and comfort from his lips. true, mr. pawlkatt had promised to attend to george's patients; but then, unhappily, george did not believe in mr. pawlkatt.--the two surgeons' views were in every way opposed,--and the idea of mr. pawlkatt attending the sick people in the lanes, and seizing with delight on the opportunity of reversing his rival's treatment, was almost harder to bear than the thought of the same sufferers being altogether unattended. and, beyond this, mr. gilbert, so clever while other people were concerned, was not the best possible judge of his own case; and he would not consent to believe that he had the fever. "i dare say pawlkatt likes to see me laid by the heels here, izzie," he said to his wife, "while he goes interfering with my patients, and bringing his old-fashioned theories to bear. he'll shut up the poor wretched little windows of all those cottages in the lanes, i dare say; and make the rooms even more stifling than they have been made by the builder. he'll frighten the poor women into shutting out every breath of fresh air, and then take every atom of strength away from those poor wasted creatures by his drastic treatment. dr. robert james graves said he only wanted three words for his epitaph, and those words were, 'he fed fevers.' pawlkatt will be for starving these poor feeble creatures in the lanes. it's no use talking, my dear; i'm a little knocked up, but i've no more fever about me than you have, and i shall go out this evening. i shall go round and see those people. there's a woman in the lane behind the church, a widow, with three children lying ill; and she seems to believe in me, poor creature, as if i was providence itself. i can't forget the look she gave me yesterday, when she stood on the threshold of her wretched hovel, asking me to save her children, as if she thought it rested with me to save them. i can't forget her look, izzie. it haunted me all last night, when i lay tossing about; for i was too tired to sleep, somehow or other. and when i think of pawlkatt pouring his drugs down those children's throats, i--i tell you it's no use, my dear; i'll take a cup of tea, and then get up and dress." it was in vain that isabel pleaded; in vain that she brought to her aid mrs. jeffson, the vigorous and outspoken, who declared that it would be nothing short of self-murder if mr. gilbert insisted on going out that evening; equally in vain the threat of summoning mr. pawlkatt. george was resolute; these quiet people always are resolute, not to say obstinate. it is your animated, impetuous, impulsive creatures who can be turned by a breath from the pursuit or purpose they have most vehemently sworn to accomplish. mr. gilbert put aside all arguments in the quietest possible manner. he was a medical man, and he was surely the best judge of his own health. he was wanted yonder among his patients, and he must go. isabel and mrs. jeffson retired in melancholy resignation to prepare the tea, which was to fortify the surgeon for his evening's work. george came down-stairs half an hour afterwards, looking, not ill, or even weak; but at once flushed and haggard. "there's nothing whatever the matter with me, my dear izzie," he said, as his wife followed him to the door; "i'm only done up by very hard work. i feel tired and cramped in my limbs, as if i'd caught cold somehow or other. i was out all day in the wet, last week, you know; but there's nothing in that. i shall just look in at those people at briargate, and come back by the lanes; and then an hour or so in the surgery will finish my work, and i shall be able to get a good night's rest. i must have an assistant, my dear. the agricultural population gets very thick about graybridge; and unless some one takes pity on the poor people, and brings about some improvement in the places they live in, we may look for plenty of fever." he went out at the little gate, and isabel watched him going along the lane. he walked a little slower than usual, and that was all. she watched him with a quiet affection on her face. there was no possible phase of circumstance by which she could ever have been brought to love him; but she knew that he was good, she knew that there was something praiseworthy in what he was doing to-night,--this resolute visiting of wretched sick people. it was not the knightly sort of goodness she had adored in the heroes of her choice; but it was good; and she admired her husband a little, in a calm unenthusiastic manner,--as she might have admired a very estimable grandfather, had she happened to possess such a relative. she was trying to be good, remember; and all the sentimental tenderness of her nature had been aroused by george's illness. he was a much more agreeable person lying faint and languid in a shaded room, and requiring his head constantly bathed with vinegar-and-water, than when in the full vigour of health and clumsiness. mr. pawlkatt came in for his second visit half an hour after george had left the house. he was very angry when he was told what had happened, and inveighed solemnly upon his patient's imprudence. "i sent my son round amongst your husband's patients," he said, "and i must say, i am a little hurt by the want of confidence in me which mr. gilbert's conduct exhibits." isabel was too much occupied by all manner of contending thoughts to be able to do much towards the soothing of mr. pawlkatt's indignation. that gentleman went away with his heart full of bitterness against the younger practitioner. "if your husband's well enough to go about amongst his patients, he can't want _me_, mrs. gilbert," he said, as isabel opened the gate for him; "but if you find him much worse, as you are very likely to do after his most imprudent conduct, you know where to send for me. i shall not come again till i'm sent for. good night." isabel sighed as she shut the gate upon the offended surgeon. the world seemed to her quite full of trouble just now. roland lansdell was angry with her. ah! what bitter anger and contempt had been exhibited in his face in the church yesterday! george was ill, and bent on making himself worse, as it seemed; a person--the person whom of all others the doctor's wife most feared--had dropped as it were from the clouds into midlandshire; and here, added to all this trouble, was mr. pawlkatt indignant and offended. she did not go indoors at once; the house seemed gloomy and hot in the summer dusk. she lingered by the gate, looking over the top of the rails at the dusty lane,--the monotonous uninteresting lane, of whose changeless aspect she was so very tired. she was sorry for her husband now that he was ill. it was her nature to love and pity every weak thing in creation. the same kind of tenderness that she had felt long ago for a sick kitten, or a wounded bird, or a forlorn street wanderer of the canine species looking pleadingly at her with great hungry eyes, filled her heart now, as she thought of george gilbert. out of the blank emptiness into which he had melted long ago at roland lansdell's advent, he emerged now, distinct and palpable, as a creature who wanted pity and affection. "is he very ill?" she wondered. "he says himself that he is not: and he is much cleverer than mr. pawlkatt." she looked out into the lane, watching for her husband's coming. two or three people went slowly by at considerable intervals; and at last, when it was growing quite dark, the figure of a boy, a slouching country-built lad, loomed out of the obscurity. "be this muster gilbert's the doctor's?" he asked of isabel. "yes; do you want him?" "i doan't want him; but i've got a letter for his wife, from a man that's staying up at our place. be you she?" "yes; give me the letter," answered isabel, putting her hand over the gate. she took the missive from the hand of the boy, who resigned it in a slow unwilling manner, and then slouched away. mrs. gilbert put the letter in her pocket, and went into the house. the candles had just been taken into the parlour. the doctor's wife seated herself at the little table, and took the letter from her pocket and tore it open. it was a very brief and unceremonious kind of epistle, containing only these words: "i've found comfortable quarters, for the nonce, in a little crib called the leicester arms, down in nessborough hollow, to the left of the briargate road. i suppose you know the place; and i shall expect to see you in the course of to-morrow. don't forget the sinews of war; and be sure you ask for captain morgan. yours truly." there was no signature. the letter was written in a big dashing hand, which had sprawled recklessly over a sheet of old-fashioned letter-paper; it seemed a riotous, improvident kind of writing, that gloried in the wasted space and squandered ink. "how cruel of him to come here!" muttered isabel, as she tore the letter into a little heap of fragments; "how cruel of him to come! as if i had not suffered enough already; as if the misery and disgrace had not been bitter enough and hard enough to bear." she rested her elbows on the table, and sat quite still for some time with her face hidden in her hands. her thoughts were very painful; but, for once in a way, they were not entirely devoted to roland lansdell; and yet the master of mordred priory did figure in that long reverie. george came in by-and-by, and found her sitting in the attitude into which she had fallen after destroying the letter. she had been very anxious about her husband some time ago; but for the last half-hour her thoughts had been entirely removed from him; and she looked up at him confusedly, almost startled by his coming, as if he had been the last person in the world whom she expected to see. mr. gilbert did not notice that look of confusion, but dropped heavily into the nearest chair, like a man who feels himself powerless to go one step farther. "i'm very ill, izzie," he said; "it's no use mincing the matter; i _am_ ill. i suppose pawlkatt is right after all, and i've got a touch of the fever." "shall i send for him?" asked isabel, starting up; "he said i was to send for him if you were worse." "not on any account. i know what to do as well as he does. if i should happen to get delirious by-and-by, you can send for him, because i dare say you'd be frightened, poor girl, and would feel more comfortable with a doctor pottering about me. and now listen to me, my dear, while i give you a few directions; for my head feels like a ton weight, and i don't think i shall be able to sit upright much longer." the doctor proceeded to give his wife all necessary instructions for the prevention of infection. she was to have a separate room prepared for herself immediately; and she was to fumigate the room in which he was to lie, in such and such a manner. as for any attendance upon himself, that would be mrs. jeffson's task. "i don't believe the fever is infectious," mr. gilbert said; "i've caught it from the same causes that give it to the poor people: hard work, exposure to bad weather, and the foul air of the places i have to visit. still we can't be too careful. you'd better keep away from my room as much as possible, izzie; and let mrs. jeffson look after me. she's a strong-minded sort of a woman, who wouldn't be likely to catch a fever, because she'd be the last in the world to trouble her head about the risk of catching it." but isabel declared that she herself would wait upon her sick husband. was she not trying to be good; and did not all mr. colborne's sermons inculcate self-sacrifice and compassion, tenderness and pity? the popular curate of hurstonleigh was perhaps the kind of teacher that some people would have designated a sentimentalist; but his tender, loving exhortations had a fascination which could surely never belong to the tenable threats and awful warnings of a sterner preacher. in spite of austin colborne's deep faith in an infinitely grand and beautiful region beyond this lower earth, he did not look upon the world as a howling wilderness, in which providence intended people to be miserable. he might certainly behold in it a place of probation, a kind of preparatory school, in which very small virtues were expected of ignorant and helpless scholars, wandering dimly towards a starry future: but he did not consider it a universal dotheboys hall, presided over by a providence after the model of mr. squeers. he looked into the simple narratives of four historians who flourished some eighteen centuries ago; and in those solemn pages he saw no possible justification for the gloomy view of life entertained by many of his clerical compeers. he found in those sacred histories a story that opened like an idyl; he found bright glimpses of a life in which there were marriage festivals and pleasant gatherings, social feasts and happy sabbath wanderings through rustic paths betwixt the standing corn; he found pure earthly friendship counted no sin against the claims of heaven, and passionate parental love not reproved as an unholy idolatry of the creature, but hallowed for ever, by two separate miracles, that stand eternal records of a love so entirely divine as to be omnipotent, so tenderly human as to change the sternest laws of the universe in pity for weak human sorrow. mr. pawlkatt was summoned to his rival's bedside early on the following morning. george's case was quite out of his own hands by this time; for he had grown much worse in the night, and was fain to submit to whatever people pleased to do to him. he was very ill. isabel sat in the half-darkened room, sometimes reading, sometimes working in the dim light that crept through the curtain, sometimes sitting very quietly wrapt in thought--painful and perplexing thought. mr. gilbert was wakeful all through the day, as he had been all through the night, tossing uneasily from side to side, and now and then uttering half-suppressed groans that wrung his wife's heart. she was very foolish--she had been very wicked--but there was a deep fount of tenderness in that sentimental and essentially feminine breast; and i doubt if george gilbert was not more lovingly watched by his weak erring young wife than ever he could have been by a strong-minded helpmate, who would have frozen any lurking sentiment in mr. lansdell's breast by one glance from her pitiless eyes. the doctor's wife felt a remorseful compassion for the man who, after his own matter-of-fact fashion, had been very good to her. "he has never, never been cross to me, as my step-mother used to be," she thought; "he married me without even knowing who i was, and never asked any cruel questions; and even now, if he knew, i think he would have pity upon me and forgive me." she sat looking at her husband with an earnest yearning expression in her eyes. it seemed as if she wanted to say something to him, but lacked the courage to approach the subject. he was very ill; it was no time to make any unpleasant communication to him. he had been delirious in the night, and had fancied that mr. pawlkatt was present, at an hour when that gentleman was snoring comfortably in his own bed. isabel had been specially enjoined to keep her husband as quiet as it was possible for an active industrious man, newly stricken down by some unlooked-for malady, to be kept. no; whatever she might have to say to him must be left unspoken for the present. whatever help he might, under ordinary circumstances, have given her, he was utterly powerless to give her now. the day in that sick chamber seemed terribly long. not because isabel felt any selfish weariness of her task; she was only too anxious to be of use to the man she had so deeply wronged; she was only too eager to do something,--something that mr. colborne himself might approve,--as an atonement for her sin. but she was quite unused to sickness; and, being of a hyper-sensitive nature, suffered keenly at the sight of any suffering whatever. if the invalid was restless, she fancied directly that he was worse--much worse--in imminent danger, perhaps: if he rambled a little in his talk betwixt sleeping and waking, she sat with his burning hands clasped in hers, trembling from head to foot: if he fell into a profound slumber, she was seized with a sudden terror, fancying him unnaturally quiet, and was fain to disturb him, in her fear lest he should be sinking into some ominous lethargy. the doctor's wife was not one of those excellent nurses who can settle themselves with cheerful briskness in a sick room, and improve the occasion by the darning of a whole basketful of invalided stockings, reserved for some such opportunity. she was not a nurse who could accept the duties of her position in a businesslike way, and polish off each separate task as coolly as a clerk in a banking-house transacts the work assigned to him. yet she was very quiet withal,--soft of foot, gentle-handed, tender; and george was pleased to see her sitting in the shadowy room, when he lifted his heavy eyelids a little now and then; he was pleased in a dim kind of way to take his medicine from her hand,--the slender little white hand with tapering fingers,--the hand he had admired as it lay lightly on the moss-grown brickwork of the bridge in hurstonleigh churchyard on the afternoon when he asked her to be his wife. mrs. gilbert sat all day in her husband's room; but about five in the afternoon george fell into a deep slumber, in which mr. pawlkatt found him at a little after six o'clock. nothing could be better than that tranquil sleep, the surgeon said; and when he was gone, mrs. jeffson, who had been sitting in the room for some time, anxious to be of use to her master, suggested that isabel should go down-stairs and out into the garden to get a breath of fresh air. "you must be a'most stifled, i should think, sitting all day in this room," tilly said, compassionately. mrs. gilbert's face crimsoned all over, as she answered in a timid, hesitating way: "yes; i should like to go down-stairs a little, if you think that george is sure to sleep soundly for a long time; and i know you'll take good care of him. i want to go out somewhere--not very far; but i must go to-night." the doctor's wife sat with her back to the light; and mrs. jeffson did not see that sudden tide of crimson that rushed into her face, and faded, as she said this; but george gilbert's housekeeper gave a sniff of disapproval notwithstanding. "i should have thought if you was the greatest gadderabout that ever was, you'd have stayed quietly at home while your husband was lying ill, mrs. gilbert," she said, sharply; "but of course you know your own business best." "i'm not going far; only--only a little way on the briargate road," isabel answered, piteously; and then her head sank back against the wall behind her, and she sighed a plaintive, almost heart-broken sigh. her life was very hard just now,--hard and difficult,--begirt with terror and peril, as she thought. she put on her bonnet and shawl--the darkest and shabbiest she possessed. mrs. jeffson watched her, as she stood before the old-fashioned looking-glass, and perceived that she did not even take the trouble to brush the rumpled hair which she pushed under her dingy bonnet. "she can't be going to meet _him_ in that plight, anyhow," thought honest matilda, considerably pacified by the contemplation of her mistress's toilette. she lifted the curtain and looked out of the window as the garden-gate closed on isabel, and she saw the doctor's wife hurrying away with her veil pulled over her face. there was some kind of mystery about this evening's walk: something that filled the yorkshirewoman's mind with vague disquietude. * * * * * the "touch of the fever," alluded to so lightly by mr. pawlkatt, turned out to be a great deal more serious in its nature than either he or george gilbert had anticipated. the week came to an end, and the parish surgeon was still a prisoner in the room in which his father and mother had died. it seemed quite a long time now since he had been active and vigorous, going about his work all day, mixing medicines in the surgery, and coming into the parlour at stated times to eat hearty meals of commonplace substantial food. now that he was so weak, and that it was a matter for rejoicing when he took a couple of spoonfuls of beef-tea, isabel's conscience smote her cruelly as she remembered how she had despised him because of his healthy appetite; with what bitter scorn she had regarded him when he ate ponderous slices of underdone meat, and mopped up the last drop of the goriest-looking gravy with great pieces of bread. he had been ill for only a week, and yet already it seemed quite a normal state of things for him to be lying in that darkened chamber, helpless and uneasy, all through the long summer day. the state of the doctor's health was common talk in graybridge; as common a subject for idle people's converse as the heat of the weather, or the progress of the green corn in the fields beyond the little town. all manner of discreditable-looking parish patients came every day to the surgery door to inquire after the surgeon's health; and went away downcast and lamenting, when they were told that he grew daily worse. mrs. gilbert, going down to answer these people's questions, discovered for the first time how much he was beloved; he who had not one of the attributes of a hero. she wondered sometimes whether it might not be better to wear thick boots, and go about doing good, than to be a used-up aristocratic wanderer, with white hands, and, oh, such delightful varnished boots wrinkled over an arched instep. she was trying to be good herself now--pleased and fascinated by mr. colborne's teaching as by some newly-discovered romance--she wanted to be good, and scarcely knew how to set about the task; and, behold, here was the man whom she had so completely ignored and despised, infinitely above her in the region she had entered. but was her romantic attachment to roland lansdell laid down at the new altar she had found for herself? ah, no; she tried very hard to do her duty; but the old sentimental worship still held its place in her heart. she was like some classic pagan newly converted to christianity, and yet entertaining a lurking love and reverence for the old heathen deities, too grand and beautiful to be cast off all at once. the first week came to an end, and still mr. pawlkatt came twice a day to visit his patient; and still he gave very much the same directions to the untiring nurses who waited on george gilbert. he was to be kept very quiet; he was to continue the medicine; all the old stereotyped rules were to be observed. throughout her husband's illness, isabel had taken very little rest; though mr. and mrs. jeffson would gladly have kept watch alternately with her in the sick room, and were a little wounded when banished therefrom. but mrs. gilbert wanted to be good; the harder the task was, the more gladly did she undertake it. very often, quite alone in that quiet room, she sat watching through the stillest hours of the night. during all those solemn watches did any bad thoughts enter her mind? did she ever think that she might be free to marry roland lansdell if the surgeon's illness should terminate fatally? never--never once did such a dark and foul fancy enter the regions of her imagination. do not believe that because she had been a foolish woman she must necessarily be a vicious woman. again and again, on her knees by her husband's bed, she supplicated that his life might be spared. she had never encountered death, and her imagination shrank appalled from the thought of that awful presence. a whole after-life of happiness could not have atoned to her for the one pang of seeing a dreadful change come upon the familiar face. sometimes, in spite of herself, though she put away the thought from her with shuddering horror, the idea that george gilbert might not recover _would_ come into her mind. he might not recover: the horror which so many others had passed through might overtake her. oh, the hideous tramp of the undertaker's men upon the stairs; the knocking, unlike all other knocking; the dreadful aspect of the shrouded house! if--if any such sorrow came upon her, mrs. gilbert thought that she would join some community of holy women, and go about doing good until she died. was it so very strange, this sudden conversion? surely not! in these enthusiastic natures sentiment may take any unexpected form. it is a question whether a madame de chantal shall write hazy devotional letters to a st. francis de sales, or peril her soul for the sake of an earthly lover. chapter xxxi. fifty pounds. after that scene in the church at hurstonleigh, roland lansdell went back to mordred; to think, with even greater bitterness, of the woman he loved. that silent encounter--the sight of the pale face, profoundly melancholy, almost statuesque in its air of half-despairing resignation--had exercised no softening influence on the mind of this young man, who could not understand why the one treasure for which he languished should be denied to him. he could not be generous or just towards the woman who had fooled him with false hopes, and then left him to despair; he could not have pity upon the childish creature who had wandered unawares upon the flowery margin of a hideous gulf, and had fled, aghast and horrified, at the first glimpse of the yawning depths below. no; his anger against isabel could not have been more intense had she been a hardened and practised coquette who had deliberately lured him to his ruin. "i suppose this is what the world calls a virtuous woman," he cried, bitterly. "i dare say lucretia was this sort of person; and dropped her eyelids to show off the dark lashes, and made the most of her tapering arms over the spinning-wheel, and summoned conscious blushes into her cheeks when tarquin looked at her. these virtuous women delight in clamour and scandal. i've no doubt mrs. gilbert profoundly enjoyed herself during our rencontre in the church, and went away proud of the havoc she had made in me--the haggard lines about my mouth, and the caverns under my eyes." "it is _not_ because she is a good woman, it is not because she loves her husband, that she refuses to listen to me," he thought; "it is only a paltry provincial terror of an _esclandre_ that ties her to this wretched place. and when she has broken my heart, and when she has ruined my life, she goes to church at hurstonleigh, and sits in a devotional pose, with her big eyes lifted up to the parson's face, like a madonna by giorgione, in order that she may rehabilitate herself in the consideration of graybridge." he could neither be just nor patient. sometimes he laughed aloud at his own folly. was he, who had prided himself on his cynical disbelief in the depth or endurance of any emotion--was he the man to go mad for love of a pale face, and darkly pensive eyes? ah, yes! it is just these scoffers who take the fever most deeply, when the infection seizes them. "i--i, who have lived my life out, as i thought, wherever life is most worth living,--i suffer like this at last for the sake of a village surgeon's half-educated wife? i--who have given myself the airs of a lauzun or a brummel--am perishing for the love of a woman who doesn't even know how to put on her gloves!" every day mr. lansdell resolved to leave midlandshire to-morrow; but to-morrow found him still lingering at the priory, in a hopeless, purposeless way,-lingering for he knew not what,--lingering, perhaps, for want of the mere physical energy required for the brief effort of departure. he would go to constantinople overland; there would be more fatigue in the journey that way. might not a walk across mount cenis cure him of his foolish love for isabel gilbert? did not d'alembert retire from the world and all its troubles into the peaceful pleasures of geometry? did not goethe seek relief from some great sorrow in the study of a new language? roland lansdell made a faint effort to acquire the arabic alphabet during those wretched idle days and nights at mordred. he would study the semitic languages; all of them. he would go in for the book of job. many people have got plenty of hard work out of the book of job. but the curly little characters in the arabic alphabet slipped out of mr. lansdell's brain as if they had been so many lively young serpents; and he only made so much headway in the attainment of the semitic languages as enabled him to scrawl an arabic rendering of isabel gilbert's name over the leaves of a blotting-book. he was in love. no schoolboy, bewitched by a pretty blue-eyed, blue-ribanded, white-robed partner at a dancing-school, was ever more foolishly in love than the young squire of mordred, who had filled a whole volume with various metrical versions of his profound contempt for his species in general, and the feminine portion of them in particular. he had set up that gladsome halloo before he was safely out of the wood; and now he found to his cost that he had been premature; for lo, the dense forest hemmed him in on every side, and there seemed no way of escape out of the sombre labyrinth. * * * * * george gilbert had been ill nearly a fortnight, and the master of mordred priory still lingered in midlandshire. he had heard nothing of the surgeon's illness, for he had never been much given to gossiping with his body-servant; and that gentleman was especially disinclined to offer his master any unasked-for information just now; for, as he expressed himself in the servants' hall, "mr. lansdell's been in a devil of a temper almost ever since we come back to the priory; and you might as lief talk to a tiger as speak to him, except when you're spoken to and goodness knows _that_ ain't very often; for anything as gloomy as his ways has become of late, i never remember to have met with; and if it wasn't that the remuneration is high, and the perquisites never greasy about the elbows, or frayed at the edges,--which i've been with a member of the peerage that wore his clothes till they was shameful shabby,--it wouldn't be very long as i should trouble this dismal old dungeon with my presence." only from lady gwendoline was roland likely to hear of george gilbert's illness; and he had not been to lowlands lately. he had a vague idea that he would go there some morning, and ask his cousin to marry him, and so make an end of it; but he deferred the carrying out of that idea indefinitely, as a man who contemplates suicide may postpone the ghastly realization of his purpose, keeping his loaded pistol or his prussic acid handy against the time when it shall be wanted. he had never ridden past the surgeon's house since that day on which he had seen isabel seated in the parlour. he had indeed shunned graybridge and the graybridge road altogether. "she shall not triumph in the idea that i pursue her," he thought; "her vain shallow heart shall not be gratified by the knowledge of my pitiful weakness. i bared my foolish breast before her once, and she sat in her pew playing at devotion, and let me go away with my despair. she might have thrown herself in my way that afternoon, if only for a few moments. she might have spoken to me, if only half-a-dozen commonplace words of comfort; but it pleased her better to exhibit her piety. i dare say she knows as well as i do how that devotional air harmonizes with her beauty; and she went home happy, no doubt, in the knowledge that she had made one man miserable. and that's the sort of woman whom the world calls virtuous,--a creature in whom vanity is strong enough to usurp the place of every other passion. for a really good woman, for a true-hearted wife who loves her husband, and before whose quiet presence the veriest libertine bows his head abashed and reverent,--for such a woman as that i have no feeling but respect and admiration; but i hate and despise these sentimental coquettes, who preach secondhand platonism, borrowed from the misty pages of shelley." but it was not always that roland lansdell was thus bitter against the woman he loved. sometimes in the midst of his rage and anger a sudden current of tenderness swept across the dark waters of his soul, and for a little while the image of isabel gilbert appeared to him in its true colours. he saw her as she really was: foolish, but not base; weak, but not hypocritical; sentimental, and with some blemish of womanly vanity perhaps, but not designing. sometimes amidst all contending emotions, in which passion, and selfishness, and wounded pride, and mortified vanity, made a very whirlpool of bitter feeling,--sometimes amidst such baser emotions as these, true love--the sublime, the clear-sighted--arose for a brief interval triumphant, and roland lansdell thought tenderly of the woman who had shattered his future. "my poor little girl,--my poor innocent childish love," he thought, in these moments of purer feeling; "if i could only be noble, and go away, and forgive you, and leave you to grow into a good woman, with that well-meaning commonplace husband, whom it is your duty to honour and obey." nothing could be more irregular than mr. lansdell's habits during this period. the cook at mordred declared that such a thing as a _soufflé_ was a simple impossibility with an employer who might require his dinner served at any time between the hours of seven and nine. the fish was flabby, the joints were leathery; and all the hot-water reservoirs in the mordred dinner-service could not preserve the cook's most special _plats_ from stagnation. that worthy artist shrugged his shoulders over the ruins of his work, and turned his attention to the composition of a menu in which the best things were to be eaten cold. he might have spared himself the trouble. the young man, who, naturally careless as to what he ate, had, out of pure affectation, been wont to outrival the insolence of the oldest _bon-vivants_, now scarcely knew the nature of the dishes that were set before him. he ate and drank mechanically; and it may be drank a little deeper than he had been accustomed to drink of the famous clarets his father and grandfather had collected. but eating delighted him not, nor drinking neither. the wine had no exhilarating effect upon him; he sat dull and gloomy after a magnum of the famous claret--sat with the arabic grammar open before him, wondering what was to become of him, now that his life was done. he was sitting thus in the library, with the sombre rembrandt face that was something like his own looking gravely down upon him; he was sitting thus by the lamplit table one sultry june evening, when george gilbert had been ill nearly a fortnight. the light of the lamp--a soft subdued light, shining dimly through a great moon-like orb of thick ground-glass--fell chiefly on the open book, and left the student's face in shadow. but even in that shadow the face looked wan and haggard, and the something that lurked somewhere in all the lansdell portraits--the something that you may see in every picture of charles the first of england and marie antoinette of france, whensoever and by whomsoever painted--was very visible in roland's face to-night. he had been sitting brooding over his books, but scarcely reading half-a-dozen pages, ever since nine o'clock, and it was now half-past eleven. he was stretching his hand towards the bell in order to summon his valet, and release that personage from the task of sitting up any longer, yawning alone in the housekeeper's room,--for the habits of mordred priory had never lost the sobriety of lady anna lansdell's régime, and all the servants except roland's valet went to bed at eleven,--when that gentleman entered the library. "would you please to see any one, sir?" he asked. "would i please to see any one?" cried roland, turning in his low easy-chair, and staring at the solemn face of his valet; "who should want to see me at such a time of night? is there anything wrong? is it any one from--from lowlands?" "no, sir, it's a strange lady; leastways, when i say a strange lady, i _think_, sir,--though, her veil being down, and a very thick veil, i should not like to speak positive,--i think it's mrs. gilbert, the doctor's lady, from graybridge." mr. lansdell's valet coughed doubtfully behind his hand, and looked discreetly at the carved oaken bosses in the ceiling. roland started to his feet. "mrs. gilbert," he muttered, "at such an hour as this! it can't be; she would never--show the lady here, whoever she is," he added aloud to his servant. "there must be something wrong; it must be some very important business that brings any one to this place to-night." the valet departed, closing the door behind him, and roland stood alone upon the hearth, waiting for his late visitor. all the warmer tints--he never had what people call "a colour"--faded out of his face, and left him very pale. why had she come to him at such a time? what purpose could she have in coming to that house, save one? she had come to revoke her decision. for a moment a flood of rapture swept into his soul, warm and revivifying as the glory of a sudden sunburst on a dull grey autumn day; but in the next moment,--so strange and subtle an emotion is that which we call love,--a chill sense of regret crept into his mind, and he was almost sorry that isabel should come to him thus, even though she were to bring him the promise of future happiness. "my poor ignorant, innocent girl--how hard it seems that my love must for ever place her at a disadvantage!" he thought. the door was opened by the valet, with as bold a sweep as if a duchess had been entering in all the glory of her court-robes, and isabel came into the room. one glance showed mr. lansdell that she was very nervous, that she was suffering cruelly from the terror of his presence; and it may be that even before she had spoken, he understood that she had not come to announce any change in her decision, any modification of the sentiments that had led to their parting at thurston's crag. there was nothing desperate in her manner--nothing of the dramatic _aplomb_ that belongs to the grand crises of life. she stood before him pale and irresolute, with pleading eyes lifted meekly to his face. mr. lansdell wheeled forward a chair, but he was obliged to ask her to sit down; and even then she seated herself with the kind of timid irresolution he had so often seen in a burly farmer come to supplicate abnormal advantages in the renewal of a lease. "i hope you are not angry with me for coming here at such a time," she said, in a low tremulous voice; "i could not come any earlier, or i----" "it can never be anything but a pleasure to me to see you," roland answered, gravely, "even though the pleasure is strangely mingled with pain. you have come to me, perhaps, because you are in some kind of trouble, and have need of my services in some way or other. i am very much pleased to think that you can so far confide in me; i am very glad to think that you can rely on my friendship." mr. lansdell said this because he saw that the doctor's wife had come to demand some favour at his hands, and he wished to smooth the way for that demand. isabel looked up at him with something like surprise in her gaze. she had not expected that he would be like this--calm, self-possessed, reasonable. a mournful feeling took possession of her heart. she thought that his love must have perished altogether, or he could not surely have been so kind to her, so gentle and dispassionate. she looked at him furtively as he lounged against the farther angle of the massive mantel-piece. his transient passion had worn itself out, no doubt, and he was deep in the tumultuous ocean of a new love affair,--a glittering duchess, a dark-eyed clotilde,--some brilliant creature after one of the numerous models in the pages of the "alien." "you are very, very good not to be angry with me," she said; "i have come to ask you a favour--a very great favour--and i----" she stopped, and sat silently twisting the handle of her parasol--the old green parasol under whose shadow roland had so often seen her. it was quite evident that her courage had failed her altogether at this crisis. "it is not for myself i am going to ask you this favour," she said, still hesitating, and looking down at the parasol; "it is for another person, who--it is a secret, in fact, and----" "whatever it is, it shall be granted," roland answered, "without question, without comment." "i have come to ask you to lend me,--or at least i had better ask you to give it me, for indeed i don't know when i should ever be able to repay it,--some money, a great deal of money,--fifty pounds." she looked at him as if she thought the magnitude of the sum must inevitably astonish him, and she saw a tender half-melancholy smile upon his face. "my dear isabel--my dear mrs. gilbert--if all the money i possess in the world could secure your happiness, i would willingly leave midlandshire to-morrow a penniless man. i would not for the world that you should be embarrassed for an hour, while i have more money than i know what to do with. i will write you a cheque immediately,--or, better still, half-a-dozen blank cheques, which you can fill up as you require them." but isabel shook her head at this proposal. "you are very kind," she said; "but a cheque would not do. it must be money, if you please; the person for whom i want it would not take a cheque." roland lansdell looked at her with a sudden expression of doubt,--of something that was almost terror in his face. "the person for whom you want it," he repeated. "it is not for yourself, then, that you want this money?" "oh no, indeed! what should i want with so much money?" "i thought you might be in debt. i thought that----ah, i see; it is for your husband that you want the money." "oh no; my husband knows nothing about it. but, oh, pray, pray don't question me. ah, if you knew how much i suffered before i came here to-night! if there had been any other person in the world who could have helped me, i would never have come here; but there is no one, and i must get the money." roland's face grew darker as mrs. gilbert spoke. her agitation, her earnestness, mystified and alarmed him. "isabel," he cried, "god knows i have little right to question you; but there is something in the manner of your request that alarms me. can you doubt that i am your friend,--next to your husband your best and truest friend, perhaps?--forget every word that i have ever said to you, and believe only what i say to-night--to-night, when all my better feelings are aroused by the sight of you. believe that i am your friend, isabel, and for pity's sake trust me. who is this person who wants money of you? is it your step-mother? if so, my cheque-book is at her disposal." "no," faltered the doctor's wife, "it is not for my step-mother, but----" "but it is for some member of your family?" "yes," she answered, drawing a long breath; "but, oh, pray do not ask me any more questions. you said just now that you would grant me the favour i asked without question or comment. ah, if you knew how painful it was to me to come here!" "indeed! i am sorry that it was so painful to you to trust me." "ah, if you knew----" isabel murmured in a low voice, speaking to herself rather than to roland. mr. lansdell took a little bunch of keys from his pocket, and went across the room to an iron safe, cunningly fashioned after the presentment of an antique ebony cabinet. he opened the ponderous door, and took a little cash-box from one of the shelves. "my steward brought me a bundle of notes yesterday. will you take what you want?" he asked, handing the open box to isabel. "i would rather you gave me the money; i do not want more than fifty pounds." roland counted five ten-pound notes and handed them to isabel. she rose and stood for a few moments, hesitating as if she had something more to say,--something almost as embarrassing in its nature as the money-question had been. "i--i hope you will not think me troublesome," she said; "but there is one more favour that i want to ask of you." "do not hesitate to ask anything of me; all i want is your confidence." "it is only a question that i wish to ask. you talked some time since of going away from midlandshire--from england; do you still think of doing so?" "yes, my plans are all made for an early departure." "a very early departure? you are going almost immediately?" "immediately,--to-morrow, perhaps. i am going to the east. it may be a long time before i return to england." there was a little pause, during which roland saw that a faint flush kindled in isabel gilbert's face, and that her breath came and went rather quicker than before. "then i must say good-bye to-night," she said. "yes, it is not likely we shall meet again. good night--good-bye. perhaps some day, when i am a pottering old man, telling people the same anecdotes every time i dine with them, i shall come back to midlandshire, and find mr. gilbert a crack physician in kylmington, petted by rich old ladies, and riding in a yellow barouche;--till then, good-bye." he held isabel's hand for a few moments,--not pressing it ever so gently,--only holding it, as if in that frail tenure he held the last link that bound him to love and life. isabel looked at him wonderingly. how different was this adieu from that passionate farewell under lord thurston's oak, when he had flung himself upon the ground and wept aloud in the anguish of parting from her! the melodramas she had witnessed at the surrey theatre were evidently true to nature. nothing could be more transient than the wicked squire's love. "only one word more, mrs. gilbert," roland said, after that brief pause. "your husband--does he know about this person who asks for money from you?" "no--i--i should have told him--i think--and asked him to give me the money, only he is so very ill; he must not be troubled about anything." "he is very ill--your husband--is ill?" "yes,--i thought every one knew. he is very, very ill. it is on that account i came here so late. i have been sitting in his room all day. good night." "but you cannot go back alone; it is such a long way. it will be two o'clock in the morning before you can get back to graybridge. i will drive you home; or it will be better to let my coachman--my mother's old coachman--drive you home." it was in vain that mrs. gilbert protested against this arrangement. roland lansdell reflected that as the doctor's wife had been admitted by his valet, her visit would of course be patent to all the other servants at their next morning's breakfast. under these circumstances, mrs. gilbert could not leave mordred with too much publicity; and a steady old man, who had driven lady anna lansdell's fat white horses for slow jog-trot drives along the shady highways and by-ways of midlandshire, was aroused from his peaceful slumbers and told to dress himself, while a half-somnolent stable-boy brought out a big bay horse and an old-fashioned brougham. in this vehicle isabel returned very comfortably to graybridge; but she begged the coachman to stop at the top of the lane, where she alighted and bade him good night. she found all dark in the little surgery, which she entered by means of her husband's latch-key; and she crept softly up the stairs to the room opposite that in which george gilbert lay, watched over by mrs. jeffson. chapter xxxii. "i'll not believe but desdemona's honest." "see that some hothouse grapes and a pine are sent to mr. gilbert at graybridge," roland said to his valet on the morning after isabel's visit. "i was sorry to hear of his serious illness from his wife last night." mr. lansdell's valet, very busily occupied with a hat-brush, smiled softly to himself as his employer made this speech. the master of mordred priory need scarcely have stained his erring soul by any hypocritical phrases respecting the graybridge surgeon. "i shouldn't mind laying a twelvemonth's wages that if her husband dies, he marries her within six months," roland's man-servant remarked, as he sipped his second cup of coffee; "i never did see such an infatuated young man in all my life." a change came over the spirit of mr. lansdell's dreams. the thought, the base and cruel thought, which had never entered isabel's mind, was not to be shut out of roland's breast after that midnight interview in the library. do what he would, struggle against the foul temptation as he might,--and he was not naturally wicked, he was not utterly heartless,--he could not help thinking of what might happen--if--if death, who carries in his fleshless hand so many orders for release, should cut the knot that bound isabel gilbert. "god knows i am not base enough to wish any harm to that poor fellow at graybridge," thought mr. lansdell; "but if--" and then the tempter's hand swept aside a dark curtain, and revealed a lovely picture of the life that might be, if george gilbert would only be so obliging as to sink under that tiresome low fever which had done so much mischief in the lanes about graybridge. roland lansdell was not a hero; he was only a very imperfect, vacillating young man, with noble impulses for ever warring against the baser attributes of his mind; a spoiled child of fortune, who had almost always had his own way until just now. "i ought to go away," he thought; "i ought to go away all the more because of this man's illness. there seems something horrible in my stopping here watching and waiting for the result, when i should gain such an unutterable treasure by george gilbert's death." but he lingered, nevertheless. a man may fully appreciate the enormity of his sin, and yet go on shining. mr. lansdell did not go away from mordred; he contented himself with sending the graybridge surgeon a basket of the finest grapes and a couple of the biggest pines to be found in the priory hothouses; and it may be that his conscience derived some small solace from the performance of this courtesy. lord ruysdale called upon his nephew in the course of the bright summer morning that succeeded isabel's visit to the priory; and as the young man happened to be smoking his cigar in front of the porch at the moment when the earl's quiet cob came jogging along the broad carriage-drive, there was no possibility of avoiding the elderly gentleman's visit. roland threw aside his cigar, and resigned himself to the prospect of an hour's prosy discussion of things in which he felt no kind of interest, no ray of pleasure. what was it to him that there was every prospect of a speedy dissolution, unless----? there almost always was every prospect of a dissolution unless something or other took place; but nothing special ever seemed to come of all the fuss and clamour. the poor people were always poor, and grumbled at being starved to death; the rich people were always rich, and indignant against the oppression of an exorbitant income-tax. poor roland behaved admirably during the infliction of his uncle's visit; and if he gave vague answers and asked irrelevant questions now and then, lord ruysdale was too much engrossed by his own eloquence to find out his nephew's delinquencies. roland only got rid of him at last by promising to dine at lowlands that evening. "if there's a dissolution, our party must inevitably come in," the earl said at parting; "and in that case you must stand for wareham. the wareham people look to you as their legitimate representative. i look forward to great things, my boy, if the present ministry go out. i've been nursing my little exchequer very comfortably for the last twelve months; and i shall take a furnished house in town, and begin life again next year, if things go well; and i expect to see you make a figure in the world yet, roland." and in all that interview lord ruysdale did not once remark the tired look in his nephew's face; that nameless look which gave a sombre cast to all the lansdell portraits, and which made the _blasé_ idler of thirty seem older of aspect than the hopeful country gentleman of sixty. roland went to lowlands in the evening. why should he not do this to please his uncle; inasmuch as it mattered so very little what he did, or where he went, in a universe where everything was weariness. he found lady gwendoline in the drawing-room, looking something like marie antoinette in a _demi-toilette_ of grey silk, with a black-lace scarf crossed upon her stately shoulders, and tied in a careless bow at the back of her waist. mr. raymond was established in a big chintz-covered easy-chair, turning over a box of books newly arrived from london, and muttering scornful comments on their titles and contents. "at last!" he exclaimed, as mr. lansdell's name was announced. "i've called at mordred about half-a-dozen times within the last two months; but as your people always said you were out, and as i could always see by their faces that you were at home, i have given up the business in despair." lord ruysdale came in presently with the "times" newspaper open in his hand, and insisted on reading a leader, which he delivered with amazing energy, and all the emphasis on the beginnings of the sentences. dinner was announced before the leader was finished, and mr. raymond led lady gwendoline to the dining-room, while roland stayed to hear the thunderer's climax murdered by his uncle's defective elocution. the dinner went off very quietly. the earl talked politics, and mr. raymond discoursed very pleasantly on the principles of natural philosophy as applied to the rulers of the nation. there was a strange contrast between the animal spirits of the two men who had passed the meridian of life, and were jogging quietly on the shady slope of the lull, and the dreamy languor exhibited by the two young people who sat listening to them. george sand has declared that nowadays all the oldest books are written by the youngest authors; might she not go even farther, and say that nowadays the young people are older than their seniors? we have got rid of our springheeled jacks and john mittons, and tom and jerry are no more popular either on or off the stage; our young aristocrats no longer think it a fine thing to drive a hearse to epsom races, or to set barrels of wine running in the haymarket; but in place of all this foolish riot and confusion a mortal coldness of the soul seems to have come down upon the youth of our nation, a deadly languor and stagnation of spirit, from which nothing less than a crimean war or an indian rebellion can arouse the worn-out idlers in a weary world. the dinner was drawing to a close, when lord ruysdale mentioned a name that awakened all mr. lansdell's attention. "i rode into graybridge after leaving you, roland," he said, "and made a call or two. i am sorry to hear that mr. gilmore--gilson--gilbert,--ah, yes, gilbert,--that very worthy young doctor, whom we met at your house the other day--last year, by the bye--egad, how the time spins round!--i was sorry to hear that he is ill. low fever--really in a very dangerous state, saunders the solicitor told me. _you'll_ be sorry to hear it, gwendoline." lady gwendoline's face darkened, and she glanced at roland, before she spoke. "i am sorry to hear it," she said. "i am sorry for mr. gilbert, for more than one reason. i am sorry he has so very bad a wife." roland's face flushed crimson, and he turned to his cousin as if about to speak; but mr. raymond was too quick for him. "i think the less we say upon that subject the better," he exclaimed, eagerly; "i think, lady gwendoline, that is a subject that had much better not be discussed here." "why should it not be discussed?" cried roland, looking--if people can look daggers--a perfect arsenal of rage and scorn at his cousin. "of course, we understand that slander of her own sex is a woman's privilege. why should not lady gwendoline avail herself of her special right? here is only a very paltry subject, certainly--a poor little provincial nobody; but she will serve for want of a better;--lay her on the table, by all means, and bring out your dissecting-tools, lady gwendoline. what have you to say against mrs. gilbert?" he waited, breathless and angry, for his cousin's answer, looking at her with sullen defiance in his face. "perhaps mr. raymond is right, after all," gwendoline said, quietly. she was very quiet, but very pale, and looked her cousin as steadily in the eyes as if she had been fighting a small-sword duel with him. "the subject is one that will scarcely bear discussion here or elsewhere; but since you accuse me of feminine malice, i am bound to defend myself. i say that mrs. gilbert is a very bad wife and a very wicked woman. a person who is seen to attend a secret rendezvous with a stranger, not once, but several times, with all appearance of stealth and mystery, while her husband lies between life and death, must surely be one of the worst and vilest of women." mr. lansdell burst into a discordant laugh. "what a place this midlandshire is!" he cried; "and what a miraculous power of invention lies uncultivated amongst the inhabitants of our country towns! i withdraw any impertinent insinuations about your talent for scandal, my dear gwendoline; for i see you are the merest novice in that subtle art. the smallest rudimentary knowledge would teach you to distinguish between the stories that are _ben trovato_ and those that are not; their being true or false is not of the least consequence. unfortunately, this graybridge slander is one of the very lamest of _canards_. a newspaper correspondent sending it in to fill the bottom of a column would be dismissed for incompetency, on the strength of his blunder. tell your maid to be a little more circumspect in future, gwendoline." lady gwendoline did not condescend to discuss the truth or probability of her story. she saw that her cousin was ashy pale to the lips, and she knew that her shot had gone home to the very centre of the bull's-eye. after this there was very little conversation. lord ruysdale started one or two of his favourite topics; but he understood dimly that there was something not quite pleasant at work amongst his companions. roland sat frowning at his plate; and charles raymond watched him with an uneasy expression in his face; as a man who is afraid of lightning might watch the gathering of a storm-cloud. the dinner drew to a close amidst dense gloom and awful silence, dismally broken by the faint chinking of spoons and jingling of glass. ah, what funeral-bell can fall more solemnly upon the ear than those common every-day sounds amidst the awful stillness that succeeds or precedes a domestic tempest! there is nothing very terrible in the twittering of birds; yet how ominous sound the voices of those innocent feathered warblers in the dread pauses of a storm! lady gwendoline rose from the table when her father filled his second glass of burgundy, and mr. raymond hurried to open the door for her. but roland's eyes were never lifted from his empty plate; he was waiting for something; now and then a little convulsive movement of his lower lip betrayed that he was agitated; but that was all. lord ruysdale seemed relieved by his daughter's departure. he had a vague idea that there had been some little passage-at-arms between roland and gwendoline, and fancied that serenity would be restored by the lady's absence. he went twaddling on with his vapid discourse upon the state of the political atmosphere, placid as some babbling stream, until the dusky shadows began to gather in the corners of the low old-fashioned chamber. then the earl pulled out a fat ponderous old hunter, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour. "i've some letters to write that must go by to-night's post," he said. "raymond, i know you'll excuse me if i leave you for an hour or so. roland, i expect you and raymond to do justice to that chambertin." charles raymond murmured some polite conventionality as the earl left the room; but he never removed his eyes from roland's face. he had watched the brewing of the storm, and was prepared for a speedy thunder-clap. nor was he mistaken in his calculations. "raymond, is this true?" mr. lansdell asked, as the door closed upon his uncle. he spoke as if there had been no break or change in the conversation since mrs. gilbert's name had been mentioned. "is what true, roland?" "this dastardly slander against isabel gilbert. is it true? pshaw! i know that it is not. but i want to know if there is any shadow of an excuse for such a scandal. don't trifle with me, raymond; i have kept no secrets from you; and i have a right to expect that you will be candid with me." "i do not think you have any right to question me upon the subject," mr. raymond answered, very gravely: "when last it was mentioned between us, you rejected my advice, and protested against my further interference in your affairs. i thought we finished with the subject then, roland, at your request; and i certainly do not care to renew it now." "but things have changed since then," mr. lansdell said, eagerly. "it is only common justice to mrs. gilbert that i should tell you as much as that, raymond. i was very confident, very presumptuous, i suppose, when i last discussed this business with you. it is only fair that you should know that the schemes i had formed, when i came back to england, have been entirely frustrated by mrs. gilbert herself." "i am very glad to hear it." there was very little real gladness in mr. raymond's tone as he said this; and the uneasy expression with which he had watched roland for the last hour was, if anything, intensified now. "yes; i miscalculated when i built all those grand schemes for a happy future. it is not so easy to persuade a good woman to run away from her husband, however intolerable may be the chain that binds her to him. these provincial wives accept the marriage-service in its sternest sense. mrs. gilbert is a good woman. you can imagine, therefore, how bitterly i felt gwendoline's imputations against her. i suppose these women really derive some kind of pleasure from one another's destruction. and now set my mind quite at rest: there is not one particle of truth--not so much as can serve as the foundation for a lie--in this accusation, is there, raymond?" if the answer to this question had involved a sentence of death, or a reprieve from the gallows, roland lansdell could not have asked it more eagerly. he ought to have believed in isabel so firmly as to be quite unmoved by any village slander; but he loved her too much to be reasonable; jealousy the demon--closely united as a siamese twin to love the god--was already gnawing at his entrails. it could not be, it could not be, that she had deceived and deluded him; but _if_ she had--ah, what baseness, what treachery! "is there any truth in it, raymond?" he repeated, rising from his chair, and glowering across the table at his kinsman. "i decline to answer that question. i have nothing to do with mrs. gilbert, or with any reports that may be circulated against her." "but i insist upon your telling me all you know; or, if you refuse to do so, i will go to lady gwendoline, and obtain the truth from her." mr. raymond shrugged his shoulders, as if he would have said, "all further argument is useless; this demented creature must go to perdition his own way." "you are a very obstinate young man, roland," he said aloud; "and i am very sorry you ever made the acquaintance of this doctor's wife, than whom there are scores of prettier women to be met with in any summer-day's walk; but i dare say there were prettier women than helen, if it comes to that. however, as you insist upon hearing the whole of this village scandal--which may or may not be true--you must have your own way; and i hope, when you have heard it, you will be contented to turn your back for some time to come upon midlandshire and mrs. george gilbert. i _have_ heard something of the story lady gwendoline told you at dinner; and from a tolerably reliable source. i have heard----" "what? that she--that isabel has been seen with some stranger?" "yes." "with whom? when? where?" "there is a strange man staying at a little rustic tavern in nessborough hollow. you know what gossips these country people are; heaven knows i have never put myself out of the way to learn other people's business; but these things get bruited about in all manner of places." roland chafed impatiently during this brief digression. "tell your story plainly, raymond," he said. "there is a strange man staying in nessborough hollow--well; what then?" "he is rather a handsome-looking fellow; flashily dressed--a londoner, evidently--and----" "but what has all this to do with mrs. gilbert?" "only this much,--she has been seen walking alone with this man, after dark, in nessborough hollow." "it must be a lie; a villanous invention! or if--if she has been seen to meet this man, he is some relation. yes, i have reason to think that she has some relation staying in this neighbourhood." "but why, in that case, should she meet the man secretly, at such an hour, while her husband is lying ill?" "there may be a hundred reasons." mr. raymond shrugged his shoulders. "can you suggest one?" he asked. roland lansdell's head sank forward on his breast. no; he could think of no reason why isabel gilbert should meet this stranger secretly--unless there were some kind of guilt involved in their association. secrecy and guilt go so perpetually together, that it is almost difficult for the mind to dissever them. "but _has_ she been seen to meet him?" cried roland, suddenly. "no; i will not believe it. some woman has been seen walking with some man; and the graybridge vultures, eager to swoop down upon my poor innocent dove, must have it that the woman is isabel gilbert. no; i will not believe this story." "so be it, then," answered mr. raymond. "in that case we can drop the subject." but roland was not so easily to be satisfied. the poisoned arrow had entered far into his soul, and he must needs drag the cruel barb backwards and forwards in the wound. "not till you have given me the name of your authority," he said. "pshaw! my dear roland, have i not already told you that my authority is the common graybridge gossip?" "i'll not believe that. you are the last man in the world to be influenced by paltry village scandal. you have better grounds for what you told me. some one has seen isabel and this man. who was that person?" "i protest against this cross-examination. i have been weak enough to sympathize with a dishonourable attachment, so far as to wish to spare you pain. you refuse to be spared, and must take the consequences of your own obstinacy. i was the person who saw isabel gilbert walking with a stranger--a showily-dressed disreputable-looking fellow--in nessborough hollow. i had been dining with hardwick the lawyer at graybridge, and rode home across country by the briargate and hurstonleigh road, instead of going through waverly. i heard the scandal about mrs. gilbert at graybridge,--heard her name linked with that of some stranger staying at the leicester arms, nessborough hollow, who had been known to send letters to her and to meet her after dark. heaven only knows how country people find out these things; but these things always are discovered somehow or other. i defended isabel,--i know her head is a good one, though by no means so well balanced as it might be,--i defended isabel throughout a long discussion with the lawyer's wife; but riding home by the briargate road, i met mrs. gilbert walking arm-in-arm with a man who answered to the description i had heard at graybridge." "when was this?" "the night before last. it must have been some time between ten and eleven when i met them, for it was broad moonlight, and i saw isabel's face as plainly as i see yours." "and did she recognize you?" "yes; and turned abruptly away from the road into the waste grass between the highway and the tall hedgerow beyond." for some moments after this there was a dead silence, and raymond saw the young man standing opposite him in the dusk, motionless as a stone figure--white as death. then after that pause, which seemed so long, roland stretched out his hand and groped among the decanters and glasses on the table for a water-jug; he filled a goblet with water; and charles raymond knew, by the clashing of the glass, that his kinsman's hand was shaken by a convulsive trembling; after taking a long draught of water, roland stretched his hand across the table. "shake hands, raymond," he said, in a dull, thick kind of voice; "i thank you heartily for having told me the truth; it was much better to be candid; it was better to let me know the truth. but, oh, if you could know how i loved her--if you could know! you think it was only the dishonourable passion of a profligate, who falls in love with a married woman, and pursues his fancy, heedless of the ruin he may entail on others. but it was not, raymond; it was nothing like that. so help me heaven, amidst all selfish sorrow for my own most bitter disappointment, i have sometimes felt a thrill of happiness in the thought that my poor girl's name was still untarnished. i have felt this, in spite of my ruined life, the cruel destruction of every hope that had grown up out of my love for her; and to think that she,--that she who saw my truth and my despair, saw my weak heart laid bare in all its abject folly,--to think that she would dismiss me with school-girl speeches about duty and honour; and then,--then, when my grief was new,--while i still lingered here, too infatuated to leave the place in which i had so cruelly suffered,--to think that she should fall into some low intrigue, some base and secret association with----. it is too bitter, raymond; it is too bitter!" the friendly dusk sheltered him as he dropped into a chair and buried his face upon the broad-cushioned elbow. the tears that gathered slowly in his eyes now were even more bitter than those that he had shed two months ago under lord thurston's oak. if this sort of thing is involved in a man's being in earnest, he had not need be in earnest about anything more than once in his life. happily for us, the power to suffer, like every other power, becomes enfeebled and wears out at last by extravagant usage. if othello had survived to marry a second time, he would not have dropped down in a fit when a new iago began to whisper poisonous hints about the lady. "i never loved any one but her," murmured roland lansdell, "i have been a hard judge of other women; but i believed in her." "my poor boy, my poor impetuous roland," mr. raymond said, softly, "men have to suffer like this once in a lifetime. fight it out, and have done with it. look at the foul phantasm straight in the eyes, and it will melt into so much empty air; and then, 'being gone,' you are 'a man again.' my dear boy, before this year is out, you will be sipping absinthe--most abominable stuff!--after supper at the maison dorée, and entertaining your companions with a satirical history of your little caprice for the doctor's wife." "and heaven forgive me for talking like major pendennis, or any other wicked old worldling!" mr. raymond added, mentally. roland lansdell got up by-and-by, and walked to the open french window. there was a silvery shimmer of moonlight upon the lawn, and the great clock in the stables was striking ten. "good night, raymond," said mr. lansdell, turning on the threshold of the window. "you can make some kind of apology for me to my uncle and gwendoline. i won't stop to say good night to them." "but where are you going?" "to nessborough hollow." "are you mad, roland?" "that's a great deal too subtle a question to be answered just now. i am going to nessborough hollow to see isabel gilbert and her lover." chapter xxxiii. keeping a promise. the moon was slowly rising behind a black belt of dense foliage,--a noble screen of elm and beech that sheltered lord ruysdale's domain from the common world without,--as roland lansdell crossed the lawn, and went in amongst the thickest depths of the park. at lowlands there were no smooth glades, and romantic waterfalls, no wonderful effects of landscape-gardening, such as adorned mordred priory. the earls of ruysdale had been more or less behind the world for the last century and a half; and the land about the old red-brick mansion was only a tangled depth of forest, in which the deer browsed peacefully, undisturbed by the ruthless handiwork of trim modern improvement. the lonely wildness of the place suited roland lansdell's mood to-night. at first he had walked very rapidly, even breaking into a run now and then; so feverishly and desperately did he desire to reach the spot where he might perhaps find that which would confirm his despair. but all at once, when he had gone some distance from the house, and the lights in lady gwendoline's drawing-room were shut from him by half the width of the park, he stopped suddenly, leaning against a tree, faint and almost breathless. he stopped for the first time to think of what he had heard. the hot passion of anger, the fierce sense of outraged pride, had filled his breast so entirely as to sweep away every softer feeling, as flowers growing near a volcanic mountain may be scattered by the rolling lava-flood that passes over them. now, for the first time, he lingered a little to reflect upon what he had heard. could it be true? could it be that this woman had deceived him,--this woman for whom he had been false to all the teaching of his life,--this woman, at whose feet he had offered up that comfortable philosophy which found an infallible armour against sorrow in supreme indifference to all things under heaven,--this woman, for whose sake he had consented to reassume the painful heritage of humanity, the faculty of suffering? "and she is like the rest, after all," he thought; "or only a little worse than the rest. and i had forgotten so much for her sake. i had blotted out the experience of a decade in order that i might believe in the witchery of her dark eyes. i, the man of half-a-dozen seasons in london and paris, vienna and st. petersburg, had sponged away every base record in the book of my memory, so that i might scrawl her name upon the blank pages; and now i am angry with her--with her, poor pitiful creature, who i suppose is only true to her nature when she is base and false. i am angry with her, when i have only my own folly to blame for the whole miserable business. i am angry with her, just as if she were a responsible being; as if she could be anything but what she is. and yet there have been good women in the world," he thought, sadly. "my mother was a good woman. i used to fancy sometimes what might have happened if i had known her in my mother's lifetime. i have even made a picture in my mind of the two women, happy together, and loving each other. heaven forgive me! and after all her pretty talk about platonism and poetry, she betrays me for a low intrigue, and a rendezvous kept in an ale-house." in all his anger against the doctor's wife, no thought of her husband's far deeper wrong ever entered into mr. lansdell's mind. it was _he_--roland--who had been betrayed: it was he whose love was outraged, whose pride was humiliated to the very dust. that there was a man, now lying ill and helpless at graybridge, who had a better right to resent isabel gilbert's treachery, and wreak vengeance upon the unknown wretch for whose sake she was thus base and guilty, never occurred to this angry young man. it had been, for a long time past, his habit to forget george gilbert's existence; he had resolutely shut from his mind the image of the graybridge surgeon ever since his return to midlandshire; ever since the wrong he was doing against george gilbert had fallen into a deliberate and persistent course, leading steadily to a foregone conclusion. he had done this, and little by little it had become very easy for him to forget so insignificant and unobtrusive a person as the simple-hearted parish surgeon, whose only sin against mankind was that he had chosen a pretty woman for his wife. so now it was of his own wrongs, and of those wrongs alone, that mr. lansdell thought. all the circumstances of isabel's visit to the priory came back to him. came back? when had they left his mind, except for that brief interval of passion during which his mind had been a chaos? "the money she wanted was for this man, of course!" he thought. "for whom else should it be? for whom else should she come to ask for money--of her rejected lover--in the dead of the night, with all the mean, miserable circumstances of a secret and guilty action? if she had wanted money from me for any legitimate purpose--in any foolish feminine confusion of debt and difficulty--why should she not have written to me boldly for the sum she required? she must have known that my purse was hers to command whenever she required it. but that she should come secretly, trembling like a guilty creature,--compromising herself and me by a midnight visit,--afraid to confess why she wanted the money,--answering my straight questions by hesitation and prevarication! what construction can i put upon her conduct of last night except one--except one? and yet, even after last night, i believed in her. i thought that she might have wanted the money for some relation. some relation! what relation should she meet alone, secretly, late at night, in such a place as nessborough hollow? she who never, in all the course of our acquaintance, mentioned a living creature beyond her step-mother who had any claim upon her; and all at once some one comes--some one for whom she must have fifty pounds; not in the form of a cheque, which might be traced home to the person who received it. i cannot forget that; i cannot forget that she refused to take my cheque for the money she wanted. that alone makes a mystery of the business; and the meeting that raymond witnessed tells all the rest. this strange man is some old lover; some jilted admirer of a bygone era, who comes now and is clamorous and dangerous, and will only be bought off by a bribe. oh, shame, shame, shame upon her, and upon my own folly! and i thought her an innocent child, who had ignorantly broken a strong man's heart!" he walked on slowly now, and with his head bent, no longer trying to make a short cut for himself among the trees, but absently following a narrow winding path worn by slow peasants' feet upon the grass. "why should i be so eager to see this man?" he thought. "what can i discover that i do not already know? if there is any one upon earth whose word i can trust in, it is raymond. he would be the very last to slander this wretched woman, or to be self-deluded by a prejudice; and he saw her--he saw her. and even beyond this, the base intrigue has become common talk. gwendoline would not have dared to say what she said to-day without good grounds for her statement. it is only i,--i who have lived apart from all the world to think and dream about her,--it is only i who am the last to be told of her shame. but i will try to see this fellow notwithstanding. i should like to see the man who has been preferred to me." nessborough hollow was some distance from lowlands; and mr. lansdell, who was familiar with almost every inch of his native county, made his way thither by shadowy lanes and rarely trodden by-ways, where the summer wild-flowers smelt sweetly in the dewy night. never surely had brighter heavens shone upon a fairer earth. the leaves and blossoms, the long lush grasses faintly stirred by lazy summer winds, made a perpetual whisper that scarcely broke the general stillness: and now and then the gurgling notes of a nightingale sounded amongst the clustering foliage that loomed darkly above tangled hedgerows, and broad wastes of moonlit grass. "i wonder why people are not happy," mused mr. lansdell, impressed in spite of himself by the quiet beauty of the summer landscape. intensely subjective though our natures may be, external things will not be quite put away, strive as we may to shut them out. did not fagin think about the broken rail when he stood in the dock, and wonder who would mend it? was not manfred, the supremely egotistical and subjective, perpetually dragging the mountain-tops and alpine streamlets into his talk of his own troubles? so to-night, deeply absorbed though he was by the consciousness of his own wrongs, there was a kind of double action in roland lansdells mind, by means of which he was conscious of every flickering shadow of the honeysuckle blossoms dark upon the silver smoothness of the moonlit grass. "i wonder how it is that people cannot be happy," he thought; "why can't they take a sensuous pleasure out of this beautiful universe, and enjoy the moonlight, and the shadows, and the perfume of new-mown hay upon the summer air; and then, when they are tired of one set of sensations, move on to another: from rural england to tropical india; from the southern prairies to the snow-mantled alps; playing a game at hide-and-seek with the disagreeable seasons, and contriving to go down to the grave through the rosy sunsets of a perpetual summer, indifferent as to who dies or suffers, so long as the beauty of the world endures? why can't people be reasonable, and take life wisely? i begin to think that mr. harold skimpole was the only true philosopher. if he had been rich enough to indulge his sensuous simplicity out of his own pocket, he would have been perfect. it is only when the skimpole philosopher wants other people's pounds that he becomes objectionable. ah, how pleasantly life might glide by, taken à la skimpole;--a beautiful waveless river, drifting imperceptibly on to darkness! but we make our own election. when we are wise enough to abjure all the glittering battle-grounds of man's ambition, we must needs fall in love, and go mad because a shallow-hearted woman has black eyes and a straight nose. with red hair and freckles mrs. gilbert might go to perdition, unwept and unhindered; but because the false creature has a pretty face we want to tear her all to pieces for her treachery." in that moonlight walk from lowlands to nessborough hollow there was time enough for mr. lansdell to fall into many moods. at one time he was ready to laugh aloud, in bitter contempt for his own weakness; at another time, moved almost to tears by the contemplation of his ruined dreams. it was so difficult for him to separate the ideal isabel of yesterday from the degraded creature of to-night. he believed what charles raymond had told him, but he could not realize it; the hard and cruel facts slipped away from him every now and then, and he found himself thinking of the doctor's wife with all the old tenderness. then suddenly, like a glare of phosphoric light, the memory of her treachery would flash back upon him. why should he lament the innocent idol of his dreams? there was not, there never had been, any such creature. but he could not hold this in his mind. he could not blot out of his brain the isabel of the past. it was easier for him to think of her as he might have thought of the dead, dwelling fondly on vain dreams of happiness which once might have been, but now could never be, because _she_ was no more. there was not a scheme that he had ever made for that impossible future which did not come back to his mind to-night. the places in which he had fancied himself lingering in tranquil happiness with the woman he loved arose before him in all their brightest colouring; fair lonely alpine villages, whose very names he had forgotten, emerged from the dim mists of memory, bright as an eastern city rising out of night's swiftly-melting vapours into the clear light of morning; and he saw isabel gilbert leaning from a rustic balcony jutting out upon broad purple waters, screened and sheltered by the tall grandeur of innumerable snow-peaks. ah, how often he had painted these things; the moonlit journeys on nights as calm as this, under still bluer skies lit by a larger moon; the varied ways and waters by which they might have gone, always leading them farther and farther away from the common world and the base thoughts of common people; the perfect isolation in which there should have been no loneliness! and all this might have been, thought mr. lansdell, if she had not been so base and degraded a creature as to cling blindly to a vulgar lover, whose power over her most likely lay in some guilty secret of the past. twenty times in the course of that long summer night's walk roland lansdell stopped for a minute or so, doubtful whether he should go farther or not. what motive had he in seeking out this stranger staying at a rustic public-house? what right had he to interfere in a wicked woman's low intrigue? if isabel gilbert was the creature she was represented to be,--and he could not doubt his authority,--what could it matter to him how low she sank? had she not coolly and deliberately rejected his love--his devotion, so earnestly and solemnly offered to her? had she not left him to his despair and desolation, with no better comfort than the stereotyped promise that she would "think of him?" what was she to him, that he should trouble himself about her, and bring universal scorn upon his name, perhaps, by some low tavern brawl? no; he would go no farther; he would blot this creature out of his mind, and turn his back upon the land which held her. was not all the world before him, and all creation designed for his pleasure? was there anything upon earth denied him, except the ignis-fatuus light of this woman's black eyes? "perhaps this is a turning-point in my life," he thought during one of these pauses; "and there may be some chance for me after all. why should i not have a career like other men, and try like them to be of some use to my species? better, perhaps, to be always trying and always failing, than to stand aloof for ever, wasting my intellect upon vain calculations as to the relative merits of the game and the candle. an outsider cannot judge the merits of the strife. to a man of my temperament it may have seemed a small matter whether spartans or persians were victors in the pass of thermopylæ; but what a glorious thing the heat and din of the struggle must have been for those who were in it! i begin to think it is a mistake to lounge luxuriously on the grand stand, looking down at the riders. better, perhaps, wear a jockey's jacket; even to be thrown and trampled to death in the race. i will wash my hands of mrs. george gilbert, and go back to the priory and sleep peacefully; and to-morrow morning i will ask lady gwendoline to be my wife; and then i can stand for wareham, and go in for liberal-conservatism and steam-farming." but the picture of isabel gilbert and the stranger meeting in nessborough hollow was not to be so easily erased from mr. lansdell's brain. the habit of vacillation, which had grown out of the idleness of his life, was stronger in him to-night than usual; but the desire to see for himself how deeply he was wronged triumphed over every other feeling, and he never turned his face from the direction in which nessborough hollow lay,--a little rustic nook in fertile midlandshire, almost as beautiful, after its own simple english fashion, as those sublime alpine villages which shone upon roland lansdell in his dreams. he came near the place at last; a little tired by the long walk from lowlands; a good deal wearied by all the contending emotions of the last few hours. he came upon the spot at last, not by the ordinary roadway, but across a strip of thickly wooded waste land lying high above the hollow--a dense and verdant shelter, in which the fern grew tall beneath the tangled branches of the trees. here he stopped, upon the top-most edge of a bank that sloped down into the rustic roadway. the place beneath him was a kind of glen, sheltered from all the outer world, solemnly tranquil in that silent hour. he saw the road winding and narrowing under the trees till it reached a little rustic bridge. he heard the low ripple of the distant brook; and close beside the bridge he saw the white wall of the little inn, chequered with broad black beams, and crowned by high peaked gables jutting out above the quaint latticed casements. in one low window he saw a feeble candle gleaming behind a poor patch of crimson curtain, and through the half-open door a narrow stream of light shone in a slanting line upon the ground. he saw all this; and then from the other end of the still glade he saw two figures coming slowly towards the inn. two figures, one of which was so familiar and had been so dear that despair, complete and absolute, came upon him for the first time, in that one brief start of recognition. ah, surely he had never believed in her falsehood until this moment; surely, if he had believed charles raymond, the agony of seeing her here could not have been so great as this! he stood upon the crown of the steep slope, with his hands grasping the branches on each side of him, looking down at those two quiet figures advancing slowly in the moonlight. there was nothing between him and them except the grassy bank, broken here and there by patches of gorse and fern, and briers and saplings; there was nothing to intercept his view, and the moonlight shone full upon them. he did not look at the man. what did it matter to him what _he_ was like? he looked at her--at _her_ whom he had loved so tenderly--at her for whose sake he had consented to believe in woman's truth and purity. he looked at her, and saw her face, very pale in the moonlight,--blanched, no doubt, by the guilty pallor of fear. even the pattern of her dress was familiar to him. had she not worn it in one of their meetings at thurston's crag? "fool!" he thought, "to think that she, who found it so easy a matter to deceive her husband, must needs be true to _me_. _i_ was ill at ease and remorseful when i went to meet her; but she came to me smiling, and went away, placid and beautiful as a good angel, to tell her husband that she had been to thurston's crag, and had happened to meet mr. lansdell." he stood as still as death, not betraying his presence by so much as the rustling of a leaf, while the two figures approached the spot above which he stood. but a little way off they paused, and were parting, very coolly, as it seemed, when mrs. gilbert lifted up her face, and said something to the man. he stood with his back turned towards roland, to whom the very expression of isabel's face was visible in the moonlight. it seemed to him as if she was pleading for something, for he had never seen her face more earnest,--no, not even when she had decided the question of his life's happiness in that farewell meeting beneath thurston's oak. she seemed to be pleading for something, since the man nodded his head once or twice while she was speaking, with a churlish gesture of assent; and when they were about to part he bent his head and kissed her. there was an insolent indifference about his manner of doing this that stung roland more keenly than any display of emotion could have done. after this the doctor's wife went away. roland watched her as she turned once, and stood for a moment looking back at the man from whom she had just parted, and then disappeared amongst the shadows in the glade. ah, if she had been nothing more than a shadow--if he could have awakened to find all this the brief agony of a dream! the man stood where isabel had left him, while he took a box of fusees from his waistcoat-pocket and lighted a cigar; but his back was still turned to mr. lansdell. he drew two or three puffs of smoke from the cigar, assured himself that it was fully lighted, and then strolled slowly towards the spot above which roland stood. all that was left of the original savage in the fine gentleman arose at that moment in roland lansdell's breast. he had come there, only to ascertain for himself that he had been betrayed and deluded; he had come with no vengeful purpose in his mind; or, at any rate, with no consciousness of any such purpose. he had come to be cool, indifferent, ironical; to slay with cruel and cutting words, perhaps, but to use no common weapons. but in a moment all his modern philosophy of indifference melted away, and left him with the original man's murderous instincts and burning sense of wrong raging fiercely in his breast. he leapt down the sloping bank with scarcely any consciousness of touching the slippery grass; but he dragged the ferns and brambles from the loose earth in his descent, and a shower of torn verdure flew up into the summer air. he had no weapon, nothing but his right arm, wherewith to strike the broad-chested black-bearded stranger. but he never paused to consider that, or to count the chances of a struggle. he only knew that he wanted to kill the man for whose sake isabel gilbert had rejected and betrayed him. in the next moment his hands were on the stranger's throat. "you scoundrel!" he gasped, hoarsely, "you consummate coward and scoundrel, to bring that woman to this place!" there was a brief struggle, and then the stranger freed himself from mr. lansdell's grasp. there was no comparison between the physical strength and weight of the two men; and the inequality was sensibly increased by a stout walking-stick of the bludgeon order carried by the black-bearded stranger. "hoity-toity!" cried that gentleman, who seemed scarcely disposed to take mr. lansdell's attack seriously; "have you newly escaped from some local lunatic asylum, my friend, that you go about the country flying at people's throats in this fashion? what's the row? can't a gentleman in the merchant navy take a moonlight stroll with his daughter for once in a way, to wish her good-bye before he fits out for a fresh voyage, without all this hullabaloo?" "your daughter!" cried roland lansdell. "your daughter?" "yes, my daughter isabel, wife of mr. gilbert, surgeon." "thank god!" murmured roland, slowly, "thank god!" and then a pang of remorse shot through his heart, as he thought how little his boasted love had been worth, after all; how ready he had been to disbelieve in her purity; how easily he had accepted the idea of her degradation. "i ought to have known," he thought,--"i ought to have known that she was innocent. if all the world had been banded together against her, i should have been her champion, and defender. but my love was only a paltry passion after all. the gold changed to brass in the fire of the first ordeal." he thought this, or something like this, and then in the next moment he said courteously: "upon my word, i have to apologize for my----" he hesitated a little here, for he really was ashamed of himself; all the murderous instincts were gone, as if they had never been, and the englishman's painfully acute perception of the ridiculous being fully aroused, he felt that he had made a consummate fool of himself. "i have to apologize for my very absurd behaviour just now; but having heard a very cruel and slanderous report, connecting you as a stranger, and not as a near relation, with mrs. gilbert, and entertaining a most sincere respect for that lady and her husband, to say nothing of the fact that i had been lately dining,"--mr. lansdell had not drunk so much as one glassful of wine during the last four-and-twenty hours; but he would have been quite willing to admit himself a drunkard if that could have lessened the ridiculous element of his position--"in point of fact, i completely lost my head. i am very happy to think you are so nearly related to the lady i so much esteem; and if i can be of service to you in any manner, i----" "stop a bit," cried mr. sleaford the barrister,--"stop a bit! i thought i knew your voice. _you're_ the languid swell, who was so jolly knowing at the old bailey,--the languid swell who had nothing better to do than join the hunt against a poor devil that never cheated you out of sixpence. i said, if ever i came out of prison alive, _i'd kill you_; and i'll keep my promise." he hissed out these last words between his set teeth. his big muscular hands were fastened on roland lansdell's throat; and his face was pushed forward until it almost touched that other handsome face which defied him in the proud insolence of a moral courage that rose above all physical superiority. the broad bright moonlight streaming through a wide gap in the foliage fell full upon the two men; and in the dark face glowering at his, mr. lansdell recognized the man whom he had followed down to liverpool for the mere amusement of the chase,--the man described in the police records by a dozen aliases, and best known by his familiar sobriquet of "jack the scribe." "you dog!" cried mr. sleaford, "i've dreamt about such a meeting as this when i was working the pious dodge at portland. i've dreamt about it; and it did me good to feel my fingers at your throat, even in my dreams. you dog! i'll do for you, if i swing for this night's work." there was a struggle,--a brief and desperate struggle,--in which the two men wrestled with each other, and the chances of victory seemed uncertain. then mr. sleaford's bludgeon went whirling up into the air, and descended with a dull thud, once, twice, three times upon roland lansdell's bare head. after the third blow, jack the scribe loosed his grasp from the young man's throat, and the master of mordred priory fell crashing down among the fern and wild-flowers, with a shower of opal-tinted rose-petals fluttering about him as he fell. he lay very quietly where he had fallen. mr. sleaford looked about him right and left along the pleasant moon-lighted glade. there was not a living creature to be seen either way. the light behind the red curtain in the little rustic tavern still glimmered feebly in the distance; but the stillness of the place could scarcely have seemed more profound had nessborough hollow been a hidden glade in some primeval forest. jack the scribe knelt down beside the figure lying so quietly amongst the tangled verdure, and laid his strong bare hand very gently above mr. lansdell's waistcoat. "he'll do," muttered the scribe; "i've spoiled him for some time to come, anyhow. perhaps it's all for the best if i haven't gone too far." he rose from his knees, looked about him again, and assured himself of the perfect loneliness of the place. then he walked slowly towards the little inn. "a low blackguard would have taken the fellow's watch," he mused, "and got himself into trouble that way. what did he mean by flying at me about isabel, i wonder; and how does he come to know her? he belongs to this part of the country, i suppose. and to think that i should have been so near him all this time without knowing it. i knew his name, and that's about all i did know; but i thought he was a london swell." he pushed open the door of the little tavern presently--the door through which the slanting line of light had streamed out upon the pathway. all within was very quiet, for the rustic owners of the habitation had long since retired to their peaceful slumbers, leaving mr. sleaford what he called "the run of the house." they had grown very familiar with their lodger, and placed implicit confidence in him as a jolly outspoken fellow of the seafaring order; for these midlandshire rustics were not very keen to detect any small shortcomings in mr. sleaford's assumption of the mercantile mariner. he went into the room where the light was burning. it was the room which he had occupied during his residence at the leicester arms. he seated himself at the table, on which there were some writing materials, and scrawled a few lines to the effect that he found himself obliged to go away suddenly that night, on his way to liverpool, and that he left a couple of sovereigns, at a rough guess, to pay his score. he wrapped the money up in the letter, sealed it with a great sprawling red seal, directed it to the landlord, and placed it on a conspicuous corner of the mantel-piece. then he took off his boots, and crept softly up the creaking corkscrew staircase leading to his bedroom, with the candle in his hand. he came down-stairs again about ten minutes afterwards carrying a little valise, which he slung across his shoulder by a strap; then he took up his bludgeon and prepared to depart. but before leaving the room he bent over the table, and examined the heaviest end of his stick by the light of the candle. there was blood upon it, and a little tuft of dark hair, which he burned in the flame of the candle; and when he looked at his waistcoat he saw that there were splashes of blood on that and on his shirt. he held the end of the stick over the candle till it was all smoked and charred; he buttoned his cut-away coat over his chest, and then took a railway-rug from a chair in a corner and threw it across his shoulder. "it's an ugly sight to look at, that is," he muttered; "but i don't think i went too far." he went out at the little door, and into the glade, where a nightingale was singing high up amongst the clustering foliage, and where the air was filled with the faint perfume of honeysuckle and starry wild roses. once he looked, with something like terror in his face, towards the spot where he had left his prostrate enemy; and then he turned and walked away at a rapid pace in the other direction, crossing the rustic wooden bridge, and ascending the rising ground that led towards the briargate road. chapter xxxiv. retrospective. the parish surgeon lay in his darkened bedchamber at graybridge day after day and night after night, and mr. pawlkatt, coming twice a day to look at him, could give very small comfort to the watchers. george gilbert had been ill nearly a fortnight--not quite a fortnight--but it seemed now a common thing for the house to be hushed and darkened, and the once active master lying dull, heavy, and lethargic, under the shadow of the dimity bed-curtains. those who watched him lost all count of time. it seemed almost as if the surgeon had always been ill. it was difficult, somehow, to remember that not quite two weeks ago he had been one of the most active inhabitants of graybridge; it was still more difficult to imagine that he could ever again be what he had been. no patient, in the dull anguish of an obstinate fever, could have desired better or more devoted nurses than those who waited on george gilbert. to isabel this experience of a sick room was altogether a new thing. she had known her father to be laid up for the space of a day with a vague sort of ailment which he called "bile," but which generally arose after a dinner in london with certain choice spirits of his acquaintance, and a stealthy return to the sanctuary of his camberwell home in the chill grey glimmer of early morning. she had known her step-mother to complain perpetually of divers aches, and pains, and "stitches," and stiffness of her ribs and shoulder-blades and loins, and other complicated portions of her bony structure, and to throw out dismal prophecies to the effect that she would be worried into a premature grave by the breakage and waste of boys, and the general aggravation of a large family. but illness, a real and dangerous malady, with all its solemn accompaniments of hushed voices and darkness, and grave faces and stealthy footsteps, was quite new to the doctor's wife. if she had loved her sick husband with that romantic love which it had been her sin and her misfortune to bestow elsewhere, she could not have watched quietly in that darkened chamber. she would have fled away from the patient's presence to fling herself on the ground somewhere, wholly abandoned to her anguish. but she had never loved george gilbert; only that womanly tenderness, which was the chief attribute of her nature, that sympathetic affection for everything that was suffering or sorrowful, held her to the invalid's bedside. she was so sorry for him, and she was so horribly afraid that he would die. the thought that she might step across the darksome chasm of his grave into those fair regions inhabited by roland lansdell, could not hold a place in her heart. death, the terrible and the unfamiliar, stood a black and gaunt figure between her and all beyond the sick room. edith dombey and ernest maltravers were alike forgotten during those long days and nights in which the surgeon's rambling delirious talk only broke the silence. isabel gilbert's ever-active imagination was busy with more terrible images than any to be found in her books. the pictures of a funeral _cortège_ in the dusky lane, a yawning grave in the familiar churchyard, forced themselves upon her as she sat watching the black shadow of the perforated lantern that held the rushlight, looming gigantic on the whitewashed wall. and, thinking thus of that dark hour which might be before her, she thought much less of roland lansdell than in the days before her husband's illness. she was not a wicked woman; she was only very foolish. the thought that there was a handsome young country gentleman with a fine estate and fifteen thousand a year waiting to be her second husband, if death loosened her present bondage, could not have a place amongst those tender poetical dreams engendered out of her books. a woman of the world, hardened by worldly experience, might have sat in that dusky chamber watching the sick man, and brooding, half remorsefully, half impatiently, upon the thought of what might happen if his malady should have a fatal ending. but this poor sentimental girl, nourished upon the airiest fancies of poets and romancers, had no such loathsome thoughts. roland lansdell's wealth and position had never tempted her; it had only dazzled her; it had only seemed a bright and splendid atmosphere radiating from and belonging to the deity himself. if, in some dreamy rapture, she had ever fancied herself far away from all the common world, united to the man she loved, she had only pictured herself as a perpetual worshipper in white muslin, kneeling at the feet of her idol, with wild-flowers in her hair. the thought that he had fifteen thousand a year, and a superb estate, never disturbed by its gross influence her brighter dreams; it was not in her to be mercenary, or even ambitious. that yearning for splendour and glitter which had made her envious of edith dombey's fate was only a part of her vague longing for the beautiful; she wanted to be amongst beautiful things, made beautiful herself by their influence; but whether their splendour took the form of a boudoir in may fair all a-glow with wonderful pictures and parian statues, rare old china and tapestry hangings, or the floral luxuriance of a forest on the banks of the amazon, was of very little consequence to this sentimental young dreamer. if she could not be mrs. dombey, sublime in scornful indignation and ruby silk velvet, she would have been contented to be simple dorothea, washing her tired feet in the brook, with her hair about her shoulders. she only wanted the vague poetry of life, the mystic beauty of romance infused somehow into her existence; and she was as yet too young to understand that latent element of poetry which underlies the commonest life. in the meantime a very terrible trouble had come to her--the trouble occasioned by her father's presence in the neighbourhood of graybridge. never, until some days after his apprehension at liverpool, had mr. sleaford's wife and children known the nature of the profession by which the master of the house earned a fluctuating income,--enough for reckless extravagance sometimes, at others barely enough to keep the wolf from the door. this is not a sensation novel. i write here what i know to be the truth. jack the scribe's children were as innocently ignorant of their father's calling as if that gentleman had been indeed what he represented himself--a barrister. he went every day to his professional duties, and returned at night to his domestic hearth; he was a very tolerable father; a faithful, and not unkind husband; a genial companion amongst the sort of men with whom he associated. he had only that awkward little habit of forging other people's names; by which talent, exercised in conjunction with a gang whose cunningly-organized plan of operations won for them considerable celebrity, he had managed to bring up a numerous family in comparative comfort and respectability. if any one had been good enough to die and leave mr. sleaford a thousand a year, jack the scribe would have willingly laid down his pen and retired into respectability; but in the meantime he found it necessary to provide for himself and a hungry family; and having no choice between a clerk's place with a pound a week and the vaguely-glorious chances of a modern freebooter, he had joined the gang in question, to whom he was originally made known by some very pretty little amateur performances in the accommodation-bill line. never, until after his apprehension, had the truth been revealed to any one member of that camberwell household. long ago, when jack the scribe was a dashing young articled clerk, with bold black eyes and a handsome face,--long ago, when isabel was only a baby, the knowledge of a bill-discounting transaction which the clerk designated an awkward scrape, but which his employers declared to be a felony, had come suddenly upon mr. sleaford's first wife, and had broken her heart. but when the amateur artist developed into the accomplished professional, isabel's father learned the art of concealing the art. his sudden departure from camberwell, the huddling of the family into an islington lodging, and his subsequent flight to liverpool, were explained to his household as an attempt to escape an arrest for debt; and as angry creditors and sheriffs' officers had been but common intruders upon the peace of the household, there seemed nothing very unnatural in such a flight. it was only when mr. sleaford was safely lodged within the fatal walls of newgate, when the preliminary investigations of the great forgeries were published in every newspaper, that he communicated the real state of the case to his horror-stricken wife and children. there is little need to dwell upon the details of that most bitter time. people get over these sort of things somehow; and grief and shame are very rarely fatal, even to the most sensitive natures. "alas, sweet friend," says shelley's helen, "you must believe this heart is stone; it did not break!" there seems to be a good deal of the stony element in all our hearts, so seldom are the arrows of affliction fatal. to isabel the horror of being a forger's daughter was something very terrible; but even in its terror there was just the faintest flavour of romance: and if she could have smuggled her father out of newgate in a woman's cap and gown, like lady nithisdale, she might have forgiven him the crimes that had helped to make her a heroine. the boys, after the first shock of the revelation, took a very lenient view of their father's case, and were inclined to attribute his shortcomings to the tyranny and prejudice of society. "if a rich cove has a jolly lot of money in the bank, and poor coves are starving, the rich cove must expect to have it forged away from him," horace sleaford remarked, moodily, when debating the question of his father's guilt. nor did the hobbledehoy's sympathy end here; for he borrowed a dirty and dilapidated copy of mr. ainsworth's delightful romance from a circulating library, and minutely studied that gentleman's description of newgate in the days of jack sheppard, with a view to mr. sleaford's evasion of his jailers. it was not so very bad to bear, after all; for of course jack the scribe was not so imprudent as to make any admission of his guilt. he represented himself as the victim of circumstances, the innocent associate of wicked men, entrapped into the folly of signing other people's names by a conspiracy on the part of his companions. hardened as he was by the experiences of a long and doubtful career, he felt some natural shame; and he did all in his power to keep his wife and children dissociated from himself and his crimes. bitterly though the cynic may bewail the time-serving and mercenary nature of his race, a man can generally find some one to help him in the supreme crisis of his fate. mr. sleaford found friends, obscure and vulgar people, by whose assistance he was enabled to get his family out of the way before his trial came on at the old bailey. the boys, ever athirst for information of the jack-sheppard order, perused the daily record of that old bailey ordeal by stealth in the attic where they slept; but isabel saw nothing of the newspapers, which set forth the story of her father's guilt, and only knew at the last, when all was decided, what mr. sleaford's fate was to be. thus it was that she never saw mr. lansdell's name amongst those of the witnesses against her father; and even if she had seen that name, it is doubtful whether it would have lived in her memory until the day when she met the master of mordred priory. no language can describe the horror that she felt on her father's sudden appearance in midlandshire. utterly ignorant of the practices of prison life, and the privileges of a ticket-of-leave, she had regarded mr. sleaford's dismal habitation as a kind of tomb in which he was to be buried alive for the full term of his imprisonment. vaguely and afar off she saw the shadow of danger to roland, in the ultimate release of his enemy; but the shadow seemed so very far away, that after the first shock of mr. lansdell's story, it had almost faded from her mind, blotted out by nearer joys and sorrows. it was only when her father stood before her, fierce and exacting, hardened and brutalized by prison-life, a wretch for ever at war with the laws he had outraged,--it was only then that the full measure of roland lansdell's danger was revealed to her. "if ever i come out of prison alive, i will kill you!" never had she forgotten the words of that threat. but she might hope that it was only an empty threat, the harmless thunder of a moment's passion; not a deliberate promise, to be fulfilled whenever the chance of its fulfilment arose. she did hope this; and in her first stolen interview with her father, she led him to talk of his trial, and contrived to ascertain his present sentiments regarding the man who had so materially helped to convict him. the dusky shadows of the summer evening hid the pallor of her earnest face, as she walked by mr. sleaford's side in the sheltered hollow; and that gentleman was too much absorbed by the sense of his own wrongs to be very observant of his daughter's agitation. isabel gilbert heard enough during that interview to convince her that roland lansdell's danger was very real and near. mr. sleaford's vengeful passions had fed and battened upon the solitude of the past years. every privation and hardship endured in his prison life had been a fresh item in his long indictment against mr. lansdell, the "languid swell," whom he had never wronged to the extent of a halfpenny, but who, for the mere amusement of the chase, had hunted him down. this was what he could not forgive. he _could not_ recognize the right of an amateur detective, who bore witness against a criminal for the general benefit of society. after this first meeting in nessborough hollow, the doctor's wife had but one thought, one purpose and desire; and that was, to keep her father in ignorance of his enemy's near neighbourhood, and to get him away before mischief arose between the two men. but this was not such an easy matter. mr. sleaford refused to leave his quarters at the leicester arms until he obtained that which he had come to midlandshire to seek--money enough for a new start in life. he had made his way to jersey immediately after getting his release, and had there seen his wife and the boys. from them he heard of isabel's marriage. she had married well, they said: a doctor at a place called graybridge-on-the -wayverne--an important man, no doubt; and she had not been unkind to them upon the whole, writing nice long letters to her step-mother now and then, and sending post-office orders for occasional sovereigns. heaven only knows with what difficulty the poor girl had contrived to save those occasional sovereigns. mr. sleaford demanded money of his daughter. he had made all manner of inquiries about george gilbert's position, and had received very satisfactory answers to those inquiries. the young doctor was a "warm" man, the gossips in the little parlour at the leicester arms told jack the scribe; a prudent young man, who had inherited a nice little nest-egg--perpetually being hatched at a moderate rate of interest in the wareham bank--from his father, and had saved money himself, no doubt. and then the gossips entered into calculations as to the value of mr. gilbert's practice, and the simple eeonomy of his domestic arrangements; all favourable to the idea that the young surgeon had a few thousands snugly invested in the county bank. under these circumstances, mr. sleaford considered himself entirely justified in standing out for what he called his rights, namely, a sum of money--say fifty or a hundred pounds--from his daughter; and isabel, with the thought of roland's danger perpetually in her mind, felt that the money must be obtained at any price. had her husband been well enough to talk of business matters, she might have made her appeal to him; but as it was, there was an easier and more speedy method of getting the money. roland, roland himself, who was rich, and to whom fifty pounds,--large as the sum seemed to this girl, who had never had an unbroken ten-pound note in her life,--must be a very small matter; he was the only person who could give her immediate help. it was to him therefore she appealed. ah, with what bitter shame and anguish! and it was to deliver up the money thus obtained that she met her father in nessborough hollow on the night of that dismal dinner at lowlands. the idea of telling roland of his danger never for a moment entered her mind. was he not a hero, and would he not inevitably have courted that or any other peril? she thought of his position with all a weak woman's illogical terror; and the only course that presented itself to her mind was that which she pursued. she wanted to get her father away before any chance allusion upon a stranger's lips told him that the man he so bitterly hated was within his reach. chapter xxxv. "'twere best at once to sink to peace." after that farewell meeting with mr. sleaford in nessborough hollow, a sense of peace came upon isabel gilbert. she had questioned her father about his plans, and he had told her that he should leave midlandshire by the seven o'clock train from wareham on the following morning. he should be heartily rejoiced to get to london, he said, and to leave a place where he felt like a fox in a hole. the sentimental element was by no means powerfully developed in the nature of jack the scribe, to whom the crowded pavements of fleet street and the strand were infinitely more agreeable than the wild roses and branching fern of midlandshire. his daughter slept tranquilly that night for the first time after mr. sleaford's appearance before the surgeon's door. she slept in peace, worn out by the fatigue and anxiety of the last fortnight; and no evil dream disturbed her slumbers. the odic forces must be worth very little after all, for there was no consciousness in the sleeper's mind of that quiet figure lying among the broken fern; no shadow, however dim, of the scene that had been enacted in the tranquil, summer moonlight, while she was hurrying homeward through the dewy lanes, triumphant in the thought that her difficult task was accomplished. only once in a century does the vision of maria martin appear to an anxious dreamer; only so often as to shake the formal boundary-wall of common sense which we have so rigidly erected between the visible and invisible, and to show us that there are more things in heaven and earth than our dull philosophy is prepared to recognize. isabel woke upon the morning after that interview in the hollow, with a feeling of relief still in her mind. her father was gone, and all was well. he was not likely to return; for she had told him, with most solemn protestations, that she had obtained the money with extreme difficulty, and would never be able to obtain more. she had told him this, and he had promised never again to assail her with any demands. it was a very easy thing for jack the scribe to make that or any other promise; but even if he broke his word, isabel thought, there was every chance that roland lansdell would leave midlandshire very speedily, and become once more an alien and a wanderer. the doctor's wife was at peace, therefore; the dreadful terror of the past fortnight was lifted away from her mind, and she was prepared to do her duty; to be true to mr. colborne's solemn teaching, and to watch dutifully, undistracted by any secret fear and anguish, by george gilbert's sick bed. very dismal faces greeted her beside that bed. mr. jeffson never left his post now at the pillow of his young master. the weeds grew unheeded in the garden; and brown molly missed her customary grooming. the gardener had thrown half a load of straw in the lane, below the doctor's window, so that no rumbling of the waggon-wheels carrying home the new-mown hay should disturb george gilbert's feverish sleep, if the brief fitful dozes into which he fell now and then could be called by so sweet a name. mr. pawlkatt sat looking at his patient longer than usual that morning. george gilbert lay in a kind of stupor, and did not recognize his medical attendant, and sometime rival. he had long since ceased to be anxious about his poor patients in the lanes behind the church, or about anything else upon this earth, as it seemed; and now that her great terror had been lifted from her mind, isabel saw a new and formless horror gliding swiftly towards her, like a great iceberg sailing fast upon an arctic sea. she followed mr. pawlkatt out of the room, and down the little staircase, and clung to his arm as he was about to leave her. "oh, do you think he will die?" she said. "i did not know until this morning that he was so very ill. do you think he will die?" the surgeon looked inquisitively into the earnest face lifted to his--looked with some expression of surprise upon his countenance. "i am very anxious, mrs. gilbert," he answered, gravely. "i will not conceal from you that i am growing very anxious. the pulse is feeble and intermittent; and these low fevers--there, there, don't cry. i'll drive over to wareham, as soon as i've seen the most important of my cases; and i'll ask dr. herstett to come and look at your husband. pray try to be calm." "i am so frightened," murmured isabel, between her low half-stifled sobs. "i never saw any one ill--like that--before." mr. pawlkatt watched her gravely as he drew on his gloves. "i am not sorry to see this anxiety on your part, mrs. gilbert," he remarked sententiously. "as the friend and brother-professional of your husband, and as a man who is--ahem!--old enough to be your father, i will go so far as to say that i am gratified to find that you--i may say, your heart is in the right place. there have been some very awkward reports about you, mrs. gilbert, during the last few days. i--i--of course should not presume to allude to those reports, if i did not believe them to be erroneous," the surgeon added, rather hastily, not feeling exactly secure as to the extent and bearing of the law of libel. but isabel only looked at him with bewilderment and distress in her face. "reports about me!" she repeated. "what reports?" "there has been a person--a stranger--staying at a little inn down in nessborough hollow; and you,--in fact, i really have no right to interfere in this matter, but my very great respect for your husband,-and, in short----" "oh, that person is gone now," isabel answered frankly. "it was very unkind of people to say anything against him, or against me. he was a relation,--a very near relation,--and i could not do otherwise than see him now and then while he was in the neighbourhood. i went late in the evening, because i did not wish to leave my husband at any other time. i did not think that the graybridge people watched me so closely, or were so ready to think that what i do must be wrong." mr. pawlkatt patted her hand soothingly. "a relation, my dear mrs. gilbert?" he exclaimed. "that, of course, quite alters the case. i always said that you were no doubt perfectly justified in doing as you did; though it would have been better to invite the person here. country people will talk, you know. as a medical man, with rather a large field of experience, i see all these little provincial weaknesses. they will talk; but keep up your courage, mrs. gilbert. we shall do our best for our poor friend. we shall do our very best." he gave isabel's tremulous hand a little reassuring squeeze, and departed complacently. the doctor's wife stood absently watching him as he walked away, and then turned and went slowly into the parlour--the empty, miserable-looking parlour, which had not been used now for more than a week. the dust lay thick upon the shabby old furniture, and the atmosphere was hot and oppressive. here isabel sat down beside the chiffonier, where her poor little collection of books was huddled untidily in a dusty corner. she sat down to think--trying to realize the nature of that terror which seemed so close to her, trying to understand the full significance of what mr. pawlkatt had said of her husband. the surgeon had given no hope that george gilbert would recover; he had only made little conventional speeches about calmness and fortitude. she tried to think, but could not. she had only spoken the truth just now, when she cried out that she was frightened. this kind of terror was so utterly new to her that she could not understand the calm business-like aspect of the people who watched and waited on her husband. could he be dying? that strong active man, whose rude health and hearty appetite had once jarred so harshly upon all her schoolgirl notions of consumptive and blood-vessel-breaking heroes! could he be dying?--dying as heroic a death as any she had ever read of in her novels: the death of a man who speculates his life for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and loses by the venture. the memory of every wrong that she had ever done him--small wrongs of neglect, or contemptuous opinions regarding his merits--wrongs that had been quite impalpable to the honest unromantic doctor,--crowded upon her now, and made a dull remorseful anguish in her breast. the dark shadow brooding over george gilbert--the dread gigantic shadow, growing darker day by day--made him a new creature in the mind of this weak girl. no thought of her own position had any place in her mind. she could not think; she could only wait, oppressed by a dread whose nature she dared not realize. she sat for a long time in the same forlornly listless attitude, almost as helpless as the man who lay in the darkened chamber above her. then, rousing herself with effort, she crept up-stairs to the room where the grave faces of the watchers greeted her, with very little sympathy in their gaze. had not mr. and mrs. jeffson heard the reports current in graybridge; and was it likely they could have any pity for a woman who crept stealthily at nightfall from her invalid husband's house to meet a stranger? isabel would have whispered some anxious question about the patient; but matilda jeffson frowned sternly at her, commanding silence with an imperious forefinger; and she was fain to creep into a dark corner, where it had been her habit to sit since the jeffsons had, in a manner, taken possession of her husband's sick bed. she could not dispute their right to do so. what was she but a frivolous, helpless creature, fluttering and trembling like a leaf when she essayed to do any little service for the invalid? the day seemed painfully long. the ticking of an old clock on the stairs, and the heavy troubled breathing of the sick man, were the only sounds that broke the painful silence of the house. once or twice isabel took an open testament from a little table near her, and tried to take some comfort from its pages. but she could not feel the beauty of the words as she had in the little church at hurstonleigh, when her mind had been exalted by all manner of vague spiritualistic yearnings; now it seemed deadened by the sense of dread and horror. she did not love her husband; and those tidings of heavenly love which have so subtle an affinity with earthly affection could not touch her very nearly in her present frame of mind. she did not love her husband well enough to pray that something little short of a miracle might be wrought for his sake. she was only sorry for him; tenderly compassionate of his suffering; very fearful that he might die. she did pray for him; but there was no exaltation in her prayers, and she had a dull presentiment that her supplications would not be answered. it was late in the afternoon when the physician from wareham came with mr. pawlkatt; and when he did arrive, he seemed to do very little, isabel thought. he was a grey-whiskered important-looking man, with creaking boots; he seated himself by the bedside, and felt the patient's pulse, and listened to his breathing, and lifted his heavy eyelids, and peered into his dim blood-shot eyes. he asked a good many questions, and then went down-stairs with mr. pawlkatt, and the two medical men were closeted together some ten or twelve minutes in the little parlour. isabel did not follow mr. pawlkatt down-stairs this time. she was awed by the presence of the strange physician, and there was nothing in the manner of the two men that inspired hope or comfort. she sat quite still in her dusky corner; but mrs. jeffson stole out of the room soon after the medical men had quitted it, and went slowly down-stairs. george was asleep; in a very sound and heavy sleep this time; and his breathing was more regular than it had been--more regular, but still a laboured stertorous kind of respiration that was very painful to hear. in less than ten minutes mrs. jeffson came back, looking very pale, and with traces of tears upon her face. the good woman had been listening to the medical consultation in the little parlour below. perhaps isabel dimly comprehended this; for she got up from her chair, and went a little way towards her husband's housekeeper. "oh, tell me the truth," she whispered, imploringly; "do they think that he will die?" "yes," matilda jeffson answered, in a hard cruel voice, strangely at variance with her stifled sobs, "yes, mrs. gilbert; and you'll be free to take your pleasure, and to meet mr. lansdell as often as you like; and go gadding about after dark with strange men. you might have waited a bit, mrs. gilbert; you wouldn't have had to wait very long--for they say my poor dear master--and i had him in my arms the day he was born, so i've need to love him dearly, even if others haven't!--i heard the doctor from wareham tell mr. pawlkatt that he will never live to see to-morrow morning's light. so you might have waited, mrs. gilbert; but you're a wicked woman and a wicked wife!" but just at this moment the sick man started suddenly from his sleep, and lifted himself into a sitting position. mr. jeffson's arm was about him directly, supporting the wasted figure that had very lately been so strong. george gilbert had heard matilda's last words, for he repeated them in a thick strange voice, but with sufficient distinctness. it was a surprise to those who nursed him to hear him speak reasonably, for it was some time since he had been conscious of passing events. "wicked! no! no!" he said. "always a good wife; always a very good wife! come, izzie; come here. i'm afraid it has been a dull life, my dear," he said very gently, as she came to him, clinging to him, and looking at him with a white scared face,--"dull--very dull; but it wouldn't have been always so. i thought--by-and-by to--new practice--helmswell--market-town--seven thousand inhabitants--and you--drive--pony-carriage, like laura pawlkatt--but--the lord's will be done, my dear!--i hope i've done my duty--the poor people--better rooms--ventilation--please god, by-and-by. i've seen a great deal of suffering--and--my duty----" he slid heavily back upon william jeffson's supporting arm; and a rain of tears--passionate remorseful tears never to be felt by him--fell on his pallid face. his death was very sudden, though his illness had been, considering the nature of his disease, a long and tedious one. he died supremely peaceful in the consciousness of having done his duty. he died, with isabel's hand clasped in his own; and never, throughout his simple life, had one pang of doubt or jealousy tortured his breast. chapter xxxvi. between two worlds. a solemn calm came down upon the house at graybridge, and for the first time isabel gilbert felt the presence of death about and around her, shutting out all the living world by its freezing influence. the great iceberg had come down upon the poor frail barque. it almost seemed to isabel as if she and all in that quiet habitation had been encompassed by a frozen wall, through which the living could not penetrate. she suffered very much; the morbid sensibility of her nature made her especially liable to such suffering. a dull, remorseful pain gnawed at her heart. ah, how wicked she had been! how false, how cruel, how ungrateful! but if she had known that he was to die--if she had only known--it might all have been different. the foreknowledge of his doom would have insured her truth and tenderness; she could not have wronged, even by so much as a thought, a husband whose days were numbered. and amid all her remorse she was for ever labouring with the one grand difficulty--the difficulty of realizing what had happened. she had needed the doctor's solemn assurance that her husband was really dead before she could bring herself to believe that the white swoon, the chill heaviness of the passive hand, did indeed mean death. and even when she had been told that all was over, the words seemed to have very little influence upon her mind. it could not be! all the last fortnight of anxiety and trouble was blotted out, and she could only think of george gilbert as she had always known him until that time, in the full vigour of health and strength. she was very sorrowful; but no passionate grief stirred her frozen breast. it was the shock, the sense of horror that oppressed her, rather than any consciousness of a great loss. she would have called her husband back to life; but chiefly because it was so horrible to her to know that he was there--near her--what he was. once the thought came to her--the weak selfish thought--that it would have been much easier for her to bear this calamity if her husband had gone away, far away from her, and only a letter had come to tell her that he was dead. she fancied herself receiving the letter, and wondering at its black-edged border. the shock would have been very dreadful; but not so horrible as the knowledge that george gilbert was in that house, and yet there was no george gilbert. again and again her mind went over the same beaten track; again and again the full realization of what had happened slipped away from her, and she found herself framing little speeches--penitent, remorseful speeches--expressive of her contrition for all past shortcomings. and then there suddenly flashed back upon her the too vivid picture of that deathbed scene, and she heard the dull thick voice murmuring feebly words of love and praise. in all this time roland lansdell's image was shut out of her mind. in the dense and terrible shadow that filled all the chambers of her brain, that bright and splendid figure could have no place. she thought of mr. colborne at hurstonleigh now and then, and felt a vague yearning for his presence. he might have been able to comfort her perhaps, somehow; he might have made it easier for her to bear the knowledge of that dreadful presence in the room up-stairs. she tried once or twice to read some of the chapters that had seemed so beautiful on the lips of the popular curate; but even out of that holy volume dark and ghastly images arose to terrify her, and she saw lazarus emerging from the tomb livid in his grave-clothes: and death and horror seemed to be everywhere and in everything. after the first burst of passionate grief, bitterly intermingled with indignation against the woman whom she believed to have been a wicked and neglectful wife, matilda jeffson was not ungentle to the terror-stricken girl so newly made a widow. she took a cup of scalding tea into the darkened parlour where isabel sat, shivering every now and then as if with cold, and persuaded the poor frightened creature to take a little of that comforting beverage. she wiped away her own tears with her apron while she talked to isabel of patience and resignation, submission to the will of providence, and all those comforting theories which are very sweet to the faithful mourner, even when the night-time of affliction is darkest. but isabel was not a religious woman. she was a child again, weak and frivolous, frightened by the awful visitant who had so newly entered that house. all through the evening of her husband's death she sat in the little parlour, sometimes trying to read a little, sometimes idly staring at the tall wick of the tallow-candle, which was only snuffed once in a way--when mrs. jeffson came into the room "to keep the scared creature company for a bit," she said to her husband, who sat by the kitchen fire with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands, brooding over those bygone days when he had been wont to fetch his master's son from that commercial academy in the wareham road. there was a good deal of going in and out, a perpetual tramp of hushed footsteps moving to and fro, as it seemed to isabel; and mrs. jeffson, even in the midst of her grief, appeared full of some kind of business that kept her astir all the evening. the doctor's wife had imagined that all voice and motion must come to an end--that life itself must make a pause--in a house where death was. others might feel a far keener grief for the man that was gone; but no one felt so deep an awe of death as she did. mrs. jeffson brought her some supper on a little tray late in the evening; but she pushed it away from her and burst into tears. there seemed a kind of sacrilege in this carrying in and out of food and drink while he lay up-stairs; he whose hat still hung in the passage without, whose papers and ink-bottles and medical books were all primly arranged on one of the little vulgar cupboards by the fireplace. ah, how often she had hated those medical books for being what they were, instead of editions of "zanoni" and "ernest maltravers!" and it seemed wicked even to have thought unkindly of them, now that he to whom they belonged was dead. it was quite in vain that mrs. jeffson urged her to go up-stairs to the room opposite that in which the surgeon lay; it was quite as vainly that the good woman entreated her to go and look at him, now that he was lying so peacefully in the newly-arranged chamber, to lay her hand on his marble forehead, so that no shadow of him should trouble her in her sleep. the girl only shook her head forlornly. "i'm afraid," she said, piteously--"i'm afraid of that room. i never thought that he would die. i know that i wasn't good. it was wicked to think of other people always, and not of him; but i never thought that he would die. i knew that he was good to me; and i tried to obey him: but i think i should have been different if i had known that he would die." she pulled out the little table-drawer where the worsted socks were rolled up in fluffy balls, with needles sticking out of them here and there. even these were a kind of evidence of her neglect. she had cobbled them a little during the later period of her married life,--during the time of her endeavour to be good,--but she had not finished this work or any other. ah, what a poor creature she was, after all!--a creature of feeble resolutions, formed only to be broken; a weak vacillating creature, full of misty yearnings and aspirings--resolving nobly in one moment, to yield sinfully in the next. she begged to be allowed to spend the night down-stairs on the rickety little sofa; and mrs. jeffson, seeing that she was really oppressed by some childish terror of that upper story, brought her some blankets and pillows, and a feeble little light that was to burn until daybreak. so in that familiar room, whose every scrap of shabby furniture had been a part of the monotony of her life, isabel gilbert spent the first night of her widowhood, lying on the little sofa, nervously conscious of every sound in the house; feverishly wakeful until long after the morning sun was shining through the yellow-white blind, when she fell into an uneasy doze, in which she dreamt that her husband was alive and well. she did not arouse herself out of this, and yet she was never thoroughly asleep throughout the time, until after ten o'clock; and then she found mrs. jeffson sitting near the little table, on which the inevitable cup of tea was smoking beside a plate of the clumsy kind of bread-and-butter inseparably identified with george gilbert in isabel's mind. "there's somebody wants to see you, if you're well enough to be spoken to, my dear," matilda said, very gently; for she had been considerably moved by mrs. gilbert's penitent little confession of her shortcomings as a wife; and was inclined to think that perhaps, after all, graybridge had judged this helpless schoolgirl creature rather harshly. "take the tea, my dear; i made it strong on purpose for you; and try and cheer up a bit, poor lassie; you're young to wear widow's weeds; but he was fit to go. if all of us had worked as hard for the good of other folks, we could afford to die as peaceful as he did." isabel pushed the heavy tangled hair away from her pallid face, and pursed-up her pale lips to kiss the yorkshire-woman. "you're very kind to me," she said; "you used to think that i was wicked, i know; and then you seemed very unkind. but i always wished to be good. i should like to have been good, and to die young, like george's mother." it is to be observed that, with isabel's ideal of goodness there was always the association of early death. she had a vague idea that very religious and self-denying people got through their quota of piety with tolerable speed, and received their appointed reward. as yet her notions of self-sacrifice were very limited; and she could scarcely have conceived a long career of perfection. she thought of nuns as creatures who bade farewell to the world, and had all their back-hair cut off, and retired into a convent, and died soon afterwards, while they were still young and interesting. she could not have imagined an elderly nun, with all a long monotonous life of self-abnegation behind her, getting up at four o'clock every morning, and being as bright and vivacious and cheerful as any happy wife or mother outside the convent-walls. yet there are such people. * * * * * mrs. gilbert took a little of the hot tea, and then sat quite still, with her head lying on matilda jeffson's shoulder, and her hand clasped in matilda's rough fingers. that living clasp seemed to impart a kind of comfort, so terribly had death entered into isabel's narrow world. "do you think you shall be well enough to see him presently, poor lassie?" mrs. jeffson said, after a long silence. "i shouldn't ask you, only he seems anxious-like, as if there was something particular on his mind; and i know he's been very kind to you." isabel stared at her in bewilderment. "i don't know who you are talking of," she said. "it's mr. raymond, from coventford! it's early for him to be so far as graybridge; but he looks as pale and worn-like as if he'd been up and about all night. he was all struck of a heap-like when i told him about our poor master." here mrs. jeffson had recourse to the cotton apron which had been so frequently applied to her eyes during the last week. isabel huddled a shabby little shawl about her shoulders; she had made no change in her dress when she had lain down the night before; and she was very pale and wan, and tumbled and woebegone, in the bright summer light. "mr. raymond! mr. raymond!" she repeated his name to herself once or twice, and made a faint effort to understand why he should have come to her. he had always been very kind to her, and associated with his image there was a sense of sound wisdom and vigorous cheerfulness of spirit. his presence would bring some comfort to her, she thought. next to mr. colborne, he was the person whom she would most have desired to see. "i will go to him, mrs. jeffson," she said, rising slowly from the sofa. "he was always very good to me. but, oh, how the sight of him will bring back the time at conventford, when george used to come and see me on sunday afternoons, and we used to walk together in the cold bare meadows!" that time did come back to her as she spoke: a grey colourless pause in her life, in which she had been--not happy, perhaps, but contented. and since that time what tropical splendors, what a gorgeous oasis of light and colour had spread itself suddenly about her path! a forest of miraculous flowers and enchanted foliage that had shut out all the every-day world in which other people dragged out their tiresome existences--a wonderful asiatic wilderness, in which there were hidden dangers lurking, terrible as the cobras that drop down upon the traveller from some flowering palm-tree, or the brindled tigers that prowl in the shadowy jungle. she looked back across that glimpse of an earthly paradise to the old dull days at conventford; and a hot blast from the tropical oasis seemed to rush in upon her, beyond which the past spread far away like a cool grey sea. perhaps that quiet neutral-tinted life was the best, after all. she saw herself again as she had been; "engaged" to the man who lay dead up-stairs; and weaving a poor little web of romance for herself even out of that prosaic situation. mr. raymond was waiting in the best parlour,--that sacred chamber, which had been so rarely used during the parish surgeon's brief wedded life,--that primly-arranged little sitting-room, which always had a faint odour of old-fashioned _pot pourri_; the room which isabel had once yearned to beautify into a bower of chintz and muslin. the blind was down, and the shutters half-closed; and in the dim light charles raymond looked very pale. "my dear mrs. gilbert," he said, taking her hand, and leading her to a seat; "my poor child,--so little more than a child,--so little wiser or stronger than a child,--it seems cruel to come to you at such a time; but life is very hard sometimes----" "it was very kind of you to come," isabel exclaimed, interrupting him. "i wanted to see you, or some one like you; for everything seems so dreadful to me. i never thought that he would die." she began to cry, in a weary helpless way, not like a person moved by some bitter grief; rather like a child that finds itself in a strange place and is frightened. "my poor child, my poor child!" charles raymond still held isabel's passive hand, and she felt tears dropping on it; the tears of a man, of all others the last to give way to any sentimental weakness. but even then she did not divine that he must have some grief of his own--some sorrow that touched him more nearly than george gilbert's death could possibly touch him. her state of feeling just now was a peculiarly selfish state, perhaps; for she could neither understand nor imagine anything outside that darkened house, where death was supreme. the shock had been too terrible and too recent. it was as if an earthquake had taken place, and all the atmosphere round her was thick with clouds of blinding dust produced by the concussion. she felt mr. raymond's tears dropping slowly on her hand; and if she thought about them at all, she thought them only the evidence of his sympathy with her childish fears and sorrows. "i loved him like my own son," murmured charles raymond, in a low tender voice. "if he had not been what he was,--if he had been the veriest cub that ever disgraced a good old stock,--i think even then i should have loved him as dearly and as truly, for her sake. her only son! i've seen him look at me as she looked when i kissed her in the church on her wedding-day. so long as he lived, i should have never felt that she was really lost to me." isabel heard nothing of these broken sentences. mr. raymond uttered them in low musing tones, that were not intended to reach any mortal ears. for some little time he sat silently by the girl's side, with her hand still lying in his; then he rose and walked up and down the room with a soft slow step, and with his head drooping. "you have been very much shocked by your husband's death?" he said at last. isabel began to cry again at this question,--weak hysterical tears, that meant very little, perhaps. "oh, very, very much," she answered. "i know i was not so good as i ought to have been; and i can never ask him to forgive me now." "you were very fond of him, i suppose?" a faint blush flickered and faded upon isabel's pallid face; and then she answered, hesitating a little,---- "he was very good to me, and i--i tried always to be grateful--almost always," she added, with a remorseful recollection of rebellious moments in which she had hated her husband because he ate spring-onions, and wore graybridge-made boots. just the slightest indication of a smile glimmered upon mr. raymond's countenance as he watched isabel's embarrassment. we are such weak and unstable creatures at the very best, that it is just possible this man, who loved roland lansdell very dearly, was not entirely grieved by the discovery of isabel's indifference for her dead husband. he went back to the chair near hers, and seated himself once more by her side. he began to speak to her in a very low earnest voice; but he kept his eyes bent upon the ground; and in that dusky light she was quite unable to see the expression of his face. "isabel," he began, very gravely, "i said just now that life seems very hard to us sometimes,--not to be explained by any doctrine of averages, by any of the codes of philosophy which man frames for his own comfort; only to be understood very dimly by one sublime theory, which some of us are not strong mough to grasp and hold by. ah, what poor tempest-tossed vessels we are without that compass! i have had a great and bitter grief to bear within the last four-and-twenty hours, isabel; a sorrow that has come upon me more suddenly than even the shock of your husband's death can have fallen on you." "i am very sorry for you," isabel answered, dreamily; "the world must be full of trouble, i think. it doesn't seem as if any one was ever really happy." she was thinking of her own life, so long to look back upon, though she was little more than twenty years of age; she was thinking of the petty sordid miseries of her girlhood,--the sheriff's officers and tax-gatherers, and infuriated tradespeople,--the great shock of her father's disgrace; the dull monotony of her married life; and roland lansdell's sudden departure; and his stubborn anger against her when she refused to run away with him; and then her husband's death. it seemed all one dreary record of grief and trouble. "i am growing old. isabel," resumed mr. raymond; "but i have never lost my sympathy with youth and all its brightness. i think, perhaps, that sympathy has grown wider and stronger with increase of years. there is one young man who has been always very dear to me--more dear to me than i can ever make you comprehend, unless i were to tell you the subtle link that has bound him to me. i suppose there are some fathers who have as deep a love for their sons as i have for the man of whom i speak; but i have always fancied fatherly love a very lukewarm feeling compared with my affection for roland lansdell." roland lansdell! it was the first time she had heard his name spoken since that sunday on which her husband's illness had begun. the name shot through her heart with a thrill that was nearly akin to pain. a little glimpse of lurid sunshine burst suddenly in upon the darkness of her life. she clasped her hands before her face almost as if it had been actual light that she wanted to shut out. "oh, don't speak of him!" she said, piteously. "i was so wicked; i thought of him so much; but i did not know that my husband would die. please don't speak of him; it pains me so to hear his name." she broke down into a torrent of hysterical weeping as she uttered this last entreaty. she remembered roland's angry face in the church; his studied courtesy during that midnight interview at the priory, the calm reserve of manner which she had mistaken for indifference. he was nothing to her; he was not even her friend; and she had sinned so deeply against the dead man for his sake. "i should be the last to mention roland lansdell's name in your hearing," mr. raymond answered presently, when she had grown a little quieter, "if the events of the last day or two had not broken down all barriers. the time is very near at hand, isabel, when no name ever spoken upon this earth will be an emptier sound than the name of roland lansdell." she lifted her tear-stained face suddenly and looked at him. all the clouds floated away, and a dreadful light broke in upon her; she looked at him, trembling from head to foot, with her hands clasped convulsively about his arm. "you came here to tell me something!" she gasped; "something has happened--to him! ah, if it has, life is _all_ sorrow!" "he is dying, isabel." "dying!" her lips shaped the words, and her fixed eyes stared at charles raymond's face with an awful look. "he is dying. it would be foolish to deceive you with any false hope, when in four-and-twenty hours' time all will be finished. he went out--riding--the other night, and fell from his horse, as it is supposed. he was found by some haymakers early the next morning, lying helpless, some miles from the priory, and was carried home. the medical men give no hope of his recovery; but he has been sensible at intervals ever since. i have been a great deal with him--constantly with him; and his cousin gwendoline is there. he wants to see you, isabel; of course he knows nothing of your husband's death; i did not know of it myself till i came here this morning. he wants to see you, my poor child. do you think you can come?" she rose and bent her head slowly as if in assent, but the fixed look of horror never left her face. she moved towards the door, and seemed as if she wanted to go at once--dressed as she was, with the old faded shawl wrapped about her. "you'd better get your housekeeper to make you comfortable and tidy, while i go and engage a fly," said mr. raymond; and then looking her full in the face, he added, "can you promise me to be very calm and quiet when you see him? you had better not come unless you can promise me as much as that. his hours are numbered, as it is; but any violent emotion would be immediately fatal. a man's last hours are very precious to him, remember; the hours of a man who knows his end is near make a sacred mystical period in which the world drops far away from him, and he is in a kind of middle region between this life and the next. i want you to recollect this, isabel. the man you are going to see is not the man you have known in the past. there would be very little hope for us after death, if we found no hallowing influence in its approach." "i will recollect," isabel answered. she had shed no tears since she had been told of roland's danger. perhaps this new and most terrible shock had nerved her with an unnatural strength. and amid all the anguish comprehended in the thought of his death, it scarcely seemed strange to her that roland lansdell should be dying. it seemed rather as if the end of the world had suddenly come about; and it mattered very little who should be the first to perish. her own turn would come very soon, no doubt. mr. raymond met mrs. jeffson in the passage, and said a few words to her before he went out of the house. the good woman was shocked at the tidings of mr. lansdell's accident. she had thought very badly of the elegant young master of mordred priory; but death and sorrow take the bitterness out of a true-hearted woman's feelings, and matilda was womanly enough to forgive roland for the wish that summoned the doctor's wife to his deathbed. she went up-stairs, and came down with isabel's bonnet and cloak and simple toilet paraphernalia; and presently mrs. gilbert had a consciousness of cold water splashed upon her face, and a brush passed over her tangled hair. she felt only half conscious of these things, as she might have felt had they been the events of a dream. so presently, when mr. raymond came back, accompanied by the muffled rolling of wheels in the straw-bestrewn lane, and she was half lifted into the old-fashioned, mouldy-smelling graybridge fly,--so all along the familiar high-road, past the old inn with the sloping roof, where the pigeons were cooing to each other, as if there had been no such thing as death or sorrow in the world,--so under the grand gothic gates of monastic mordred, it was all like a dream--a terrible oppressive dream--hideous by reason of some vague sense of horror rather than by the actual vision presented to the eyes of the sleeper. in a troubled dream it is always thus,--it is always a hidden, intangible something that oppresses the dreamer. the leaves were fluttering in the warm midsummer wind, and the bees were humming about the great flower-beds. far away the noise of the waterfall blended with all other summer sounds in a sweet confusion. and he was dying! oh, what wonderful patches of shadow and sunlight on the wide lawns! what marvellous glimpses down long glades, where the young fern heaved to and fro in the fitful breezes like the emerald wavelets of a summer sea! and he was dying! it is such an old, old feeling, this unwillingness to comprehend that there can be death anywhere upon an earth that is so beautiful. eve may have felt very much as isabel felt to-day, when she saw a tropical sky, serenely splendid, above the corpse of murdered abel. hero may have found the purple distances of the classic mountains, the yellow glory of the sunlit sands, almost more difficult to bear than the loss of her drowned lover. there was the same solemn hush at mordred priory that there had been in the surgeon's house at graybridge; only there seemed a deeper solemnity here amid all the darkened splendour of the spacious rooms, stretching far away, one beyond another, like the chambers of a palace. isabel saw the long vista, not as she had seen it once, when _he_ came into the hall to bid her welcome, but with the haunting dreamlike oppression strong upon her. she saw little glimmering patches of gilding and colour here and there in the cool gloom of the shaded rooms, and long bars of light shining through the venetian shutters upon the polished oaken floors. one of the medical men--there were three or four of them in the house--came out of the library and spoke in a whisper to mr. raymond. the result of the whispering seemed tolerably favourable, for the doctor went back to his companions in the library, and charles raymond led isabel up the broad staircase; the beautiful staircase which seemed to belong to a church or a cathedral rather than to any common habitation. they met a nurse in the corridor; a prim, pleasant-looking woman, who answered mr. raymond's questions in a cheerful business-like manner, as if a roland lansdell or so more or less in the world were a matter of very small consequence. and then a mist came before isabel's eyes, and she lost consciousness of the ground on which she trod; and presently there was a faint odour of hartshorn and aromatic medicines, and she felt a soft hand sponging her forehead with eau-de-cologne, and a woman's muslin garments fluttering near her. and then she raised her eyelids with a painful sense of their weight, and a voice very close to her said,-- "it was very kind of you to come. i am afraid the heat of the room makes you faint. if you could contrive to let in a little more air, raymond. it was very good of you to come." oh, he was _not_ dying! her heart seemed to leap out of a dreadful frozen region into an atmosphere of warmth and light. he was not dying! death was not like this. he spoke to her to-day as he had always spoken. it was the same voice, the same low music which she had heard so often mingled with the brawling of the mill-stream: the voice that had sounded perpetually in her dreams by day and night. she slipped from her chair and fell upon her knees by the bedside. there was nothing violent or melodramatic in the movement; it seemed almost involuntary, half unconscious. "oh, i am so glad to hear you speak!" she said; "it makes me so happy--to see you like this. they told me that you were very, very ill; they told me that----" "they told you the truth," roland answered gravely. "oh, dear mrs. gilbert, you must try and forget what i have been, or you will never be able to understand what i am. and i was so tired of life, and thought i had so little interest in the universe; and yet i feel so utterly changed a creature now that all earthly hope has really slipped away from me. i sent for you, isabel, because in this last interview i want to acknowledge all the wrong i have done you; i want to ask your forgiveness for that wrong." "forgiveness--from me! oh, no, no!" she could not abandon her old attitude of worship. he was a prince always--noble or wicked--a prince by divine right of his splendour and beauty! if he stooped from his high estate to smile upon her, was he not entitled to her deepest gratitude, her purest devotion? if it pleased him to spurn and trample her beneath his feet, what was she, when counted against the magnificence of her idol, that she should complain? there is always some devoted creature prostrate in the road when the car comes by; and which of them would dream of upbraiding juggernaut for the anguish inflicted by the crushing wheels? the same kind hands which had bathed mrs. gilbert's forehead half lifted her from her kneeling attitude now; and looking up, isabel saw lady gwendoline bending over her, very pale, very grave, but with a sweet compassionate smile upon her face. lord ruysdale and his daughter had come to the priory immediately after hearing of roland's dangerous state; and during the four-and-twenty hours that had elapsed, lady gwendoline had been a great deal with her cousin. the hidden love which had turned to jealous anger against roland's folly regained all its purer qualities now, and there was no sacrifice of self or self-love that gwendoline pomphrey would have hesitated to make, if in so doing she could have restored life and vigour to the dying man. she had heard the worst the doctors had to tell. she knew that her cousin was dying. she was no woman to delude herself with vain hopes, to put away the cup for awhile because it was bitter, knowing that its last drop must be drained sooner or later. she bowed her head before the inevitable, and accepted her sorrow. never in her brightest day, when her portrait had been in every west-end print-shop, and her name a synonym for all that is elegant and beautiful--never had she seemed so perfect a woman as now, when she sat pale and quiet and resigned, by the deathbed of the man she loved. during that long night of watching, mr. lansdell's mind had seemed at intervals peculiarly clear,--the fatal injuries inflicted upon his brain had not blotted out his intellect. that had been obscured in occasional periods of wandering and stupor, but every now and then the supremacy of spirit over matter reasserted itself, and the young man talked even more calmly than usual. all the fitfulness of passion, the wavering of purpose--now hot, now cold, now generous, now cruel,--all natural weakness seemed to have been swept away, and an unutterable calm had fallen upon his heart and mind. once, on waking from a brief doze, he found his cousin watching, but the nurse asleep, and began to talk of isabel gilbert. "i want you to know all about her," he said; "you have only heard vulgar scandal and gossip. i should like you to know the truth. it is very foolish, that little history--wicked perhaps; but those provincial gossips may have garbled and disfigured the story. i will tell you the truth, gwendoline; for i want you to be a friend to isabel gilbert when i am dead and gone." and then he told the history of all those meetings under lord thurston's oak; dwelling tenderly on isabel's ignorant simplicity, blaming himself for all that was guilty and dishonourable in that sentimental flirtation. he told gwendoline how, from being half amused, half gratified, by mrs. gilbert's unconcealed admiration of him, so naïvely revealed in every look and tone, he had, little by little, grown to find the sole happiness of his life in those romantic meetings; and then he spoke of his struggles with himself, real, earnest struggles--his flight--his return--his presumptuous belief that isabel would freely consent to any step he might propose--his anger and disappointment after the final interview, which proved to him how little he had known the depths of that girlish sentimental heart. "she was only a child playing with fire, gwendoline," he said; "and had not the smallest desire to walk through the furnace. that was my mistake. she was a child, and i mistook her for a woman--a woman who saw the gulf before her, and was prepared to take the desperate leap. she was only a child, pleased with my pretty speeches and town-made clothes and perfumed handkerchiefs,--a schoolgirl; and i set my life upon the chance of being happy with her. will you try and think of her as she really is, gwendoline,--not as these graybridge people see her,--and be kind to her when i am dead and gone? i should like to think she was sure of one wise and good woman for a friend. i have been very cruel to her, very unjust, very selfish. i was never in the same mind about her for an hour together,--sometimes thinking tenderly of her, sometimes upbraiding and hating her as a trickstress and a coquette. but i can understand her and believe in her much better now. the sky is higher, gwendoline." if roland had told his cousin this story a week before, when his life seemed all before him, she might have received his confidence in a very different spirit from that in which she now accepted it; but he was dying, and she had loved him, and had been loved by him. it was by her own act that she had lost that love. she of all others had least right to resent his attachment to another woman. she remembered that day, nearly ten years ago, on which she had quarrelled with him, stung by his reproaches, insolent in the pride of her young beauty and the knowledge that she might marry a man so high above roland lansdell in rank and position. she saw herself as she had been, in all the early splendour of her saxon beauty, and wondered if she really was the same creature as that proud worldly girl who thought the supremest triumph in life was to become the wife of a marquis. "i will be her friend, roland," she said, presently. "i know she is very childish; and i will be patient with her and befriend her, poor lonely girl." lady gwendoline was thinking, as she said this, of that interview in the surgeon's parlour at graybridge--that interview in which isabel had not scrupled to confess her folly and wickedness. "i ought to have been more patient," gwendoline thought; "but i think i was angry with her because she had dared to love roland. i was jealous of his love for her, and i could not be kind or tolerant." thus it was that isabel found lady gwendoline so tender and compassionate to her. she only raised her eyes to the lady's face with a grateful look. she forgot all about the interview at graybridge; what _could_ she remember in that room, except that _he_ was ill? in danger, people had told her; but she could not believe that. the experience of her husband's deathbed had impressed her with an idea that dangerous illness must be accompanied by terrible prostration, delirium, raging fever, dull stupor. she saw roland in one of his best intervals, reasonable, cheerful, self-possessed, and she could not believe that he was going to die. she looked at him, and saw that his face was bloodless, and that his head was bound by linen bandages, which concealed his forehead. a fall from his horse! she remembered how she had seen him once ride by upon the dusty road, unconscious of her presence, grand and self-absorbed as count lara; but amongst all her musings she had never imagined any danger coming to him in that shape. she had fancied him always as a dauntless rider, taming the wildest steed with one light pressure of his hand upon the curb. she looked at him sorrowfully, and the vision of his accident arose before her; she saw the horse tearing across a moonlit waste, and then a fall, and then a figure dragged along the ground. she had read of such things: it was only some old half-forgotten scene out of one of her books that rose in her mind. no doubt as to the nature of mr. lansdell's accident, no glimmering suspicion of the truth, ever entered her brain. she believed most fully that she had herself prevented all chance of an encounter between her father and his enemy. had she not seen the last of mr. sleaford in nessborough hollow, whence he was to depart for wareham station at break of day? and what should take roland lansdell to that lonely glade in which the little rustic inn was hidden,--a resting-place for haymakers and gipsy-hawkers? she never guessed the truth. the medical men who attended roland lansdell knew that the injuries from which he was dying had never been caused by any fall from a horse; and they said as much to charles raymond, who was unutterably distressed by the intelligence. but neither he nor the doctors could obtain any admission from the patient, though mr. raymond most earnestly implored him to reveal the truth. "cure me, if you can," he said; "nothing that i can tell you will give you any help in doing that. if it is my fancy to keep the cause of my death a secret, it is the whim of a dying man, and it ought to be respected. no living creature upon this earth except one man will ever know how i came by these injuries. but i do hope that you gentlemen will be discreet enough to spare my friends any useless pain. the gossips are at work already, i dare say, speculating as to what became of the horse that threw me. for pity's sake, do your best to stop their talk. my life has been sluggish enough; do not let there be any _esclandre_ about my death." against such arguments as these charles raymond could urge nothing. but his grief for the loss of the young man he loved was rendered doubly bitter by the mystery which surrounded roland's fate. the doctors told him that the wounds on mr. lansdell's head could only have been caused by merciless blows inflicted with some blunt instrument. mr. raymond in vain distracted himself with the endeavour to imagine how or why the young man had been attacked. he had not been robbed; for his watch and purse, his rings, and the little trinkets hanging at his chain, all of them costly in their nature, had been found upon him when he was brought home to the priory. that roland lansdell could have counted one enemy amongst all mankind, never entered into his kinsman's calculations. he had no recollection of that little story told so lightly by the young man in the flower-garden; he was entirely without a clue to the catastrophe; and he perceived very plainly that roland's resolution was not to be shaken. there was a quiet determination in mr. lansdell's refusal, which left no hope that he might be induced to change his mind. he spoke with all apparent frankness of the result of his visit to nessborough hollow. he had found isabel there, he said, with a man who was related to her,--a poor relation, who had come to graybridge to extort money from her. he had seen and spoken to the man, and was fully convinced that his account of himself was true. "so you see the graybridge gossips had lighted on the usual mare's nest," roland said, in conclusion; "the man was a relation,--an uncle or cousin, i believe,--i heard it from his own lips. if i had been a gentleman, i should have been superior to the foul suspicions that maddened me that night. what common creatures we are, raymond, some of us! our mothers believe in us, and worship us, and watch over us, and seem to fancy they have dipped us in a kind of moral styx, and that there is something of the immortal infused into our vulgar clay; but rouse our common passions, and we sink to the level of the navigator who beats his wife to death with a poker in defence of his outraged honour. they put a kind of varnish over us at eton and oxford; but the colouring underneath is very much the same, after all. your king arthur, or sir philip sidney, or bayard, crops up once in a century or so, and the world bows down before a gentleman; but, oh, what a rare creature he is!" * * * * * "i want you to forgive me," roland said to isabel, after she had been sitting some minutes in the low chair in which lady gwendoline had placed her. there was no one in the room but charles raymond and gwendoline pomphrey; and mr. raymond had withdrawn himself to a distant window that had been pushed a little way open, near which he sat in a very mournful attitude, with his face averted from the sick bed. "i want you to forgive me for having been very unjust and cruel to you, mrs. gilbert--isabel. ah, i may call you isabel now, and no one will cry out upon me! dying men have all manner of pleasant privileges. i was very cruel, very unjust, very selfish and wicked, my poor girl; and your childish ignorance was wiser than my worldly experience. a man has no right to desire perfect happiness: i can understand that now. he has no right to defy the laws made by wiser men for his protection, because there is a fatal twist in the fabric of his life, and those very laws happen to thwart him in his solitary insignificance. how truly thomas carlyle has told us that manhood only begins when we have surrendered to necessity! we must submit, isabel. i struggled; but i never submitted. i tried to crush and master the pain; but i never resigned myself to endure it; and endurance is so much grander than conquest. and then, when i had yielded to the tempter, when i had taken my stand, prepared to defy heaven and earth, i was angry with you, poor child, because you were not alike rash and desperate. forgive me, my dear; i loved you very much; and it is only now--now when i am dying, that i know how fatal and guilty my love was. but it was never a profligate's brief passion, isabel. it was wicked to love you; but my love was pure. if you had been free to be my wife, i should have been a true and faithful husband to my childish love. ah, even now, when life seems so far away; even now, isabel, the old picture rises before me, and i fancy what might have been if i had found you free." the low penetrating voice reached charles raymond, and he bent his head and sobbed aloud. dimly, as the memory of a dream, came back upon him the recollection of that time in which he had sat amongst the shadows of the great beech-trees at hurstonleigh, with the young man's poems open in his hand, and had been beguiled into thinking of what might happen if roland returned to england to see isabel in her girlish beauty. and roland had returned, and had seen her; but too late; and now she was free once more,--free to be loved and chosen,--and again it was too late. perhaps mr. raymond seems only a foolish sentimentalist, weeping because of the blight upon a young man's love-story; but then he had loved the young man's mother,--and in vain! "gwendoline has promised to be your friend, isabel," roland said by-and-by; "it makes me very happy to know that. oh, my darling, if i could tell you the thoughts that came to me as i lay there, with the odour of leaves and flowers about me, and the stars shining above the tall branches over my head. what is impossible in a universe where there are such stars? it seemed as if i had never seen them until then." he rambled on thus, with isabel's hand held loosely in his. he seemed to be very happy--entirely at peace. gwendoline had proposed to read to him; and the parish rector had been with him, urging the duty of some religious exercises, eager to exhort and to explain; but the young man had smiled at him with some shade of contempt in his expression. "there is very little you could read from that book which i do not already know by heart," he said, pointing to the bible lying open under the clergyman's hand. "it is not your unbeliever who least studies his gospel. imagine a man possessed of a great crystal that looks like a diamond. his neighbours tell him that the gem is priceless--matchless --without crack or flaw. but some evil thing within the man suggests that it may be valueless after all--only a big beautiful lump of glass. you may fancy that he would examine it very closely; he would scrutinize every facet, and contemplate it in every light, and perhaps know a good deal more about it than the believing possessor, who, feeling confident in the worth of his jewel, puts it safely away in a strong box against the hour when it may be wanted. i know all about the gospel, mr. matson; and i think, as my hours are numbered, it may be better for me to lie and ponder upon those familiar words. the light breaks upon me very slowly; but it all comes from a far distant sky; and no earthly hand can lift so much as the uttermost edge of the curtain that shuts out the fuller splendour. i am very near him now; i am very near 'the shadow, cloaked from head to foot, who keeps the keys of all the creeds!'" the conscientious rector thought mr. lansdell a very unpromising penitent; but it was something to hear that the young man did not rail or scoff at religion on his dying bed; and even that might have been expected of a person who had attended divine service only once in six weeks, and had scandalized a pious and well-bred congregation by undisguised yawns, and absent-minded contemplation of his finger-nails, during the respectable prosiness of a long sermon. the rector did not understand this imperfect conversion, expressed in phrases that sounded the reverse of orthodox; but the state of matters in that death-chamber was much better than he had expected. he had heard it hinted that mr. lansdell was a freethinker--a deist; even an atheist, some people had said; and he had half anticipated to find the young man blaspheming aloud in the throes of his dying agony. he had not been prepared for this quiet deathbed; this man, who was dying with a smile upon his face, murmuring alternate fragments of st. john's gospel and tennyson's "in memoriam." "i was with my mother when she died." roland said by-and-by, "and yet could not accept the simple faith that made her so happy. but i dare say saul had seen many wonderful things before that journey to damascus. had he not witnessed the martyrdom of stephen, and had yet been unmoved? the hour comes, and the miracle comes with it. oh, what an empty wasted life mine has been for the last ten years! because i could not understand--i could not see beyond. i might have done so much perhaps, if i could only have seen my way beyond the contradictions and perplexities of this lower life. but i could not--i could not; and so i fell back into a sluggish idleness, 'without a conscience or an aim.' i 'basked and battened in the woods.'" the rector lingered in the house even after he had left roland's chamber. he would be summoned by-and-by, perhaps, and the dying man would require some more orthodox consolation than was to be derived from mr. tennyson's verses. but roland seemed very happy. there was a brightness upon his face, in spite of its death-like pallor--a spiritual brightness, unaffected by any loss of blood, or languor of that slow pulse which the london physicians felt so often. for some two or three hours after the struggle in nessborough hollow he had lain stunned and unconscious; then he had slowly awakened to see the stars fading above the branches over his head, and to hear the early morning breeze creeping with a ghostly rustling noise amidst the fern. he awoke to feel that something of an unwonted nature had happened to him, but not for some time to any distinct remembrance of his encounter with mr. sleaford. he tried to move, but found himself utterly powerless,--a partial paralysis seemed to have changed his limbs to lead; he could only lie as he had fallen; dimly conscious of the fading stars above, the faint summer wind rippling a distant streamlet, and all the vague murmur of newly-awakened nature. he knew as well as if a whole conclave of physicians had announced their decision upon his case,--he knew that for him life was over; and that if there was any vitality in his mind, any sense of a future in his breast, that sense, so vague and imperfect as yet, could only relate to something beyond this earth. very rambling fancies filled mr. lansdell's mind as he lay amongst the bruised fern, with the wild-rose brambles and blossoms above him. he knew that his life was done; he knew that for him all interest in this earth and its creatures had ceased for ever; and a perfect calm came down upon him. he was like a man who had possessed a great fortune, and had been perpetually tormented by doubts and perplexities about it, and who, waking one morning to discover himself a beggar, found a strange relief in the knowledge that he was penniless. the struggle was all over. no longer could the tempter whisper in his ear, urging him to follow this or that wandering exhalation of the world's foul marsh-lands. no more for him irresolution or perplexity. the problem of life was solved; a new and unexpected way was opened for him out of the blank weariness which men call existence. at first, the thought of his approaching release brought with it no feeling but a sense of release. it was only afterwards, when the new aspect of things became familiar to him, that he began to think with remorseful pain of all the empty life that lay behind him. he seemed to be thinking of this even when isabel was with him; for after lying for some time quite silent, in a doze, as they thought who watched him,--he raised his heavy eyelids, and said to her,-- "if ever you should find yourself with the means of doing great good, of being very useful to your fellow-creatures, i should like you to remember my wasted life, isabel. you will try to be patient, won't you, my dear? you will not think, because you are baulked in your first pet scheme for the regeneration of mankind, that you are free to wash your hands of the business, and stand aloof shrugging your shoulders at other people's endeavours. ten years ago i fancied myself a philanthropist; but i was like a child who plants an acorn over-night, and expects to see the tender leaflets of a sapling oak sprouting through the brown earth next morning. i wanted to do great things all at once. my courage failed before the battle had well begun. but i want you to be different from me, my dear. you were wiser than i when you left me that day; when you left me to my foolish anger, my sinful despair. our love _was_ too pure to have survived the stain of treachery and guilt. it would have perished like some beautiful flame that expires in a tainted atmosphere. impure love may flourish in a poisoned habitation; but the true god sickens and dies if you shut him from the free air of heaven. i know now that we should not have been happy, isabel; and i acknowledge the mysterious wisdom that has saved us. my darling, do not look at me with those despairing eyes; death will unite us rather than separate us, isabel. i should have been farther away from you if i had lived; for i was tired of my life. i was like a spoilt child, who has possessed all the toys ever devised by mortal toymaker, and has played with them all, and grown weary of them, and broken them. only his nurses know what an abomination that child is. i might have become a very bad man if i had lived, isabel. as it is, i begin to understand what tennyson means. he has written the gospel of his age, isabel. he has told me what i am: 'an infant crying in the night; an infant crying for the light; and with no language but a cry.'" these were the last words that roland lansdell ever spoke to the doctor's wife. he fell back into the same half-slumber from which he had awakened to talk to her; and some one--she scarcely knew who it was--led her out of the sick chamber, and a little way along the corridor into another room, where the venetian shutters were half open, and there was sunshine and splendour. then, as if in a dream, she found herself lying on a bed; a bed that seemed softer than the billows of the sea, and around which there were curtains of pale green silk and shadowy muslin, and a faint odour like incense hovering about everything. as in a dream, isabel saw lady gwendoline and the nurse bending over her; and then one of them told her to go to sleep; she must want rest; she had been sorely tried lately. "you are among friends," the soft patrician voice murmured. "i know that i wronged you very much, poor child; but i have promised _him_ that i will be your friend." the soft curtains fell with a rustling noise between isabel and the light, and she knew that she was alone; but still the dream-like feeling held her senses as in a spell. does not simple, practical sir walter scott, writing of the time of his wife's burial, tell us that it was all like a dream to him; he could not comprehend or lay hold of the dread reality? and is it any wonder, therefore, if to this romantic girl the calamity that had so suddenly befallen her seemed like a dream? he was dying! every one said that it was so; he himself spoke of his death calmly as a settled thing; and no one gainsayed him. and yet she could not believe in the cruel truth. was he not there, talking to her and advising her? his intellect unclouded as when he had taught her how to criticise her favourite poets in the bright summer days that were gone. no, a thousand times no; she would _not_ believe that he was to die. like all people who have enjoyed a very close acquaintance with poverty, she had an exaggerated idea of the power of wealth. those great physicians, summoned from savile row, and holding solemn conclave in the library,--they would surely save him; they would fan that feeble flame back into new life. what was medical science worth, if it was powerless to save this one sick man? and then the prayers which had seemed cold and lifeless on her lips when she had supplicated for george gilbert's restoration took a new colour, and were as if inspired. she pushed aside the curtains and got up from the bed where they had told her to sleep. she went to the door and opened it a little way; but there was no sound to be heard in the long corridor where the portraits of dead-and-gone lansdells--all seeming to her more or less like him--looked sadly down from the wainscot. a flood of hot sunshine poured into the room, but she had no definite idea of the hour. she had lost all count of time since the sudden shock of her husband's death; and she did not even know the day of the week. she only knew that the world seemed to have come to an end, and that it was very hard to be left alone in a deserted universe. for a long time she knelt by the bedside praying that roland lansdell might live--only that he might live. she would be contented and happy, she thought, to know that all the world lay between her and him, if she could only know that he lived. there was no vestige of any selfish desire in her mind. childishly, ignorantly, as a child might supplicate for the life of its mother, did this girl pray for the recovery of roland lansdell. no thought of her new freedom, no foreshadowing of what might happen if he could be restored to health, disturbed the simple fervour of her prayers. she only wanted him to live. the sun sloped westward, and still shone upon that kneeling figure. perhaps isabel had a vague notion that the length of her prayers might prevail. they were very rambling, unorthodox petitions. it is not every mourner who can cry, "thy will be done!" pitiful and weak and foolish are some of the lamentations that rise to the eternal throne. at last, when isabel had been some hours alone and undisturbed in that sunlit chamber, an eager yearning to see roland lansdell once more came upon her,--to see him, or at least to hear tidings of him; to hear that a happy change had come about; that he was sleeping peacefully, wrapt in a placid slumber that gave promise of recovery. ah, what unspeakable delight it would be to hear something like this! and sick men had been spared before to-day. her heart thrilled with a sudden rapture of hope. she went to the door and opened it, and then stood upon the threshold listening. all was silent as it had been before. no sound of footsteps, no murmur of voices, penetrated the massive old walls. there was no passing servant in the corridor whom she could question as to mr. lansdell's state. she waited with faint hope that lady gwendoline or the sick-nurse might come out of roland's room; but she waited in vain. the western sunlight shining redly through a lantern in the roof of the corridor illumined the sombre faces of the dead lansdells with a factitious glow of life and colour; pensive faces, darkly earnest faces--all with some look of the man who was lying in the chamber yonder. the stillness of that long corridor seemed to freeze isabel's childish hopes. the flapping of a linen blind outside the lantern sounded like the fluttering of a sail at sea; but inside the house there was not so much as a breath or a whisper. the stillness and the suspense grew unendurable. the doctor's wife moved away from the door, and crept nearer and nearer the dark oaken door at the end of the corridor--the ponderous barrier that shut her from roland lansdell. she dared not knock at that door, lest the sound should disturb _him_. some one must surely come out into the corridor before long,--mr. raymond, or lady gwendoline, or the nurse,--some one who could give her hope and comfort. she went towards the door, and suddenly saw that the door of the next room was ajar. from this room came the low murmur of voices; and isabel remembered all at once that she had seen an apartment opening out of that in which roland lansdell lay--a large pleasant-looking chamber, with a high oaken mantel-piece, above which she had seen the glimmer of guns and pistols, and a picture of a horse. she went into this room. it was empty, and the murmur of voices came from the adjoining chamber. the door between the two rooms was open, and she heard something more than voices. there was the sound of low convulsive sobbing; very subdued, but very terrible to hear. she could not see the sick man, for there was a little group about his bed, a group of bending figures, that made a screen between her and him. she saw lady gwendoline on her knees at the bottom of the bed, with her face buried in the silken coverlet, and her arms thrown up above her head; but in the next moment charles raymond saw her, and came to her. he closed the door softly behind him, and shut out that group of bending figures. she would have spoken; but he lifted his hand with a solemn gesture. "come away, my dear," he said softly. "come with me, isabel." "oh, let me see him! let me speak to him! only once more--only once!" "never again, isabel,--never upon this earth any more! you must think of him as something infinitely better and brighter than you ever knew him here. i never saw such a smile upon a human face as i saw just now on his." she had no need of any plainer words to tell her he was dead. she felt the ground reel suddenly beneath her feet, and saw the gradual rising of a misty darkness that shut out the world, and closed about her like the silent waters through which a drowning man goes down to death. chapter the last. "if any calm, a calm despair." lady gwendoline kept her promise. what promises are so sacred as those that are made to the dying, and which become solemn engagements binding us to the dead--the dead whom we have wronged, most likely; for who is there amongst us who does not do some wrong to the creature he most tenderly loves? gwendoline pomphrey repented her jealous anger against her cousin; she bitterly lamented those occasions upon which she had felt a miserable joy in the probing of his wounds. she looked back, now that the blindness of passion had passed away with the passing of the dead, and saw herself as she had really been-unchristian, intolerant, possessed by a jealous anger, which she had hidden under the useful womanly mask of outraged propriety. it was not roland's sin that had stung her proud spirit to the quick: it was her love for the sinner that had been outraged by his devotion to another woman. she never knew that she had sent the man she loved to his death. inflexible to the last, roland lansdell had kept the secret of that fatal meeting in nessborough hollow. the man who had caused his death was isabel's father. if roland had been vindictively disposed towards his enemy, he would, for her sake, have freely let him go: but no very vengeful impulse had stirred the failing pulses of his heart. he was scarcely angry with jack the scribe; but rather recognized in what had occurred the working of a strange fatality, or the execution of a divine judgment. "i was ready to defy heaven and earth for the sake of this girl," he thought. "i fancied it was an easy thing for a man to make his own scheme of life, and be happy after his own fashion. it was well that i should be made to understand my position in the universe. mr. sleaford was only a brutal kind of nemesis waiting for me at the bottom of the hill. if i had tried to clamber upwards,--if i had buckled on my armour, and gone away from this castle of indolence, to fight in the ranks of my fellow-men,--i need never have met the avenger. let him go, then. he has only done his appointed work; and i, who made so pitiful a use of my life, have small ground for complaint against the man who has shortened it by a year or two." thus it was that mr. sleaford went his own way. in spite of that murderous threat uttered by him in the old bailey dock, in spite of the savage violence of his attack upon roland lansdell, he had not, perhaps, meant to kill his enemy. in his own way of expressing it, he had not meant to go too far. there is a wide gulf between the signing of other people's names, or the putting an additional y after the word _eight_, and an unauthorized after the numeral on the face of a cheque--there is an awful distance between such illegal accomplishments and an act of deliberate homicide. mr. sleaford had only intended to "punish" the "languid swell" who had borne witness against him; to spoil his beauty for the time being; and, in short, to give him just cause for remembering that little amateur-detective business by which he had beguiled the elegant idleness of his life. isabel's father had scarcely intended to do more than this. but when you beat a man about the head with a loaded bludgeon, it is not so very easy to draw the line of demarcation between an assault and a murder; and mr. sleaford did go a little too far: as he learned a few days afterwards, when he read in the "times" supplement an intimation of the sudden death of roland lansdell, esq., of mordred priory, midlandshire. the strong man, reading this announcement in the parlour of a low public-house in one of the most obscure purlieus of lambeth, felt an icy sensation of fear that he had never experienced before amidst all the little difficulties attendant upon the forging of negotiable autographs. this was something more than he had bargained for. _this_ midlandshire business was murder, or something so nearly resembling that last and worst of crimes, that a stupid jury might fail to recognize the distinction. jack the scribe, armed with roland lansdell's fifty pounds, had already organized a plan of operations which was likely to result in a very comfortable little income, without involving anything so disagreeable to the feelings of a gentleman as the illegal use of other people's names. it was to the science of money-lending that mr. sleaford had turned his attention; and during the enforced retirement of the last few years he had woven for himself a very neat little system, by which a great deal of interest, in the shape of inquiry-fees and preliminary postage-stamps, could be extorted out of simple-minded borrowers without any expenditure in the way of principal on the part of the lender. with a view to the worthy carrying out of this little scheme, mr. sleaford had made an appointment with one of his old associates, who appeared to him a likely person to act as clerk or underling, and to double that character with the more dignified _rôle_ of solicitor to the mutual and co-operative friend-in-need and friend-in-deed society; but after reading that dismal paragraph respecting mr. lansdell in the supplement of the "times," jack the scribe's ideas underwent a considerable change. it might be that this big pleasant metropolis, in which there is always such a nice little crop of dupes and simpletons ready to fall prone beneath the sickle of the judicious husbandman, would become, in vulgar parlance, a little too hot to hold mr. sleaford. the contemplation of this unpleasant possibility led that gentleman's thoughts away to fairer and more distant scenes. he had a capital of fifty pounds in his pocket. with such a sum for his fulcrum, jack the scribe felt himself capable of astonishing--not to say uprooting--the universe; and if an indiscreet use of his bludgeon had rendered it unadvisable for him to remain in his native land, there were plenty of opportunities in the united states of america for a man of his genius. in america--on the "other side," as he had heard his transatlantic friends designate their country--he might find an appropriate platform for the mutual and co-operative friend-in-need and friend-in-deed society. the genus dupe is cosmopolitan, and the transatlantic arcadian would be just as ready with his postage-stamps as the confiding denizen of bermondsey or camden town. already in his mind's eye mr. sleaford beheld a flaming advertisement of his grand scheme slanting across the back page of a daily newspaper. already he imagined himself thriving on the simplicity of the new yorkers; and departing, enriched and rejoicing, from that delightful city just as the arcadians were beginning to be a little impatient about the conclusion of operations, and a little backward in the production of postage-stamps. having once decided upon the advisability of an early departure from england, mr. sleaford lost no time in putting his plans into operation. he strolled out in the dusk of the evening, and made his way to some dingy lanes and waterside alleys in the neighbourhood of london bridge. here he obtained all information about speedily-departing steam-vessels bound for new york; and early the following morning, burdened only with a carpet-bag and the smallest of portmanteaus, jack the scribe left euston square on his way to liverpool, whence he departed, this time unhindered and unobserved, in the steam-vessel _washington_ bound for new york. and here he drops out of my story, as the avenging goddess might disappear from a classic stage when her work was done. for him too a nemesis waits, lurking darkly in some hidden turning of the sinuous way along which a scoundrel walks. * * * * * "if any calm, a calm despair." such a calm fell at last upon isabel gilbert; but it was slow to come. for a long time it seemed to her as if a dreadful darkness obscured all the world; a darkness in which she groped blindly for a grave, where she might lie down and die. was not _he_ dead? what was there left in all the universe now that he was gone? happily for the sufferer there is attendant upon all great mental anguish a kind of numbness, a stupefaction of the senses, which in some manner deadens the sharpness of the torture. for a long time isabel could not think of what had happened within the last few troubled weeks. she could only sit hopeless and tearless in the little parlour at graybridge while the funeral preparations went quietly on about her, and while mrs. jeffson and the young woman, who went on to work at eighteenpence a day, came in every now and then to arouse her from her dull stupor for the trying-on of mourning garments which smelt of dye and size, and left black marks upon her neck and arms. she heard the horrible snipping of crape and bombazine going on all day, like the monotonous accompaniment of a nightmare; and sometimes when the door had been left ajar, she heard people talking in the opposite room. she heard them talking in stealthy murmurs of the two funerals which were to take place on successive days--one at graybridge, one at mordred. she heard them speculate respecting mr. lansdell's disposal of his wealth; she heard the name, the dear romantic name, that was to be nothing henceforward but an empty sound, bandied from lip to lip; and all this pain was only some portion of the hideous dream which bound her night and day. people were very kind to her. even graybridge took pity upon her youth and desolation; though every pang of her foolish heart was the subject of tea-table speculation. but the accomplished slanderer is not always a malevolently disposed person. he is only like the wit, who loves his jest better than his friend; but who will yet do his friend good service in the day of need. the misses pawlkatt, and many other young ladies of standing in graybridge, wrote isabel pretty little notes of condolence, interlarded with quotations from scripture, and offered to go and "sit with her." to "sit with her;" to beguile with their frivolous stereotype chatter the anguish of this poor stupefied creature, for whom all the universe seemed obscured by one impenetrable cloud. it was on the second day after the surgeon's funeral, the day following that infinitely more stately ceremonial at mordred church, that mr. raymond came to see isabel. he had been with her several times during the last few days; but he had found all attempts at consolation utterly in vain, and he, who had so carefully studied human nature, knew that it was wisest and kindest to let her alone. but on this occasion he came on a business errand; and he was accompanied by a grave-looking person, whom he introduced to isabel as the late mr. lansdell's solicitor. "i have come to bring you strange news, mrs. gilbert," he said--"news that cannot fail to be very startling to you." she looked up at charles raymond with a sad smile, whose meaning he was not slow to interpret. it said so plainly, "do you think anything that can happen henceforward upon this earth could ever seem strange to me?" "when you were with--him--on the last day of his life, isabel," mr. raymond continued, "he talked to you very seriously. he changed--changed wonderfully with the near approach of death. it seemed as if the last ten years had been blotted away, and he was a young man again, just entering life, full of noble yearnings and aspirations. i pray god those ten idle years may never be counted against him. he spoke to you very earnestly, my dear; and he urged you, if ever great opportunities were given you, which they might be, to use them faithfully for his sake. i heard him say this, and was at a loss to understand his full meaning. i comprehend it perfectly now." he paused; but isabel did not even look up at him. the tears were slowly pouring down her colourless cheeks. she was thinking of that last day at mordred; and roland's tenderly-earnest voice seemed still sounding in her ears. "isabel, a great charge has been entrusted to you. mr. lansdell has left you the bulk of his fortune." it is certain that mr. raymond expected some cry of surprise, some token of astonishment, to follow this announcement; but isabel's tears only flowed a little faster, and her head sank forward on the sofa-cushion by her side. "had you any idea that roland intended to leave his money in this manner?" "oh, no, no! i don't want the money; i can do nothing with it. oh, give it to some hospital, please: and let the hospital be called by his name. it was cruel of him to think that i should care for money when he was dead." "i have reason to believe that this will was made under very peculiar circumstances," mr. raymond said presently; "when roland was labouring under a delusion about you--a delusion which you yourself afterwards dispelled. mr. lansdell's solicitor fully understands this; lord ruysdale and his daughter also understand it; and no possible discredit can attach to you from the inheritance of this fortune. had roland lived, he might very possibly have made some alteration and modifications of this will. as it stands, it is as good a will as any ever proved at doctors' commons. you are a very rich woman, isabel. lady gwendoline, her father, and myself are all legatees to a considerable amount; but mordred priory and the bulk of the lansdell property are left to you." and then mr. raymond went on to explain the nature of the will, which left everything to himself and mr. meredith (the london solicitor) as trustees, for the separate use and maintenance of isabel gilbert, and a great deal more, which had no significance for the dull indifferent ears of the mourner. there had been a time when mrs. gilbert would have thought it a grand thing to be rich, and would have immediately imagined a life spent in ruby velvet and diamonds; but that time was past. the blessings we sigh for are very apt to come to us too late; like that pension the tidings of which came to the poet as he lay upon his deathbed. mordred priory became the property of isabel gilbert; and for a time all that shakespearian region of midlandshire had enough to employ them in the discussion of mr. lansdell's will. but even the voice of slander was hushed when mrs. gilbert left england in the company of lord ruysdale and his daughter for a lengthened sojourn on the continent. i quote here from the "wareham gazette," which found isabel's proceedings worthy of record since her inheritance of mr. lansdell's property. lady gwendoline had promised to be the friend of isabel; and she kept her word. there was no bitterness in her heart now; and perhaps she liked george gilbert's widow all the better on account of that foolish wasted love that made a kind of link between them. lord ruysdale's daughter was not the sort of woman to feel any base envy of mrs. gilbert's fortune. the earl had been very slow to understand the motives of his kinsman's will; but as he and his daughter received a legacy of ten thousand pounds apiece, to say nothing of sundry cromwellian tankards, old-fashioned brooches and bracelets in rose-diamonds, a famous pearl necklace that had belonged to lady anna lansdell, a murillo and a rembrandt, and nineteen dozen of madeira that connoisseurs considered unique, lord ruysdale could scarcely esteem himself ill-treated by his late nephew. so mrs. gilbert was permitted to possess her new wealth in peace, protected from any scandal by the ruysdale influence. she was permitted to be at peace; and she went away with lady gwendoline and the earl to those fair foreign lands for which she had pined in the weedy garden at camberwell. even during the first bitterness of her sorrow she was not utterly selfish. she sent money to mrs. sleaford and the boys--money which seemed enormous wealth to them; and she instructed her solicitor to send them quarterly instalments of an income which would enable her half-brothers to receive a liberal education. "i have had a great sorrow," she wrote to her step-mother, "and i am going away with people who are very kind to me; not to forget--i would not for the world find forgetfulness, if such a thing was to be found; only that i may learn to bear my sorrow and to be good. when i come back, i shall be glad to see you and my brothers." she wrote this, and a good deal more that was kind and dutiful, to poor mrs. sleaford, who had changed that tainted name to singleton, in the peaceful retirement of jersey; and then she went away, and was taken to many beautiful cities, over all of which there seemed to hang a kind of mist that shut out the sunshine. it was only when roland lansdell had been dead more than two years, that she began to understand that no grief, however bitter, can entirely obscure the beauty of the universe. she began to feel that there is something left in life even when a first romantic love is nothing but a memory; a peace which is so nearly akin to happiness, that we scarcely regret the flight of the brighter spirit; a calm which lies beyond the regions of despair, and which is unruffled by those vague fears, those shadowy forebodings, that are apt to trouble the joyful heart. and now it seems to me that i have little more to do with isabel gilbert. she passes away from me into a higher region than that in which my story has lain,--useful, serene, almost happy, but very constant to the memory of sorrow,--she is altogether different from the foolish wife who neglected all a wife's duties while she sat by the mill-stream at thurston's crag reading the "revolt of islam." there is a great gulf between a girl of nineteen and a woman of five-and twenty; and isabel's foolish youth is separated from her wiser womanhood by a barrier that is formed by two graves. is it strange, then, that the chastening influence of sorrow has transformed a sentimental girl into a good and noble woman--a woman in whom sentiment takes the higher form of universal sympathy and tenderness? she has faithfully employed the trust confided to her. the money bequeathed to her by the ardent lover, who fancied that he had won the woman of his choice, and that his sole duty was to protect her from worldly loss or trouble,--the fortune bequeathed under such strange circumstances has become a sacred trust, to be accounted for to the dead. only the mourner knows the exquisite happiness involved in any act performed for the sake of the lost. our protestant creed, which will not permit us to pray for our dead, cannot forbid the consecration of our good works to those departed and beloved creatures. charles raymond has transferred to isabel something of that affection which he felt for roland lansdell; and he and the orphans, grown into estimable young persons of sixteen and seventeen, spend a great deal of their time at mordred priory. the agricultural labourer, who had known the doctor's wife only as a pale-faced girlish creature, sitting under the shelter of a hedgerow, with a green parasol above her head, and a book in her lap, has good reason to bless the doctor's widow; for model cottages have arisen in many a pleasant corner of the estate which was once roland lansdell's--pretty elizabethan cottages, with peaked gables and dormer windows. allotment gardens have spread themselves here and there on pleasant slopes; and coming suddenly upon some woody hollow, you find yourself face to face with the tudor windows of a schoolhouse, a substantial modern building, set in an old-world garden, where there are great gnarled pear-trees, and a cluster of beehives in a bowery corner, sheltered by bushes of elder and hazel. sigismund smith appears sometimes at mordred priory, always accompanied by a bloated and dilapidated leathern writing-case, unnaturally distended by stuff which he calls "copy," and other stuff which he speaks of as "proofs." telegrams from infuriated proprietors of penny journals pursue him in his calm retreat, and a lively gentleman in a white hat has been known to arrive per express-train, vaguely declaring his intention of "standing over" mr. smith during the production of an urgently-required chapter of "the bride of the bosphorus; or, the fourteen corpses of the caspian sea." he is very happy and very inky; and the rustic wanderers who meet a pale-faced and mild-looking gentleman loitering in the green lanes about mordred, with his hat upon the back of his head, and his insipid blue eyes fixed on vacancy, would be slow to perceive in him the deliberate contriver of one of the most atrocious and cold-blooded schemes of vengeance that ever outraged the common dictates of human nature and adorned the richly-illustrated pages of a penny periodical. amongst the wild roses and new-mown hay of midlandshire, mr. smith finds it sweet to lie at ease, weaving the dark webs of crime which he subsequently works out upon paper in the dingy loneliness of his temple chambers. he is still a bachelor, and complains that he is not the kind of man to fall in love, as he is compelled to avail himself of the noses and eyes, ruby lips, and golden or raven tresses--there are no other hues in mr. smith's vocabulary--of every eligible young lady he meets, for the decking out of his numerous heroines. "miss binks?" he will perhaps remark, when a lady's name is mentioned to him; "oh yes: _she's_ bella the ballet girl (one of bickers's touch-and-go romances; the first five numbers, and a magnificent engraving of one of landseer's best pictures, for a penny); i finished her off last week. she poisoned herself with insect-powder in a garret near drury lane, after setting fire to the house and grounds of her destroyer. she ran through a hundred and thirteen numbers, and bickers has some idea of getting me to write a sequel. you see there _might_ be an antidote to the insect-powder, or the oilman's shop-boy might have given bella patent mustard in mistake." but it has been observed of late that mr. smith pays very special attention to the elder of the two orphans, whom he declares to be too good for penny numbers, and a charming subject for three volumes of the quiet and domestic school, and he has consulted mr. raymond respecting the investment of his deposit-account, which is supposed to be something considerable; for a gentleman who lives chiefly upon bread-and marmalade and weak tea may amass a very comfortable little independence from the cultivation of sensational literature in penny numbers. [illustration: frontispiece] bouvard and pÉcuchet _a tragi-comic novel of bourgeois life_ by gustave flaubert _volume x._ simon p. magee publisher chicago, ill. copyright, , by m. walter dunne _entered at stationers' hall, london_ contents bouvard and pÉcuchet (_continued._) chapter ix. page sons of the church chapter x. lessons in art and science conference [extract from a plan found amongst gustave flaubert's papers indicating the conclusion of the work.] the dance of death - rabelais - preface to the last songs (_posthumous poems_) of louis bouilhet - letter to the municipality of rouen - selected correspondence intimate remembrances of gustave flaubert - correspondence - illustrations facing page "then, haply, faithful one, weary as i, thou finally shalt seek some precipice from which to cast thyself." (see page , _the dance of death_) _frontispiece_ bouvard and pÉcuchet bouvard and pÉcuchet carried them off the dance of death nero: yet, i am loth to die} death: die, then! } bouvard and pÉcuchet (_continued._) chapter ix. sons of the church. marcel reappeared next day at three o'clock, his face green, his eyes bloodshot, a lump on his forehead, his breeches torn, his breath tainted with a strong smell of brandy, and his person covered with dirt. he had been, according to an annual custom of his, six leagues away at iqueville to enjoy a midnight repast with a friend; and, stuttering more than ever, crying, wishing to beat himself, he begged of them for pardon, as if he had committed a crime. his masters granted it to him. a singular feeling of serenity rendered them indulgent. the snow had suddenly melted, and they walked about the garden, inhaling the genial air, delighted merely with living. was it only chance that had kept them from death? bouvard felt deeply affected. pécuchet recalled his first commission, and, full of gratitude to the force, the cause, on which they depended, the idea took possession of them to read pious works. the gospel dilated their souls, dazzled them like a sun. they perceived jesus standing on a mountain, with one arm raised, while below the multitude listened to him; or else on the margin of a lake in the midst of the apostles, while they drew in their nets; next on the ass, in the clamour of the "alleluias," his hair fanned by the quivering palms; finally, lifted high upon the cross, bending down his head, from which eternally falls a dew of blood upon the world. what won them, what ravished them, was his tenderness for the humble, his defence of the poor, his exaltation of the oppressed; and they found in that book, wherein heaven unfolds itself, nothing theological in the midst of so many precepts, no dogma, no requirement, save purity of heart. as for the miracles, their reason was not astonished by them. they had been acquainted with them from their childhood. the loftiness of st. john enchanted pécuchet, and better disposed him to appreciate the _imitation_. here were no more parables, flowers, birds, but lamentations--a compression of the soul into itself. bouvard grew sad as he turned over these pages, which seemed to have been written in foggy weather, in the depths of a cloister, between a belfry and a tomb. our mortal life appeared there so wretched that one must needs forget it and return to god. and the two poor men, after all their disappointments, experienced that need of simple natures--to love something, to find rest for their souls. they studied _ecclesiastes_, _isaiah_, _jeremiah_. but the bible dismayed them with its lion-voiced prophets, the crashing of thunder in the skies, all the sobbings of gehenna, and its god scattering empires as the wind scatters clouds. they read it on sunday at the hour of vespers, while the bell was ringing. one day they went to mass, and then came back. it was a kind of recreation at the end of the week. the count and countess de faverges bowed to them from the distance, a circumstance which was remarked. the justice of the peace said to them with blinking eyes: "excellent! you have my approval." all the village dames now sent them consecrated bread. the abbé jeufroy paid them a visit; they returned it; friendly intercourse followed; and the priest avoided talking about religion. they were astonished at this reserve, so much so that pécuchet, with an assumption of indifference, asked him what was the way to set about obtaining faith. "practise first of all." they began to practise, the one with hope, the other with defiance, bouvard being convinced that he would never be a devotee. for a month he regularly followed all the services; but, unlike pécuchet, he did not wish to subject himself to lenten fare. was this a hygienic measure? we know what hygiene is worth. a matter of the proprieties? down with the proprieties! a mark of submission towards the church? he laughed at it just as much; in short, he declared the rule absurd, pharisaical, and contrary to the spirit of the gospel. on good friday in other years they used to eat whatever germaine served up to them. but on this occasion bouvard ordered a beefsteak. he sat down and cut up the meat, and marcel, scandalised, kept staring at him, while pécuchet gravely took the skin off his slice of codfish. bouvard remained with his fork in one hand, his knife in the other. at length, making up his mind, he raised a mouthful to his lips. all at once his hands began to tremble, his heavy countenance grew pale, his head fell back. "are you ill?" "no. but----" and he made an avowal. in consequence of his education (it was stronger than himself), he could not eat meat on this day for fear of dying. pécuchet, without misusing his victory, took advantage of it to live in his own fashion. one evening he returned home with a look of sober joy imprinted on his face, and, letting the word escape, said that he had just been at confession. thereupon they argued about the importance of confession. bouvard acknowledged that of the early christians, which was made publicly: the modern is too easy. however, he did not deny that this examination concerning ourselves might be an element of progress, a leaven of morality. pécuchet, desirous of perfection, searched for his vices: for some time past the puffings of pride were gone. his taste for work freed him from idleness; as for gluttony, nobody was more moderate. sometimes he was carried away by anger. he made a vow that he would be so no more. in the next place, it would be necessary to acquire the virtues: first of all, humility, that is to say, to believe yourself incapable of any merit, unworthy of the least recompense, to immolate your spirit, and to place yourself so low that people may trample you under their feet like the mud of the roads. he was far as yet from these dispositions. another virtue was wanting in him--chastity. for inwardly he regretted mélie, and the pastel of the lady in the louis xv. dress disturbed him by her ample display of bosom. he shut it up in a cupboard, and redoubled his modesty, so much so that he feared to cast glances at his own person. in order to mortify himself, pécuchet gave up his little glass after meals, confined himself to four pinches of snuff in the day, and even in the coldest weather he did not any longer put on his cap. one day, bouvard, who was fastening up the vine, placed a ladder against the wall of the terrace near the house, and, without intending it, found himself landed in pécuchet's room. his friend, naked up to the middle, first gently smacked his shoulders with the cat-o'-nine-tails without quite undressing; then, getting animated, pulled off his shirt, lashed his back, and sank breathless on a chair. bouvard was troubled, as if at the unveiling of a mystery on which he should not have gazed. for some time he had noticed a greater cleanliness about the floor, fewer holes in the napkins, and an improvement in the diet--changes which were due to the intervention of reine, the curé's housekeeper. mixing up the affairs of the church with those of her kitchen, strong as a ploughman, and devoted though disrespectful, she gained admittance into households, gave advice, and became mistress in them. pécuchet placed implicit confidence in her experience. on one occasion she brought to him a corpulent man with narrow eyes like a chinaman, and a nose like a vulture's beak. this was m. gouttman, a dealer in pious articles. he unpacked some of them shut up in boxes under the cart-shed: a cross, medals, and beads of all sizes; candelabra for oratories, portable altars, tinsel bouquets, and sacred hearts of blue pasteboard, st. josephs with red beards, and porcelain crucifixes. the price alone stood in his way. gouttman did not ask for money. he preferred barterings; and, having gone up to the museum, he offered a number of his wares for their collection of old iron and lead. they appeared hideous to bouvard. but pécuchet's glance, the persistency of reine, and the bluster of the dealer were effectual in making him yield. gouttman, seeing him so accommodating, wanted the halberd in addition; bouvard, tired of having exhibited its working, surrendered it. the entire valuation was made. "these gentlemen still owed a hundred francs." it was settled by three bills payable at three months; and they congratulated themselves on a good bargain. their acquisitions were distributed through the various rooms. a crib filled with hay and a cork cathedral decorated the museum. on pécuchet's chimney-piece there was a st. john the baptist in wax; along the corridor were ranged the portraits of episcopal dignitaries; and at the bottom of the staircase, under a chained lamp, stood a blessed virgin in an azure mantle and a crown of stars. marcel cleaned up those splendours, unable to imagine anything more beautiful in paradise. what a pity that the st. peter was broken, and how nicely it would have done in the vestibule! pécuchet stopped sometimes before the old pit for composts, where he discovered the tiara, one sandal, and the tip of an ear; allowed sighs to escape him, then went on gardening, for now he combined manual labour with religious exercises, and dug the soil attired in the monk's habit, comparing himself to bruno. this disguise might be a sacrilege. he gave it up. but he assumed the ecclesiastical style, no doubt owing to his intimacy with the curé. he had the same smile, the same tone of voice, and, like the priest too, he slipped both hands with a chilly air into his sleeves up to the wrists. a day came when he was pestered by the crowing of the cock and disgusted with the roses; he no longer went out, or only cast sullen glances over the fields. bouvard suffered himself to be led to the may devotions. the children singing hymns, the gorgeous display of lilacs, the festoons of verdure, had imparted to him, so to speak, a feeling of imperishable youth. god manifested himself to his heart through the fashioning of nests, the transparency of fountains, the bounty of the sun; and his friend's devotion appeared to him extravagant, fastidious. "why do you groan during mealtime?" "we ought to eat with groans," returned pécuchet, "for it was in that way that man lost his innocence"--a phrase which he had read in the _seminarist's manual_, two duodecimo volumes he had borrowed from m. jeufroy: and he drank some of the water of la salette, gave himself up with closed doors to ejaculatory prayers, and aspired to join the confraternity of st. francis. in order to obtain the gift of perseverance, he resolved to make a pilgrimage in honour of the blessed virgin. he was perplexed as to the choice of a locality. should it be nôtre dame de fourviers, de chartres, d'embrun, de marseille, or d'auray? nôtre dame de la délivrande was nearer, and it suited just as well. "you will accompany me?" "i should look like a greenhorn," said bouvard. after all, he might come back a believer; he did not object to being one; and so he yielded through complaisance. pilgrimages ought to be made on foot. but forty-three kilometers would be trying; and the public conveyances not being adapted for meditation, they hired an old cabriolet, which, after a twelve hours' journey, set them down before the inn. they got an apartment with two beds and two chests of drawers, supporting two water-jugs in little oval basins; and "mine host" informed them that this was "the chamber of the capuchins" under the terror. there la dame de la délivrande had been concealed with so much precaution that the good fathers said mass there clandestinely. this gave pécuchet pleasure, and he read aloud a sketch of the history of the chapel, which had been taken downstairs into the kitchen. it had been founded in the beginning of the second century by st. régnobert, first bishop of lisieux, or by st. ragnebert, who lived in the seventh, or by robert the magnificent in the middle of the eleventh. the danes, the normans, and, above all, the protestants, had burnt and ravaged it at various epochs. about , the original statue was discovered by a sheep, which indicated the place where it was by tapping with its foot in a field of grass; and on this spot count baudouin erected a sanctuary. "'her miracles are innumerable. a merchant of bayeux, taken captive by the saracens, invoked her: his fetters fell off, and he escaped. a miser found a nest of rats in his corn loft, appealed to her aid, and the rats went away. the touch of a medal, which had been rubbed over her effigy, caused an old materialist from versailles to repent on his death-bed. she gave back speech to sieur adeline, who lost it for having blasphemed; and by her protection, m. and madame de becqueville had sufficient strength to live chastely in the married state. "'amongst those whom she cured of irremediable diseases are mentioned mademoiselle de palfresne, anne lirieux, marie duchemin, françois dufai, and madame de jumillac _née_ d'osseville. "'persons of high rank have visited her: louis xi., louis xiii., two daughters of gaston of orléans, cardinal wiseman, samirrhi, patriarch of antioch, monseigneur véroles, vicar apostolic of manchuria; and the archbishop of quelen came to return thanks to her for the conversion of prince talleyrand.'" "she might," said pécuchet, "convert you also!" bouvard, already in bed, gave vent to a species of grunt, and presently was fast asleep. next morning at six o'clock they entered the chapel. another was in course of construction. canvas and boards blocked up the nave; and the monument, in a rococo style, displeased bouvard, above all, the altar of red marble with its corinthian pilasters. the miraculous statue, in a niche at the left of the choir, was enveloped in a spangled robe. the beadle came up with a wax taper for each of them. he fixed it in a kind of candlestick overlooking the balustrade, asked for three francs, made a bow, and disappeared. then they surveyed the votive offerings. inscriptions on slabs bore testimony to the gratitude of the faithful. they admired two swords in the form of a cross presented by a pupil of the polytechnic school, brides' bouquets, military medals, silver hearts, and in the corner, along the floor, a forest of crutches. a priest passed out of the sacristy carrying the holy pyx. when he had remained for a few minutes at the bottom of the altar, he ascended the three steps, said the _oremus_, the _introit_, and the _kyrie_, which the boy who served mass recited all in one breath on bended knees. the number present was small--a dozen or fifteen old women. the rattling of their beads could be heard accompanying the noise of a hammer driving in stones. pécuchet bent over his prie-dieu and responded to the "amens." during the elevation, he implored our lady to send him a constant and indestructible faith. bouvard, in a chair beside him, took up his euchology, and stopped at the litany of the blessed virgin. "most pure, most chaste, most venerable, most amiable, most powerful--tower of ivory--house of gold--gate of the morning." these words of adoration, these hyperboles drew him towards the being who has been the object of so much reverence. he dreamed of her as she is represented in church paintings, above a mass of clouds, cherubims at her feet, the infant jesus on her breast--mother of tendernesses, upon whom all the sorrows of the earth have a claim--ideal of woman carried up to heaven; for man exalts that love arising out of the depths of the soul, and his highest aspiration is to rest upon her heart. the mass was finished. they passed along by the dealers' sheds which lined the walls in front of the church. they saw there images, holy-water basins, urns with fillets of gold, jesus christs made of cocoanuts, and ivory chaplets; and the sun brought into prominence the rudeness of the paintings, the hideousness of the drawings. bouvard, who had some abominable specimens at his own residence, was indulgent towards these. he bought a little virgin of blue paste. pécuchet contented himself with a rosary as a memento. the dealers called out: "come on! come on! for five francs, for three francs, for sixty centimes, for two sous, don't refuse our lady!" the two pilgrims sauntered about without making any selections from the proffered wares. uncomplimentary remarks were made about them. "what is it they want, these creatures?" "perhaps they are turks." "protestants, rather." a big girl dragged pécuchet by the frock-coat; an old man in spectacles placed a hand on his shoulder; all were bawling at the same time; and a number of them left their sheds, and, surrounding the pair, redoubled their solicitations and effronteries. bouvard could not stand this any longer. "let us alone, for god's sake!" the crowd dispersed. but one fat woman followed them for some distance, and exclaimed that they would repent of it. when they got back to the inn they found gouttman in the café. his business called him to these quarters, and he was talking to a man who was examining accounts at a table. this person had a leather cap, a very wide pair of trousers, a red complexion, and a good figure in spite of his white hair: he had the appearance at the same time of a retired officer and an old strolling player. from time to time he rapped out an oath; then, when gouttman replied in a mild tone, he calmed down at once and passed to another part of the accounts. bouvard who had been closely watching him, at the end of a quarter of an hour came up to his side. "barberou, i believe?" "bouvard!" exclaimed the man in the cap, and they embraced each other. barberou had in the course of twenty years experienced many changes of fortune. he had been editor of a newspaper, an insurance agent, and manager of an oyster-bed. "i will tell you all about it," he said. at last, having returned to his original calling, he was travelling for a bordeaux house, and gouttman, who took care of the diocese, disposed of wines for him to the ecclesiastics. "but," he hurriedly added, "you must pardon me one minute; then i shall be at your service." he was proceeding with the examination of the accounts, and all of a sudden he jumped up excitedly. "what! two thousand?" "certainly." "ha! it's wrong, that's what it is!" "what do you say?" "i say that i've seen hérambert myself," replied barberou in a passion. "the invoice makes it four thousand. no humbug!" the dealer was not put out of countenance. "well, it discharges you--what next?" barberou, as he stood there with his face at first pale and then purple, impressed bouvard and pécuchet with the apprehension that he was about to strangle gouttman. he sat down, folded his arms, and said: "you are a vile rascal, you must admit." "no insults, monsieur barberou. there are witnesses. be careful!" "i'll bring an action against you!" "ta! ta! ta!" then having fastened together his books, gouttman lifted the brim of his hat: "i wish you luck on't!" with these words he went off. barberou explained the facts: for a credit of a thousand francs doubled by a succession of renewals with interest, he had delivered to gouttman three thousand francs' worth of wines. this would pay his debt with a profit of a thousand francs; but, on the contrary, he owed three thousand on the transaction! his employers might dismiss him; they might even prosecute him! "blackguard! robber! dirty jew! and this fellow dines at priests' houses! besides, everything that touches the clerical headpiece----" and he went on railing against the priests, and he struck the table with such violence that the little statue was near falling. "gently!" said bouvard. "hold on! what's this here?" and barberou having removed the covering of the little virgin: "a pilgrimage bauble! yours?" "'tis mine," said pécuchet. "you grieve me," returned barberou; "but i'll give you a wrinkle on that point. don't be afraid." and as one must be a philosopher, and as there is no use in fretting, he invited them to come and lunch with him. the three sat down together at table. barberou was agreeable, recalled old times, took hold of the maid-servant's waist, and wished to measure the breadth of bouvard's stomach. he would soon see them again, and would bring them a droll book. the idea of his visit was rather pleasant to them. they chatted about it in the omnibus for an hour, while the horse was trotting. then pécuchet shut his eyes. bouvard also relapsed into silence. internally he felt an inclination towards religion. "m. marescot had the day before called to make an important communication"--marcel knew no more about it. they did not see the notary till three days after; and at once he explained the matter. madame bordin offered to buy the farm from m. bouvard, and to pay him seven thousand five hundred francs a year. she had been casting sheep's eyes on it since her youth, knew the boundaries and lands all around it, its defects and its advantages; and this desire consumed her like a cancer. for the good lady, like a true norman, cherished above everything landed estate, less for the security of the capital than for the happiness of treading on soil that belonged to herself. in that hope she had devoted herself to inquiries and inspections from day to day, and had practised prolonged economies; and she waited with impatience for bouvard's answer. he was perplexed, not desiring that pécuchet one day should be fortuneless; but it was necessary to seize the opportunity--which was the result of the pilgrimage, for the second time providence had shown itself favourable to them. they proposed the following conditions: an annual payment, not of seven thousand five hundred francs, but of six thousand francs, provided it should pass to the survivor. marescot made the point that one of them was in delicate health. the constitution of the other gave him an apoplectic tendency. madame bordin, carried away by her ruling passion, signed the contract. bouvard got into a melancholy frame of mind about it. somebody might desire his death; and this reflection inspired him with serious thoughts, ideas about god and eternity. three days after, m. jeufroy invited them to the annual dinner which it was his custom to give to his colleagues. the dinner began at two o'clock in the afternoon, and was to finish at eleven at night. perry was used at it as a beverage, and puns were circulated. the abbé pruneau, before they broke up, composed an acrostic; m. bougon performed card-tricks; and cerpet, a young curate, sang a little ballad which bordered on gallantry. the curé frequently came to see them. he presented religion under graceful colours. and, after all, what risk would they run? so bouvard expressed his willingness to approach the holy table shortly, and pécuchet was to participate in the sacrament on the same occasion. the great day arrived. the church, on account of the first communions, was thronged with worshippers. the village shopkeepers and their womenfolk were crowded close together in their seats, and the common people either remained standing up behind or occupied the gallery over the church door. what was about to take place was inexplicable--so bouvard reflected; but reason does not suffice for the comprehension of certain things. great men have admitted that. let him do as much as they had done; and so, in a kind of torpor, he contemplated the altar, the censer, the tapers, with his head a little light, for he had eaten nothing, and experienced a singular weakness. pécuchet, by meditating on the passion of jesus christ, excited himself to outbursts of love. he would have liked to offer his soul up to him as well as the souls of others--and the ecstasies, the transports, the illumination of the saints, all beings, the entire universe. though he prayed with fervour, the different parts of the mass seemed to him a little long. at length the little boys knelt down on the first step of the altar, forming with their coats a black band, above which rose light or dark heads of hair at unequal elevations. then the little girls took their places, with their veils falling from beneath their wreaths. from a distance they resembled a row of white clouds at the end of the choir. then it was the turn of the great personages. the first on the gospel-side was pécuchet; but, too much moved, no doubt, he kept swaying his head right and left. the curé found difficulty in putting the host into his mouth, and as he received it he turned up the whites of his eyes. bouvard, on the contrary, opened his jaws so widely, that his tongue hung over his lip like a streamer. on rising he jostled against madame bordin. their eyes met. she smiled; without knowing the reason why, he reddened. after madame bordin, mademoiselle de faverges, the countess, their lady companion, and a gentleman who was not known at chavignolles approached the altar in a body. the last two were placquevent and petit, the schoolmaster, and then, all of a sudden, gorju made his appearance. he had got rid of the tuft on his chin; and, as he went back to his place, he had his arms crossed over his breast in a very edifying fashion. the curé harangued the little boys. let them take care later on in life not to act like judas, who betrayed his god, but to preserve always their robe of innocence. pécuchet was regretting his when there was a sudden moving of the seats: the mothers were impatient to embrace their children. the parishioners, on their way out, exchanged felicitations. some shed tears. madame de faverges, while waiting for her carriage, turned round towards bouvard and pécuchet, and presented her future son-in-law: "baron de mahurot, engineer." the count was sorry not to have the pleasure of their company. he would return the following week. "pray bear it in mind." the carriage having now come up, the ladies of the château departed, and the throng dispersed. they found a parcel inside their own grounds in the middle of the grass. the postman, as the house had been shut up, had thrown it over the wall. it was the work which barberou had promised to send, _examination of christianity_, by louis hervieu, a former pupil of the normal school. pécuchet would have nothing to say to it, and bouvard had no desire to make himself acquainted with it. he had been repeatedly told that the sacrament would transform him. for several days he awaited its blossomings in his conscience. he remained the same as ever, and a painful astonishment took possession of him. what! the flesh of god mingles with our flesh, and it produces no effect there! the thought which governs the world does not illuminate our spirits! the supreme power abandons us to impotence! m. jeufroy, while reassuring him, prescribed for him the catechism of the abbé gaume. on the other hand, pécuchet's devotion had become developed. he would have liked to communicate under two species, kept singing psalms as he walked along the corridor, and stopped the people of chavignolles to argue with, and to convert them. vaucorbeil laughed in his face; girbal shrugged his shoulders; and the captain called him "tartuffe." it was now thought that they were going too far. it is an excellent custom to consider things as so many symbols. if the thunder rumbles, imagine to yourself the last judgment; at sight of a cloudless sky, think of the abode of the blessed; say to yourself in your walks that every step brings you nearer to death. pécuchet observed this method. when he took hold of his clothes, he thought of the carnal envelope in which the second person of the trinity was clad; the ticking of the clock recalled to him the beatings of his heart, and the prick of a pin the nails of the cross. but in vain did he remain on his knees for hours and multiply his fasts and strain his imagination. he did not succeed in getting detached from self; it was impossible to attain to perfect contemplation. he had recourse to mystic authors: st. theresa, john of the cross, louis of granada, simpoli, and, of the more modern, monseigneur chaillot. instead of the sublimities which he expected, he encountered only platitudes, a very disjointed style, frigid imagery, and many comparisons drawn from lapidaries' shops. he learned, however, that there is an active purgation and a passive purgation, an internal vision and an external vision, four kinds of prayers, nine excellencies in love, six degrees in humility, and that the wounding of the soul is not very different from spiritual theft. some points embarrassed him. "since the flesh is accursed, how is it that we are bound to thank god for the boon of existence?" "what proportion must be observed between the fear indispensable to the salvation and the hope which is no less so?" "where is the sign of grace?" etc. m. jeufroy's answers were simple. "don't worry yourself. by desiring to sift everything we rush along a perilous slope." the _catechism of perseverance_, by gaume, had disgusted pécuchet so much that he took up louis hervieu's book. it was a summary of modern exegesis, prohibited by the government. barberou, as a republican, had bought the book. it awakened doubts in bouvard's mind, and, first of all, on original sin. "if god had created man peccable, he ought not to punish him; and evil is anterior to the fall, since there were already volcanoes and wild beasts. in short, this dogma upsets my notions of justice." "what would you have?" said the curé. "it is one of those truths about which everybody is agreed, without being able to furnish proofs of it; and we ourselves make the crimes of their fathers rebound on the children. thus morality and law justify this decree of providence, since we find it in nature." bouvard shook his head. he had also doubts about hell. "for every punishment should look to the amelioration of the guilty person, which is impossible where the penalty is eternal; and how many are enduring it? just think! all the ancients, the jews, the mussulmans, the idolaters, the heretics, and the children who have died without baptism--those children created by god, and for what end?--for the purpose of being punished for a sin which they did not commit!" "such is st. augustine's opinion," added the curé; "and st. fulgentius involves even the unborn child in damnation. the church, it is true, has come to no decision on this matter. one remark, however. it is not god, but the sinner who damns himself; and the offence being infinite, since god is infinite, the punishment must be infinite. is that all, sir?" "explain the trinity to me," said bouvard. "with pleasure. let us take a comparison: the three sides of a triangle, or rather our soul, which contains being, knowing, and willing; what we call faculty in the case of man is person in god. there is the mystery." "but the three sides of the triangle are not each the triangle; these three faculties of the soul do not make three souls, and your persons of the trinity are three gods." "blasphemy!" "so then there is only one person, one god, one substance affected in three ways!" "let us adore without understanding," said the curé. "be it so," said bouvard. he was afraid of being taken for an atheist, and getting into bad odour at the château. they now visited there three times a week, about five o'clock in winter, and the cup of tea warmed them. the count's manners recalled the ease of the ancient court; the countess, placid and plump, exhibited much discernment about everything. mademoiselle yolande, their daughter, was the type of the young person, the angel of "keepsakes"; and madame de noares, their lady companion, resembled pécuchet in having a pointed nose like him. the first time they entered the drawing-room she was defending somebody. "i assure you he is changed. his gift is a proof of it." this somebody was gorju. he had made the betrothed couple an offer of a gothic prie-dieu. it was brought. the arms of the two houses appeared on it in coloured relief. m. de mahurot seemed satisfied with it, and madame de noares said to him: "you will remember my _protégés_?" then she brought in two children, a boy of a dozen years and his sister, who was perhaps ten. through the holes in their rags could be seen their limbs, reddened with cold. the one was shod in old slippers, the other wore only one wooden shoe. their foreheads disappeared under their hair, and they stared around them with burning eyeballs like famished wolves. madame de noares told how she had met them that morning on the high-road. placquevent could not give any information about them. they were asked their names. "victor--victorine." "where was their father?' "in jail." "and what was he doing before that?" "nothing." "their country?" "st. pierre." "but which st. pierre?" the two little ones for sole response, said, snivelling: "don't know--don't know." their mother was dead, and they were begging. madame de noares explained how dangerous it would be to abandon them; she moved the countess, piqued the count's sense of honour, was backed up by mademoiselle, pressed the matter--succeeded. the gamekeeper's wife would take charge of them. later, work would be found for them, and, as they did not know how to read or write, madame de noares gave them lessons herself, with a view to preparing them for catechism. when m. jeufroy used to come to the château, the two youngsters would be sent for; he would question them, and then deliver a lecture, into which he would import a certain amount of display on account of his audience. on one occasion, when the abbé had discoursed about the patriarchs, bouvard, on the way home with him and pécuchet, disparaged them very much. "jacob is notorious for his thieveries, david for his murders, solomon for his debaucheries." the abbé replied that we should look further into the matter. abraham's sacrifice is a prefigurement of the passion; jacob is another type of the messiah, just like joseph, like the brazen serpent, like moses. "do you believe," said bouvard, "that he composed the 'pentateuch'?" "yes, no doubt." "and yet his death is recorded in it; the same observation applies to joshua; and, as for the judges, the author informs us that, at the period whose history he was writing, israel had not yet kings. the work was, therefore, written under the kings. the prophets, too, astonish me." "he's going to deny the prophets now!" "not at all! but their overheated imagination saw jehovah under different forms--that of a fire, of a bush, of an old man, of a dove; and they were not certain of revelation since they are always asking for a sign." "ha! and where have you found out these nice things?" "in spinoza." at this word, the curé jumped. "have you read him?" "god forbid!" "nevertheless, sir, science----" "sir, no one can be a scholar without being a christian." science furnished a subject for sarcasms on his part: "will it make an ear of corn sprout, this science of yours? what do we know?" he said. but he did know that the world was created for us; he did know that archangels are above the angels; he did know that the human body will rise again such as it was about the age of thirty. his ecclesiastical self-complacency provoked bouvard, who, through want of confidence in louis hervieu, had written to varlot; and pécuchet, better informed, asked m. jeufroy for explanations of scripture. the six days of genesis mean six great epochs. the pillage of the precious vessels made by the jews from the egyptians must be interpreted to mean intellectual riches, the arts of which they had stolen the secret. isaiah did not strip himself completely, _nudus_ in latin signifying "up to the hips": thus virgil advises people to go naked in order to plough, and that writer would not have given a precept opposed to decency. ezekiel devouring a book has nothing extraordinary in it; do we not speak of devouring a pamphlet, a newspaper? "but if we see metaphors everywhere, what will become of the facts?" the abbé maintained, nevertheless, that they were realities. this way of understanding them appeared disloyal to pécuchet. he pushed his investigations further, and brought a note on the contradictions of the bible. "exodus teaches us that for forty years they offered up sacrifices in the desert; according to amos and jeremiah they offered up none. paralipomenon and the book of esdras are not in agreement as to the enumeration of the people. in deuteronomy, moses saw the lord face to face; according to exodus, he could not see him. where, then, is the inspiration?" "an additional ground for admitting it," replied m. jeufroy smiling. "impostors have need of connivance; the sincere take no such precautions. in perplexity, have recourse to the church. she is always infallible." "on whom does her infallibility depend?" "the councils of basle and of constance attribute it to the councils. but often the councils are at variance--witness that which decided in favour of athanasius and of arius; those of florence and lateran award it to the pope." "but adrian vi. declares that the pope may be mistaken, like any other person." "quibbles! all that does not affect the permanence of dogma." "louis hervieu's work points out the variations: baptism was formerly reserved for adults, extreme unction was not a sacrament till the ninth century, the real presence was decreed in the eighth, purgatory recognised in the fifteenth, the immaculate conception is a thing of yesterday." and so it came to pass that pécuchet did not know what to think of jesus. three evangelists make him out to be a man. in one passage of st. john he appears to be equal to god; in another, all the same, to acknowledge himself his inferior. the abbé rejoined by citing the letter of king abgar, the acts of pilate, and the testimony of the sibyls, "the foundation of which is genuine." he found the virgin again amongst the gauls, the announcement of a redeemer in china, the trinity everywhere, the cross on the cap of the grand lama, and in egypt in the closed hands of the gods; and he even exhibited an engraving representing a nilometer, which, according to pécuchet, was a phallus. m. jeufroy secretly consulted his friend pruneau, who searched for proofs for him in the authors. a conflict of erudition was waged, and, lashed by conceit, pécuchet became abstruse, mythological. he compared the virgin to isis, the eucharist to the homa of the persians, bacchus to moses, noah's ark to the ship of xithurus. these analogies demonstrated to his satisfaction the identity of religions. but there cannot be several religions, since there is only one god. and when he was at the end of his arguments, the man in the cassock exclaimed: "it is a mystery!" "what is the meaning of that word? want of knowledge: very good. but if it denotes a thing the mere statement of which involves contradiction, it is a piece of stupidity." and now pécuchet would never let m. jeufroy alone. he would surprise him in the garden, wait for him in the confessional, and take up the argument again in the sacristy. the priest had to invent plans in order to escape from him. one day, after he had started for sassetot on a sick call, pécuchet proceeded along the road in front of him in such a way as to render conversation inevitable. it was an evening about the end of august. the red sky began to darken, and a large cloud lowered above them, regular at the base and forming volutes at the top. pécuchet at first talked about indifferent subjects, then, having slipped out the word "martyr": "how many do you think there were of them?" "a score of millions at least." "their number is not so great, according to origen." "origen, you know, is open to suspicion." a big gust of wind swept past, violently shaking the grass beside the ditches and the two rows of young elm trees that stretched towards the end of the horizon. pécuchet went on: "amongst the martyrs we include many gaulish bishops killed while resisting the barbarians, which is no longer the question at issue." "do you wish to defend the emperors?" according to pécuchet, they had been calumniated. "the history of the theban legion is a fable. i also question symphorosa and her seven sons, felicitas and her seven daughters, and the seven virgins of ancyra condemned to violation, though septuagenarians, and the eleven thousand virgins of st. ursula, of whom one companion was called _undecemilla_, a name taken for a figure; still more, the ten martyrs of alexandria!" "and yet--and yet they are found in authors worthy of credit." raindrops fell, and the curé unrolled his umbrella; and pécuchet, when he was under it, went so far as to maintain that the catholics had made more martyrs than the jews, the mussulmans, the protestants, and the freethinkers--than all those of rome in former days. the priest exclaimed: "but we find ten persecutions from the reign of nero to that of cæsar galba!" "well! and the massacres of the albigenses? and st. bartholomew? and the revocation of the edict of nantes?" "deplorable excesses, no doubt; but you do not mean to compare these people to st. Étienne, st. lawrence, cyprian, polycarp, a crowd of missionaries?" "excuse me! i will remind you of hypatia, jerome of prague, john huss, bruno, vanini, anne dubourg!" the rain increased, and its drops dashed down with such force that they rebounded from the ground like little white rockets. pécuchet and m. jeufroy walked on slowly, pressed close to one another, and the curé said: "after abominable tortures they were flung into vessels of boiling water." "the inquisition made use of the same kind of torture, and it burned very well for you." "illustrious ladies were exhibited to the public gaze in the _lupanars_." "do you believe louis xiv.'s dragoons regarded decency?" "and mark well that the christians had done nothing against the state." "no more had the huguenots." the wind swept the rain into the air. it clattered on the leaves, trickled at the side of the road; and the mud-coloured sky intermingled with the fields, which lay bare after the close of harvest. not a root was to be seen. only, in the distance, a shepherd's hut. pécuchet's thin overcoat had no longer a dry thread in it. the water ran along his spine, got into his boots, into his ears, into his eyes, in spite of the amoros headpiece. the curé, while lifting up with one hand the tail of his cassock, uncovered his legs; and the points of his three-cornered hat sputtered the water over his shoulders, like the gargoyles of a cathedral. they had to stop, and, turning their backs to the storm, they remained face to face, belly to belly, holding with their four hands the swaying umbrella. m. jeufroy had not interrupted his vindication of the catholics. "did they crucify your protestants, as was done to st. simeon; or get a man devoured by two tigers, as happened to st. ignatius?" "but make some allowance for the number of women separated from their husbands, children snatched from their mothers, and the exile of the poor across the snow, in the midst of precipices. they huddled them together in prisons; just when they were at the point of death they were dragged along on the hurdle." the abbé sneered. "you will allow me not to believe a word of it. and our martyrs are less doubtful. st. blandina was delivered over naked in a net to a furious cow. st. julia was beaten to death. st. taracus, st. probus, and st. andronicus had their teeth broken with a hammer, their sides torn with iron combs, their hands pierced with reddened nails, and their scalps carried off." "you are exaggerating," said pécuchet. "the death of the martyrs was at that time an amplification of rhetoric." "what! of rhetoric?" "why, yes; whilst what i relate to you, sir, is history. the catholics in ireland disembowelled pregnant women in order to take their children----" "never!" "---- and give them to the pigs." "come now!" "in belgium they buried women alive." "what nonsense!" "we have their names." "and even so," objected the priest, angrily shaking his umbrella, "they cannot be called martyrs. there are no martyrs outside the church." "one word. if the value of a martyr depends on the doctrine, how could he serve to demonstrate its existence?" the rain ceased; they did not speak again till they reached the village. but, on the threshold of the presbytery, the curé said: "i pity you! really, i pity you!" pécuchet immediately told bouvard about the wrangle. it had filled him with an antipathy to religion, and, an hour later, seated before a brushwood fire, they both read the _curé meslier_. these dull negations disgusted pécuchet; then, reproaching himself for perhaps having misunderstood heroes, he ran through the history of the most illustrious martyrs in the biography. what a clamour from the populace when they entered the arena! and, if the lions and the jaguars were too quiet, the people urged them to come forward by their gestures and their cries. the victims could be seen covered with gore, smiling where they stood, with their gaze towards heaven. st. perpetua bound up her hair in order that she might not look dejected. pécuchet began to reflect. the window was open, the night tranquil; many stars were shining. there must have passed through these martyrs' souls things of which we have no idea--a joy, a divine spasm! and pécuchet, by dwelling on the subject, believed that he understood this emotion, and that he would have done the same himself. "you?" "certainly." "no fudge! do you believe--yes or no?" "i don't know." he lighted a candle; then, his eyes falling on the crucifix in the alcove: "how many wretches have sought help from that!" and, after a brief silence: "they have denaturalised him. it is the fault of rome--the policy of the vatican." but bouvard admired the church for her magnificence, and would have brought back the middle ages provided he might be a cardinal. "you must admit i should have looked well in the purple." pécuchet's headpiece, placed in front of the fire, was not yet dry. while stretching it out he felt something in the lining, and out tumbled a medal of st. joseph. madame de noares wished to ascertain from pécuchet whether he had not experienced some kind of change, bringing him happiness, and betrayed herself by her questions. on one occasion, whilst he was playing billiards, she had sewn the medal in his cap. evidently she was in love with him: they might marry; she was a widow, and he had had no suspicion of this attachment, which might have brought about his life's happiness. though he exhibited a more religious tendency than m. bouvard, she had dedicated him to st. joseph, whose succour is favourable to conversions. no one knew so well as she all the beads and the indulgences which they procure, the effect of relics, the privileges of blessed waters. her watch was attached to a chain that had touched the bonds of st. peter. amongst her trinkets glittered a pearl of gold, in imitation of the one in the church of allouagne containing a tear of our lord; a ring on her little finger enclosed some of the hair of the curé of ars, and, as she was in the habit of collecting simples for the sick, her apartment was like a sacristy combined with an apothecary's laboratory. her time was passed in writing letters, in visiting the poor, in dissolving irregular connections, and in distributing photographs of the sacred heart. a gentleman had promised to send her some "martyr's paste," a mixture of paschal wax and human dust taken from the catacombs, and used in desperate cases in the shape of fly-blisters and pills. she promised some of it to pécuchet. he appeared shocked at such materialism. in the evening a footman from the château brought him a basketful of little books relating pious phrases of the great napoleon, witticisms of clergymen at inns, frightful deaths that had happened to atheists. all those things madame de noares knew by heart, along with an infinite number of miracles. she related several stupid ones--miracles without an object, as if god had performed them to excite the wonder of the world. her own grandmother had locked up in a cupboard some prunes covered with a piece of linen, and when the cupboard was opened a year later they saw thirteen of them on the cloth forming a cross. "explain this to me." this was the phrase she used after her marvellous tales, which she declared to be true, with the obstinacy of a mule. apart from this she was a harmless woman of lively disposition. on one occasion, however, she deviated from her character. bouvard was disputing with her about the miracle of pezilla: this was a fruit-dish in which wafers had been hidden during the revolution and which had become gilded of itself. "perhaps there was at the bottom a little yellow colour caused by humidity?" "not at all! i repeat it, there was not! the cause of the gilding was the contact with the eucharist." by way of proof she relied on the attestations of bishops. "it is, they say, like a buckler, a--a palladium over the diocese of perpignan. ask monsieur jeufroy, then!" bouvard could not stand this kind of talk any longer; and, after he had looked over his louis hervieu, he took pécuchet off with them. the clergyman was finishing his dinner. reine offered them chairs, and, at a gesture from her master, she went to fetch two little glasses, which she filled with rosolio. after this bouvard explained what had brought him there. the abbé did not reply candidly. "everything is possible to god, and the miracles are a proof of religion." "however, there are laws of nature--" "that makes no difference to him. he sets them aside in order to instruct, to correct." "how do you know whether he sets them aside?" returned bouvard. "so long as nature follows her routine we never bestow a thought on it, but in an extraordinary phenomenon we believe we see the hand of god." "it may be there," replied the ecclesiastic; "and when an occurrence has been certified by witnesses----" "the witnesses swallow everything, for there are spurious miracles." the priest grew red. "undoubtedly; sometimes." "how can we distinguish them from the genuine ones? if the genuine ones, given as proofs, have themselves need of proofs, why perform them?" reine interposed, and, preaching like her master, said it was necessary to obey. "life is a passage, but death is eternal." "in short," suggested bouvard, guzzling the rosolio, "the miracles of former times are not better demonstrated than the miracles of to-day; analogous reasonings uphold those of christians and pagans." the curé flung down his fork on the table. "again i tell you those miracles were spurious! there are no miracles outside of the church." "stop!" said pécuchet, "that is the same argument you used regarding the martyrs: the doctrine rests on the facts and the facts on the doctrine." m. jeufroy, having swallowed a glass of water, replied: "even while denying them you believe in them. the world which twelve fishermen converted--look at that! it seems to me a fine miracle." "not at all!" pécuchet gave a different account of the matter: "monotheism comes from the hebrews; the trinity from the indians; the logos belongs to plato, and the virgin mother to asia." no matter! m. jeufroy clung to the supernatural and did not desire that christianity should have humanly the least reason for its existence, though he saw amongst all peoples foreshadowings or deformations of it. the scoffing impiety of the eighteenth century he would have tolerated, but modern criticism, with its politeness, exasperated him. "i prefer the atheist who blasphemes to the sceptic who cavils." then he looked at them with an air of bravado, as if to dismiss them. pécuchet returned home in a melancholy frame of mind. he had hoped for a reconciliation between faith and reason. bouvard made him read this passage from louis hervieu: "in order to know the abyss which separates them, oppose their axioms. "reason says to you: 'the whole comprehends the part,' and faith replies to you: 'by substantiation, jesus, while communicating with the apostles, had his body in his hand and his head in his mouth.' "reason says to you: 'no one is responsible for the crime of another,' and faith replies to you: 'by original sin.' "reason says to you: 'three make three,' and faith declares that 'three make one.'" they no longer associated with the abbé. it was the period of the war with italy. the respectable people were trembling for the pope. they were thundering against victor emmanuel. madame de noares went so far as to wish for his death. bouvard and pécuchet alone protested timidly. when the door of the drawing-room flew open in front of them and they looked at themselves in the lofty mirrors, as they passed, whilst through the windows they caught a glimpse of the walks where glared above the grass the red waistcoat of a man-servant, they felt a sensation of delight; and the luxuriousness of their surroundings rendered them indulgent to the words that were uttered there. the count lent them all the works of m. de maistre. he expounded the principles contained in them before a circle of intimate friends--hurel, the curé, the justice of the peace, the notary, and the baron, his future son-in-law, who used to come from time to time for twenty-four hours to the château. "what is abominable," said the count, "is the spirit of 'eighty-nine. first of all they question the existence of god; then they dispute about government; then comes liberty--liberty for insults, for revolt, for enjoyments, or rather for plunder, so that religion and authority ought to proscribe the independents, the heretics. no doubt they will protest against what they call persecution, as if the executioners persecuted the criminals. let me resume: no state without god! the law being unable to command respect unless it comes from on high, and, in fact, it is not a question of the italians, but of determining which shall have the best of it, the revolution or the pope, satan or jesus christ." m. jeufroy expressed his approval by monosyllables, hurel by means of a smile, and the justice of the peace by nodding his head. bouvard and pécuchet kept their eyes fixed on the ceiling; madame de noares, the countess, and yolande were making clothes for the poor, and m. de mahurot, beside his betrothed, was turning over the leaves of a book. then came intervals of silence, during which everyone seemed to be absorbed in the investigation of a problem. napoleon iii. was no longer a saviour, and he had even given a deplorable example by allowing the masons at the tuileries to work on sunday. "it ought not to be permitted," was the ordinary phrase of the count. social economy, fine arts, literature, history, scientific doctrines--on all he decided in his quality of christian and father of a family; and would to god that the government, in this respect, exercised the same severity that he exhibited in his household! authority alone is the judge of the dangers of science: spread too extensively, it inspires fatal ambitions in the breasts of the people. they were happier, these poor people, when the nobles and the bishops tempered the absolutism of the king. the manufacturers now make use of them. they are on the point of sinking into slavery. and all looked back with regret to the old _régime_, hurel through meanness, coulon through ignorance, marescot as a man of artistic tastes. bouvard, when he found himself at home once more, fortified his mind with a course of lamettrie, holbach, and others; whilst pécuchet forsook a religion which had become a medium of government. m. de mahurot had communicated in order the better to charm the ladies, and, if he adopted it as a practice, it was in the interests of the servants. a mathematician and _dilettante_, who played waltzes on the piano and admired topffer, he was distinguished by a tasteful scepticism. what was said about feudal abuses, the inquisition, and the jesuits, was the result of prejudice. he extolled progress, though he despised everyone who was not a gentleman, or who had not come from the polytechnic school! m. jeufroy likewise displeased the two friends. he believed in sorcery, made jokes about idolatry, declared that all idioms are derived from the hebrew. his rhetoric lacked the element of novelty: it was invariably the stag at bay, honey and absinthe, gold and lead, perfumes, urns, and the comparison of the christian soul to the soldier who ought to say in the face of sin: "thou shalt not pass!" in order to avoid his discourses they used to come to the château at as late an hour as possible. one day, however, they encountered him there. he had been an hour awaiting his two pupils. suddenly madame de noares entered. "the little girl has disappeared. i am bringing victor in. ah! the wretch!" she had found in his pocket a silver thimble which she had lost three days ago. then, stifled with sobs: "that is not all! while i was giving him a scolding, he turned his back on me!" and, ere the count and countess could have said a word: "however, it is my own fault: pardon me!" she had concealed from them the fact that the two orphans were the children of touache, who was now in prison. what was to be done? if the count sent them away they would be lost, and his act of charity would be taken for a caprice. m. jeufroy was not surprised. since man is corrupt, our natural duty is to punish him in order to improve him. bouvard protested. leniency was better. but the count once more expatiated on the iron hand indispensable for children as well as for the people. these two children were full of vices--the little girl was untruthful, the boy brutish. this theft, after all, might have been excused, the impertinence never. education should be the school of respect. therefore sorel, the gamekeeper, would immediately administer to the youngster a good flogging. m. de mahurot, who had something to say to him, undertook the commission. he went to the anteroom for a gun, and called victor, who had remained in the centre of the courtyard with downcast head. "follow me," said the baron. as the way to the gamekeeper's lodge turned off a little from chavignolles, m. jeufroy, bouvard, and pécuchet accompanied him. at a hundred paces from the château, he begged them not to speak any more while he was walking along the wood. the ground sloped down to the river's edge, where rose great blocks of stone. at sunset they looked like slabs of gold. on the opposite side the green hillocks were wrapped in shadow. a keen wind was blowing. rabbits came out of their burrows, and began browsing on the grass. a shot went off; a second; a third: and the rabbits jumped up, then rolled over. victor flung himself on them to seize hold of them, and panted, soaking with perspiration. "you have your clothes in nice condition!" said the baron. there was blood on his ragged blouse. bouvard shrank from the sight of blood. he would not admit that it ever should be shed. m. jeufroy returned: "circumstances sometimes make it necessary. if the guilty person does not give his own, there is need of another's--a truth which the redemption teaches us." according to bouvard, it had been of hardly any use, since nearly all mankind would be damned, in spite of the sacrifice of our lord. "but every day he renews it in the eucharist." "and whatever be the unworthiness of the priest," said pécuchet, "the miracle takes place at the words." "there is the mystery, sir." meanwhile victor had riveted his eyes on the gun, and he even tried to touch it. "down with your paws!" and m. de mahurot took a long path through the wood. the clergyman had placed pécuchet on one side of him and bouvard at the other, and said to the latter: "attention, you know. _debetur pueris._" bouvard assured him that he humbled himself in the presence of the creator, but was indignant at their having made him a man. we fear his vengeance; we work for his glory. he has every virtue: an arm, an eye, a policy, a habitation. "'our father, who art in heaven,' what does that mean?" and pécuchet added: "the universe has become enlarged; the earth is no longer its central point. it revolves amongst an infinite multitude of other worlds. many of them surpass it in grandeur, and this belittlement of our globe shows a more sublime ideal of god. "so, then, religion must change. paradise is something infantile, with its blessed always in a state of contemplation, always chanting hymns, and looking from on high at the tortures of the damned. when one reflects that christianity had for its basis an apple!" the curé was annoyed. "deny revelation; that would be simpler." "how do you make out that god spoke?" said bouvard. "prove that he did not speak!" said m. jeufroy. "once again, who affirms it?" "the church." "nice testimony!" this discussion bored m. de mahurot, and, as he walked along: "pray listen to the curé. he knows more than you." bouvard and pécuchet made signs to indicate that they were taking another road; then, at croix-verte: "a very good evening." "your servant," said the baron. all this would be told to m. de faverges, and perhaps a rupture would result. so much the worse. they felt that they were despised by those people of rank. they were never asked to dinner, and they were tired of madame de noares, with her continual remonstrances. they could not, however, keep the de maistre; and a fortnight after they returned to the château, not expecting to be welcomed, but they were. all the family were in the boudoir, and amongst those present were hurel and, strangely enough, foureau. correction had failed to correct victor. he refused to learn his catechism; and victorine gave utterance to vulgar words. in short, the boy should go to a reformatory, and the girl to a nunnery. foureau was charged with carrying out the measure, and he was about to go when the countess called him back. they were waiting for m. jeufroy to fix the date of the marriage, which was to take place at the [illustration: bouvart and pÉcuchet carried them off] mayor's office before being celebrated in the church, in order to show that they looked on civil marriage with contempt. foureau tried to defend it. the count and hurel attacked it. what was a municipal function beside a priesthood?--and the baron would not have believed himself to be really wedded if he had been married only in the presence of a tri-coloured scarf. "bravo!" said m. jeufroy, who had just come in. "marriage having been established by jesus christ----" pécuchet stopped him: "in which gospel? in the apostolic times they respected it so little that tertullian compares it to adultery." "oh! upon my word!" "yes, certainly! and it is not a sacrament. a sign is necessary for a sacrament. show me the sign in marriage." in vain did the curé reply that it represented the union of god with the church. "you do not understand christianity either! and the law----" "the law preserves the stamp of christianity," said m. de faverges. "without that, it would permit polygamy." a voice rejoined: "where would be the harm?" it was bouvard, half hidden by a curtain. "you might have many wives, like the patriarchs, the mormons, the mussulmans, and nevertheless be an honest man." "never!" exclaimed the priest; "honesty consists in rendering what is due. we owe homage to god. so he who is not a christian is not honest." "just as much as others," said bouvard. the count, believing that he saw in this rejoinder an attack on religion, extolled it. it had set free the slaves. bouvard referred to authorities to prove the contrary: "st. paul recommends them to obey their masters as they would obey jesus. st. ambrose calls servitude a gift of god. leviticus, exodus, and the councils have sanctioned it. bossuet treats it as a part of the law of nations. and monseigneur bouvier approves of it." the count objected that, none the less, christianity had developed civilisation. "ay, and idleness, by making a virtue of poverty." "however, sir, the morality of the gospel?" "ha! ha! not so moral! those who labour only during the last hour are paid as much as those who labour from the first hour. to him who hath is given, and from him who hath not is taken away. as for the precept of receiving blows without returning them and of letting yourself be robbed, it encourages the audacious, the cowardly, and the dissolute." they were doubly scandalised when pécuchet declared that he liked buddhism as well. the priest burst out laughing. "ha! ha! ha! buddhism!" madame de noares lifted up her hands: "buddhism!" "what! buddhism!" repeated the count. "do you understand it?" said pécuchet to m. jeufroy, who had become confused. "well, then, learn something about it. better than christianity, and before it, it has recognised the nothingness of earthly things. its practices are austere, its faithful more numerous than the entire body of christians; and, as for incarnation, vishnu had not merely one, but nine of them. so judge." "travellers' lies!" said madame de noares. "backed up by the freemasons!" added the curé. and all talking at the same time: "come, then, go on!" "very pretty!" "for my part, i think it funny!" "not possible!" finally, pécuchet, exasperated, declared that he would become a buddhist! "you are insulting christian ladies," said the baron. madame de noares sank into an armchair. the countess and yolande remained silent. the count kept rolling his eyes; hurel was waiting for his orders. the abbé, to contain himself, read his breviary. this sight calmed m. de faverges; and, looking at the two worthies: "before you find fault with the gospel, and that when there may be stains on your own lives, there is some reparation----" "reparation?" "for stains?" "enough! gentlemen. you don't understand me." then, addressing foureau: "sorel is informed about it. go to him." bouvard and pécuchet withdrew without bowing. at the end of the avenue they all three gave vent to their indignation. "they treated me as if i were a servant," grumbled foureau; and, as his companions agreed with him, in spite of their recollection of the affair of the hemorrhoids, he exhibited towards them a kind of sympathy. road-menders were working in the neighbourhood. the man who was over them drew near: it was gorju. they began to chat. he was overseeing the macadamisation of the road, voted in , and he owed this post to m. de mahurot, the engineer. "the one that's going to marry mademoiselle de faverges. i suppose 'tis from the house below you were just coming?" "for the last time," said pécuchet gruffly. gorju assumed an innocent air. "a quarrel! come, come!" and if they could have seen his countenance when they had turned on their heels, they might have observed that he had scented the cause of it. a little further on, they stopped before a trellised enclosure, inside which there were kennels, and also a red-tiled cottage. victorine was on the threshold. they heard dogs barking. the gamekeeper's wife came out. knowing the object of the mayor's visit, she called to victor. everything was ready beforehand, and their outfit was contained in two pocket-handkerchiefs fastened together with pins. "a pleasant journey," said the woman to the children, too glad to have no more to do with such vermin. was it their fault if they owed their birth to a convict father? on the contrary, they seemed very quiet, and did not even betray any alarm as to the place to which they were being conveyed. bouvard and pécuchet watched them as they walked in front of them. victorine muttered some unintelligible words, with her little bundle over her arm, like a milliner carrying a bandbox. every now and then she would turn round, and pécuchet, at the sight of her fair curls and her pretty figure, regretted that he had not such a child. brought up under different conditions, she would be charming later. what happiness only to see her growing tall, to hear day after day her bird-like warbling, to kiss her when the fancy seized him!--and a feeling of tenderness, rising from his heart to his lips, made his eyes grow moist and somewhat oppressed his spirit. victor, like a soldier, had slung his baggage over his shoulder. he whistled, threw stones at the crows in the furrows, and went to cut switches off the trees. foureau called him back; and bouvard, holding him by the hand, was delighted at feeling within his own those fingers of a robust and vigorous lad. the poor little wretch asked for nothing but to grow freely, like a flower in the open air! and he would rot between closed walls with tasks, punishment, a heap of tomfooleries! bouvard was seized with pity, springing from a sense of revolt, a feeling of indignation against fate, one of those fits of rage in which one longs to destroy government altogether. "jump about!" he said, "amuse yourself! have a bit of fun as long as you can!" the youngster scampered off. his sister and he were to sleep at the inn, and at daybreak the messenger from falaise would take victor and set him down at the reformatory of beaubourg; while a nun belonging to the orphanage of grand-camp would come to fetch victorine. foureau having gone into these details, was once more lost in his own thoughts. but bouvard wished to know how much the maintenance of the youngsters would cost. "bah! a matter perhaps of three hundred francs. the count has given me twenty-five for the first disbursements. what a stingy fellow!" and, stung to the heart by the contempt shown towards his scarf, foureau quickened his pace in silence. bouvard murmured: "they make me feel sad. i will take the charge of them." "and so will i," said pécuchet, the same idea having occurred to both of them. no doubt there were impediments? "none," returned foureau. besides, he had the right as mayor to entrust deserted children to whomsoever he thought fit. and, after a prolonged hesitation: "well, yes; take them! that will annoy _him_." bouvard and pécuchet carried them off. when they returned to their abode they found at the end of the staircase, under the madonna, marcel upon his knees praying with fervour. with his head thrown back, his eyes half closed, and his hare-lip gaping, he had the appearance of a fakir in ecstasy. "what a brute!" said bouvard. "why? he is perhaps attending to things that would make you envy him if you could only see them. are there not two worlds entirely distinct? the aim of a process of reasoning is of less consequence than the manner of reasoning. what does the form of belief matter? the great thing is to believe." such were the objections of pécuchet to bouvard's observation. [illustration: decoration] chapter x. lessons in art and science. they procured a number of works relating to education, and resolved to adopt a system of their own. it was necessary to banish every metaphysical idea, and, in accordance with the experimental method, to follow in the lines of natural development. there was no haste, for the two pupils might forget what they had learned. though they had strong constitutions, pécuchet wished, like a spartan, to make them more hardy, to accustom them to hunger, thirst, and severe weather, and even insisted on having their feet badly shod in order that they might be prepared for colds. bouvard was opposed to this. the dark closet at the end of the corridor was used as their sleeping apartment. its furniture consisted of two folding beds, two couches, and a jug. above their heads the top window was open, and spiders crawled along the plaster. often the children recalled to mind the interior of a cabin where they used to wrangle. one night their father came home with blood on his hands. some time afterwards the gendarmes arrived. after that they lived in a wood. men who made wooden shoes used to kiss their mother. she died, and was carried off in a cart. they used to get severe beatings; they got lost. then they could see once more madame de noares and sorel; and, without asking themselves the reason why they were in this house, they felt happy there. but they were disagreeably surprised when at the end of eight months the lessons began again. bouvard took charge of the little girl, and pécuchet of the boy. victor was able to distinguish letters, but did not succeed in forming syllables. he stammered over them, then stopped suddenly, and looked like an idiot. victorine put questions. how was it that "ch" in "orchestra" had the sound of a "q," and that of a "k" in "archæology." we must sometimes join two vowels and at other times separate them. all this did not seem to her right. she grew indignant at it. the teachers gave instruction at the same hour in their respective apartments, and, as the partition was thin, these four voices, one soft, one deep, and two sharp, made a hideous concert. to finish the business and to stimulate the youngsters by means of emulation, they conceived the idea of making them work together in the museum; and they proceeded to teach them writing. the two pupils, one at each end of the table, copied written words that were set for them; but the position of their bodies was awkward. it was necessary to straighten them; their copybooks fell down; their pens broke, and their ink bottles were turned upside down. victorine, on certain days, went on capitally for about three minutes, then she would begin to scrawl, and, seized with discouragement, she would sit with her eyes fixed on the ceiling. victor was not long before he fell asleep, lying over his desk. perhaps they were distressed by it? too great a strain was bad for young heads. "let us stop," said bouvard. there is nothing so stupid as to make children learn by heart; yet, if the memory is not exercised, it will go to waste, and so they taught the youngsters to recite like parrots the first fables of la fontaine. the children expressed their approval of the ant that heaped up treasure, of the wolf that devoured the lamb, and of the lion that took everyone's share. when they had become more audacious, they spoiled the garden. but what amusement could be provided for them? jean jacques rousseau in _emile_ advises the teacher to get the pupil to make his own playthings. bouvard could not contrive to make a hoop or pécuchet to sew up a ball. they passed on to toys that were instructive, such as cut-paper work. pécuchet showed them his microscope. when the candle was lighted, bouvard would sketch with the shadow of his finger on the wall the profile of a hare or a pig. but the pupils grew tired of it. writers have gone into raptures about the delightfulness of an open-air luncheon or a boating excursion. was it possible for them really to have such recreations? fénelon recommends from time to time "an innocent conversation." they could not invent one. so they had to come back to the lessons--the multiplying bowls, the erasures of their scrawlings, and the process of teaching them how to read by copying printed characters. all had proved failures, when suddenly a bright idea struck them. as victor was prone to gluttony, they showed him the name of a dish: he soon ran through _le cuisinier français_ with ease. victorine, being a coquette, was promised a new dress if she wrote to the dressmaker for it: in less than three weeks she accomplished this feat. this was playing on their vices--a pernicious method, no doubt; but it had succeeded. now that they had learned to read and write, what should they be taught? another puzzle. girls have no need of learning, as in the case of boys. all the same, they are usually brought up like mere animals, their sole intellectual baggage being confined to mystical follies. is it expedient to teach them languages? "spanish and italian," the swan of cambray lays down, "scarcely serve any purpose save to enable people to read dangerous books." such a motive appeared silly to them. however, victorine would have to do only with these languages; whereas english is more widely used. pécuchet proceeded to study the rules of the language. he seriously demonstrated the mode of expressing the "th"--"like this, now, _the_, _the_, _the_." but before instructing a child we must be acquainted with its aptitudes. they may be divined by phrenology. they plunged into it, then sought to verify its assertions by experiments on their own persons. bouvard exhibited the bumps of benevolence, imagination, veneration, and amorous energy--_vulgo_, eroticism. on pécuchet's temples were found philosophy and enthusiasm allied with a crafty disposition. such, in fact, were their characters. what surprised them more was to recognise in the one as well as in the other a propensity towards friendship, and, charmed with the discovery, they embraced each other with emotion. they next made an examination of marcel. his greatest fault, of which they were not ignorant, was an excessive appetite. nevertheless bouvard and pécuchet were dismayed to find above the top of the ear, on a level with the eye, the organ of alimentivity. with advancing years their servant would perhaps become like the woman in the salpêtrière, who every day ate eight pounds of bread, swallowed at one time fourteen different soups, and at another sixty bowls of coffee. they might not have enough to keep him. the heads of their pupils presented no curious characteristics. no doubt they had gone the wrong way to work with them. a very simple expedient enabled them to develop their experience. on market days they insinuated themselves among groups of country people on the green, amid the sacks of oats, the baskets of cheese, the calves and the horses, indifferent to the jostlings; and whenever they found a young fellow with his father, they asked leave to feel his skull for a scientific purpose. the majority vouchsafed no reply; others, fancying it was pomatum for ringworm of the scalp, refused testily. a few, through indifference, allowed themselves to be led towards the porch of the church, where they would be undisturbed. one morning, just as bouvard and pécuchet were beginning operations, the curé suddenly presented himself, and seeing what they were about, denounced phrenology as leading to materialism and to fatalism. the thief, the assassin, the adulterer, have henceforth only to cast the blame of their crimes on their bumps. bouvard retorted that the organ predisposes towards the act without forcing one to do it. from the fact that a man has in him the germ of a vice, there is nothing to show that he will be vicious. "however, i wonder at the orthodox, for, while upholding innate ideas, they reject propensities. what a contradiction!" but phrenology, according to m. jeufroy, denied divine omnipotence, and it was unseemly to practise under the shadow of the holy place, in the very face of the altar. "take yourselves off! no!--take yourselves off!" they established themselves in the shop of ganot, the hairdresser. bouvard and pécuchet went so far as to treat their subjects' relations to a shave or a clip. one afternoon the doctor came to get his hair cut. while seating himself in the armchair he saw in the glass the reflection of the two phrenologists passing their fingers over a child's pate. "so you are at these fooleries?" he said. "why foolery?" vaucorbeil smiled contemptuously, then declared that there were not several organs in the brain. thus one man can digest food which another cannot digest. are we to assume that there are as many stomachs in the stomach as there are varieties of taste? they pointed out that one kind of work is a relaxation after another; an intellectual effort does not strain all the faculties at the same time; each has its distinct seat. "the anatomists have not discovered it," said vaucorbeil. "that's because they have dissected badly," replied pécuchet. "what?" "oh, yes! they cut off slices without regard to the connection of the parts"--a phrase out of a book which recurred to his mind. "what a piece of nonsense!" exclaimed the physician. "the cranium is not moulded over the brain, the exterior over the interior. gall is mistaken, and i defy you to justify his doctrine by taking at random three persons in the shop." the first was a country woman, with big blue eyes. pécuchet, looking at her, said: "she has a good memory." her husband attested the fact, and offered himself for examination. "oh! you, my worthy fellow, it is hard to lead you." according to the others, there was not in the world such a headstrong fellow. the third experiment was made on a boy who was accompanied by his grandmother. pécuchet observed that he must be fond of music. "i assure you it is so," said the good woman. "show these gentlemen, that they may see for themselves." he drew a jew's-harp from under his blouse and began blowing into it. there was a crashing sound--it was the violent slamming of the door by the doctor as he went out. they were no longer in doubt about themselves, and summoning their two pupils, they resumed the analysis of their skull-bones. that of victorine was even all around, a sign of ponderation; but her brother had an unfortunate cranium--a very large protuberance in the mastoid angle of the parietal bones indicated the organ of destructiveness, of murder; and a swelling farther down was the sign of covetousness, of theft. bouvard and pécuchet remained dejected for eight days. but it was necessary to comprehend the exact sense of words: what we call combativeness implies contempt for death. if it causes homicides, it may, likewise bring about the saving of lives. acquisitiveness includes the tact of pickpockets and the ardour of merchants. irreverence has its parallel in the spirit of criticism, craft in circumspection. an instinct always resolves itself into two parts, a bad one and a good one. the one may be destroyed by cultivating the other, and by this system a daring child, far from being a vagabond, may become a general. the sluggish man will have only prudence; the penurious, economy; the extravagant, generosity. a magnificent dream filled their minds. if they carried to a successful end the education of their pupils, they would later found an establishment having for its object to correct the intellect, to subdue tempers, and to ennoble the heart. already they talked about subscriptions and about the building. their triumph in ganot's shop had made them famous, and people came to consult them in order that they might tell them their chances of good luck. all sorts of skulls were examined for this purpose--bowl-shaped, pear-shaped, those rising like sugar loaves, square heads, high heads, contracted skulls and flat skulls, with bulls' jaws, birds' faces, and eyes like pigs'; but such a crowd of people disturbed the hairdresser in his work. their elbows rubbed against the glass cupboard that contained the perfumery, they put the combs out of order, the wash-hand stand was broken; so he turned out all the idlers, begging of bouvard and pécuchet to follow them, an ultimatum which they unmurmuringly accepted, being a little worn out with cranioscopy. next day, as they were passing before the little garden of the captain, they saw, chatting with him, girbal, coulon, the keeper, and his younger son, zephyrin, dressed as an altar-boy. his robe was quite new, and he was walking below before returning to the sacristy, and they were complimenting him. curious to know what they thought of him, placquevent asked "these gentlemen" to feel his young man's head. the skin of his forehead looked tightly drawn; his nose, thin and very gristly at the tip, drooped slantwise over his pinched lips; his chin was pointed, his expression evasive, and his right shoulder was too high. "take off your cap," said his father to him. bouvard slipped his hands through his straw-coloured hair; then it was pécuchet's turn, and they communicated to each other their observations in low tones: "evident _love of books_! ha! ha! _approbativeness_! _conscientiousness_ wanting! no _amativeness_!" "well?" said the keeper. pécuchet opened his snuff-box, and took a pinch. "faith!" replied bouvard, "this is scarcely a genius." placquevent reddened with humiliation. "all the same, he will do my bidding." "oho! oho!" "but i am his father, by god! and i have certainly the right----" "within certain limits," observed pécuchet. girbal interposed. "the paternal authority is indispensable." "but if the father is an idiot?" "no matter," said the captain; "his power is none the less absolute." "in the interests of the children," added coulon. according to bouvard and pécuchet, they owed nothing to the authors of their being; and the parents, on the other hand, owed them food, education, forethought--in fact, everything. their good neighbours protested against this opinion as immoral. placquevent was hurt by it as if it were an insult. "for all that, they are a nice lot that you collect on the high-roads. they will go far. take care!" "care of what?" said pécuchet sourly. "oh! i am not afraid of you." "nor i of you either." coulon here used his influence to restrain the keeper and induce him to go away quietly. for some minutes there was silence. then there was some talk about the dahlias of the captain, who would not let his friends depart till he had exhibited every one of them. bouvard and pécuchet were returning homeward when, a hundred paces in front of them, they noticed placquevent; and close beside him zephyrin was lifting up his elbow, like a shield, to save his ear from being boxed. what they had just heard expressed, in another form, were the opinions of the count; but the example of their pupils proved how much liberty had the advantage over coercion. however, a little discipline was desirable. pécuchet nailed up a blackboard in the museum for the purpose of demonstrations. they each resolved to keep a journal wherein the things done by the pupil, noted down every evening, could be read next morning, and, to regulate the work by ringing the bell when it should be finished. like dupont de nemours, they would, at first, make use of the paternal injunction, then of the military injunction, and familiarity in addressing them would be forbidden. bouvard tried to teach victorine ciphering. sometimes he would make mistakes, and both of them would laugh. then she would kiss him on the part of his neck which was smoothest and ask leave to go, and he would give his permission. pécuchet at the hour for lessons in vain rang the bell and shouted out the military injunction through the window. the brat did not come. his socks were always hanging over his ankles; even at table he thrust his fingers into his nostrils, and did not even keep in his wind. broussais objects to reprimands on this point on the ground that "it is necessary to obey the promptings of a conservative instinct." victorine and he made use of frightful language, saying, _mé itou_ instead of _moi aussi_, _bère_ instead of _boire_, _al_ instead of _elle_, and _deventiau_ with the _iau_; but, as grammar cannot be understood by children, and as they would learn the use of language by hearing others speak correctly, the two worthy men watched their own words till they found it quite distressing. they held different views about the way to teach geography. bouvard thought it more logical to begin with the commune, pécuchet with the entire world. with a watering-pot and some sand he sought to demonstrate what was meant by a river, an island, a gulf, and even sacrificed three flower-beds to explain three continents; but the cardinal points could not be got into victor's head. on a night in january pécuchet carried him off in the open country. while they walked along he held forth on astronomy: mariners find it useful on their voyages; without it christopher columbus would not have made his discovery. we owe a debt of gratitude to copernicus, to galileo, and to newton. it was freezing hard, and in the dark blue sky countless stars were scintillating. pécuchet raised his eyes. "what! no ursa major!" the last time he had seen it, it was turned to the other side. at length he recognised it, then pointed out the polar star, which is always turned towards the north, and by means of which travellers can find out their exact situation. next day he placed an armchair in the middle of the room and began to waltz round it. "imagine that this armchair is the sun and that i am the earth; it moves like this." victor stared at him, filled with astonishment. after this he took an orange, passed through it a piece of stick to indicate the poles, then drew a circle across it with charcoal to mark the equator. he next moved the orange round a wax candle, drawing attention to the fact that the various points on the surface were not illuminated at the same time--which causes the difference of climates; and for that of the seasons he sloped the orange, inasmuch as the earth does not stand up straight--which brings about the equinoxes and the solstices. victor did not understand a bit of it. he believed that the earth turns around in a long needle, and that the equator is a ring pressing its circumference. by means of an atlas pécuchet exhibited europe to him; but, dazzled by so many lines and colours, he could no longer distinguish the names of different places. the bays and the mountains did not harmonise with the respective nations; the political order confused the physical order. all this, perhaps, might be cleared up by studying history. it would have been more practical to begin with the village, and go on next to the arrondissement, the department, and the province; but, as chavignolles had no annals, it was absolutely necessary to stick to universal history. it was rendered embarrassing by such a variety of details that one ought only to select its beautiful features. for greek history there are: "we shall fight in the shade," the banishment of aristides by the envious, and the confidence of alexander in his physician. for roman, the geese of the capitol, the tripod of scævola, the barrel of regulus. the bed of roses of guatimozin is noteworthy for america. as for france, it supplies the vase of soissons, the oak of st. louis, the death of joan of arc, the boiled hen of bearnais--you have only too extensive a field to select from, not to speak of _À moi d'auvergne!_ and the shipwreck of the _vengeur_. victor confused the men, the centuries, and the countries. pécuchet, however, was not going to plunge him into subtle considerations, and the mass of facts is a veritable labyrinth. he confined himself to the names of the kings of france. victor forgot them through not knowing the dates. but, if dumouchel's system of mnemonics had been insufficient for themselves, what would it be for him! conclusion: history can be learned only by reading a great deal. he would do this. drawing is useful where there are numerous details; and pécuchet was courageous enough to try to learn it himself from nature by working at the landscape forthwith. a bookseller at bayeux sent him paper, india-rubber, pasteboard, pencils, and fixtures, with a view to the works, which, framed and glazed, would adorn the museum. out of bed at dawn, they started each with a piece of bread in his pocket, and much time was lost in finding a suitable scene. pécuchet wished to reproduce what he found under his feet, the extreme horizon, and the clouds, all at the same time; but the backgrounds always got the better of the foregrounds; the river tumbled down from the sky; the shepherd walked over his flock; and a dog asleep looked as if he were hunting. for his part, he gave it up, remembering that he had read this definition: "drawing is composed of three things: line, grain, and fine graining, and, furthermore, the powerful touch. but it is only the master who can give the powerful touch." he rectified the line, assisted in the graining process, watched over the fine graining, and waited for the opportunity of giving the powerful touch. it never arrived, so incomprehensible was the pupil's landscape. victorine, who was very lazy, used to yawn over the multiplication table. mademoiselle reine showed her how to stitch, and when she was marking linen she lifted her fingers so nicely that bouvard afterwards had not the heart to torment her with his lesson in ciphering. one of these days they would resume it. no doubt arithmetic and sewing are necessary in a household; but it is cruel, pécuchet urged, to bring up girls merely with an eye to the husbands they might marry. not all of them are destined for wedlock; if we wish them later to do without men, we ought to teach them many things. the sciences can be taught in connection with the commonest objects; for instance, by telling what wine is made of; and when the explanation was given, victor and victorine had to repeat it. it was the same with groceries, furniture, illumination; but for them light meant the lamp, and it had nothing in common with the spark of a flint, the flame of a candle, the radiance of the moon. one day victorine asked, "how is it that wood burns?" her masters looked at each other in confusion. the theory of combustion was beyond them. another time bouvard, from the soup to the cheese, kept talking of nutritious elements, and dazed the two youngsters with fibrine, caseine, fat and gluten. after this, pécuchet desired to explain to them how the blood is renewed, and he became puzzled over the explanation of circulation. the dilemma is not an easy one; if you start with facts, the simplest require proofs that are too involved, and by laying down principles first, you begin with the absolute--faith. how is it to be solved? by combining the two methods of teaching, the rational and the empirical; but a double means towards a single end is the reverse of method. ah! so much the worse, then. to initiate them in natural history, they tried some scientific excursions. "you see," said they, pointing towards an ass, a horse, an ox, "beasts with four feet--they are called quadrupeds. as a rule, birds have feathers, reptiles scales, and butterflies belong to the insect class." they had a net to catch them with, and pécuchet, holding the insect up daintily, made them take notice of the four wings, the six claws, the two feelers, and of its bony proboscis, which drinks in the nectar of flowers. he gathered herbs behind the ditches, mentioned their names, and, when he did not know them, invented them, in order to keep up his prestige. besides, nomenclature is the least important thing in botany. he wrote this axiom on the blackboard: "every plant has leaves, a calyx, and a corolla enclosing an ovary or pericarp, which contains the seed." then he ordered his pupils to go looking for plants through the fields, and to collect the first that came to hand. victor brought him buttercups; victorine a bunch of strawberries. he searched vainly for the pericarp. bouvard, who distrusted his own knowledge, rummaged in the library, and discovered in _le redouté des dames_ a sketch of an iris in which the ovaries were not situated in the corolla, but beneath the petals in the stem. in their garden were some scratchweeds and lilies-of-the-valley in flower. these rubiaceæ had no calyx; therefore the principle laid down on the blackboard was false. "it is an exception," said pécuchet. but chance led to the discovery of a field-madder in the grass, and it had a calyx. "goodness gracious! if the exceptions themselves are not true, what are we to put any reliance on?" one day, in one of these excursions, they heard the cries of peacocks, glanced over the wall, and at first did not recognise their own farm. the barn had a slate roof; the railings were new; the pathways had been metalled. père gouy made his appearance. "'tisn't possible! is it you?" how many sad stories he had to tell of the past three years, amongst others the death of his wife! as for himself, he had always been as strong as an oak. "come in a minute." it was early in april, and in the three fruit-gardens rows of apple trees in full blossom showed their white and red clusters; the sky, which was like blue satin, was perfectly cloudless. table-cloths, sheets, and napkins hung down, vertically attached to tightly-drawn ropes by wooden pins. père gouy lifted them as they passed; and suddenly they came face to face with madame bordin, bareheaded, in a dressing-gown, and marianne offering her armfuls of linen. "your servant, gentlemen. make yourselves at home. as for me, i shall sit down; i am worn out." the farmer offered to get some refreshment for the entire party. "not now," said she; "i am too hot." pécuchet consented, and disappeared into the cellar with père gouy, marianne and victor. bouvard sat down on the grass beside madame bordin. he received the annual payment punctually; he had nothing to complain of; and he wished for nothing more. the bright sunshine lighted up her profile. one of her black head-bands had come loose, and the little curls behind her neck clung to her brown skin, moistened with perspiration. with each breath her bosom heaved. the smell of the grass mingled with the odour of her solid flesh, and bouvard felt a revival of his attachment, which filled him with joy. then he complimented her about her property. she was greatly charmed with it; and she told him about her plans. in order to enlarge the farmyard, she intended to take down the upper bank. victorine was at that moment climbing up the slopes, and gathering primroses, hyacinths, and violets, without being afraid of an old horse that was browsing on the grass at her feet. "isn't she pretty?" said bouvard. "yes, she is pretty, for a little girl." and the widow heaved a sigh, which seemed charged with life-long regret. "you might have had one yourself." she hung down her head. "that depended on you." "how?" he gave her such a look that she grew purple, as if at the sensation of a rough caress; but, immediately fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief: "you have let the opportunity slip, my dear." "i don't quite understand." and without rising he drew closer to her. she remained looking down at him for some time; then smiling, with moist eyes: "it is your fault." the sheets, hanging around them, hemmed them in, like the curtains of a bed. he leaned forward on his elbow, so that his face touched her knees. "why?--eh?--why?" and as she remained silent, while he was in a condition in which words cost nothing, he tried to justify himself; accused himself of folly, of pride. "forgive me! let everything be as it was before. do you wish it?" and he caught her hand, which she allowed to remain in his. a sudden gust of wind blew up the sheets, and they saw two peacocks, a male and a female. the female stood motionless, with her tail in the air. the male marched around her, erected his tail into a fan and bridled up, making a clucking noise. bouvard was clasping the hand of madame bordin. she very quickly loosed herself. before them, open-mouthed and, as it were, petrified, was young victor staring at them; a short distance away victorine, stretched on her back, in the full light of day, was inhaling all the flowers which she had gathered. the old horse, frightened by the peacocks, broke one of the lines with a kick, got his legs entangled in it, and, galloping through the farmyard, dragged the washed linen after him. at madame bordin's wild screams marianne rushed up. pére gouy abused his horse: "fool of a beast! old bag of bones! infernal thief of a horse!"--kicked him in the belly, and lashed his ears with the handle of a whip. bouvard was shocked at seeing the animal maltreated. the countryman, in answer to his protest, said: "i've a right to do it; he's my own." this was no justification. and pécuchet, coming on the scene, added that animals too have their rights, for they have souls like ourselves--if indeed ours have any existence. "you are an impious man!" exclaimed madame bordin. three things excited her anger: the necessity for beginning the washing over again, the outrage on her faith, and the fear of having been seen just now in a compromising attitude. "i thought you were more liberal," said bouvard. she replied, in a magisterial manner, "i don't like scamps." and gouy laid the blame on them for having injured his horse, whose nostrils were bleeding. he growled in a smothered voice: "damned unlucky people! i was going to put him away when they turned up." the two worthies took themselves off, shrugging their shoulders. victor asked them why they had been vexed with gouy. "he abuses his strength, which is wrong." "why is it wrong?" could it be that the children had no idea of justice? perhaps so. and the same evening, pécuchet, with bouvard sitting at his right, and facing the two pupils with some notes in his hand, began a course of lectures on morality. "this science teaches us to exercise control over our actions. "they have two motives--pleasure and interest, and a third, more imperious--duty. "duties are divided into two classes: first, duties towards ourselves, which consist in taking care of our bodies, protecting ourselves against all injury." (they understood this perfectly.) "secondly, duties towards others; that is to say, to be always loyal, good-natured, and even fraternal, the human race being only one single family. a thing often pleases us which is injurious to our fellows; interest is a different thing from good, for good is in itself irreducible." (the children did not comprehend.) he put off the sanction of duties until the next occasion. in the entire lecture, according to bouvard, he had not defined "good." "why do you wish to define it? we feel it." so, then, the lessons of morality would suit only moral people--and pécuchet's course did not go further. they made their pupils read little tales tending to inspire them with the love of virtue. they plagued victor to death. in order to strike his imagination, pécuchet suspended from the walls of his apartment representations of the lives of the good person and the bad person respectively. the first, adolphe, embraced his mother, studied german, assisted a blind man, and was admitted into the polytechnic school. the bad person, eugène, began by disobeying his father, had a quarrel in a café, beat his wife, fell down dead drunk, smashed a cupboard--and a final picture represented him in jail, where a gentleman, accompanied by a young lad, pointed him out, saying, "you see, my son, the dangers of misconduct." but for the children, the future had no existence. in vain were their minds saturated with the maxim that "work is honourable," and that "the rich are sometimes unhappy." they had known workmen in no way honoured, and had recollections of the château, where life seemed good. the pangs of remorse were depicted for them with so much exaggeration that they smelled humbug, and after that became distrustful. attempts were then made to govern their conduct by a sense of honour, the idea of public opinion, and the sentiment of glory, by holding up to their admiration great men; above all, men who made themselves useful, like belzunce, franklin, and jacquard. victor displayed no longing to resemble them. one day, when he had done a sum in addition without a mistake, bouvard sewed to his jacket a ribbon to symbolise the cross. he strutted about with it; but, when he forgot about the death of henry iv., pécuchet put an ass's cap on his head. victor began to bray with so much violence and for so long a time, that it was found necessary to take off his pasteboard ears. like him, his sister showed herself vain of praise, and indifferent to blame. in order to make them more sensitive, a black cat was given to them, that they might take care of it; and two or three coppers were presented to them, so that they might bestow alms. they thought the requirement unjust; this money belonged to them. in compliance with the wish of the pedagogues, they called bouvard "my uncle," and pécuchet "good friend;" but they "thee'd" and "thou'd" them, and half the lessons were usually lost in disputes. victorine ill-treated marcel, mounted on his back, dragged him by the hair. in order to make game of his hare-lip, she spoke through her nose like him; and the poor fellow did not venture to complain, so fond was he of the little girl. one evening his hoarse voice was unusually raised. bouvard and pécuchet went down to the kitchen. the two pupils were staring at the chimneypiece, and marcel, with clasped hands, was crying out: "take him away! it's too much--it's too much!" the lid of the pot flew off like the bursting of a shell. a greyish mass bounded towards the ceiling, then wriggled about frantically, emitting fearful howls. they recognised the cat, quite emaciated, with its hair gone, its tail like a piece of string, and its dilated eyes starting out of its head. they were as white as milk, vacant, so to speak, and yet glaring. the hideous animal continued its howling till it flung itself into the fireplace, disappeared, then rolled back in the middle of the cinders lifeless. it was victor who had perpetrated this atrocity; and the two worthy men recoiled, pale with stupefaction and horror. to the reproaches which they addressed to him, he replied, as the keeper had done with reference to his son and the farmer with reference to his horse: "well! since it's my own," without ceremony and with an air of innocence, in the placidity of a satiated instinct. the boiling water from the pot was scattered over the floor, and saucepans, tongs, and candlesticks lay everywhere thrown about. marcel was some time cleaning up the kitchen, and his masters and he buried the poor cat in the garden under the pagoda. after this bouvard and pécuchet had a long chat about victor. the paternal blood was showing itself. what were they to do? to give him back to m. de faverges or to entrust him to others would be an admission of impotence. perhaps he would reform. no matter! it was a doubtful hope; and they no longer felt any tenderness towards him. what a pleasure it would have been, however, to have near them a youth interested in their ideas, whose progress they could watch, who would by and by have become a brother to them! but victor lacked intellect, and heart still more. and pécuchet sighed, with his hands clasped over his bent knee. "the sister is not much better," said bouvard. he pictured to himself a girl of nearly fifteen years, with a refined nature, a playful humour, adorning the house with the elegant tastes of a young lady; and, as if he had been her father and she had just died, the poor man began to weep. then, seeking an excuse for victor, he quoted rousseau's opinion: "the child has no responsibility, and cannot be moral or immoral." pécuchet's view was that these children had reached the age of discretion, and that they should study some method whereby they could be corrected. bentham lays down that a punishment, in order to be effectual, should be in proportion to the offence--its natural consequence. the child has broken a pane of glass--a new one will not be put in: let him suffer from cold. if, not being hungry any longer, he asks to be served again, give way to him: a fit of indigestion will quickly make him repent. suppose he is lazy--let him remain without work: boredom of itself will make him go back to it. but victor would not endure cold; his constitution could stand excesses; and doing nothing would agree with him. they adopted the reverse system: medicinal punishment. impositions were given to him; he only became more idle. they deprived him of sweet things; his greediness for them redoubled. perhaps irony might have success with him? on one occasion, when he came to breakfast with dirty hands, bouvard jeered at him, calling him a "gay cavalier," a "dandy," "yellow gloves." victor listened with lowering brow, suddenly turned pale, and flung his plate at bouvard's head; then, wild at having missed him, made a rush at him. it took three men to hold him. he rolled himself on the floor, trying to bite. pécuchet, at some distance, sprinkled water over him out of a carafe: he immediately calmed down; but for two days he was hoarse. the method had not proved of any use. they adopted another. at the least symptom of anger, treating him as if he were ill, they put him to bed. victor was quite contented there, and showed it by singing. one day he took out of its place in the library an old cocoanut, and was beginning to split it open, when pécuchet came up: "my cocoanut!" it was a memento of dumouchel! he had brought it from paris to chavignolles. he raised his arms in indignation. victor burst out laughing. "good friend" could not stand it any longer, and with one good box sent him rolling to the end of the room, then, quivering with emotion, went to complain to bouvard. bouvard rebuked him. "are you crazy with your cocoanut? blows only brutalise; terror enervates. you are disgracing yourself!" pécuchet returned that corporal chastisements were sometimes indispensable. pestalozzi made use of them; and the celebrated melancthon confesses that without them he would have learned nothing. his friend observed that cruel punishments, on the other hand, had driven children to suicide. he had in his reading found examples of it. victor had barricaded himself in his room. bouvard parleyed with him outside the door, and, to make him open it, promised him a plum tart. from that time he grew worse. there remained a method extolled by monseigneur dupanloup: "the severe look." they tried to impress on their countenances a dreadful expression, and they produced no effect. "we have no longer any resource but to try religion." pécuchet protested. they had banished it from their programme. but reasoning does not satisfy every want. the heart and the imagination desire something else. the supernatural is for many souls indispensable. so they resolved to send the children to catechism. reine offered to conduct them there. she again came to the house, and knew how to make herself liked by her caressing ways. victorine suddenly changed, became shy, honey-tongued, knelt down before the madonna, admired the sacrifice of abraham, and sneered disdainfully at the name of protestant. she said that fasting had been enjoined upon her. they made inquiries: it was not true. on the feast of corpus christi some damask violets disappeared from one of the flower-beds to decorate the processional altar: she impudently denied having cut them. at another time she took from bouvard twenty sous, which she placed at vesper-time in the sacristan's collecting-plate. they drew from this the conclusion that morality is distinguishable from religion; when it has not another basis, its importance is secondary. one evening, while they were dining, m. marescot entered. victor fled immediately. the notary, having declined to sit down, told what had brought him there. young touache had beaten--all but killed--his son. as victor's origin was known, and as he was unpopular, the other brats called him "convict," and not long since he had given master arnold marescot a drubbing, which was an insult. "dear arnold" bore the marks of it on his body. "his mother is in despair, his clothes are in rags, his health is imperilled. what are we coming to?" the notary insisted on severe chastisement, and, amongst other things, on victor being henceforth kept away from catechism, to prevent fresh collisions. bouvard and pécuchet, although wounded by his haughty tone, promised everything he wished--yielded. had victor obeyed a sentiment of honour or of revenge? in any case, he was no coward. but his brutality frightened them. music softens manners. pécuchet conceived the notion of teaching him the solfeggio. victor had much difficulty in reading the notes readily and not confounding the terms _adagio_, _presto_, and _sforzando_. his master strove to explain to him the gamut, perfect harmony, the diatonic, the chromatic, and the two kinds of intervals called major and minor. he made him stand up straight, with his chest advanced, his shoulders thrown back, his mouth wide open, and, in order to teach by example, gave out intonations in a voice that was out of tune. victor's voice came forth painfully from his larynx, so contracted was it. when the bar began with a crotchet rest, he started either too soon or too late. nevertheless pécuchet took up an air in two parts. he used a rod as a substitute for a fiddle-stick, and moved his arm like a conductor, as if he had an orchestra behind him; but, engaged as he was in two tasks, he sometimes made a mistake; his blunder led to others on the part of the pupil; and, knitting their brows, straining the muscles of their necks, they went on at random down to the end of the page. at length pécuchet said to victor: "you're not likely to shine in a choral society." and he abandoned the teaching of music. besides, perhaps locke is right: "music is associated with so much profligate company that it is better to occupy oneself with something else." without desiring to make an author of him, it would be convenient for victor to know how to despatch a letter. a reflection stopped them: the epistolary style cannot be acquired, for it belongs exclusively to women. they next thought of cramming his memory with literary fragments, and, perplexed about making selections, consulted madame campan's work. she recommends the scene of eliakim, the choruses in _esther_, and the entire works of jean baptiste rousseau. these are a little old-fashioned. as for romances, she prohibits them, as depicting the world under too favourable colours. however, she permits _clarissa harlowe_ and _the father of a family_, by mrs. opie.[a] who is this mrs. opie? [a] this is possibly a reference to that once celebrated specimen of english didactic fiction, _fathers and daughters_, by mrs. amelia opie.--translator. they did not find her name in the biographie of michaud. there remained fairy tales. "they would be expecting palaces of diamonds," said pécuchet. literature develops the intellect, but excites the passions. victorine was sent away from catechism on account of her conduct. she had been caught kissing the notary's son, and reine made no joke of it: her face looked grave under her cap with its big frills. after such a scandal, why keep a young girl so corrupted? bouvard and pécuchet called the curé an old fool. his housekeeper defended him, muttering: "we know you!--we know you!" they made a sharp rejoinder, and she went off rolling her eyes in a fearful manner. victorine was, in fact, smitten with a fancy for arnold, so nice did she think him, with his embroidered collar, his velvet jacket, and his well-scented hair; and she had been bringing bouquets to him up to the time when zephyrin told about her. what foolishness was exhibited regarding this adventure, the two children being perfectly innocent! the two guardians thought victor required a stirring amusement like hunting; this would lead to the expense of a gun, of a dog. they thought it better to fatigue him, in order to tame the exuberance of his animal spirits, and went in for coursing in the fields. the young fellow escaped from them, although they relieved each other. they could do nothing more; and in the evening they had not the strength to hold up the newspaper. whilst they were waiting for victor they talked to the passers-by, and through the sheer necessity of playing the pedagogue, they tried to teach them hygiene, deplored the injuries from floods and the waste of manures, thundered against such superstitions as leaving the skeleton of a blackbird in a barn, putting consecrated wood at the end of a stable and a bag of worms on the big toes of people suffering from fever. they next took to inspecting wet nurses, and were incensed at their management of babies: some soaked them in gruel, causing them to die of exhaustion; others stuffed them with meat before they were six months old, and so they fell victims to indigestion; several cleaned them with their own spittle; all managed them barbarously. when they saw over a door an owl that had been crucified, they went into the farmhouse and said: "you are wrong; these animals live on rats and field-mice. there has been found in a screech-owl's stomach a quantity of caterpillars' larvæ." the country-folk knew them from having seen them, in the first place, as physicians, then searching for old furniture, and afterwards looking for stones; and they replied: "come, now, you pair of play-actors! don't try to teach us." their conviction was shaken, for the sparrows cleanse the kitchen-gardens, but eat up the cherries. the owls devour insects, and at the same time bats, which are useful; and, if the moles eat the slugs, they upset the soil. there was one thing of which they were certain: that all game should be destroyed as fatal to agriculture. one evening, as they were passing along by the wood of faverges, they found themselves in front of sorel's house, at the side of the road. sorel was gesticulating in the presence of three persons. the first was a certain dauphin, a cobbler, small, thin, and with a sly expression of countenance; the second, père aubain, a village porter, wore an old yellow frock-coat, with a pair of coarse blue linen trousers; the third, eugène, a man-servant employed by m. marescot, was distinguished by his beard cut like that of a magistrate. sorel was showing them a noose in copper wire attached to a silk thread, which was held by a clamp--what is called a snare--and he had discovered the cobbler in the act of setting it. "you are witnesses, are you not?" eugène lowered his chin by way of assent, and père aubain replied: "once you say so." what enraged sorel was that anyone should have the audacity to set up a snare at the entrance of his lodge, the rascal imagining that one would have no idea of suspecting it in such a place. dauphin adopted the blubbering system: "i was walking over it; i even tried to break it." they were always accusing him. they had a grudge against him; he was most unlucky. sorel, without answering him, had drawn out of his pocket a note-book and a pen and ink, in order to make out an official report. "oh, no!" said pécuchet. bouvard added: "let him go. he is a decent fellow." "he--a poacher!" "well, such things will happen." and they proceeded to defend poaching: "we know, to start with, that the rabbits nibble at the young sprouts, and that the hares destroy the corn crops--except, perhaps, the woodcock----" "let me alone, now." and the gamekeeper went on writing with clenched teeth. "what obstinacy!" murmured bouvard. "another word, and i shall send for the gendarmes! "you are an ill-mannered fellow!" said pécuchet. "you are no great things!" retorted sorel. bouvard, forgetting himself, referred to him as a blockhead, a bully; and eugène kept repeating, "peace! peace! let us respect the law"; while père aubain was groaning three paces away from them on a heap of pebbles. disturbed by these voices, all the dogs of the pack rushed out of their kennels. through the railings their black snouts could be seen, and, rushing hither and thither they kept barking loudly. "don't plague me further," cried their master, "or i'll make them go for your breeches!" the two friends departed, satisfied, however, with having upheld progress and civilisation. next day a summons was served on them to appear at the police court for offering insults to the gamekeeper, and to pay a hundred francs' compensation, "reserving an appeal to the public administration, having regard to the contraventions committed by them. costs: francs centimes.--tiercelin, summoner." wherefore a public administration? their heads became giddy; then, becoming calm, they set about preparing their defence. on the day named, bouvard and pécuchet repaired to the court-house an hour too early. no one was there; chairs and three cushioned seats surrounded an oval table covered with a cloth; a niche had been made in the wall for the purpose of placing a stove there; and the emperor's bust, which was on a pedestal, overlooked the scene. they strolled up to the top room of the building, where there was a fire-engine, a number of flags, and in a corner, on the floor, other plaster busts--the great napoleon without a diadem; louis xviii. with epaulets on a dress-coat; charles x., recognisable by his hanging lip; louis philippe, with arched eyebrows and hair dressed in pyramid fashion, the slope of the roof grazing the nape of his neck; and all these objects were befouled by flies and dust. this spectacle had a demoralising effect on bouvard and pécuchet. governing powers excited their pity as they made their way back to the main hall. there they found sorel and the field-keeper, the one wearing his badge on his arm, and the other his military cap. a dozen persons were talking, having been summoned for not having swept in front of their houses, or for having let their dogs go at large, or neglecting to attach lanterns to their carts, or for keeping a public-house open during mass-time. at length coulon presented himself, wrapped in a robe of black serge and wearing a round cap with velvet edgings. his clerk sat down at his left, the mayor, scarfed, at his right; and shortly afterwards the case of sorel against bouvard and pécuchet was called. louis-martial-eugène lenepveur, valet at chavignolles (calvados), availed himself of his character as a witness to unburden himself of all he knew about a great many things that were foreign to the issue. nicolas-juste aubain, day-labourer, was afraid both of displeasing sorel and of injuring "these gentlemen." he had heard abusive words, and yet he had his doubts about it. he pleaded that he was deaf. the justice of the peace made him sit down; then, addressing himself to the gamekeeper: "do you persist in your declarations?" "certainly." coulon then asked the two defendants what they had to say. bouvard maintained that he had not insulted sorel, but that in taking the poacher's part he had vindicated the rights of the peasantry. he recalled the abuses of feudal times and the ruinous huntings of the nobles. "no matter! the contravention----" "allow me to stop you," exclaimed pécuchet. the words "contravention," "crime," and "delict" were of no value. to seek in this way to class punishable acts was to take an arbitrary basis. as much as to say to citizens: "don't bother yourself as to the value of your actions; that is determined by the punishment inflicted by authority." however, the penal code appeared to him an absurd production devoid of principles. "that may be," replied coulon; and he proceeded to pronounce his judgment. but here foureau, who represented the public administration, arose. they had outraged the gamekeeper in the exercise of his functions. if no regard were shown for propriety, everything would be destroyed. "in short, may it please monsieur the justice of the peace to apply the maximum penalty." this was ten francs, in the form of damages to sorel. "bravo!" exclaimed bouvard. coulon had not finished. "impose on them, in addition, a fine of five francs for having been guilty of the contravention mentioned by the public administration." pécuchet turned around to the audience: "the fine is a trifle to the rich man, but a disaster to the poor man. as for myself, it matters nothing to me." and he presented the appearance of defying the court. "really," said coulon, "i am astonished that people of intelligence----" "the law dispenses you from the possession of it," retorted pécuchet. "the justice of the peace occupies his post indefinitely, while the judge of the supreme court is reputed capable up to seventy-five years, and the judge of first instance is no longer so at seventy." but, at a gesture from foureau, placquevent advanced. they protested. "ah! if you were appointed by competition!" "or by the general council!" "or a committee of experts, and according to a proper list!" placquevent moved them on, and they went out while the other defendants' names were being called, believing that they had made a good show in the course of these vile proceedings. to give vent to their indignation they went that evening to beljambe's hostelry. his café was empty, the principal customers being in the habit of leaving about ten o'clock. the lamp had been lowered; the walls and the counter seemed shrouded in a fog. a female attendant came on the scene. it was mélie. she did not appear agitated, and, smiling, she poured them out two bocks. pécuchet, ill at ease, quickly left the establishment. bouvard came back there alone, entertained some of the villagers with sarcasms at the mayor's expense, and after that went into the smoking-room. six months later dauphin was acquitted for want of evidence. what a shame! these very witnesses who had been believed when testifying against them were now regarded with suspicion. and their anger knew no bounds when the registrar gave them notice to pay the fine. bouvard attacked the registry as injurious to property. "you are mistaken," said the collector. "why, it bears a third of the public expenditure!" "i would have proceedings with regard to taxes less vexatious, a better system of land registration, alterations in the law as to mortgages, and would abolish the bank of france, which has the privilege of usury." girbal, not being strong on the subject, let the argument fall to the ground, and departed. however, bouvard made himself agreeable to the innkeeper; he would attract a crowd around him; and, while he was waiting for the guests, he chatted familiarly with the barmaid. he gave utterance to odd ideas on primary education. on leaving school, pupils ought to be capable of nursing the sick, understanding scientific discoveries, and taking an interest in the arts. the requirements of his programme made him fall out with petit; and he offended the captain by maintaining that soldiers, instead of losing their time with drilling, would be better occupied in growing vegetables. when the question of free trade turned up he brought pécuchet along with him, and the whole winter there were in the café angry looks, contemptuous attitudes, insults and vociferations, with blows of fists on the table that made the beer-glasses jump. langlois and the other merchants defended national commerce; oudot, owner of a spinning factory, and mathieu, a goldsmith, national industry; the landowners and the farmers, national agriculture: everyone claiming privileges for himself to the detriment of the public at large. the observations of bouvard and pécuchet had an alarming effect. as they were accused of ignoring the practical side of life, of having a tendency towards levelling, and of immorality, they developed these three ideas: to replace the family name by a registered number; to arrange the french people in a hierarchy, and in such a way that, in order to preserve his grade, it would be necessary for one to submit from time to time to an examination; no more punishments, no more rewards, but in every village an individual chronicle of all persons living there, which would pass on to posterity. their system was treated with disdain. they wrote an article about it for the bayeux daily paper, drew up a note to the prefect, a petition to the chambers, and a memorial to the emperor. the newspaper did not publish their article. the prefect did not condescend to reply. the chambers were silent; and they waited a long time for a communication from the tuileries. what, then, was the emperor occupying his time with? with women, no doubt. foureau, on the part of the sub-prefect, suggested the desirability of more reserve. they laughed at the sub-prefect, the prefect, the councillors of the prefecture, even the council of state. administrative justice was a monstrosity, for the administration by means of favours and threats unjustly controls its functionaries. in short, they came to be regarded as a nuisance, and the leading men of the place gave injunctions to beljambe not to entertain two such fellows. at this period, bouvard and pécuchet were burning to signalise themselves by a work which would dazzle their neighbours; and they saw nothing better than plans for the embellishment of chavignolles. three fourths of the houses should be demolished. they would construct in the centre of the village a monumental square, on the way to falaise a hospital, slaughter-houses on the way to caen, and at the "cows' pass" a roman church of many colours. pécuchet manufactured a colouring mixture with indian ink, and did not forget in preparing his plans to give a yellow tint to the woods, a red to the buildings, and a green to the meadows, for the pictures of an ideal chavignolles pursued him in his daydreams, and he came back to them as he lay on his mattress. bouvard was awakened by him one night. "are you unwell?" pécuchet stammered, "haussmann prevents me from going to sleep." about this time he received a letter from dumouchel to know the cost of sea-baths on the norman coast. "let him go about his business with his baths! have we any time to write?" and, when they had procured a land-surveyor's chain, a semicircle, a water-level, and a compass, they began at other studies. they encroached on private properties. the inhabitants were frequently surprised to see the pair fixing stakes in the ground for surveying purposes. bouvard and pécuchet announced their plans, and what would be the outcome of them, with the utmost self-complacency. the people became uneasy, for, perchance, authority might at length fall in with these men's views! sometimes they rudely drove them away. victor scaled the walls and crept up to the roof to hang up signals there; he exhibited good-will, and even a degree of enthusiasm. they were also better satisfied with victorine. when she was ironing the linen she hummed in a sweet voice as she moved her smoothing-iron over the board, interested herself in looking after the household, and made a cap for bouvard, with a well-pointed peak that won compliments for her from romiche. this man was one of those tailors who go about mending clothes in farmhouses. he was taken into the house for a fortnight. hunchbacked, with bloodshot eyes, he made up for his bodily defects by a facetious disposition. while the masters were out, he used to amuse marcel and victorine by telling them funny stories. he would put out his tongue as far as his chin, imitate the cuckoo, or give exhibitions of ventriloquism; and at night, saving the cost of an inn, he went to sleep in the bakehouse. now, one morning, at a very early hour, bouvard, being cold, happened to go there to get chips to light his fire. what he saw petrified him. behind the remains of the chest, upon a straw mattress, romiche and victorine lay asleep together. he had passed his arm around her waist, and his other hand, long as that of an ape, clutched one of her knees. she was smiling, stretched on her back. her fair hair hung loose, and the whiteness of the dawn threw its pale light upon the pair. bouvard for a moment felt as if he had received a blow in the chest; then a sense of shame prevented him from making a single movement. he was oppressed by painful reflections. "so young! lost! lost!" he then went to awaken pécuchet, and briefly told him everything. "ah! the wretch!" "we cannot help it. be calm!" and for some time they remained sighing, one after the other--bouvard, with his coat off and his arms folded; pécuchet, at the side of his bed, sitting barefooted in a cotton nightcap. romiche should leave that very day, when his work was finished. they would pay him in a haughty fashion, and in silence. but providence had some spite against them. marcel, a short time afterwards, led them to victor's room and showed them at the bottom of his chest of drawers a twenty-franc piece. the youngster had asked him to get the change of it. where did it come from? no doubt it was got by a theft committed while they were going about as engineers. but in order to restore it they would require to know the person; and if some one came to claim it they would look like accomplices. at length, having sent for victor, they ordered him to open his drawer: the napoleon was no longer there. he pretended not to understand. a short time before, however, they had seen it, this very coin, and marcel was incapable of lying. this affair had revolutionised pécuchet so much that he had, since morning, kept in his pocket a letter for bouvard: "sir,--fearing lest m. pécuchet may be ill, i have recourse to your kindness----" "whose is the signature, then?" "olympe dumouchel, _née_ charpeau." she and her husband were anxious to know in which bathing-place--courseulles, langrune, or lucques--the best society was to be found, which was least noisy, and as to the means of transport, the cost of washing, etc. this importunity made them angry with dumouchel; then weariness plunged them into deeper despondency. they went over all the pains that they had taken--so many lessons, precautions, torments! "and to think that we intended at one time to make victorine a teacher, and victor an overseer of works!" "ah! how deceived we were in her!" "if she is vicious, it is not the fault of the lessons she got." "for my part, to make her virtuous, i would have learned cartouche's biography." "perhaps they needed family life--the care of a mother?" "i was like one to them," protested bouvard. "alas!" replied pécuchet. "but there are natures bereft of moral sense; and education in that case can do nothing." "ah! yes, 'tis a fine thing, education!" as the orphans had not learned any trade, they would seek two situations for them as servants; and then, with the help of god, they would have nothing more to do with them. and henceforth "my uncle" and "good friend" made them take their meals in the kitchen. but soon they grew restless, their minds feeling the need of work, their existence of an aim. besides, what does one failure prove? what had proved abortive in the case of children might be more successful with men. and they conceived the idea of preparing a course of lectures for adults. in order to explain their views, a conference would be necessary. the great hall of the inn would be perfectly suitable for this purpose. beljambe, as deputy mayor, was afraid to compromise himself, refused at first, then, thinking that he might make something out of it, changed his mind, and sent word to that effect by his servant-maid. bouvard, in the excess of his joy, kissed her on both cheeks. the mayor was absent. the other deputy, m. marescot, entirely taken up with his office, would pay little attention to the conference. so it was to take place; and, to the beating of the drum, the hour was announced as three o'clock on the following sunday. it was only on the day before that they thought about their costumes. pécuchet, thank heaven, had preserved an old ceremonial coat with a velvet collar, two white cravats, and black gloves. bouvard put on his blue frock-coat, a nankeen waistcoat and beaver shoes; and they were strongly moved when they had passed through the village and arrived at the hostelry of the golden cross. [_here gustave flaubert's manuscript breaks off._] [illustration: decoration] [extract from a plan found amongst gustave flaubert's papers indicating the conclusion of the work.] conference the inn of the golden cross--two wooden galleries at the sides on the first floor, with projecting balcony; main building at the bottom; café on the ground floor, dining-room, billiard-room; the doors and the windows are open. crowd: people of rank, ordinary folk. bouvard: "the first thing to do is to demonstrate the utility of our project; our studies entitle us to pronounce an opinion." * * * * * discourse by pécuchet of a pedantic description. follies of the government and of the administration. too much taxation. two economies to be practised: the suppression of the religious and of the military budget. he is accused of atheism. "quite the contrary; but there is need of a religious renovation." foureau appears on the scene, and insists on dissolving the meeting. bouvard excites a laugh at the mayor's expense by recalling his idiotic bounties for owls. objection to this. "if it is necessary to destroy animals that injure plants, it would likewise be necessary to destroy the cattle that devour the grass." foureau withdraws. * * * * * discourse by bouvard--in a familiar style. prejudices: celibacy of priests, futility of adultery, emancipation of woman. "her earrings are the symbol of her former servitude." studs of men. * * * * * bouvard and pécuchet are reproached with the misconduct of their pupils. also, why did they adopt the children of a convict? theory of rehabilitation. they would dine with touache. foureau, having returned, reads, with a view to having revenge on bouvard, a petition from him to the municipal council, in which he asks for the establishment of a brothel at chavignolles. (contemptuous arguments.) the meeting is brought to a close amid the utmost confusion. * * * * * on their return to their own residence, bouvard and pécuchet perceive foureau's man-servant galloping along the road from falaise at full speed. they go to bed, quite jaded, without suspecting how many plots are fermenting against them.--explain the motives for ill-will towards them actuating the curé, the physician, the mayor, marescot, the people, everybody. * * * * * next day, at breakfast, they talk about the conference. pécuchet sees the future of humanity in dark colours. the modern man is lessened, and has become a machine. final anarchy of the human race. (buchner, i., ii.) impossibility of peace. (_id._) savagery traceable to the excess of individualism and the frenzy of science. three hypotheses--first: pantheistic radicalism will break every tie with the past, and an inhuman despotism will result; second: if theistic absolutism triumphs, the liberalism with which humanity has been penetrated since the era of reform succumbs--all is thrown back; third: if the convulsions which have been going on since ' continue, without an end between the two issues, these oscillations will carry us away by their own force. there will be no longer ideal, religion, morality. the united states will have conquered the earth. future of literature. universal greed. there will be no longer anything but a debauch of workmen. end of the world through the cessation of caloric. * * * * * bouvard sees the future of humanity in a bright light. the modern man is progressive. europe will be regenerated by asia. the historic law that civilisation travels from east to west--the part to be played by china--the two humanities will at length be fused. future inventions: modes of travelling. balloons. submarine barges with glass windows, in an unchanging calm, the sea's agitation being only on the surface. passing travellers shall see the fishes and the landscapes in the ocean's depths. animals tamed. all forms of cultivation. future of literature (opposite of industrial literature). future sciences.--how to regulate the force of magnetism. paris will become a winter-garden; fruit will be grown on the boulevards; the seine filtered and heated; abundance of precious stones artificially made; prodigality as to gilding; lighting of houses--light will be stored up, for there are bodies which possess this property, such as sugar, the flesh of certain molluscs, and the phosphorus of bologna. people will be ordered to cover the fronts of the houses with a phosphorescent substance, and the radiations from them will illuminate the streets. disappearance of evil by the disappearance of want. philosophy will be a religion. communion of all peoples. public fêtes. people will travel to the heavenly bodies; and when the earth is used up, humanity will set up housekeeping in the stars. * * * * * he has hardly finished when the gendarmes make their appearance. entry of the gendarmes. at the sight of them the children are terror-stricken, owing to vague recollections. marcel's desolation. anxiety on the part of bouvard and pécuchet. do they mean to arrest victor? the gendarmes exhibit an order to take them into custody. it is the conference that brought it on. they are accused of having made attempts on religion, on order, having roused people to revolt, etc. sudden arrival of m. and madame dumouchel with their baggage; they have come to take sea-baths. dumouchel is not changed; madame wears spectacles and composes fables. their perplexity. the mayor, knowing that the gendarmes are with bouvard and pécuchet, arrives, encouraged by their presence. gorju, seeing that authority and public opinion are against them, has thought of profiting by it, and escorts foureau. assuming bouvard to be the richer of the pair, he accuses him of having formerly debauched mélie. "i? never!" bouvard breaks into a loud exclamation. "let him at least make allowance for the child that is about to be born, for she is pregnant." this second accusation is based on the liberties taken with her by bouvard at the café. the public gradually overrun the house. barberou, called into the country by a matter connected with his own business, has just learned at the inn what is going on, and comes on the scene. he believes bouvard to be guilty, takes him aside, and makes him promise to yield and give the allowance. next comes the doctor, the count, reine, madame bordin, madame marescot, under her umbrella, and other persons of rank. the village brats, outside the railing, scream out and fling stones into the garden. (it is now well kept, and this makes the inhabitants jealous.) foureau wishes to drag bouvard and pécuchet to prison. barberou interposes, and marescot, the doctor, and the count likewise interpose with insolent pity. explain the order for the arrest. the sub-prefect, on receiving foureau's letter, has despatched an order to take them into custody, in order to frighten them, together with a letter to marescot and faverges, saying that they might be let alone if they exhibited repentance. vaucorbeil seeks likewise to defend them. "'tis rather to a madhouse that they ought to be sent; they are lunatics. i'll write to the prefect." everything is settled. bouvard will make an allowance for mélie. the custody of the children cannot be left to them. they refuse to give them up; but as they have not adopted the orphans according to the forms of law, the mayor takes them back. they display a revolting insensibility. bouvard and pécuchet shed tears at it. m. and madame dumouchel go away. * * * * * so everything has gone to pieces in their hands. they no longer have any interest in life. a good idea cherished secretly by each of them. they conceal it from each other. from time to time they smile when it comes into their heads; then at last communicate it to each other: _to copy as in former times._ designing of a bureau with a double desk. (for this purpose they seek the services of a joiner. gorju, who has heard about their invention, proposes to make it. recall the trunk incident.) purchase of books, writing materials, sandaracs, erasers, etc. they sit down to write. the dance of death (_ _) "many words for few things!" "death ends all; judgment comes to all." [this work may be called a prose poem. it is impregnated with the spirit of romanticism, which at the time of writing had a temporary but powerful hold on the mind of gustave flaubert.] death speaks. [illustration: a]at night, in winter, when the snowflakes fall slowly from heaven like great white tears, i raise my voice; its resonance thrills the cypress trees and makes them bud anew. i pause an instant in my swift course over earth; throw myself down among cold tombs; and, while dark-plumaged birds rise suddenly in terror from my side, while the dead slumber peacefully, while cypress branches droop low o'er my head, while all around me weeps or lies in deep repose, my burning eyes rest on the great white clouds, gigantic winding-sheets, unrolling their slow length across the face of heaven. how many nights, and years, and ages have i journeyed thus! a witness of the universal birth and of a like decay! innumerable are the generations i have garnered with my scythe. like god, i am eternal! the nurse of earth, i cradle it each night upon a bed both soft and warm. the same recurring feasts; the same unending toil! each morning i depart, each evening i return, bearing within my mantle's ample folds all that my scythe has gathered. and then i scatter them to the four winds of heaven! * * * * * when high the billows run, when the heavens weep, and shrieking winds lash ocean into madness, then in the turmoil and the tumult do i fling myself upon the surging waves, and lo! the tempest softly cradles me, as in her hammock sways a queen. the foaming waters cool my weary feet, burning from bathing in the falling tears of countless generations that have clung to them in vain endeavour to arrest my steps. then, when the storm has ceased, after its roar has calmed me like a lullaby, i bow my head: the hurricane, raging in fury but a moment earlier dies instantly. no longer does it live, but neither do the men, the ships, the navies that lately sailed upon the bosom of the waters. 'mid all that i have seen and known,--peoples and thrones, loves, glories, sorrows, virtues--what have i ever loved? nothing--except the mantling shroud that covers me! * * * * * my horse! ah, yes! my horse! i love thee too! how thou rushest o'er the world! thy hoofs of steel resounding on the heads bruised by thy speeding feet. thy tail is straight and crisp, thine eyes dart flames, the mane upon thy neck flies in the wind, as on we dash upon our maddened course. never art thou weary! never do we rest! never do we sleep! thy neighing portends war; thy smoking nostrils spread a pestilence that, mist-like, hovers over earth. where'er my arrows fly, thou overturnest pyramids and empires, trampling crowns beneath thy hoofs! all men respect thee; nay, adore thee! to invoke thy favour, popes offer thee their triple crowns, and kings their sceptres; peoples, their secret sorrows; poets, their renown. all cringe and kneel before thee, yet thou rushest on over their prostrate forms. ah, noble steed! sole gift from heaven! thy tendons are of iron, thy head is of bronze. thou canst pursue thy course for centuries as swiftly as if borne up by eagle's wings; and when, once in a thousand years, resistless hunger comes, thy food is human flesh, thy drink, men's tears. my steed! i love thee as pale death alone can love! * * * * * ah! i have lived so long! how many things i know! how many mysteries of the universe are shut within my breast! sometimes, after i have hurled a myriad of darts, and, after coursing o'er the world on my pale horse, have gathered many lives, a weariness assails me, and i long to rest. but on my work must go; my path i must pursue; it leads through infinite space and all the worlds. i sweep away men's plans together with their triumphs, their loves together with their crimes, their very all. i rend my winding-sheet; a frightful craving tortures me incessantly, as if some serpent stung continually within. i throw a backward glance, and see the smoke of fiery ruins left behind; the darkness of the night; the agony of the world. i see the graves that are the work of these, my hands; i see the background of the past--'tis nothingness! my weary body, heavy head, and tired feet, sink, seeking rest. my eyes turn towards a glowing horizon, boundless, immense, seeming to grow increasingly in height and depth. i shall devour it, as i have devoured all else. when, o god! shall i sleep in my turn? when wilt thou cease creating? when may i, digging my own grave, stretch myself out within my tomb, and, swinging thus upon the world, list the last breath, the death-gasp, of expiring nature? when that time comes, away my darts and shroud i'll hurl. then shall i free my horse, and he shall graze upon the grass that grows upon the pyramids, sleep in the palaces of emperors, drink the last drop of water from the sea, and snuff the odour of the last slow drop of blood! by day, by night, through the countless ages, he shall roam through fields eternal as the fancy takes him; shall leap with one great bound from atlas to the himalayas; shall course, in his insolent pride, from heaven to earth; disport himself by caracoling in the dust of crumbled empires; shall speed across the beds of dried-up oceans; shall bound o'er ruins of enormous cities; inhale the void with swelling chest, and roll and stretch at ease. then haply, faithful one, weary as i, thou finally shalt seek some precipice from which to cast thyself; shalt halt, panting before the mysterious ocean of infinity; and then, with foaming mouth, dilated nostrils, and extended neck turned towards the horizon, thou shalt, as i, pray for eternal sleep; for repose for thy [illustration] fiery feet; for a bed of green leaves, whereon reclining thou canst close thy burning eyes forever. there, waiting motionless upon the brink, thou shalt desire a power stronger than thyself to kill thee at a single blow--shalt pray for union with the dying storm, the faded flower, the shrunken corpse. thou shalt seek sleep, because eternal life is torture, and the tomb is peace. why are we here? what hurricane has hurled us into this abyss? what tempest soon shall bear us away towards the forgotten planets whence we came? till then, my glorious steed, thou shalt run thy course; thou mayst please thine ear with the crunching of the heads crushed under thy feet. thy course is long, but courage! long time hast thou carried me: but longer time still must elapse, and yet we shall not age. stars may be quenched, the mountains crumble, the earth finally wear away its diamond axis; but we two, we alone are immortal, for the impalpable lives forever! but to-day thou canst lie at my feet, and polish thy teeth against the moss-grown tombs, for satan has abandoned me, and a power unknown compels me to obey his will. lo! the dead seek to rise from their graves. * * * * * satan, i love thee! thou alone canst comprehend my joys and my deliriums. but, more fortunate than i, thou wilt some day, when earth shall be no more, recline and sleep within the realms of space. but i, who have lived so long, have worked so ceaselessly, with only virtuous loves and solemn thoughts,--i must endure immortality. man has his tomb, and glory its oblivion; the day dies into night, but i--! and i am doomed to lasting solitude upon my way, strewn with the bones of men and marked by ruins. angels have fellow-angels; demons their companions of darkness; but i hear only sounds of a clanking scythe, my whistling arrows, and my speeding horse. always the echo of the surging billows that sweep over and engulf mankind! satan. dost thou complain,--thou, the most fortunate creature under heaven? the only, splendid, great, unchangeable, eternal one--like god, who is the only being that equals thee! dost thou repine, who some day in thy turn shalt disappear forever, after thou hast crushed the universe beneath thy horse's feet? when god's work of creating has ceased; when the heavens have disappeared and the stars are quenched; when spirits rise from their retreats and wander in the depths with sighs and groans; then, what unpicturable delight for thee! then shalt thou sit on the eternal thrones of heaven and of hell--shalt overthrow the planets, stars, and worlds--shalt loose thy steed in fields of emeralds and diamonds--shalt make his litter of the wings torn from the angels,--shalt cover him with the robe of righteousness! thy saddle shall be broidered with the stars of the empyrean,--and then thou wilt destroy it! after thou hast annihilated everything,--when naught remains but empty space,--thy coffin shattered and thine arrows broken, then make thyself a crown of stone from heaven's highest mount, and cast thyself into the abyss of oblivion. thy fall may last a million æons, but thou shalt die at last. because the world must end; all, all must die,--except satan! immortal more than god! i live to bring chaos into other worlds! death. but thou hast not, as i, this vista of eternal nothingness before thee; thou dost not suffer with this death-like cold, as i. satan. nay, but i quiver under fierce and unrelaxing heats of molten lava, which burn the doomed and which e'en i cannot escape. for thou, at least, hast only to destroy. but i bring birth and i give life. i direct empires and govern the affairs of states and of hearts. i must be everywhere. the precious metals flow, the diamonds glitter, and men's names resound at my command. i whisper in the ears of women, of poets, and of statesmen, words of love, of glory, of ambition. with messalina and nero, at paris and at babylon, within the self-same moment do i dwell. let a new island be discovered, i fly to it ere man can set foot there; though it be but a rock encircled by the sea, i am there in advance of men who will dispute for its possession. i lounge, at the same instant, on a courtesan's couch and on the perfumed beds of emperors. hatred and envy, pride and wrath, pour from my lips in simultaneous utterance. by night and day i work. while men are burning christians, i luxuriate voluptuously in baths perfumed with roses; i race in chariots; yield to deep despair; or boast aloud in pride. at times i have believed that i embodied the whole world, and all that i have seen took place, in verity, within my being. sometimes i weary, lose my reason, and indulge in such mad follies that the most worthless of my minions ridicule me while they pity me. no creature cares for me; nowhere am i loved,--neither in heaven, of which i am a son, nor yet in hell, where i am lord, nor upon earth, where men deem me a god. naught do i see but paroxysms of rage, rivers of blood, or maddened frenzy. ne'er shall my eyelids close in slumber, never my spirit find repose, whilst thou, at least, canst rest thy head upon the cool, green freshness of the grave. yea, i must ever dwell amid the glare of palaces, must listen to the curses of the starving, or inhale the stench of crimes that cry aloud to heaven. god, whom i hate, has punished me indeed! but my soul is greater even than his wrath; in one deep sigh i could the whole world draw into my breast, where it would burn eternally, even as i. when, lord, shall thy great trumpet sound? then a great harmony shall hover over sea and hill. ah! would that i could suffer with humanity; their cries and sobs should drown the sound of mine! [_innumerable skeletons, riding in chariots, advance at a rapid pace, with cries of joy and triumph. they drag broken branches and crowns of laurel, from which the dried and yellow leaves fall continually in the wind and the dust._] lo, a triumphal throng from rome, the eternal city! her coliseum and her capitol are now two grains of sand that served once as a pedestal; but death has swung his scythe: the monuments have fallen. behold! at their head comes nero, pride of my heart, the greatest poet earth has known! [_nero advances in a chariot drawn by twelve skeleton horses. with the sceptre in his hand, he strikes the bony backs of his steeds. he stands erect, his shroud flapping behind him in billowy folds. he turns, as if upon a race-course; his eyes are flaming and he cries loudly_:] nero. quick! quick! and faster still, until your feet dash fire from the flinty stones and your nostrils fleck your breasts with foam. what! do not the wheels smoke yet? hear ye the fanfares, whose sound reached even to ostia; the clapping of the hands, the cries of joy? see how the populace shower saffron on my head! see how my pathway is already damp with sprayed perfume! my chariot whirls on; the pace is swifter than the wind as i shake the golden reins! faster and faster! the dust clouds rise; my mantle floats upon the breeze, which in my ears sings "triumph! triumph!" faster and faster! hearken to the shouts of joy, list to the stamping feet and the plaudits of the multitude. jupiter himself looks down on us from heaven. faster! yea, faster still! [_nero's chariot now seems to be drawn by demons; a black cloud of dust and smoke envelops him; in his erratic course he crashes into tombs, and the re-awakened corpses are crushed under the wheels of the chariot, which now turns, comes forward, and stops._] nero. now let six hundred of my women dance the grecian dances silently before me, the while i lave myself with roses in a bath of porphyry. then let them circle me, with interlacing arms, that i may see on all sides alabaster forms in graceful evolution, swaying like tall reeds bending over an amorous pool. and i will give the empire and the sea, the senate, and olympus, the capitol, to her who shall embrace me the most ardently; to her whose heart shall throb beneath my own; to her who shall enmesh me in her flowing hair, smile on me sweetest, and enfold me in the warmest clasp; to her who soothing me with songs of love shall waken me to joy and heights of rapture! rome shall be still this night; no barque shall cleave the waters of the tiber, since 'tis my wish to see the mirrored moon on its untroubled face and hear the voice of woman floating over it. let perfumed breezes pass through all my draperies! ah, i would die, voluptuously intoxicated. then, while i eat of some rare meat, that only i may taste, let some one sing, while damsels, lightly draped, serve me from plates of gold and watch my rest. one slave shall cut her sister's throat, because it is my pleasure--a favourite with the gods--to mingle the perfume of blood with that of food, and cries of victims soothe my nerves. this night i shall burn rome. the flames shall light up heaven, and tiber shall roll in waves of fire! then, i shall build of aloes wood a stage to float upon the italian sea, and the roman populace shall throng thereto chanting my praise. its draperies shall be of purple, and on it i shall have a bed of eagles' plumage. there i shall sit, and at my side shall be the loveliest woman in the empire, while all the universe applauds the achievements of a god! and though the tempest roar around me, its rage shall be extinguished 'neath my feet, and sounds of music shall o'ercome the clamor of the waves! * * * * * what didst thou say? vindex revolts, my legions fly, my women flee in terror? silence and tears alone remain, and i hear naught but the rolling of thunder. must i die, now? death. instantly! nero. must i give up my days of feasting and delight, my spectacles, my triumphs, my chariots and the applause of multitudes? death. all! all! satan. haste, master of the world! one comes--one who will put thee to the sword. an emperor knows how to die! nero. die! i have scarce begun to live! oh, what great deeds i should accomplish--deeds that should make olympus tremble! i would fill up the bed of hoary ocean and speed across it in a triumphal car. i would still live--would see the sun once more, the tiber, the campagna, the circus on the golden sands. ah! let me live! death. i will give thee a mantle for the tomb, and an eternal bed that shall be softer and more peaceful than the imperial couch. nero. yet, i am loth to die. death. die, then! [_he gathers up the shroud, lying beside him on the ground, and bears away nero, wrapped in its folds._] rabelais[b] [b] the manuscript of this essay, unlike all other early manuscripts of gustave flaubert, bears no date. it belongs to the earliest of his writing, a time when there was a far from unanimous opinion among the literary _cognoscenti_ regarding the work of rabelais. [illustration: n]no name in literature has been more generally cited than that of rabelais; and never, perhaps, has one been cited with so much ignorance and injustice. thus, to some minds he is merely a drunken, cynical old monk, with a mind disordered and fantastic, as obscene as it is ingenious, dangerous in its ideas and revolting in their expression. to others he is a practical philosopher, gentle and moderate; sceptical, certainly, but, after all, an honest man of reputable life. he has been alternately loved and despised, misunderstood and rehabilitated; and ever since his prodigious genius first launched at the world his biting and all-embracing satire, in the form of the colossal mocking glee of giants, creatures of his imagination, each century has puzzled over his meaning, and has interpreted in a thousand fashions this long enigma, apparently so trivial, gross and merry, but in reality profound and true. rabelais' work is a historical achievement, in itself so important that it belongs to and illumines the thought of each age. thus, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when first given to the world, it was in reality an open revolt, a moral pamphlet. it had the importance of actuality and the controlling power of a revolution. rabelais may be regarded as a luther in his own way. his sphere was that of laughter, but his power over men was such that with titanic mockery he demolished more of evil than the good man of wittenberg, with all his anger. he managed everything so well--wielded so cleverly the sharp chisel of satire--that his laughter became a terror. his work is the embodiment of the grotesque; it is as eternal as the world. rabelais was the father of the frank and naïve literature of the seventeenth century--of molière and la fontaine,--all were immortals, geniuses, in spirit the most essentially french of gallic writers. all three regarded poor human nature with a smile at once good-natured and cynical; all were frank, free and easy in their language, men in every sense of the word: careless of philosophers, of sects, of religions, they were of the religion of mankind itself, and well they understood it. they turned it over, analysed and dissected it; one in a strange story full of gross obscenities, bursting with laughter and blasphemy; the second, on the stage, in deftly constructed dialogue, full of truth and wisdom and a naïveté almost sublime--more of a philosopher in the simple laughter of his mascarille, in the good sense of philinte, or in the bilious spleen of alceste, than any other philosopher that ever lived; and the third, in fables for children with morals for men, in verses full of good-nature and kindly humour, in words and phrases, wherein rests something of sublimity; in crystalline sonnets, in all the poetic gems that deck his name with splendid ornaments. but rabelais is to-day a subject of serious study, the favourite author of those rare minds that rise superior to the ordinary limitations of intelligence. besides those men whose names we cite, la bruyère studied and appreciated his work with the utmost impartiality. the great romancer was not sufficiently correct to please the scrupulous taste of boileau, or to accord with the reserve and purity of racine. that prudish age, governed by madame de maintenon, so well typified in the flat and angular garden at versailles, was ashamed of literature at once so frank and open, nude and picturesque. this giant made them fear. they seemed instinctively to feel that they were placed between two terrible epochs: the sixteenth century, which produced a luther and a rabelais, and the revolution, which was to give a mirabeau, a robespierre. first the demolishers of faith, then the demolishers of life: two abysses, 'twixt which they stood firm in the adoration of themselves! in the eighteenth century things were still worse. philosophers then were of a high moral tone, and would have none of rabelais. the poor curate of meudon would have found himself much out of place in the salons of the witty and beautiful _marquises_, or in the intellectual society of madame du deffand or madame geoffrin. never would they have comprehended the flashing darts of wit, the bubbling spirits, the whirlwind, the poetic mind, throbbing with adventures, inventions, travel, and extravagances. the petty and affected tastes, the cold and formal manners of the age, were horrified at aught that might be called licentiousness of mind. the "precieuses" probably preferred to have it in their manners! voltaire, for instance, could pardon rabelais because he ridiculed the church; but of his style, of his meaning, voltaire had scarce an idea, although he claimed to have a key to the great work, which he summed up in vicious epigram: "a mass of the grossest refuse ever vomited by a drunken monk." it is quite natural that this should have been his opinion. the glory and value of rabelais, as in the case of all great men, all illustrious names, have long been vigorously disputed. his genius is unique, exceptional; its product stands alone among the histories of the literatures of the world. where is his rival to be found? to go back to antiquity, shall we cite petronius or apuleius, with their studied and premeditated art, their classic style, their scholarly conceptions? passing to the middle ages, shall we compare the epics of the twelfth century, the comic and the morality plays? no, certainly not; and although much of the comic material in the work of rabelais is characteristic of the grotesque humour and manners of the middle ages, we do not find its predecessor in any literary document. coming down to modern times, his closest imitator, béroald of verville, author of _l'art de parvenir_, is so far removed from his model in style and power that it is scarcely worth while to make a comparison. sterne attempted to reproduce the style of rabelais, but his affectation and over-refined sensibility destroyed the parallel. no, rabelais is unique because he himself expresses the traits and characteristics of an entire century. his work possesses the highest significance in literature, politics, morals and religion. certain geniuses appear from time to time, to create new literatures, or to resuscitate old ones; they deliver their message to the world, express the sentiment of their own generation, and we hear from them no more. homer sang the glories of the martial life, of the valiant and warlike youth of the world, the vernal season when the trees put forth new sprouts. in virgil's day civilisation was already old; we find him full of tears, of shadows, sentiment and delicacy. dante is sombre and radiant at the same time; he was the christian poet, the bard of death and of hell, full of melancholy and of hope also. in olden times, if satiety overtook a people, if doubt entered into all hearts, if all beautiful dreams, all illusions, all utopian yearnings fell, one by one, destroyed by stern realities, by science, reason, and analysis, what did the poet do? he retired within himself; he had sublime flights of pride and enthusiasm, and moments of poignant despair. he sang the agonies of the heart and the vagaries of fancy. then, all the griefs that compassed him, the sobs that rang in his ears, the maledictions that he heard on every side, resounded in his soul--which god had made great, responsive, all-embracing--and issued thence through the voice of genius, to mark forever in history an epoch in a nation's life, to record its sorrows, and carve indelibly the names of its unfortunates. in our own day lord byron has done this. for this reason, the true poet is more accurate than the historian, and indeed most poets are more strictly truthful than historians. great writers, then, may be compared, in the realms of thought, to the capitals of kingdoms. they absorb the brains of every province and every individuality; mingling those qualities of each that are distinctively personal and original, they amalgamate them, arrange them, and after a time the result is seen in the form of art. rabelais was born in , the year that louis xi. died. luther had just become known. the king had overthrown the ancient feudalism; the monks were about to attack the papacy: this situation describes the history of the middle ages--a period divided between the wars of nations and of the church. but the people, weary of both, would have no more of either. they realised that the men of arms devoured their substance and ruined them; they knew the priests made use of them for their own selfish purposes, besides deceiving them. for some time the people contented themselves with inscribing satires and scurrilities on the stones of the cathedrals, with making songs against the seigneurs, or publishing, broadcast, biting criticisms of the ruling power or of the nobility, as in the _romance of the rose_. but something more was wanted: a revolt, a reform. symbols were old, and so were mystery plays and poems; and there was a general feeling that an entirely new form of attack was desirable. science was needed, even in poetry and philosophy. in , a caricature representing the church, with the body of a woman, the legs of a chicken, the claws of a vulture, and the tail of a serpent, was circulated throughout europe. it was the epoch of comines, of machiavelli, of arétin. the papacy had lately had alexander vi.; now it had leo x., who was no better. an intellectual orgy had set in, destined to be long, and to end with blood. during the eighteenth century this was repeated, and the termination was the same. in the chaotic conditions belonging to this epoch lived rabelais. we are not surprised that, in the midst of this society, corrupt from its debaucheries and tottering on its foundations, and being witness to such ruin and devastation, the genius of this wonderful man prompted him to reveal, by means of withering sarcasm, the frightful past of the middle ages, the effects of which were still felt in his own century, which looked back upon that past with horror. in my opinion, those who have claimed to possess a key to rabelais, to be able to understand his allegories, and to translate each jest into its real significance, do not understand him in the least. his satire is general and universal, not at all personal or local. a careful reading of his work should prove the fallacy of such pretensions. shall i cite all that was done in this respect in the sixteenth century, and tell of all the abuse poured by that century upon the middle ages, of which it was the outcome? for instance, without saying anything of ariosto, are not falstaff, sancho panza, and gargantua a grotesque trilogy forming a bitter satire on the old society? falstaff belongs wholly to england; he is john bull bloated with beer and pork; fat, sensual, running away from the dead, eternally drawing from his pocket a flask of old spanish wine. he possesses none of the terrible grotesqueness of iago, or of the deliberate immorality of schiller's hassan, the moor. his greatest passion was self-love; he carried it to the highest degree; it was even sublime. he was egotism personified, with a certain facility in analysis and a strain of ridicule, by which he managed to turn everything to his own advantage. as for peaceful sancho panza, mounted on his lazy, tawny ass, snoring all night and sleeping all day, a poltroon, not able to understand the meaning of heroism, full of proverbs, the prosaic man _par excellence_,--is not his base blood the crying reason why he endeavours with all his power to stop don quixote from tilting at the windmills, which the worthy knight takes for giants? the man of gentle birth attacks them, nevertheless, but he breaks his arm and wounds his head. his helmet is a barber's basin, his horse, rosinante, and a labourer's donkey brays at the sight of his coat-of-arms. placed between these two figures, that of gargantua is vaguer, less precise. his characterisation is ampler, freer, and grander. gargantua is less gluttonous, less sensual than falstaff, and not so lazy as sancho panza; but he is a greater drinker, a heartier laugher, and makes a louder clamour. he is terrible and monstrous in his gaiety. one more reflection: the satire of rabelais does not apply to his own day only. he denounces, for all time, all abuses, crimes, and everything that is ridiculous. perhaps he was able to foresee a better state of the body politic and a society whose moral laws should be purified. existing conditions aroused his pity, and, to employ a trivial expression, all the world was a farce. and he made himself a part of the farce. since his time, what has been done? everything has changed. reform has come, with independence of thought. we have had the revolution. we possess material independence. and what besides all this? thousands of questions have been discussed,--sciences, arts, philosophies, theories,--how many questions even during the last twenty years! what a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas! where will they lead us? let us see. where are we? are we in the twilight or in full dawn? we have no more christianity. what have we? i ask. railways, factories, chemists, mathematicians. to be sure, our bodies are better off, we suffer less in the flesh, but the heart still bleeds! do you not feel the perturbation of your soul, although its outward covering seems calm and happy? it is plunged in the abyss of universal scepticism; it is overcome by that deadly ennui that seizes upon our race even in the cradle. meanwhile, politicians babble, poets have scarcely time to rhyme their fancies and scribble them hastily on ephemeral sheets of paper; and the suicidal bullet is heard in every garret and every palace where dwell misery, pride, or satiety! material questions have been settled. but others--have they also been solved? answer me that! and the longer you delay in filling this yawning chasm in the soul of mankind, the more i mock at your efforts to be happy, and laugh at your miserable sciences, that are worth no more than a blade of grass. now is the time for another genius like rabelais to arise. let him be without anger, without hatred, without grief. what could he laugh at? not at kings--there are no more; nor at god, because although we may have lost our faith, yet a certain fear remains; nor at the jesuits, for they are an old story. what could he laugh at, then? the material world has improved, or at least it is on the road to improvement. but the other? he would have fine sport with that. and if such a poet could conceal his tears and laugh instead, i assure you his book would be the most terrible and the most sublime that ever has been written! preface to the last songs (_posthumous poems_) of louis bouilhet. [illustration: i]it would perhaps make criticism easier, if, before giving our opinion, we should make known our preferences. to omit this preliminary distinction is a great injustice, as every book contains a peculiarity pertaining to the writer himself, which, independently of the execution, will charm or irritate us according to our preferences. we are never completely charmed unless a book appeals to our feelings and our intellect at the same time. first, let us discuss the object of the book. "why this novel, this drama? of what use is it? etc." instead of following the author's idea, instead of pointing out to him where he failed of his aim, and how he should have gone about to attain it, we bicker with him on a thousand things outside of his subject, always declaring the contrary of what he meant to express. if a critic's sphere extends beyond the author's province, he should first of all look to the æsthetics and the moral. it is impossible for me to warrant either of these concerning the poet in questions. as for writing his life, it has been linked so closely with mine, that i shall be brief on this subject; individual memoirs belong only to great men. besides, has not research been exhausted? history will soon absorb all literature. in studying too closely what makes up the author's atmosphere, we fail to give the originality of his genius due consideration. in la harpe's time, when a masterpiece appeared, we were convinced,--thanks to certain rules!--that it was under no obligation whatsoever; whereas now, after we have examined everything about it, we still wish to discover its right to exist. i have another scruple. i do not wish to betray the modesty that my friend constantly maintained. at an epoch when insignificant mediocrity aspired to fame, when typography was the medium of all affectations, and the rivalry of the most insipid personalities became a public pest, he was proud of being modest. his photograph was never displayed on the boulevards. no article, no letter, not a single line from him, was ever published in the papers. he did not even belong to the academy of his province. yet no life is more deserving of praise than his. he lived nobly and labouriously. though poor, he remained free. he was as strong as a blacksmith, mild as a child, intellectual without being paradoxical, noble without affectation; and those who knew him well will say that i have not praised him enough. louis hyacinthe bouilhet was born at cany (seine inférieure), the th day of may, . his father, chief of ambulances in the campaign of , swam the bérésina, carrying on his head the regiment's chest, and died quite young from wounds received. his maternal grandfather, pierre hourcastremé, dabbled in legislation, poetry, and geometry, received congratulations from voltaire, corresponded with turgot and condorcet, spent nearly all his money buying shells, produced _les aventures de messire anselme_, an _essai sur la faculté de penser_, _les etrennes de mnémosyne_, etc., and after being a lawyer in pau, a journalist in paris, administrator of the navy at havre, and a schoolmaster at montvilliers, died almost a centenarian, bequeathing to his grandson the memory of a strange but charming old man, who powdered his hair, wore knee-breeches and cultivated tulips. the child was sent to ingouville, to a boarding-school on a high cliff, and went to the college of rouen at twelve, where he was usually at the head of his class. he was not a model pupil, however; this term applies to mediocre natures and a calmness of spirit which was rare in those days. i do not know what students admire nowadays, but our dreams were wildly imaginative. the most enthusiastic dreamt of violent courtships, with gondolas, and fainting ladies carried away in stagecoaches by masked ruffians. some, more gloomily disposed (admirers of armand carrel, a countryman), preferred the clash of the press and the court-room, or the glory of conspiracy. a rhetorician wrote an _apologie de robespierre_, which reached a certain gentleman and so scandalised him that it brought on an exchange of notes, followed by a challenge to a duel, in which the said gentleman did not play a very creditable part. one good-natured fellow always wore a red cap; another swore to live as a mohican; one of my intimate friends aspired to the honour of serving under abd-el-kader. apart from being troubadours, insurgents and orientals, we were, above all, artists. after studies, we wrote, and read novels till late in the night. bar ..., declaring he was tired of life, shot himself; and and ... hanged himself with his cravat. we certainly deserved little praise for our follies; but we hated platitudes; our minds soared towards noble things. how we revered the masters! how we admired victor hugo! among this group was bouilhet, the elegist, the poet of moonlight and ruins. when he was nearly twenty, this affectation disappeared, to give place to a virulent democracy, so genuine that he was about to join a secret society. he received his bachelor's degree, and was told to choose a profession. he chose medicine, settled his small income on his mother, and taught for a living. his life became painfully labourious; he combined the duties of poet, tutor and saw-bones. two years later, he was appointed interne at l'hôtel dieu in rouen, under my father's orders. as he could not attend during the day, his turn came oftener than others for night watch. he did not mind it, however, as he had no other time in which to write. all his poems of love, flowers and birds were written in those winter nights, amidst the sick and suffering, or on sundays in summer, while the patients walked under his window. those years of sadness were not useless; the contemplation of suffering humanity, the dressing of wounds, the dissecting-table, gave him a better knowledge of mankind. some would have given way under the strain, the disgust, the torture of having to follow a vocation unsuited to him; but, thanks to his physical and mental health, he stood it cheerfully. some still remember meeting in the streets of his native city, this handsome though somewhat timid youth, with flowing blond hair, who always carried a note-book, in which he wrote his verses as they came to him; sometimes while teaching, at a friend's house, in a café, during an operation, anywhere. poor in worldly wealth, but rich in hope, he gave them away. he was a real poet in the classical sense of the word. when we met again after four years' separation, he read to me three of his plays. the first, entitled _le déluge_, described a lover clinging to his beloved, while he watched with anguish the ruins of the fast disappearing world: "hark to the crashing of the palm-trees on the heights, and to the agonizing cries of earth!" it was somewhat prolix, and too emphatic, but was replete with force and passion. the second, a satire against the jesuits, was more resolute and in an entirely different style: "smile, priests of the boudoir and gather poor feminine souls in your golden nets!" "charming ministers in the confessional, inflicting penance with love-words on their lips! heroes of the gospel, impleading the lord with flowery language, and treading each day, holy martyrs! on soft carpets the _via crucis_!" "these merchants, at the foot of the cross, casting lots and dividing, piece by piece, o lord, thy robe and thy cloak! these fakirs of holy relics, selling, oh, wonder! thy heart as amulets, and phials of thy blood." we must not forget the disturbances of the times, and must remember that the author was only twenty-two. the play was dated . the third was an invective to "an author who sold his poems": why seek a famished passion to revive? after thy rustic love through green fields strive on flowery banks beside the rosy stream archangel, drink to drunkenness the sunny beam, under the willows chant etotic dreams, though brutus' sins upon thy shoulders weigh doubtless thy simple soul and heart inveigh against the destiny that took from thee. "'tis the greedy plutus, with his purse full, who quotes smiling, human honesty!" "destiny is the bag full of gold into which we plunge our greedy hands with rapture! it is corruption which flaunts before our eyes its alluring breast! it is fear, the silent spectre that disturbs the coward in the hour of danger!" "your prudent apollo, no doubt, passed through the stock exchange to reach the parnassus? we often see, in the political sky, the morning sun die out before night. look through your telescope, do you not see guizot waning and thiers coming to light? do you base your changeable faith and your flexible probity on the mobility of the weather?" "avaunt! greek, whose servile words lauded xerxes the night before thermopylæ!" he continued in the same rough tone against the administration. he sent his play to the _reforme_, hoping they would print it; but they refused peremptorily, not wishing to expose themselves to a law suit--for mere literature. it was near the end of , when my father died, that bouilhet gave up the practice of medicine. but he continued to teach, and, with the aid of a partner, obtained bachelorships for their pupils. the events of disturbed his republican faith. he now became a confirmed _littérateur_, fond of metaphors and comparisons, but indifferent to all else. his thorough knowledge of latin (he wrote as fluently in latin as in french) inspired the few roman sketches, as in _festons et astragales_ and the poem _meloenis_, published in the _revue de paris_, on the eve of a political crisis. the moment was badly chosen. the public's fancy and courage were considerably cooled, and it was not disposed, neither were the powers, to accept independent genius; besides, individual style always seems insurrectionary to governments and immoral to commoners. the exaltation of vulgarism, the banishment of poetry, became more than ever the rage. wishing to show good judgment, they rushed headlong into stupidity; anything above the ordinary bored them. as a protest, he took refuge in forgotten places and in the far east; and thence came the _fossiles_ and different chinese plays. however, the provincial atmosphere stifled him; he needed a vaster field; and severing his connections, he came to paris; but at a certain age one can no longer acquire the parisian judgment; the things that seem simple to a native of the boulevards, are impracticable to a man of thirty-three arriving in the great city, having few acquaintances and no income, and unaccustomed to solitude. then his bad days began. his first book, _madame de montarcy_, received on approval at the théâtre français, and refused at the second reading, lingered for two years and was only accepted at the odéon in november, . the first performance was a rousing success. the applause often interrupted the action of the play; a whiff of youth permeated the atmosphere; it was a reminiscence of . that night he became known; his success was assured. he could have collaborated, and made money with his name; but he preferred the quietness of mantes, and went to live in a little house near an old tower, at the turn of the bridge, where his friends visited him on sundays. as soon as his plays were written, he took them to paris; but the whims and fancies of the managers, the critics, the belated appointments, and the loss of time, caused him much weariness. he did not know that art, in a question of art, held such a trifling place! when he joined a committee against the unfair dealings at the théâtre français, he was the only member that did not complain of the rates of authors' royalties. with what pleasure he returned to his daily distraction, the study of chinese! he pursued it ten years, merely as a study of the race, intending to write a grand poem on the celestial empire. days when his heart was too full, he relieved himself by writing lyrical verses on the restrictions of the stage. his luck had turned, but with the _conjuration d'ambroise_ it returned, and it lasted all winter. six months later he was appointed conservator of the municipal library of rouen; and his old dream of leisure and fortune was realized at last! but soon afterward a dullness seized him--the exhaustion from too long a struggle. to counteract this he resumed the greek tragic style and rapidly composed his last play, _mademoiselle aïssé_, which he never corrected. an incurable disease, long neglected, was the cause of his death, which took place on the th of july, . he passed away without pain, in the presence of a friend of his youth and her child, whom he loved as if he were his own son. their affection had increased towards the last, but two other persons marred their happiness. it seems that in a poet's family there are always bitter disappointments. annoying quarrels, honeyed sarcasms, direct insults to art, the million and one things that make your heart bleed,--nothing was spared him while he lived, and these things followed him to his death-bed. his fellow-countrymen flocked to his funeral as if he had been a public man; even the less educated knowing full well that a superior intellect had passed away. the whole parisian press joined in this universal sorrow; even the most hostile expressed their regrets; a catholic writer alone spoke disparagingly. no doubt the connoisseurs in verse deplore the loss of such a poetical spirit; but those in whom he confided, who knew his powerful spirit, who benefited by his advice, they alone know to what height he might have risen. he left, besides _aïssé_, three comedies in prose, a fairy-scene, and the first act of _pélerinage de saint-jacques_, a drama in verse, in ten tableaux. he had outlined two short poems: _le boeuf_, depicting the rustic life of latium; and _le dernier banquet_, describing the roman patricians poisoning themselves at a banquet the night the soldiers of alaric are entering rome. he wished also to write a novel on the heathen of the fifth century, the counterpart of the _martyrs_; but above all, he desired to write his chinese tale, the scenes of which are completely laid out. it was his supreme ambition to recapitulate modern science, to write the _de natura rerum_ of our age! who has the right to classify the talents of his contemporaries, and, thinking himself superior to all, say: "this one comes first, that one second, and this other third"? fame's sudden changes are numerous. there are irretrievable failures; some long, obscure periods, and some triumphant reappearances. was not ronsard forgotten before sainte-beuve? in days gone by, saint-amant was considered inferior as a poet to jacques delille. _don quixote_, _gil blas_, _manon lescaut_, _la cousine bette_ and other masterpieces, have never had the success of _uncle tom_. in my youth, i heard comparisons made between casimir delavigne and victor hugo, and it seems that "our great national poet" was declining. let us then be careful, or posterity will misjudge us--perhaps laugh at our bitterness--still more, perhaps, at our adulations; for the fame of an author does not spring from public approbation, but from the verdict of a few intellects, who, in the course of time, impose it upon the public. some will say that i have given my friend too high a place; but they know not, no more do i, what place he will retain. because his first book is written in stanzas of six lines each, with triple rhymes, like _naouma_, and begins like this: "of all the men that ever walked through rome, in grecian buskins and linen toga, from suburra to the capitoline hill, the handsomest was paulus," somewhat similar to this: "of all the libertines in paris, the first, oldest and most prolific in vice, where debauchery is so easily found, the lewdest of all was jacques rolla," without more ado, and ignoring the dissimilarity of execution, poetry, and nature, it was declared that the author of _meloenis_ imitated alfred de musset! he was condemned on the spot; a farce--it is so easy to label a thing so as to be able to put it aside. i do not wish to be unfair; but where has musset, in any part of his works, harmonized description, dialogue, and intrigue in more than two thousand consecutive rhymes, with such results of composition, such choice of language, in short, where is there a work of such magnitude? what wonderful ability was needed to reproduce roman society, without affectation, yet keeping within the narrow confines of a dramatic fable! if you look for the primitive idea, the general element in louis bouilhet's poems, you will find a kind of naturalism that reminds you of the renaissance. his hatred of commonplace saved him from platitudes; his inclination towards the heroic was tempered by his wit--he was very witty. this part of his talent was almost unknown; he kept it somewhat in the shadow, thinking it of no consequence; but now nothing hinders me from acknowledging that he excelled in epigrams, sonnets, rondeaux and other jests, written for distraction or pastime, and also through sheer good-nature. i discovered some official speeches for functionaries, new-year verses for a little girl, some stanzas for a barber, for the christening of a bell, for the visit of a king. he dedicated to one of our friends, wounded in , an ode on the patron of _the taking of namur_, where emphasis reached the pinnacle of dullness. to another who killed a viper with his whip he sent a piece entitled: _the struggle of a monster and a genius_, which contained enough imperfect metaphors and ridiculous periphrasis to serve as a model or as a scarecrow. but his best was a masterpiece, in béranger's style, entitled _the nightcap!_ his intimate friends will always remember it. it praised glory, the ladies, and philosophy so highly,--it was enough to make all the members of the caveau burst with the desire of emulating him. he had the gift of being entertaining--a rare thing for a poet. compare his chinese with his roman plays, _neera_ with _lied norman_, _pastel_ with _clair de lune_, _chronique de printemps_ with _sombre eglogue_, _le navire_ with _une soirée_, and you will see how productive and ingenious he was. he has dramatised all human passions; he has written about the mummies, the triumphs of the unknown, the sadness of the stones, has unearthed worlds, described barbaric peoples and biblical scenes, and written lullabies. the scope of his imagination is sufficiently proven in _les fossiles_, which théophile gautier called "the most difficult subject ever attempted by any poet!" i may add that it is the only scientific poem in all french literature that is really poetical. the stanzas at the end, on the future man, show how well he understood the most transcendent utopias. among religious works, his _colombe_ will perhaps live as the declaration of faith of the nineteenth century. his individuality manifests itself plainly in _dernière nuit_, _a une femme_, _quand vous m'avez quitté_, _boudeuse_, etc., where he is by turns dismal and ironical; whereas in _la fleur rouge_ it bursts out in a singularly sharp and almost savage manner. he does not look for effect; follows no school but his own individual style, which is versatile, fluent, violent, full of imagination and always musical. he possesses all the secrets of poetry; that is the reason that his works abound with good lines, good all the way through, as in _le lutrin_ and _les châtiments_. take, for instance: "is long like a crocodile, with bird-like extremities." "a big, brown bear, wearing a golden helmet." "he was a muleteer from capua." "the sky was as blue as a calm sea." "the thousand things one sees when mingling with a crowd." and this one of the virgin mary: "forever pale from carrying her god." in one sense of the word, he is classical. his _l'oncle million_ is written in the most excellent french. "a poem! make rhymes! it is insanity! i have seen saner men put into a padded cell! zounds! who speaks in rhymes? what a farce! am i imaginative? do i make verses? do you know, my boy, what i have had to endure to give you the extreme pleasure of watching, lyre in hand, which way the winds blow? wisely considered, these frivolities are well enough at odd moments. i myself knew a clerk that wrote verses." then further: "i say léon is not even a poet! he a poet, come! you are joking. why, i saw him when he was no higher than that! what has he out of the ordinary? he is a rattle-brained, stupid fool, and i warrant you he will be a business man, or i will know the reason why!" this style goes straight to the point. the meaning comes out so clearly that the words are forgotten; that is, while clinging to it, they do not impede or alter its purport. but you will say these accomplishments are of no use for the stage; that he was not a successful playwright. the sixty-eight performances of _montarcy_, ninety of _hélène peyron_, and five hundred of _la conjuration d'ambroise_, prove the contrary. one must really know what is suitable for the stage, and, above all things, acknowledge that the dominant question is spontaneous and lucrative success. the most experienced are at sea, not being able to follow the vagaries of public taste. in olden times, one went to the theatre to hear beautiful thoughts put into beautiful language. in , furious and roaring passion was the rage; later, such rapidity of action, that the heroes had not time to speak; then, thesis; after that, witty sallies; and now the reproduction of stupid vulgarism appears to monopolize the public favour. bouilhet cared nothing for thesis; he hated insipid phrases, and considered what is called "realism" a monstrosity. stunning effects not being acquired by mild colouring, he preferred bold descriptions, violent situations--that is what made his poems really tragic. his plots weakened sometimes towards the middle, but, for a play in verse, were it more concise, it would crowd out all poetry. _la conjuration d'ambroise_ and _mademoiselle aïssé_ show some progress in this respect; but i am not blind; i censure his louis xiv. in _madame de montarcy_ as too unreal; in _l'oncle million_ the feigned illness of the notary; in _hélène peyron_ the too prolix scene in the fourth act, and in _dolorès_ the lack of harmony between vagueness and precision. in short, his personages are too poetical. he knew how to bring out sensational effects, however. for instance, the reappearance of marcelline at dubret's, the entrance cf dom pedro in the third act of _dolorès_, the countess of brissot in the dungeon, the commander in the last act of _aïssé_, and the ghostly reappearance of cassius before the empress faustine. this book was unjustly criticised; nor was the atticism understood in _l'oncle million_, it being perhaps the best written of all his plays, as _faustine_ is the most labouriously contrived. they are all very pathetic at the end, filled with exquisite things and real passion. how well suited to the voice his poems are! how virile his words, which make one shiver! their impulsion resembles the flap of a great bird's wings! the heroic style of his dramas secured them an enthusiastic reception; but his triumphs did not turn his head, as he knew that the best part of a work is not always understood, and he might owe his success to the weaker. if he had written the same plays in prose, perhaps his dramatic talent would have been extolled; but, unfortunately, he used a medium that is generally disliked. "no comedy in verse!" was the first cry, and later, "no verses on the stage!" why not confess that we desire none at all? he never wrote prose; rhymes were his natural dialect. he thought in rhymes, and he loved them so that he read all sorts with equal attention. when we love a thing we love every part of it. play-goers love the green-room; gourmands love to smell cooking; mothers love to bathe their children. disillusion is a sign of weakness. beware of the fastidious, for they are usually powerless! art, he thought, was a serious thing, its aim being to create a vague exaltation; that alone being its morality. from a memorandum i take the following notes: "in poetry, one need not consider whether the morals are good, but whether they adapt themselves to the person described; thus will it describe with equal indifference good and bad actions, without suggesting the latter as an example."--pierre corneille. "art, in its creations, must strive to please only those who have the right to judge it; otherwise it will follow the wrong path."--goethe. "all the intellectual beauties and details of a tale (if it is well written) are so many useful facts, and are perhaps more precious to the public mind than the main points that make up the subject."--buffon. therefore art, being its own motive, must not be considered an expedient. no matter how much genius we might use in the development of a story used as an example, another might prove the contrary. a climax is not a conclusion. we must not infer generalities from one particular case; those who think themselves progressive in doing so are working against modern science, which demands that we gather all the facts before proclaiming a law. bouilhet did not like that moralising art which teaches and corrects; he liked still less the frivolous art, which strives to divert the mind or stir the feelings; he did not follow democratic art, being convinced that, to be accessible to all, it must descend to the lowest level; as, at this civilised period, when we try to be artless we become silly. as to official art, he refused all its advantages, not wishing to defend causes that are so short-lived. he avoided paradoxes, oddities, and all deviations; he followed a straight road; that is, the generous feelings, the immutable side of the human soul. as "thoughts are the foundation of language," he tried to think well so as to write well. although he wrote emotional dramas, he never said: "if margot wept, the melodrama is good," as he did not believe in replacing emotion by trickery. he hated the new maxim that says, "one must write as one speaks." it is true, the old way of wasting time in making researches, the trouble taken when bringing out a book, would seem ridiculous nowadays; we are above all those things, we overflow with fluency and genius! not that he lacked genius, however; he often made corrections while a rehearsal was in progress. inspiration, he held, cannot be made, but must come naturally. he followed buffon's advice, expressing each thought by an image, and made his conceptions as vivid as possible; but the _bourgeois_ declared that "atmosphere" was too material a thing to express sentiment; and fearing their sound french judgment might be disturbed and carried beyond its limits, they exclaimed "too much metaphor"!--as if they had any to spare! few authors take such pains in choosing their words, in phrasing. he did not give the title of author to those who possess only certain elements of style. many of the most praised would have been unable to combine analysis, description, and dialogue! he loved rhythm, in verse as well as in prose. he considered that language without rhythm was tedious, and unfit to stand the test of being read aloud. he was very liberal; shakespeare and boileau were equally admired by him; he read rabelais continually, loved corneille and la fontaine, and, although very romantic, he praised voltaire. in greek literature, he preferred first of all the odyssey, then aristophanes; in latin, tacitus and juvenal. he had also studied apuleius a great deal. he despised public speeches, whether addressed to god or to the people; the bigot's style, as that of the labourer; all things that reek of the sewer or of cheap perfume. many things were unknown to him; such as the fanaticism of the seventeenth century, the infatuation for calvin, the continuous lamentations on the decline of the arts. he cared little for m. de maistre, nor did prudhon dazzle him. in his estimation, sober minds were nothing else than inferior minds; he hated affected good taste, thinking it more execrable than bad; and all discussions on the arts, the gossip of the critics. he would rather have died than write a preface. the following page, taken from a note-book and entitled _notes et projets_, will give a better idea: "this century is essentially pedagogic. there is no scribbler, no book, be they never so paltry, that does not press itself upon the public; as to form, it is outlawed. if you happen to write well, you are accused of lacking ideas. heavens! one must be stupid indeed to want for ideas at the price they bring! by simply using these three words future, progress, society, no matter who you are, you are a poet. how easy to encourage the fools and console the envious! mediocre, profitable poetry, school-room literature, æsthetic prattle, economical refuse, scrofulous products of an exhausted nation, oh! how i detest you all from the bottom of my heart! you are not gangrene, you are putrescence!" the day after his death théophile gautier wrote: "he carried with pride the old tattered banner, which had seen so many battles; we can make a shroud of it, the valiant followers of hernani are no more." how true! he devoted his entire life to ideals, loving literature for itself; as the last fanatic loves a religion nearly or quite extinct. "second-rate genius," you will say; but fourth-rate ones are not so plentiful now! we are getting wide of the mark. we are so engrossed in stupidity and vulgarism that we shun delicacy and loftiness of mind; we think it a bore to show respect to great men. perhaps we shall lose, with literary tradition, that ethereal element which represented life as more sublime than it really is; but if we wish our works to live after us, we must not sneer at fame. by cultivating the mind we acquire some wit. witnessing beautiful actions makes us more noble. if there should be somewhere two young men who spend their sundays reading poetry together, telling each other what they have written and what they would like to write, and, while indifferent to all else, conceal this passion from all eyes--if so, my advice to them is this: go side by side, through the woods, reciting poetry; mingle your souls with the sap of the trees and the eternity of god's creations; abandon yourselves to reverie and the torpors of sublimity! give up your youth to the muse; it will replace all other loves. when you have experienced the world's miseries; when everything, including your own existence, seems to point towards one purpose; when you are ready for any sacrifice, any test,--then, publish your works. after that, no matter what happens, you will look on the wretchedness of your rivals without indignation, and on their success without envy. as the less favoured will be consoled by the other's success, the one with a stouter heart will encourage the weaker one; each will contribute his particular gift; this mutual help will avert pride and delay declination. when one of you dies--as we must all die--let the other treasure his memory; let him use it as a bulwark against weakness, or, better, as a private altar where he can open his heart and pour out his grief. many times, in the stillness of night, will he look vainly for his friend's shadow, ready to question him: "am i doing right? what must i do? answer me!"--and if this memory be a constant reminder of his sorrow, it will at least be a companion in his solitude. letter to the municipality of rouen on the subject of a memorial to louis bouilhet. gentlemen:-- [illustration: b]by a majority of two votes--thirteen votes against eleven (including that of the mayor and his six clerks)--you refused the offer i made you to erect _free of cost_, at any place you might choose in your city, a small fountain ornamented with the bust of louis bouilhet. as i am spokesman for the persons who contributed their money for this purpose, i must protest in their name against this decision--that is, i must reply to the objections uttered in your meeting of the th of december last, an account of which appeared in the newspapers of rouen on the th of the same month. the four principal objections were: .--that the subscription committee changed the destination of the monument; .--that the municipal budget would be imperilled; .--that bouilhet was not born in rouen; .--that his literary talent is inadequate. first objection (i use the words as they were printed): "can the committee modify the intention and substitute a fountain for a tombstone? will all the subscribers accept the substitution?" we have modified nothing, gentlemen! the monument (a vague expression, not precisely designating a tombstone) was suggested by m. ernest leroy, ex-prefect of the "seine-inférieure," on the day of bouilhet's funeral. i immediately started a subscription, on which figured the names of an imperial highness, george sand, alexandre dumas, the great russian author tourgeneff, harrisse, a new york journalist, etc. some subscribers from the _comédie française_ are: mmes. plessy, favart, brohan and m. bressant; from the opéra, m. fauré and mlle. nilsson; in short, after six months, we had about , francs at our disposal; besides this, the marble was to be given to us by the _beaux-arts_ administration, and the sculptor chosen by us refused to accept any remuneration. surely, all those people, known or unknown, did not give their time, talent, or money, for the erection in a cemetery (which very few would ever visit) of so costly a tombstone; one of those grotesque constructions that are adverse to all religious feeling, to all philosophies, whose derisive pride insults eternity! no, gentlemen, what they desired was something less useful--and more moral: that when passing bouilhet's statue each one could say: "there was a man who, in this avaricious century, devoted his whole life to the worship of literature. this mark of respect is but justice to him, and i have contributed my share to this reparation." this was their idea; nothing else. besides, how do you know? who asked you to defend them? the municipal council say: "as we understand it to be a tombstone, we will give ten metres of ground and subscribe francs." as this decision implies a recrimination, let them keep their francs! as to the ground, we are willing to buy it. what is your price? but enough on your first objection. the second is dictated by excessive caution: "if the subscription committee have made a mistake in their estimate, the city could not leave it (the monument) unfinished; and we must even now foresee that, if need be, we should have to make up the deficit." our estimate was submitted to your architect; as to our funds, if they had been insufficient, rest assured the committee would have made an appeal to the subscribers, or rather, would have supplied them out of their own pockets. thank heaven! we are rich enough to keep our word! your excessive anxiety seems somewhat rude. third objection: "bouilhet was not born in rouen!" yet, m. decorde says in his report: "he is one of us"; and after the first performance of _la conjuration d'ambroise_, m. verdrel, ex-mayor of rouen, at a banquet given in honor of bouilhet, complimented him in the most flattering terms; calling him "one of the geniuses of rouen." for some years, it was quite a fad of the smaller parisian publications to ridicule the enthusiasm of the people of rouen for bouilhet. in the _charivari_, a caricature represented the people of rouen offering their respects to _hélène peyron_ in the shape of bonbons and cakes; in another, i was represented dragging the "rouenese float." but no matter. according to you, gentlemen, if an illustrious man is born in a village consisting of thirty shanties, the monument must be erected in that village, and not in the county seat? then why not erect it in the street, house, or even room where he was born? suppose his birthplace were unknown (history is not always decisive on this point),--what would you do? nothing. am i right? fourth objection:--"his literary merit!" i find in the report many big words on this subject: "propriety"; "principles." "it must be risky." "it would be a great distinction; an extreme honour; a supreme homage; which must be granted only with extreme caution"; lastly, "rouen is too large a pedestal for his genius!" really, such praise was not bestowed even upon the excellent m. pottier, "whose services to the city library were more conspicuous" (no doubt, because it was your library). nor, secondly, on hyacinthe langlois! i knew him, gentlemen, better than all of you. do not revive this painful recollection! never speak of this noble man! his life was a disgrace to his countrymen! you call him "a great norman celebrity," and, dispensing fame in fantastic manner, you quote among the celebrities of which our city can boast (you can, but do not always) pierre corneille! corneille a celebrity? really, you are severe! then, in the same breath, you mention boieldieu, lemonnier, fontenelle, and, gentlemen, you forget gericault, the dean of modern painting; saint-amant, the great poet; boisgilbert, the first economist of france; de la salle, who discovered the mouth of the mississippi; louis poterat, inventor of porcelain in europe,--and others! that your predecessors should have forgotten to pay high, immoderate, sufficient tribute, or even no tribute at all, to these "celebrities" (samuel bochart, for instance, whose name adorns one of the streets of caen) is an indisputable fact! but does a previous injustice authorise subsequent wrongs? it is true, nothing has been erected to the memory of rabelais, montaigne, ronsard, pascal, la bruyère, le sage, diderot, vauvenargues, lamennais, alexandre dumas, and balzac, in their native cities. on the other hand, there is a statue of general de saint-pol at nogent-le-rotrou; one of general blanmont at gisors; one of general leclerc at pontoise; one of general valhubert at avranches; one of m. vaisse at lyons; one of m. billault at nantes; one of m. de morny at deauville; one of ancelot at havre; one of ponsard at valence; in a public park at vire, an enormous bust of chênedollé; at séez, in front of the cathedral, a magnificent statue of conté, etc. this is all well enough, if the public purse has not suffered. let those who desire fame pay for it; let those who wish to pay tributes to others, do so at their own cost. this is exactly what we wished to do. so long as you were subject to no financial risks, your duty was to demand of us a guaranty of execution. besides the right to choose the spot for our fountain, you had that of rejecting our sculptor and choosing one yourselves. but you are too engrossed in the hypothetical success of _mademoiselle aïssé_! "if this drama is not a success, might not the erection of a public monument to his literary talent [bouilhet's] be looked upon with disfavour?" m. nion (who has special charge of the fine arts) thinks that if by chance this drama should be a failure, the adoption of the proposed plan would be "rashness" on the part of the municipal council. so, it would seem that the bone of contention is the financial success of the piece! if it is a success, bouilhet is a great man; if a failure, he is not! what a noble theory! the immediate success of a drama has nothing to do with its literary value. there are numerous examples: molière's _l'avare_ ran four nights; racine's _athalie_ and rossini's _barbier de seville_ were hooted. but rest easy, _mademoiselle aïssé_ was a great success. it does not seem to matter to m. decorde, your reporter, who says: 'bouilhet's talent is not proof against criticism'; and: 'his reputation is not sufficiently established.' m. nion says: 'his method is more remarkable than his scenic conceptions! he is not original, not a first-class author!' m. decorde calls him 'an imitator of alfred de musset, who was sometimes successful'! really, my dear sir, you are not as indulgent as you should be towards a contemporary,--you who, artfully scoffing at this very city of rouen, whose literary morals you defend so well, have stigmatized saint-tard as 'a progressive borough.'[c] a nice little place, where, "despite the city toll, against which they grumble, liquor-shops and cafés flourish." [c] read at a public meeting of the academy of rouen, aug. th, . if you had been asked for money, i should have understood your reluctance. "here is another thing; we are continually taxed for the least reason." 'tis true the bourgeois of saint-tard are not much given to generosity! we expected better of you after your treatment of modern slang in your epistle _des importations anglaises_[d] in which are these lines: "i read in a paper that at boulogne-sur-mer a fashionable cricket-club had arranged a match. and having so poorly aped fashion, can lay claim to admiration." attractive lines, but these are better: "i have read somewhere that a miser of rennes, knowing no better way to avoid giving presents, had died on the new year." [d] read at the academy of rouen, at a public meeting, aug. th, . (see analytical summary of the works of the academy of rouen.) you are really versatile--whether you praise photograph collections: "it is a pleasant pastime, and everyone has a large collection," or saint-ouen park: "your fate is that of the great stream once so sought after, and you in your turn are deserted."[e] or dancing: "as everything must follow the fashion, terpsichore has submitted to the law of exchange. ignoring prohibition, the lancers have already reached us from albion."[f] or dinners in town: "you must not expect me to divulge what the menu consists of; but from the beginning the dessert adorns the table. alas! those pleasures are not had for nothing; a winter in the city is more costly than one thinks!"[g] or the marvels of modern industry: "and now, thanks to special trains, we can visit belgium or switzerland in eight days, and at much less cost. and when de lesseps has at last made a passage through the suez canal, the tourist can take a pleasure trip to india or the extreme orient as easily as travelling through france."[h] [e] letter of condolence to saint-ouen park.--meeting of june , . (see analytical summary of the academy of rouen.) [f] winter in the city. (letter.--meeting of aug. th, .) [g] winter in the city. (letter.--meeting aug. th, .) [h] vacations. (familiar letter.--meeting of aug. th, .) do not stop, by any means! write dramas even, you who have such a keen conception of dramatic form! and rest assured, honourable sir, that if your "reputation were sufficiently established," and although like louis bouilhet's, your "talent" is not "proof against criticism," you are not "original" not "a first-class author," you will never be called "an imitator," even "sometimes successful," of alfred de musset! besides, your memory is at fault on this point. did not one of your colleagues of the academy of rouen, at the meeting of aug. th, , praise louis bouilhet in flattering terms? he praised him so highly as a dramatic author, and denied so energetically that he was an imitator of alfred de musset, that when i wrote the preface to _dernières chansons_, i simply copied the words of my old friend, alfred nion, brother of m. emile nion, the gentleman that lacked boldness! what was the gentleman "who has special charge of the fine arts" afraid of? of obstructing your public by-ways? poets like this one (begging your pardon) are not precisely innumerable. since you have refused to accept his statue, _notwithstanding_ our gift of a fountain, you have lost one of your colleagues, m. thubeuf. i do not wish to speak unbecomingly, or to insult a sorrowful family i have not the honour of knowing, but it seems to me that nicholas-louis-juste thubeuf is at the present moment as forgotten as if he never had existed, while bouilhet's name is known over all europe. _aïssé_ is being played in st. petersburg and london. his plays and verses will be printed in six, twenty, even a hundred years hence, and perhaps beyond that. a man is seldom remembered unless he has been amusing or serviceable. you are not able to be the former; grant us the latter. instead of devoting your time to literary criticism, a pastime that is beyond your powers, attend to more serious things such as: the construction of a bridge; the construction of a bonded-warehouse; the widening of the rue du grand-pont; the opening of a street, running from the court-house to the docks; the much delayed completion of the spire of the cathedral, etc. queer collection, indeed! it might be called "museum of deferred projects." you are so afraid of compromising yourselves, so afraid to act, that each outgoing administration hands its caution down to its successor. you think caution such a virtue that it would be a crime for you to act. mediocrity is not detrimental, you think, but one must avoid being enterprising. when the public clamours, a committee is at once appointed; and from that time nothing is done. "we can do absolutely nothing; we await the committee's decision." invincible argument to soothe public impatience! sometimes, however, you are bold enough to act; but it almost creates a scandal: as when the ex-rue de l'impératrice, now the rue jeanne-darc, and the square solferino were opened in rouen. still: "public parks are the style now, and rouen must have one!"[i] [i] m. decorde's poetry. (letter of condolence to saint-ouen park, already cited.) but the most important, though the most neglected, of all your projects is the distribution of water throughout the city. take saint-sever, for example, where there is great need of it. what we proposed was, to erect, at any street corner, a small fountain adorned with a statue. several of you had formally promised that our fountain should be erected; we were therefore greatly surprised at your decision, inasmuch as you are sometimes generous in these matters. the statue to napoleon i. on the place saint-ouen is an instance. you gave, for the erection of this masterpiece, which had cost , francs or thereabouts, the small sum of , francs! the council had appropriated the first time , francs; the second time, , ; and the third time, , , as indemnity to the sculptor, because his _maquette_ had casually been overthrown by the committee--always the committee! what aptitude for art! for the statue of pierre corneille, proposed in and erected twenty-nine years later, , you spent , . francs--not a cent more. true, he was a great poet, and you are so considerate that you prefer to deprive yourselves of a necessity, rather than honour a second-rate poet! permit me to ask two questions: if this fountain, this useful public monument which we offered, had represented anything but louis bouilhet's bust, would you have refused it? if it had been intended for one of the capitalists of our district, whose fortune runs into the millions, would you have refused it? i doubt it. be careful, or you will be accused of despising those who cannot boast of a fortune! for such cautious men, who consider success the main object, you have sadly erred, gentlemen! the _moniteur universel_, _l'ordre_, the _paris-journal_, the _bien public_, the _xixème siècle_, _l'opinion nationale_, the _constitutionnel_, the _gaulois_, the _figaro_, in fact, nearly all the papers, were against you. to convince you, we will simply quote a few lines from the dean of modern critics, jules janin: "when the time came for definitive compensation, the last hope of louis bouilhet's friends was dashed to the ground; they encountered all sorts of obstacles. his statue was refused a place in a city that his fame had made illustrious! his friends proposed in vain to erect a much needed fountain, so that the statue ornamenting it might not be thought the main object of this good deed. but how can unjust men understand the cruelty of such a refusal? they might erect a statue to war, but to a poet, never!" of the twenty-four composing the committee, eleven sided with us; and messrs. vaucquier du traversin, f. deschamps and raoul duval spoke eloquently in our favour. this affair is trifling in itself, but it may be noted as a characteristic feature of the century--of your class. "i address myself to you no longer, gentlemen, but to all the _bourgeoisie_. therefore i say: conservators who conserve nothing, it is time to follow a different path. you speak of decentralizing, regenerating,--if so, rouse yourselves. be active! originate! french nobles lost their prestige for having had, during two centuries, the feelings of menials. the end of the _bourgeois_ is at hand, because their feelings are those of the rabble. i do not see that they read different papers, or hear different music, or that their pleasures are more refined. in one as in the other, it is the same love of money; the same wish to destroy idols; the same hatred of superior minds; the same meanness; the same crass ignorance." of the seven hundred members of l'assemblée nationale, how many are there who could name six kings of france, who know the first rudiments of political economy, who have even read bastiat? the whole municipality of rouen, who disowned a poet's talent, no doubt are ignorant of the rules of versification. they do not need to know them, so long as they do not meddle with poetry. to be respected by those beneath us, we must respect those above us! before educating the rabble, educate yourselves! enlightened people, enlighten yourselves! because of your disdain for superiority, you think you have abundant good sense, you are positive, you are practical. one is never really practical unless he carries it a little farther.... you would not enjoy the benefits of industry if your ancestors of the eighteenth century had had other ideals than common usefulness. how we scoffed at germany--at her dreamers, her ideologists, her ethereal poets! our milliards compensated her for the time well employed in perfecting plans. it seems to me, it was the dreamer fichte who reorganized the prussian army after jena; and that the poet koërner sent a few uhlans against us about ! you practical? come! you cannot even hold a pen or a gun! you let convicts rob, imprison, and slaughter you! you have lost even the brute's instinct of defence; and when not only your life, but your purse (which ought to be dearer to you), is in danger, you lack the energy to drop a ballot into a box! with all your capital, all your wisdom, you never can form an association equal to _l'internationale_! all your intellectual efforts consist of trembling for the future. think! hasten! or france, between a hideous demagogy and a stupid _bourgeoisie_, will sink lower and lower! gustave flaubert. selected correspondence of gustave flaubert with an intimate study of the author by caroline commanville simon p. magee publisher chicago, ill. copyright, , by m. walter dunne _entered at stationers' hall, london_ intimate remembrances of gustave flaubert i. [illustration: t]these pages are not a biography of gustave flaubert, they are simply recollections; my own and those i have collected. my uncle's life was passed entirely in the intimacy of the family, between his mother and me; to relate the story of this life is to make him better known, more loved and esteemed; in this way i believe that i am fulfilling a pious duty towards his memory. before gustave flaubert's birth, my grandparents had had three children. the eldest, achilles, was nine years older than gustave, and the two other little ones were dead. then came gustave and another boy who died in a few months; and finally my mother, caroline, the last child. she and her younger brother loved each other with a peculiar tenderness. with but three years difference in their ages, the two little ones were scarcely ever separated from each other. gustave repeated everything he learned to his sister; she was his pupil, and one of his greatest pleasures was initiating her into literary composition. later, when he was in paris, it was to her he wrote; through her was the daily news transmitted to their parents, because that sweet communion had not been lost. i should say that the greater part of the facts relative to my uncle's infancy have been told me by the old nurse who brought him up and who died three years after him, in . the familiarity permitted with a child was followed in her case by a respect and worship for her master. she was "full of him," recalling his least action, his least word. when she said "monsieur gustave," she believed that she was speaking of an extraordinary being. those who knew him will appreciate the verity contained in the admiration of this old servant. gustave flaubert was four years old when julie came to rouen into my grand-parents' service, in . she came from the village of fleury-on-the-andelle, situated in that pretty, smiling valley which extends from pont-saint-pierre to the great market-town of lyons-la-forêt. the coast of the "two lovers" protected its entrance; here and there was a château, sometimes surrounded by water and having its drawbridge, again the superb estate of radepont, the ruins of an old abbey and the woods of the surrounding hills. this charming country is fertile in old stories of love and of ghosts. julie knew them all. she was a skilful story-teller, this simple girl of the people, and endowed with a naturally fine and agreeable mind. her ancestors, from father to son, had been postilions, rather bad fellows, and hard drinkers. while gustave was small he would sit beside her for whole days. in order to amuse him, julie would join together all the legends she had heard around the fire with those she had read, and, having been kept in bed a year with a bad knee, she had read more than most women of her class. the child was of a tranquil nature, meditative, possessing an ingenuousness of which he retained traces during his whole life. my grandmother has told me that he would remain for hours with a finger in his mouth, absorbed, and with an almost stupid appearance. when he was six years old an old domestic, called pierre, used to amuse himself with that innocence; he would say to little gustave, if he teased for anything, "go now and look at the end of the garden, or in the kitchen and see whether i am there." and the child would go and say to the cook: "pierre sent me to see whether he were here." he could not comprehend that they were deceiving him, and while they laughed, would stand thinking, trying to see through the mystery. my grandmother had taught her oldest son to read, and, wishing to do as much for the second, put herself to the task. the little caroline, beside gustave, learned by degrees that she could not keep up with him, and he, being forced to understand this from signs of which no one said anything to him, began to weep large tears. he was, however, eager for knowledge, and his brain worked continually. opposite the hospital, in a modest little house in the rue de lecat, lived two old people, father and mother mignot. they had an extreme tenderness for their little neighbour. times without number, the child would open the heavy door of the hôtel-dieu, and run across to father mignot's knee, upon a signal from him. and it was not the good woman's strawberries that tempted him, but the stories the old man told him. he knew a great many pretty tales of one kind and another, and with what patience he related them! from this time julie was supplanted. the child was not difficult to please, but had insistent preferences; those that he liked must be told him over and over again. father mignot also read to him. _don quixote_ especially pleased my uncle; he would never let it be taken from him. and he retained for cervantes the same admiration all his life. in the scenes brought about by the difficulty of learning to read, the last irrefutable argument with him was: "why should i learn, since papa mignot can read to me?" but the age for entering school arrived. he must know once for all that his old friend could not follow him there. gustave put himself resolutely to work, and at the end of a few months had caught up with the children of his age. he entered the eighth class. he was not what one would call a brilliant pupil. continually failing to observe some rule, and not troubling himself to understand his professors, punishments abounded, and the first prize escaped him, except in history, in which he was always first. in philosophy he distinguished himself, but he never comprehended mathematics. generous and full of exuberance, he had some warm friends whom he amused extremely by his unquenchable enthusiasm and good humour. his melancholy times, for he had them even then, he passed in a region of his mind accessible to himself alone, and not yet did he show them in his exterior life. he had a great memory, forgetting nothing, neither benevolences nor vexation of which he was the subject. thus, he preserved for his professor in history, cheruel, a profound remembrance, and hated a certain usher who had hindered him from reading his favourite book during the study hour. but his years at the college were miserable; he never could become accustomed to things there, having a horror of discipline, and of everything that savoured of militarism. the custom of announcing the change of exercises by the beating of drums irritated him, and that of filing the pupils in rank when they passed from one class to another exasperated him. constraint in his movements was a punishment, and his walk with the procession every thursday was never a pleasure; not that he was feeble, but he had a natural antipathy for all that seemed to him useless motion. his antipathy for walking lasted his whole life. of all exercises for the body, swimming alone pleased him; he was a very good swimmer. the dull, labourious days of school life were enlivened by outings on thursdays and sundays. then he saw his beloved family and his little sister, which was a joy unequalled. in the dormitory during the week, thanks to some hidden pieces of candle, he read some of victor hugo's dramas, and his passion for the theatre was kept warm. from the age of ten, gustave composed tragedies. these pieces, of which he was scarcely able to write the lines, were played by him and his comrades. a great billiard hall opening from the salon was given up to them. the billiard table, pushed to one end of the room, served as a stage, which they mounted by means of a crock from the garden. caroline had charge of the decorations and costumes. his mother's wardrobe was plundered for old shawls, which made excellent peplums. he wrote to one of his principal actors, ernest chevalier: "victory! victory! victory! victory! you will come, and amédée, edmond, madame chevalier, mamma, two servants and perhaps some pupils, will be here to see us play. we shall give four pieces that you do not know. but you will soon learn them. the tickets of the first, second, and third classes are made. there will be some armchairs. there will also be scenery and decorations; the curtain is arranged. perhaps there will be ten or twelve persons. so we must have courage and not fear," etc. alfred le poittevin, some years older than gustave, and his sister laura, were also a part of these representations. the family of poittevin was bound to that of flaubert through the two mothers, who had known each other from nine years of age at the _pension_. alfred le poittevin had a very great influence upon my uncle in his youth, contributing to his literary development. he was endowed with a brilliant mind, full of life and eccentricity. he died young, which was a great grief. my uncle speaks of him in his preface to the _last songs_. * * * * * a few words about my grandparents and upon the moral and intellectual development of my uncle. my grandfather, whose traits have been sketched in _madame bovary_, under those of doctor larivière, called in consultation to the bed of the dying emma, was the son of a veterinary of nogent-on-the-seine. the situation of the family was modest: nevertheless, by denying themselves, they sent their son to paris to study medicine. he took the first prize in the great competition and by this success was received as a doctor free of further cost. scarcely had he passed his examinations when he was sent from dupuytren, where he was house physician, to rouen to doctor laumonier, who was then surgeon of the hospital. this sojourn was supposed to be only temporary, to restore his health, which had become enfeebled from overwork and a life of privation. but, instead of remaining for a few months, the young physician spent all his life there. the frequent appeals of his numerous friends, or the hope of arriving at a high place in the medical profession in paris, which his successful beginning had justified, never decided him to leave his hospital and a people to whom he became profoundly attached. but in the beginning, it was love which extended this sojourn,--love for a young girl, a child of thirteen years, a goddaughter of madame laumonier, an orphan in a boarding-school, who came each week to visit her godmother. anne-justine-caroline fleuriot was born in at pont-l'evêque in calvados. through her mother she was allied to the oldest families in lower normandy. "a great noise is made," said charlotte corday in one of her letters, "about an unequal marriage between charlotte cambremer de croixmare and jean-baptiste francois-prosper fleuriot, a doctor without reputation." at thirty years of age mademoiselle de croixmare had been sent back to the convent. but the obstacles were finally conquered, the walls of the convent broken and the marriage took place. one year later a daughter was born, and the mother died in giving her birth. the child, left in the arms of its father, became for him an object of tenderness and worship. at sixteen, my grandmother still remembered with emotion her father's kisses. "he would undress me each evening," she said, "and put me in my bed, wishing to take my mother's place." these paternal cares soon ceased. doctor fleuriot, seeing that he was about to die, gave his daughter in charge of two old ladies of saint-cyr who had a little school at honfleur. these ladies promised to keep her until her marriage, but they, too, soon disappeared. then her tutor, monsieur thouret, sent the young girl to madame laumonier, sister of jacques-guillaume thouret, deputy from rouen to the states-general and president of that assembly. she came at the same time as my grandfather, when they happened to see each other. some months later they avowed their love and promised themselves to each another. the laumonier household, like many others of that epoch, tolerated, under a spiritual and gracious exterior, a certain lightness of morals. the eminently serious nature of my grandmother and her love preserved her from the dangers of such surroundings. besides, my grandfather, more far-seeing than she could be, wished her to remain in the boarding-school until she was married. she was eighteen and he twenty-seven at the time of their marriage. their purse was slender, but their hearts had little fear. my grandfather's portion was in his future; my grandmother had a little farm which brought her a revenue of four thousand francs. the household was established in the rue du petit-salut, near the rue grand-pont, a little street of narrow houses, touching one another, where the sun could never penetrate. in my childhood my grandmother would often take me through there, and, looking at the windows, would say in a grave voice, almost religious: "look, my child, the best years of my life were passed there." descended from a champenois and a norman, gustave flaubert had the characteristic signs of both races; his temperament was very expansive and, at the same time, it was enveloped in the vague melancholy of the people of the north. he was of even temper and gay, sometimes with a touch of buffoonery; but ever at the bottom of his nature was an undefined sadness, a kind of disquiet. he was physically robust, enjoying full, strong pleasures; but his soul, aspiring to an unattainable ideal, suffered without ceasing in not finding it. this applied to the smallest things; because, as a seeker after the exquisite, he had found that the most frequently recurring sentiment was nearly always one of grief. this without doubt added to the sensibility of his nervous system, which the violent commotions of a certain malady (to the paroxysms of which he had had many relapses, especially in his youth) had refined to an extreme point. that came also from his great love of the ideal. this nervous malady threw a veil over his whole life; it was a permanent fear obscuring even his happiest days. however, it had no influence upon his robust health, and the incessant and vigorous work of his brain continued without interruption. gustave flaubert was something of a fanatic; he had taken art for his god, and like a devotee, he knew all the tortures and all the intoxications of the love to which he had sacrificed himself. after hours passed in communion with abstract form, the mystic became man again, was a _bon vivant_, laughed with a frank laugh, put a charming gaiety into the recital of a story, or some pleasant personal remembrance. one of his greatest pleasures was to amuse those about him. what would he not do to raise my spirits when i was sad or ill? it was easy to feel the honesty of his characteristics. from his father he had received his tendency to experiment, that minute observation of things which caused him to spend infinite time in accounting to himself for the smallest detail, and that taste for all knowledge which made him a scholar as well as an artist. his mother transmitted to him his impressionability and that almost feminine tenderness which often made his great heart overflow and his eyes grow moist at the sight of a child. his taste for travel, he often said, came to him from one of his ancestors who took part in the conquest of canada. he was very proud of counting up the brave ones among his own people, any one who had brains and was not _bourgeois_; for he had a hatred of the _bourgeois_, and continually employed that term as a synonym for mediocrity and envy, the living only with the appearance of virtue and insulting all grandeur and beauty. at the death of laumonier, my grandfather succeeded him as surgeon-in-chief of the hospital. it was in this vast building that gustave flaubert was born. the hospital at rouen, of the construction of the last century, is not wanting in a certain kind of character; the straight lines of its architecture present something of chasteness and something of the accepted modern types. it was situated at the end of rue de crosne, and as one came from the centre of the town he found himself face to face with the great arch of the iron gate, all black, behind which was a court-yard with willows planted in rows: at the end and built around the sides was the edifice. the part occupied by my grandparents formed a wing, approached by a private entrance. at the left of the central gate, a high door opened upon a court where grass grew among the old paving stones. on the other side of the pavilion was a garden forming an angle with the street, bordered at the left by a wall covered with ivy and hemmed in at the right by the hospital buildings. these are high grey walls, punctured with little glazed holes to which meagre faces are glued, their heads bound in white linen cloths. these ghastly silhouettes with hollow eyes show great suffering and have a profound sadness about them. gustave's room was on the side of the entrance, in the second story. the view was upon the hospital gardens overlooking the trees, under whose verdure the patients sat on stone seats, when the weather was pleasant. from time to time the white wing of a great bonnet of one of the sisters could be seen rapidly crossing the courtyard, and sometimes there were visitors, the parents of the invalids, or the friends of the attendants, but never any noise or anything unexpected. this severe and melancholy place could not have been without influence upon gustave flaubert. he ever retained an exquisite compassion for all human suffering, and also a high morality, which would scarcely be suspected by those who are scandalised by his paradoxes. no one was less like what is usually called an artist than my uncle. among the peculiarities of his character, the contrasts have always astonished me. this man, so preoccupied with beauty in style and giving form so high a place, even the highest, paid little attention to the beauty that surrounded him; his own furniture was of heavy contour, not the least delicate, and he had no taste for objects of art (bric-à-brac) so much in vogue at that time. he loved order with a passion, carrying it to a mania, and would never work until his books were arranged in a certain fashion. he preserved carefully all letters addressed to him. i have large boxes full of them. did he think there would be as much interest taken in them as there was later in his own? did he foresee that great interest in his correspondence (which reveals the man in a light so different from that revealed by his works), that he imposed upon me the task of collecting and publishing it? no one can say. he always observed extreme regularity in his work each day. he yoked himself to it as an ox is yoked to a cart, without waiting for that inspiration which expectation renders fruitless, as he said. his energy of will for all that concerned his art was prodigious, and his patience was tireless. some years before his death, he would amuse himself by saying: "i am the last of the fathers of the church," and, in fact, with his long, maroon-coloured wrapper and a little black silk cap on the top of his head, he was something like a recluse of port-royal. i can see him now running over the terrace at croisset, absorbed in thought, stopping suddenly, his arms crossed, raising his head and remaining for some moments with his eyes fixed on the space above, and then resuming his walk again. life at the hospital was regular, free, and good. my grandfather, who had attained a high reputation, medically, gave his children all that ease and tenderness could add to the happiness of youth. he had bought a house in the country, at deville near rouen, which he disposed of one year before his death, a railroad having cut through the garden only a few metres from the house. it was then that he bought croisset, on the banks of the seine. each year the entire family went to nogent-on-the-seine to the home of the flaubert parents. it was quite a journey, which we made in a post-chaise, a veritable journey of the good old times. the thought of them brought many an amusing remembrance to my uncle; but those which were most charming to him were his vacations passed at trouville, then but a simple fishing village. he met there some english people, the family of admiral collier, all of whom were beautiful and intelligent. the oldest daughters, gertrude and henrietta, soon became the intimate friends of my uncle and my mother. gertrude, now madame tennant, lately wrote me some pages about her youth. i translate the following lines:-- "gustave flaubert was then like a young greek. in full adolescence, he was tall and thin, supple and graceful as an athlete, unconscious of the gifts that he possessed, physically and morally, caring little for the impression he produced and entirely indifferent to accepted form. his dress consisted of a red flannel shirt, great trousers of blue cloth, a scarf of the same color around his waist and a cap put on no matter how, or often bare-headed. when i spoke to him of fame, or of influence, as desirable things that i esteemed, he listened, smiled, and seemed superbly indifferent. he admired what was beautiful in nature, art and literature and lived for that, as he said, without any thought of the personal. he cared neither for glory nor for gain. was it not enough that a thing was true and beautiful? his great joy was in finding something that he judged worthy of admiration. the charm of his society was in his enthusiasm for all that was noble; and the charm of his mind was its intense individuality. he hated all hypocrisy. what was lacking in his nature, was an interest in exterior and useful things. if any one happened to say that religion, politics, or business had as great an interest for them as literature or art, he would open his eyes in astonishment and pity. to be literary, an artist, that alone was worth living for." it was at trouville also that he met the musical editor, maurice schlesinger and his wife. many faces remained engraved on his memory of his sojourns by the sea, among others that of an old sailor, captain barbet and his little daughter, barbette, a little humpback always crying out to her dolls. then there was doctor billard, and father couillère, mayor of the commune, at whose house they had repasts that lasted for six hours. he recalled these years in writing _a simple soul_. madame aubin, her two children, the house where she lived, and all the details so true, so appreciative, in this simple history, are of striking exactness. madame was an aunt to my grandmother; félicité and her parrot once lived. in his last years, my uncle had an extreme desire to revive his youth. he wrote _a simple soul_, after his mother's death, to try to accomplish this. in painting the town where she was born, the hearth before which she had played, his cousins, the companions of his childhood, he found satisfaction, and that pleasure has brought from his pen his most touching pages, those perhaps where he allows us to divine most clearly the man under the writer. recall that scene where madame aubin and her servant are arranging the trifling possessions that had belonged to virginia. a large hat of black straw which my grandmother had worn awoke in my uncle a similar emotion. he would take that relic from the nail, look at it in silence, with eyes moistening, and then respectfully replace it. finally, the happy time of leaving college arrived, but the terrible question of choosing a profession, or taking up some career poisoned his joy. as a vocation, he cared only for literature, and "literature" is not a career; it leads to no "position." my grandfather wished his son to be a savant and a law practitioner. to devote himself to the unique and exclusive research for beauty of literary form, seemed to him almost folly. a man of character, eminently strong, and of very active habits, he comprehended with difficulty the nervous and somewhat feminine side which characterises all artistic organisations. with his mother my uncle found more encouragement, but she held to the point that he should obey his father, and he was resolved that gustave should make his way in paris. he set out, sad at leaving his own people, his sister especially. at paris he lived in the rue de l'est in a little bachelor apartment where he found himself badly installed. the noisy, free and easy pleasures of his comrades seemed to him stupid, so that he scarcely ever participated in them. he would remain alone, open one of his law books, which he would immediately put away, then extending himself upon his bed, he would smoke and dream for hours. he became very weary of this life, and grew sombre. pradier's studio alone put warmth in him again; he saw there all the artists of the day, and in contact with them he felt his instincts grow. one day he met victor hugo there. some women visited the studio; it was there he met louise colet. he often went to see the pretty english girls of trouville, to the salon of the editor, maurice schlesinger, and to the hospitable house of his father's friend, doctor jules cloquet, who led him away one summer to the pyrenees and to corsica. the _education sentimental_ was composed in remembrance of this epoch. but in spite of friendship,--doubtless in spite of love,--a weariness without bounds invaded him. his work, which was contrary to his taste, became intolerable to him, his health was seriously affected and he returned to rouen. my mother's marriage, her death the year following, and a little later that of my grandfather, left my grandmother in such grief that she was happy to keep her son near her. paris and the law school were abandoned. it was then that, in company with maxime ducamp, he made the journey through brittany and they wrote together the book: _over strand and field_. (_a travers les champs et les grèves._) upon his return, he began his _saint antoine_, his first great work. it had been preceded by many, of which fragments have been published since his death. the _saint antoine_ composed then, was not the first known to the public. this work was undertaken at three different times before it was finally finished. in gustave flaubert took a second journey with maxime ducamp. this time the two friends directed their steps towards the orient, which had for so long been their dream! ii. my personal reminiscences date from his return. he came back at evening; i was in bed, but they awakened me. he came to my little bed, raised me suddenly and found me very droll in my long nightgown; i remember that it extended far below my feet. he began to laugh very hard and then to imprint great kisses on my cheeks which made me cry; i felt the cold of his moustache, humid with dew, and was very glad when he put me down again. i was then five years old and we were at the grandparents' house at nogent. three months later i saw him again in england, as i still remember distinctly. it was at the time of the first exposition at london. they took me there and the crowd frightened me; my uncle took me on his shoulder, and i traversed the galleries overlooking everybody, this time happy to be in his arms. they chose me a governess and we returned to croisset. my uncle wished to begin my education immediately. the governess was to teach me only english; my grandmother would teach me to read and write, and for him was reserved history and geography. he believed it useless to study grammar, holding that it taught itself in reading, and that it was bad to charge the memory of a young child with abstractions, which one begins where often they ought to finish. then began some years when we were all together. croisset, where we lived, is the first village on the bank of the seine in going from rouen to havre. the house, long and low in shape, all white, must have been built about two hundred years. it had belonged to the monks of the abbey of saint-ouen whom it served for a country house, and it pleased my uncle to think that prévost had composed _manon lescaut_ here. in the interior court, where still remained the pointed roof and the guillotine-shaped windows of the seventeenth century, the construction was interesting, but the façade was ugly. it had undergone one of those remodellings in bad taste that were seen so often in the first empire and the reign of louis philippe, at the beginning of the century. above the entrance, after the fashion of bas-reliefs, were some villainous casts,--the seasons of bouchardon--and the mantelpiece in the salon had on each side a representation of a mummy in white marble, a souvenir of the egyptian country. the rooms were few, but sufficiently large. the spacious dining-room, which occupied the centre of the house on the ground floor, opened upon the garden by a glass door flanked by two windows in full view of the river. it was pleasing and gay. on the next story, at the right, a long corridor separated the chambers, and on the left was my uncle's study, or work-room. it was a large apartment, with a very low ceiling, but very light, because of five windows, of which three looked upon the whole length of the garden, the other two being in the front of the house. there was a pretty view of the turf, the beds full of flowers, the trees on the long terrace, and the seine enframed in the foliage of a splendid tulip tree. the ways of the house were subordinated to the taste of my uncle, my grandmother having, so to speak, no longer any personal life; she lived for the happiness of others. her tenderness was in alarm at the slightest symptom of suffering which she thought she detected in her son, and she sought to envelop him in a calm atmosphere. in the morning she was on the defence against the least noise; towards ten o'clock the violent ringing of a bell would be heard, and some one would go to my uncle's room; not until then did every one awake. the domestic carried him his letters and newspapers, deposited on the night table a glass of fresh water and a well-filled pipe; then he opened the shutters, and the light streamed in. my uncle would seize his letters, run over the addresses, but rarely did he open one before taking a few whiffs from his pipe; then, having read them all, he would tap the neighbouring wall to call his mother, who would run in immediately and seat herself near his bed until he was ready to rise. he made his toilet slowly, sometimes interrupting himself to go to the table and re-read some passage with which he was preoccupied. although little complicated, his dress was not lacking in care, and his neatness expressed his refinement. at eleven he came down to breakfast, where my grandmother, uncle parain, the governess and i, were already assembled. we all loved uncle parain infinitely. he had married my grandfather's sister and passed a great part of the year with us. at this time my uncle ate little, especially in the morning, finding that too much nourishment made him heavy and unfit for work. almost never did he eat meat; only eggs, vegetables, a piece of cheese, fruit and a cup of cold chocolate. at dessert, he would relight his pipe--a little gray pipe--get up and go into the garden, where we followed. his favourite walk was the terrace walled in and bordered on one side by old willows cut straight across like a gigantic wall. this led to a little pavilion in the style of louis xv., whose windows looked out upon the seine. very often on summer evenings we would all seat ourselves here under the balcony of graceful fretwork and remain for some calm hours, chatting together; the night would come, little by little, the last passers disappear; in the water opposite we could just distinguish the silhouette of a horse drawing a boat which glided along without noise; then the moon would begin to shine with a thousand sparkling rays, like a fine diamond powder, scintillating at our feet, while a light tug and two or three barques would slip from their moorings and invade the river. these belonged to the eel fishers who were starting at this time to set their nets. my grandmother, who was very delicate, would cough, and my uncle would say: "it is time to return to the bovary." the bovary? what was that? i knew not. but i respected the name, those two words, as i respected everything that came from my uncle, and believed vaguely that it was a synonym for work, and work was writing, as was well understood. in fact, it was during these years, from to that he composed this novel. we were rarely in the pavilion after breakfast. fleeing from the midday sun, we mounted to a spot called "the mercury," because of a statue of that god which formerly ornamented it. it was a second avenue situated above the terrace, which led to a charming shady footpath; some old yew-trees came out of the rocks in queer shapes, showing their bare roots and jagged trunks; they appeared to be suspended, holding only to the crumbling wall at the side by their roots. above the alley was a kind of roundpoint, a circular bench concealed under some huge chestnut-trees. through the branches one could see the tranquil waters and above them a large expanse of sky. from time to time, a cloud would rapidly go by and vanish. it was the smoke of a steamboat; and immediately would appear between the interlaced branches the pointed masts of ships which were being towed to rouen. sometimes there would be seven, or nine. nothing is more majestic and beautiful than the pomp of these floating houses, which suggest a far-off country. about one o'clock could be heard a sharp whistle; it was "the steamer," as they say in the country. three times a day this boat crossed between rouen and bouille. the whistle was the signal of departure. "come," my uncle would say, "come to your lesson, my caro;" and dragging me along, we would both go into his large study, where the shutters were carefully closed to keep out the heat. it was pleasant there; one breathed an odour of oriental joss-sticks mingled with that of tobacco, also with perfumes that were wafted in through the door of his dressing-room. with a bound i would throw myself upon the great white bear-skin, which i adored, and cover his great head with kisses. my uncle, meantime, would be putting his pipe on the chimney-piece; and, selecting another, would fill it, light it, and seat himself in his leather armchair at the end of the room; he would cross one leg over the other, turn his back, take a file and begin to polish his nails, saying: "let us see, where were you? now, what do you remember from yesterday?" "oh! i know the history of pelopidas and epaminondas very well." "relate it, then." i began, but naturally i became confused or i had forgotten. "i am going to tell it to you once more," he would finally say. then i would approach and sit facing him on a long chair or upon the divan. i listened with a palpitating interest to the recitals that he made so amusing to me. it was thus i learned all my ancient history, coming to the facts one after another, making reflections within my power, but remaining truly and profoundly observant; mature minds would have been able to listen without finding anything puerile in his teaching. sometimes i would stop him and ask: "was he good?" and this question, applied to such men as cambyses, alexander or alcibiades, was somewhat embarrassing for him to answer. "good?" he would say, "yes ... these were not very proper gentlemen, but ... that is not the point." but i was not satisfied, and i found that "my old boy," as i called him, knew even the smallest details of the people we were studying about. the history lesson finished, we passed on to geography. he never wished me to study from a book. "images, as many as possible," he said, "are the best means of learning in childhood." we had charts, spheres, games of patience which we could make and unmake together; then, to explain the difference between islands, peninsulas, bays, gulfs and promontories he would take a shovel and a pail of water and, in a little walk in the garden, make models of these in nature. as i grew older, the lessons became longer and more serious. he continued them up to my seventeenth year, until my marriage. when i was ten years old, he obliged me to take notes while he was speaking, and when my mind was capable of comprehending it, he began to make me notice the artistic side of things, especially in my reading. he considered no book dangerous that was well written; he held this opinion because of his intimate union of foundation and form: anything well written could not be badly thought out or basely conceived. it was not the crude detail, the raw fact that was pernicious or harmful, or likely to soil the intelligence; all that is in nature. there is nothing moral or immoral but the soul of him who represents nature, rendering it grand, beautiful, serene, small, ignoble, or tormenting. such a thing as an obscene book well written could not exist, according to him. certainly he was very liberal in the reading he recommended to me, yet he was decided in allowing me nothing for amusement alone, and never would permit me to leave a book unfinished. "continue to read the history of the conquest," he wrote me, "and do not allow yourself to begin books and then leave them for some time. when one undertakes to read a book, it should be finished at a single blow. it is the only way of seeing it as a whole and of deriving any profit from it. accustom yourself to following this idea. since you are my pupil, i do not wish you to have that disconnected way of thinking, a mind unable to follow out anything, which is the attribute of persons of your sex." he held to this intellectual discipline, judging it to be very useful. his teaching sought to impress itself upon my mind in the strongest manner possible. so easy in some ways, he was very rigorous on certain points; thus, he wished that the virtue of a woman consisted not alone of purity of morals, but that she might add that to what is exacted in an honest man. my lesson finished, my uncle would seat himself at his table in his high-back, oak armchair and there remain until seven o'clock, allowing himself only a moment from time to time, to go to his window and breathe large whiffs of air. then we dined, and chatted together awhile, as after breakfast. at nine o'clock, or ten at the latest, he would again take up his work with zeal, prolonging it far into the night. he was never more in the spirit of it than in these solitary hours when no sound could come to trouble him. he remained thus many months in succession, seeing no one but louis bouilhet, his intimate friend, who came each sunday, staying until monday morning. a part of the night was passed in reading the work of the week. what delightful hours of expansion! there were loud cries of exclamation without end, some controversy over rejecting or keeping some epithet, or some reciprocal enthusiasm! three or four times a year, my uncle would go to paris to pass some days at the house of the helder's. all his distractions were limited to short absences. however, in , having decided to publish _madame bovary_, he went to live at no. boulevard du temple, in a house belonging to m. mourier, director of the theatre of the _délassements-comiques_. bouilhet was presenting his first piece, _madame de montarcy_, at the odéon that year. he had already preceded his friend, left rouen and his profession as tutor to live entirely by letters. my grandmother was not long in joining them; she spent some of the winter months in a furnished apartment, and two years later installed herself in the same house with her son, on the story above. although living so near, we were very independent. my uncle had taken into his service a valet named narcisse, the queerest individual possible; he had been a domestic in my grandfather's house, and his drollery as well as his zeal prompted my uncle to engage him. narcisse, an established farmer, married, and the father of six children, had left his wife and family with the greatest eagerness to follow the son of his old master for whom he had a respect amounting to fanaticism, but joined to that the greatest forgetfulness of difference in station. one day he returned completely drunk; my uncle perceived this and seated, or rather tumbled him into a chair in the kitchen. he aided him to reach his room, and to stretch himself out on the bed. then narcisse, in a supplicating air, said: "ah! sir! complete your goodness by pulling off my boots." and this was done by the too indulgent master! our friends amused themselves with the reflections of this servant and his repartee; certain of them sent him their books. he was often found sitting in the study, or before a bookcase, with a feather duster under one arm and a book in his hand; he read in a high voice, imitating his master. but these artistic endeavours, joined to the abuse of small glasses, completely disordered the brain of the poor devil; and he was obliged to return to the fields. during these winter months, i regretted the summer days because the great success of _madame bovary_ followed by a famous lawsuit had given to my uncle a celebrity that made him sought after. he went out much and i saw less of him. the apartment of the boulevard du temple blossomed on certain days. it was a pleasure to give little repasts there to our intimate friends; i remember those in which i took part and which had around the table sainte-beuve, monsieur and madame sandeau, monsieur and madame cornu, these last brought by jules duplan, the faithful friend of gustave flaubert; then charles d'osmoy, and théophile gautier came very often, and on sundays the door was open wide and friends were numerous. this epoch was for my uncle the beginning of relations which lasted until his death. he assiduously frequented the _salon_ of the princess mathilde. he found gathered there scholars, artists, and some of his intimate friends; he relished strongly this intellectual and worldly life. he went also to the tuileries and was invited to compiègne; from his sojourn at the castle there came to him the thought of a great romance which should bring out the french and the turkish civilisations. then he also had dinners at magny which, in the beginning, numbered only half a score of people: sainte-beuve, théophile gautier, the two de goncourts, garvarni, renan, taine, the marquis of chennevières, bouilhet and my uncle. their conversations abounded in the highest interest. finally, the month of may arrived and we returned to the tranquil life at croisset. beginning in to write _salammbô_, my uncle soon perceived that a voyage to the site of what was once carthage was necessary to him, and he set out for tunis. on his return he accompanied his mother to vichy. we went there the two years following. my grandmother's health not permitting her to go out with me, my uncle took her place; he accompanied me in my walks and on sunday even took me to church, in spite of the independence of his beliefs, or rather because of that independence. we often went when it was pleasant, and seated ourselves under the little white-leaved poplars along the main walk; he would read while i sketched, and interrupting his reading, he would speak to me of what it suggested to him, or begin to recite verse, or entire pages of prose which he knew by heart. what he most often recited was montesquieu and chateaubriand. his memory disclosed itself equally in dates or in historic facts. but let him recall some literary remembrance and he was truly surprising; in a volume read twenty years before he could name the page and the spot on the page which had pleased him; and, going straight to his library and opening the book, he would say: "here it is," with a certain satisfaction which made the light shine in his eyes. at vichy he returned to old acquaintances: doctor villemain whom he met in egypt, and lambert bey, one of the adepts of the _père enfantin_. my marriage came in , changing all our life. i lived a great part of the year at neuville near dieppe, going no oftener to croisset than twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn. my uncle made only short visits at my house; any change of place troubling him extraordinarily and disturbing his work. it was necessary for him to work at an extreme tension, and it was impossible for him to find himself in this state elsewhere than at his great round table in his study, where he was sure that nothing would distract him. this love of tranquillity, which he carried later to an excess, had begun already to exercise a tyranny upon his least action. at the end of a few days, i could see that he was nervous and i felt that he was desirous of returning to his beloved labour. for ten years our lives were less mingled, save for the month of april in . when i returned from england where i had passed some months, i found him much changed. the war had made a profound impression upon him; his "old latin blood" had revolted at this return to barbarity. obliged to flee from his house,--for he would not for anything in the world be under the necessity of speaking to a prussian,--he took refuge in rouen in a little lodging near the havre quay where he was badly housed. this seemed to be a bereavement; my grandmother, now aged, no longer occupied herself with the management of the household, and instead of transporting their furniture and necessary objects from the country to the town (and that would have been easy to do), they left all at croisset, where a score of men, officers and soldiers, had established themselves. the fatal lack of employment that a disturbed life brings, the thought of his study, his books, his home soiled by the presence of the enemy, brought to my uncle's heart and mind frightful anxiety and grief. the arts appeared to him dead. why? was it possible? could it be that an intelligent country would cause these billows of blood? but there were scholars who were holding paris in siege, and hurling projectiles against the monuments! he thought that he should return to his house to find nothing there. he was deceived; save some trifling objects without value, such as cards, a penknife, or a paper-cutter, they had respected absolutely all that belonged to him. one thing only about the return was suffocating,--the odour of the prussian, as the french call it, an odour of greased boots. the walls were impregnated with it, through their stay there of three long months, and it was necessary to paint and redecorate the rooms in order to get rid of it. six months passed without my uncle being able to write, and finally, he was at my house at neuville when, yielding to my supplications, he began again, this time finishing _the temptation of saint antony_. there was in gustave flaubert's nature a sort of impossibility of being happy, and a tendency continually to turn back in order to compare and analyse. even at the age of the most absolute joys, he dissected them so that he saw nothing in them but the skeleton of pleasure. when, on descending the nile, he wrote the pages entitled: _au bord de la cange_, he regretted his home on the banks of the seine. the landscape under his eye never seemed to captivate him; it was later that he recalled it with pleasure, while man, with his foolishness, and his conversation, was intensely interesting to him. "foolishness," he would say, "enters my pores." and when he was reproached for not going out more, or for remaining so much in the country, he would say indignantly: "but nature devours me! if i remain extended on the grass for a long time, i believe that i can feel the plants growing under my body"; and he would add: "you don't know what trouble confusion and change make me." as to himself, in the most grievous events of his life he wrote down his sensations, seeking, scrutinising the most remote corners of his nature, however veiled or intimate. a fact in a newspaper, a droll story of people he knew, stupidities written by authoritative pens, the manifestation of their self-conceit or their greed, were to him so much subjects of experience that he recorded them and slipped them into his portfolio; he could not comprehend the art that sought only gain; according to him, mere money could not reward the artist; and between the five hundred francs which the editor michael levy sent him for his five years' work on _madame bovary_, and the ten thousand francs which he received some years later for _salammbô_, he saw very little difference. in his note-books of travel in the pyrenees at seventeen years of age, he pointed out the silliness of the reflections of travelers about lake gaube and the inn near gavarnie. even here is the beginning of the _dictionary of accepted ideas by bouvard and pécuchet_. this strong sense of the comic was useful in opposition to his love for the ideal, as his love for farce corrected his inborn melancholy. iii. in , the loss of a considerable sum of money changed our circumstances. my husband saw all that he had disappear in commercial transactions. married under the dowry laws so common in normandy, i could dispose of only a part of my property in his favour. my uncle made up the deficit with an entirely spontaneous generosity, giving all that he possessed to save our position. nothing remained for him to live on except the interest that we had engaged to pay him, and the very mediocre revenue from his books. to sell croisset was the thought which first presented itself to our minds; this property had been given me by my grandmother, with the expressed wish that her son gustave should continue to live there. this consideration, added to my uncle's repugnance to separating himself from it, decided us in the resolution to keep it. loneliness weighed upon his tender nature, and an arrangement of a life in common was agreeable to him. he passed the greater part of the time in the country; and, in paris, having taken his apartment again in the rue murillo, we took one on the same landing, on the fifth floor of a house situated at the angle of the rue du faubourg-saint-honoré and the avenue de la reine-hortense. we were then together as formerly, and our confidential talks were more frequent, deeper and more intimate than those of my childhood's days. in the retired life that we led, my uncle spoke to me as to a friend; we talked on all subjects, but preferably those of literature, religion and philosophy, which we discussed without any anger or disagreeable results, although we were often of a different opinion. it is easy to see that a man who could write _saint antoine_ must be superabundantly occupied with religious thought as found in humanity, and its manifold manifestations. the old theogonies interested him extremely, and the excessive in all people had an infinite attraction for him. the anchorite, the recluse at the thebans, provoked his admiration, and he felt towards them as towards the bouddha on the bank of the ganges. he often re-read his bible. that verse of isaiah: "how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!" he thought sublime. "reflect, sift the thing to the bottom," he would say to me enthusiastically. a pagan on his artistic side, he was, through the needs of his soul, pantheistic. spinoza, whom he much admired, did not fail to leave his imprint upon him. besides, no belief of his mind, save his belief in beauty, was so fixed that it was not capable of listening to the other side, and admitting even, up to a certain point, the obverse. he loved to repeat with montaigne, what was perhaps the last word of his philosophy, that it is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt. but let us return to the work of the day. here he is happy in reading to me the freshly hatched phrase that he has just finished; i assist, as a motionless witness, the slow creation of these pages so labouriously elaborated. in the evening, the same lamp lights us, i, seated beside the large table, where i am employed with my needlework, or in reading; he, struggling with his work. bent forward, he writes feverishly, then turns his back upon his work, strikes his arms upon those of his chair and utters a groan, for a moment almost like a rattle in the throat; but suddenly his voice modulates sweetly, swelling proudly: he has found the desired expression and is repeating the phrase to himself. then he gets up and walks around his study with long steps, scanning the syllables as he goes and is content; it is a moment of triumph after exhausting labour. having arrived at the end of a chapter, he would often give himself a day of rest in order to read over at his ease what he had written, to see the "effect." he read in a unique fashion, chanting and emphasising so much that at first it seemed exaggerated, but ending in a way that was very agreeable. it was not only his own works that he read in this way; from time to time he would give real literary sessions, becoming impassioned with the beauty that he found; and his enthusiasm was communicative, so that it was impossible to remain cold, or keep from vibrating with him. among the ancients, homer and Æschylus were his gods. aristophanes gave him more pleasure than sophocles, plautus than horace, whose merit he thought over-praised. how many times have i heard him say that he would prefer above all things to be a comic poet! shakespeare, byron, and victor hugo he profoundly admired, but he never comprehended milton. he said: "virgil has created the amorous woman, shakespeare the amorous young girl; all others are more or less far-removed copies of dido or juliette." in french prose he read again and again rabelais and montaigne, recommending them to all who wished to meddle with writing. literary enthusiasms had always existed in him; one that he loved to recall was that he experienced on his first reading of _faust_. he read it on the eve of easter as he was leaving college; instead of returning to his father's house, he found himself, not knowing how, in a spot called "queen's walk." it is a beautiful promenade planted with high trees upon the left bank of the seine, a little removed from the town. he was seated upon the steep bank; the clocks in the churches across the river resounded in the air and mingled with the poetry of goethe. "christ had arisen, peace and joy were complete. announce then, deep bells, the beginning of the easter day, celestial sounds, powerful and sweet! why seek you me in the dust?" his head was turned and he came back like one lost in revery, scarcely realising things of earth. how could this man, so great an admirer of the beautiful, find so much happiness in uncovering human turpitude, especially that found outside the realm of virtue? must it not be from his worship of the true? his revelations seemed to be the confirmation of his philosophy and he rejoiced in them through love of that truth which he believed he was penetrating. numerous projects of work occupied his mind. he mentioned especially a story of the people of thermopylæ that he intended to begin. he found that he had lost too much time in the preparatory research for his works and wished to employ the rest of his life in art, pure art. his belief in form would cross his mind; this caused him one day to cry out in his whimsical spontaneity: "i attach myself to the ideal!" then immediately laughing at our applause, he said: "not bad, that! poetry, isn't it? i begin to comprehend art." a true artist, for him, never could be wicked, for an artist is before all an observer; the first quality for an observer is to possess good eyes. if they are blurred with passion, or personal interest, things escape them; a good heart makes a good mind! his worship of the beautiful led him to say: "the moral is not only a part of the æsthetic, but its condition foundationally." two kinds of men were especially displeasing to him and were ever a subject for his disgust: the critic who never produced anything, but judges all things (to whom he preferred a candle merchant), and the educated gentleman who believes himself an artist, who has imagined venice different from what it is, and has had disillusions. when he met a person of this kind, there was an explosion of scorn which showed itself, perhaps through cutting answers (he would pretend that he had no imagination, never fancied anything nor knew anything) or through a silence still more haughty. up to the time of his death, i had the advantage of continuing that serious, calm life from which my feminine mind had so much to gain. many of my uncle's best friends were dead: louis bouilhet, jules duplan, ernest lemarié, théophile gautier, jules de goncourt, ernest feydeau, and sainte-beuve, while others were far away. his meetings with maxime ducamp were only rare; from the two friends no longer followed the same routes, as their correspondence witnesses. in friendship my uncle was perfect; of a devotion absolutely faithful, without envy, happier in the success of a friend than in his own; but he brought into his friendly relations some exactions that those who were the object of them found it difficult to support. the heart that was bound to him by a common love of art (and all his deep attachments were upon this basis) should belong to him without reserve. wherefore, five years before his death, he received this short note in response to a package containing his _three stories_:-- "my dear friend: i thank you for your volume. i have not read any of it, for i am absolutely besotted by the finishing of a work of mine. i should have it done in eight or ten days and i shall then reward myself by reading you. yours, maxime ducamp." his heart suffered and recoiled on itself bitterly. where now was the ardent desire of knowing quickly the thought that springs from the brain of a friend? where were those beautiful years of youth? where was the faith in each other? nevertheless, there were still some natures that he loved much. among the young, in the first rank, was the nephew of alfred le poittevin, guy de maupassant, his "disciple," as he loved to call him. then, his friendship with george sand was for his mind no less than for his heart, a great comfort. but of his own generation, he often said that only edmond de goncourt and ivan tourgenief remained; with them he tasted the full joy of æsthetic conversation. alas! they became more and more rare, these hours of intimate talks, because, for this overflow of soul it was necessary to find minds taken up with the same things, and the sojourns in paris became farther and farther apart. his solitude, always terrible, became unbearable when i was not there, and often, to escape it, he would call on the old nurse of his childhood. at her fireside his heart would become warm again. in a letter to me he said: "to-day i have had an exquisite conversation with 'mademoiselle julie.' in speaking of the old times, she brought before me a crowd of portraits and images which expanded my heart. it was like a whiff of fresh air. she has (in language) an expression of which i shall make use. it was in speaking of a lady, 'she was very fragile,' she said, 'thundering so!' _thundering_ after _fragile_ is full of depth! then we spoke of marmontel and of the _new heloise_, something that could not be done among ladies nor scarcely among gentlemen." when he was much alone, he would sometimes take up his love of nature, which would relieve him from his work for a moment. "yesterday," he wrote, "in order to refresh my poor noddle, i took a walk to canteleu. after travelling for two solid hours, monsieur took a chop at pasquet's, where they were making ready for new year's day. pasquet showed a great joy at seeing me, because i recalled to him 'that poor monsieur bouilhet'; and he sighed many times. the weather was so beautiful, the moon so bright in the evening that i went out to walk again at ten o'clock in the garden, 'under the glimmer of the stars of night.' you cannot imagine what a lover of nature i have become; i look at the sky, the trees and the verdure with a pleasure i never knew before. i could wish to be a cow that i might eat grass." but he would seat himself again at his table and let many months slip by without being seized with the same desire. at the beginning of the year , he began _bouvard and pécuchet_, a subject which had interested him for thirty years. he intended it at first to be very short--a novel of about forty pages. here is how the idea came to him: seated with bouilhet on a bench of the boulevard at rouen, opposite the asylum for the aged, they amused themselves by dreaming of what they should be some day; and, having begun gaily the supposed romance of their existence, suddenly they cried: "and who knows? we may finish, perhaps, like these old decrepits in this asylum." then they began to imagine the friendship of two clerks, their life, their retiring from business, etc., etc., in order finally to finish their days in misery. these two clerks became "bouvard and pécuchet." this romance, so difficult of execution, discouraged my uncle at more than one undertaking. he was even obliged to lay it aside and go to concarneau to join his friend george pouchet, the naturalist. down there, on the brittany strand, he began the legend of _saint julian the hospitaller_, which was immediately followed by _a simple soul_ and _hérodias_. he wrote these three stories rapidly and then took up _bouvard and pécuchet_ again, a heavy care, under which he must die. few existences bear witness to unity so complete as his: his letters show that at nine years of age he was preoccupied with art as if he were fifty. his life, as has been stated by all those who have spoken about him, was, from the awakening of his intelligence to the day of his death, the long development of the same passion--literature. he sacrificed all to that; his love and tenderness were never separated from his art. did he regret in the last years of his life that he had not followed the common route? some words which came from his lips one day when we were walking beside the seine made me think so: we had just visited one of my friends whom we had found among her charming children. "they are in the right," he said to me, alluding to that household of the honest and good family; "yes," he repeated to himself, gravely, "they are in the right." i did not trouble his thoughts, but remained silent by his side. this walk was one of our last. death took him in full health. it was at evening, and his letter was all good cheer, expressing the joy he felt at seeing himself confirmed in a conjecture that he had made regarding a plant. he had written me these interesting lines upon his work, of which only a few pages remained: "i am right! i have the assurance of the professor of botany in the _jardin des plantes_, and i was right; because the æsthetic is true, and to a certain intellectual degree (when one has some method) one is not deceived; the reality does not yield to the ideal, but confirms it. it has been necessary for me to make three journeys into different regions for _bouvard and pécuchet_ before finding their setting, that best fit for action. ah! ha! i have triumphed! i flatter myself it is a success!" he had made arrangements to set out for paris to join me again. it was the day of his departure, he was coming from the bath and mounting to his study; the cook was going up to serve his breakfast, when she heard him call and hastened to him. already his tense fingers could not loosen a bottle of salts which he held in his hand. he tried to utter some words that were unintelligible in which she could distinguish: "eylau--go--bring--avenue--i know him--" a letter received from me that morning had told him that victor hugo was going to live in the avenue d'eylau; it was without doubt a remembrance of this news that he had in mind, as well as an appeal for help. he was cared for by his neighbor and friend, doctor fortin. the last glimmer of his thought evoked the great poet who had caused his whole nature to vibrate. immediately he fell into unconsciousness. some moments later they found that he no longer breathed. apoplexy had been the thunderbolt. caroline commanville. paris, _december, _. correspondence. to madame x. croisset, _monday night, june, _. [illustration: f]feeling myself in a grand humor of style this morning, after giving my niece her lesson in geography, i seized upon my _bovary_, sketching three pages in the afternoon which i have just rewritten this evening. its movement is furious and full, and i shall doubtless discover a thousand repetitions which it will be necessary to strike out as soon as i come to look it over a little. what a miracle it would be for me to write even two pages in a day, when heretofore i have scarcely been able to write three in a week! with the _saint antony_ that was, indeed, the way i worked, but i can no longer content myself with that. i wish _bovary_ to be at the same time heavier and more flowing. i believe that this week will see me well advanced, and that in about a fortnight i shall be able to read bouilhet the whole of the beginning (a hundred and twenty pages), which, if it goes well, would be a great encouragement, and i shall have passed if not the most difficult part at least the most annoying. but there are so many delays! i am not yet at the point where i can credit our last interview at mantes. what foolish and severe vexation you must have passed through that week, my poor friend! about cases like m----, who throw themselves at your feet, the best thing to do is to pass the sponge over them immediately; but if you would care the least bit in the world for the elder lacroix or the great sainte-beuve to receive something on the face or elsewhere, you have only to tell me and it is a commission of which i shall acquit myself with despatch on my next visit to paris, in the old-time manner between two journeys; but could you not show lacroix the door with a single word? what good is there in discussing, replying to, and angering him? this is all very easy to say in cold blood, is it not? it is always this accursed passion element which causes us all our annoyances. how true is larochefoucauld's remark: "the virtuous man is he who allows himself to be concerned with nothing." yes, it is necessary to bridle the heart, to hold it in leash like an enraged bulldog, and then let it loose at a bound at the opportune moment. run, run, my old fellow, bark loudly and go at top speed; what these rogues have that is superior to us is patience. so in this story, lacroix by his cowardly tenacity wearies de lisle, who ends by becoming vexed and leaving the game and _le jeune irrité_ (the whole of sainte-beuve is in these words) will not have had finally either a sword in his paunch or a foot to his coat-tails, and will privately begin his machinations anew, as homais would say. you are astonished to find yourself the butt of so much calumny, opposition, indifference and ill-will. you will be more so and have more of it; it is the reward of the good and the beautiful: one may calculate the value of a man from the number of his enemies and the importance of a work by the evil said of it. critics are like fleas which always jump upon white linen and adore lace. that reproach sent by sainte-beuve to the _paysanne_ establishes my belief in the _paysanne_ more firmly than victor hugo's praise of it; we give our praise to everybody, but our blame, no! who is there that has not made a parody on the mediocre? in regard to hugo, i do not believe that it is time to write to him; you gave him a month for an answer, and it is not more than two weeks since our packet left; so it is necessary to wait at least as long as that, provided it has not been seized. every precaution was taken, my mother addressing the letter herself. what can this phrase in your letter this morning mean in speaking of de lisle? "i believe that i was deceived in my impression of yesterday." the words of the _bourgeois_ at préault are good. have i told you what a curate of trouville said one day after i had dined with him? when i refused champagne (i had already eaten and drunk enough to make me fall under the table), my curate was astonished and turned on me an eye! such an eye! an eye expressing envy, admiration, and disdain together, and said to me, shrugging his shoulders: "come, now! all you young people from paris who _gulp down champagne_ with your fine suppers, make very little mouths when you come to the provinces!" and it was so easy to understand that between the words "fine suppers" and "gulp" he meant to say "with the actresses!" what horizons! and to know that i excited this brave man! in this connection i am going to allow myself a quotation: "come now!" said the chemist, shrugging his shoulders, "do you know about these fine parties at the house of the traitor! the masked balls! the champagne? all this goes on, i assure you." "i do not believe that it injures him," objected bovary. "nor i either," quickly replied m. homais, "and it may be necessary for him to keep them up or be taken for a jesuit. but if you only knew what lives those fellows lead, in the latin quarter with their actresses! generally speaking, students are well looked upon in paris. for the little attractiveness that they have, they are received into the best society, and there are even ladies of the faubourg saint-germain who fall in love with them and, in consequence sometimes give them opportunities of making fine marriages." in two pages i believe i have collected all the stupidity that one hears in the provinces about paris,--student life, actresses, the pickpockets you encounter in the public gardens, and the cooking at the restaurants, "always more unwholesome than provincial cooking." that stiffness of which préault accuses me is astonishing; it appears that when i have on a black coat, i am not the same man. and it is certain that i am then wearing a kind of disguise which my face and manners ought to resent, so much effect has the exterior upon the interior. it is the cap that moulds the head, and all troopers have about them the imbecile stiffness of hard lines. bouilhet pretends that, out in the world, i have the air of a drilled, _bourgeois_ officer. is it on this account that the illustrious turgan calls me "the major?" he also maintains that i have a military air, and one could pay me no compliment that would be less agreeable. if préault knew me, he would, on the contrary, find that i have a too bare-breasted air like the good captain; but how beautiful ferrat must have been with his "good southern fury;" i can see him there now gasconading; it is tremendous. and, speaking of the grotesque, i was overwhelmed at the funeral of madame pouchet; decidedly, the good god is romantic, for he continually mingles the two kinds together. nevertheless, while i was looking at the poor pouchet, who was in torture, shaking like a reed in the wind, do you know what came up before me? a gentleman who asked me, on my voyage: "what kind of museums have they in egypt? _what is the condition of their public libraries?_" and when i demolished his illusions, he was desolate. "is it possible!" said he. "what an unfortunate country! what a civilization!" etc.... the burial was protestant, the priest speaking in french beside the grave; monsieur would prefer it so ... "since catholicism is denuded of the flowers of rhetoric." o humans! o mortals! and to think we are always duped, that we have the vanity to believe ourselves imaginative, when the reality crushes us! i went to that ceremony with the intention of elevating my mind to the point of penetration; to try to discover a few pebbles; and then--these blocks fell upon my head! the grotesque deafened my ears, and the pathetic was in convulsions before my eyes. whence i draw (or rather withdraw) this conclusion: _it is never necessary to fear exaggerating_; all the great ones have done it: michael-angelo, rabelais, shakespeare and molière. it is a question of making a man take an injection when he has no syringe; well, we must fill the theatre with apothecaries' syringes; that is clearly the way to reach genius in its true centre, which is very ridiculous. but to suppress exaggeration, there must be continuity, proportion, and harmony in itself. if your good men have a hundred feet, your mountains should be twenty miles high; and what is the ideal if it is not a magnifying? adieu; work well, see only friends, mount to the ivory tower, and let come what may. to madame x. croisset, _saturday night_. finally i have finished my first part (of the second part); that is, i am at the point where i had intended to be at our last interview at mantes; you see how great a delay this is! i shall pass still another week in re-reading all this and copying it, and a week from to-morrow i shall spout it to my lord bouilhet. if this goes, a great anxiety will be removed, at least, and one good thing i can be sure of, that the foundation is well established; but i think however, that this book will have one great fault: that is, the fault of material proportion. i have already two hundred and sixty pages which contain only the preparation for action, some expositions, more or less disguised, of character (it is true that they are graduated), and of landscapes and places. my conclusion, which will be the recital of the death of my little woman, her funeral, and the sorrow of the husband, will follow with sixty pages at least. there remains, then, for the body of the action one hundred and twenty, or one hundred and sixty pages at the most. is this not a great defect? what reassures me (in a slight degree), however, is that this book is a biography rather than a gradual development. the drama is a small part of it, so the dramatic element is well drowned in the general tone of the book; perhaps it will not be noticed that there is a want of harmony between the different phases so much as in their development; and then, it seems to me that life itself is a little like this. our passions are like volcanoes; they grumble continually, but the eruption is only intermittent. unfortunately, the french mind has such a rage for amusement, it is necessary for it always to be seeing things! it cares so little for that which is poetry for me, or for knowing the _exposition_, that perhaps, as one may strike it picturesquely through tableaux, or morally through psychological analysis, it may serve exceedingly well that i wear a blouse, or have the appearance of doing so. this is not the only day that i have suffered from writing in this language and thinking in it! at bottom i am german! the force of study has rubbed off all my southern mists. i wish to make books where only phrases are written (if one may so put it), as one lives by breathing only air; what vexes me is the trickery of the plan, the combinations for effect, and all the calculations which are the art of it, and upon which the effect of style depends exclusively. and you, good muse, dear colleague in all (colleague comes from _colligere_, to bind together), have you worked well this week? i am curious to see that second recital. i have to recommend only two things: first, follow your metaphors closely; second, no details outside the subject; work in a straight line. _parbleu!_ we shall make some arabesques when we wish to, and better than anybody's. we must show the classicists that we are more classic than they, and make the romanticists turn pale with rage by surpassing their attempts. i believe the thing feasible, although of no importance. when a verse is good, it loses its school. a good verse by boileau resembles a good verse by hugo. perfection has everywhere the same character, which is precision and justness. if the book i am writing with so much trouble comes to any good, i shall have established two truths by its execution alone, which are for me axioms of knowledge: first, that poesy is purely subjective, that there are not in literature beautiful art subjects, and that yvetot is worth as much as constantinople; consequently, one may write one thing as well as another, it matters not what. the artist must raise all; he is like a pump, having in him a great duct which descends to the entrails of things, to the deepest stratum, and makes leap into the light, in giant jets, what was under the earth and seen by no one but himself. shall i have a letter from you on awakening? your letters have not been numerous this week, my friend! but i suppose it is work which has kept you. what an admirable face father babinet, member of the reading committee of the odéon, will have! i can see now his _facies_, as my chemist would say, listening to the pieces as they are read. there is taking place here an interesting case. a judge of the court of assizes, a brave man, is accused of killing his wife and then, having sewed her in a sack, of throwing her into the water. this poor woman had many lovers, and some one discovered at her house (it was a workman of the lowest class) a portrait and a letter from a gentleman, a chevalier of the legion of honor, a rallying legitimist, member of the general council, of the building associations, etc., ... of all the associations, well known among the vestry, member of the society of saint-vincent de paul, of the society of saint-regis, of the children's society, and all the humbugs possible; highly placed in fine society of the right kind, one of those persons who are an honour to a country and of whom it is said: "we are happy to possess such a gentleman"; and here, at a blow, it is discovered that this merry fellow has been carrying on relations (this is the phrase) with this merry lass--relations of the most disgusting kind, yes, madame! ah! great heavens! i jeer like a beggar when i see all those fine people in the hands of the law; the humiliations these good gentlemen receive (they who find honours everywhere) seem to me to be the just punishment of their false pride. it is a disgrace to be always wishing to shine; it is debasing to mount to the heights and then sink into the mire with the mob! one should keep his level. and while there is not in my make-up much liking for democracy, i nevertheless love what is common, even ignoble, when it is sincere. but that which lies, which poses, which affects a condemnation of passion and assumes a grimace of virtue, revolts me beyond all limits. i feel now for my kind a serene hatred, or an inactive pity which is akin to it. i have made great progress in two years, and the political state of things has confirmed my old theories à _priori_, upon the biped without feathers, whom all in all i consider a turkey and a vulture. adieu, dear dove. to madame x. croisset, _tuesday, a.m._ i am overwhelmed; my brain is dancing in my head. i have been since six o'clock this evening until now recopying seventy-seven successive pages, and now they make but fifty-three. it is torture. the ramifications of my vertebræ to the neck, as m. enault remarks, are broken from having bent my head so long. what with the repetition of words, the _alls_, the _buts_, the _fors_ and the _howevers_ i had to strike out, there is never any end to it, which is the way with this diabolical prose. there are, nevertheless, good pages, and i believe that, as a whole, it moves along; but i doubt if i shall be ready to read it all to bouilhet on sunday. just think! since the end of february, i have written fifty-three pages! what a charming profession! it is like whipping cream when one would like to be rolling marbles. i am very tired, but have, however, many things to say. i have just written four lines to ducamp, not for you; that would have been a reason for his showing you more malevolence--i know the man. this is the reason why i wrote him: to-day i received the last package of his photographs, of which i had never spoken to him, and the note was to thank him for it. that was all; i said nothing further. if, in the article on the philosophers, on wednesday, he uses your name accompanied with any harmful allusions, i will do what you wish; but for my part, i should propose to break off squarely in a pretty, well-defined letter. however, do not let us torment ourselves, since the thing will doubtless not take place. it is bouilhet's opinion (my note to-day is from a contrary hypothesis) that it is best to be on good terms when the rupture comes and be able to say to him: here is still another time that you are disobliging to me; good evening and good-bye. do you understand? as for enault's article, it seems to me, good muse, as if you had exaggerated it. it is stupid and foolish and all that, with its _feminosities_, "sensible woman," "younger woman," etc.--which have evidently come from madame ----, who is jealous of you from all reports, and on that i would bet my head. it is our opinion, both bouilhet's and mine, that he labours hard over his little monthly billets without ever saying anything. bouilhet is profoundly indignant and proposes not even going to see him when he next goes to paris; but what difference does it make to us, the opinion of my lord enault, either written or spoken? as ducamp said to ferrat: can you expect, in the midst of the whirlwind in which he lives, with his fascinating personality, his officer's badge, his receptions at the house of m. de persigny, etc., that he could preserve enough perspicacity to feel a new, original, or novel thing? besides, in this arrangement, there may be something agreed upon. we never can turn a negro white and we never can hinder the mediocre from being mediocre. i assure you that if he were to say to me "i have had curvature of the spine or softening of the brain," it would make me laugh. do you know what i found out to-day from his photographs? the only one he did not publish was the one representing our hotel at cairo and the garden before our windows where i stood in nubian costume; it is a bit of malice on his part. he wishes that i did not exist; i have weighed him, as have you and every body else. the work is dedicated to cormenin, with a dedicatory epigraph in latin, and in the text is an epigraph taken from homer, all in greek. the good maxime does not know a declension, but that does not matter. he has had the german work of leipsius translated and has pillaged it impudently (in the text that i looked over) without quoting it once. i heard that from a friend of his that i met on the train; you know i said he must have pillaged it, for there were all sorts of inscriptions that he never would have valued, which are not in the books that we meet in our travels, but which he reports as having been appreciated by him; it is like all the rest of his work. as for the _paysanne_, the eulogy which bouilhet wrote him about it (at the same time he wrote to de lisle, a letter which has met with no response) is the cause, you may be sure, of his remark to ferrat. finally, all that is of very little importance. still, we have been very much vexed all sunday afternoon from it, these stories demoralising lord bouilhet a little, in which respect i find him weak, and me also, for i am caught in it. frankly now, it is stupid to permit these fellows to trouble us so. in fact, i find that in injuries, stupidities, foolishness, etc., it is necessary to be angry only when something is said to one's face. make grimaces at my back as much as you wish, my breeches alone contemplate you. i love you so much when i see you calm and know that you are working well, and still more, perhaps, when i know that you are suffering, for then you write me such superb letters, so full of fire. but, poor dear soul, take care of thyself, and tax only in moderation thy southern fury, as you called it in speaking of ferrat. the advice of de lisle relative to the _acropole_ is good. first, send the manuscript to villemain as you sent it to jersey (i have received no letter about it, which seems strange, and my mother will write some day to madame farmer if i receive nothing); you could even make some corrections if you find it necessary although it seems good to me, except about the barbarians, which i persist in finding much the weakest; second, try to have it appear in the _press_; third, we shall find some plan, you may be sure. bouilhet will be there this winter and he will aid you. his last fossil, the third piece, "springtime," is superb; there is in it a pecking of birds around gigantic nests which is gigantic in itself. but he gets too sad, my poor bouilhet; it is necessary to straighten up and em ... humanity which em ... us! oh! i shall be avenged! in fifteen years from now i shall have undertaken a great modern romance where they shall all pass in review. i think that _gil blas_ has perhaps done this, and balzac remotely, but the fault of his style is that his work is rather more curious than beautiful and stronger than it is brilliant. these are projects of which i should not speak, as all my books are only the preparation for two, which i will finish if god lends me life. i mean this one and the oriental story. you must see the story of the journey that enault has published on his return from italy! he is a wag and a droll fellow, who will make an article in that cavalier fashion upon one with whom he has dined without first asking his permission. as for the article, it is simply stupid, and that one he wrote upon bouilhet was no stronger. he underlines _bosom_ and _rags_, exclaims "eight children! o, poesy!" paints the school where he thinks it probable there are a certain number of children that will be known to literature! no, if one does not keep himself from all this, _i say it in all seriousness_, there is danger of his becoming an idiot. my father said repeatedly that he never would wish to be a doctor in a hospital for the insane, because if one dealt seriously with madness, he ended by becoming mad himself. it is the same in this case; from becoming too much disturbed by these imbeciles, there is danger of becoming such ourselves. heavens! what a headache i have! i must go to bed! my thumb is hollowed by my pen and my neck is twisted. i find musset's observation of hamlet that of a profound _bourgeois_, and this is the reason why: he reproaches the inconsistency of hamlet, a sceptic, seeing with his eyes the soul of his father. but first, it was not the soul that he saw, but a phantom, a shadow, a thing, a materially living shadow, which has no connection either in popular or in poetic ideas with the abstract idea of the soul. it is we, metaphysicians and modern people, who speak this language; and then, hamlet did not _question_ at all the philosophic sense, he was _dreaming_. i believe this observation of musset's is not his own but mallefille's; in the preface of his _don juan_, he is superficial, to my mind. a peasant in our day could see a phantom perfectly and, the next day in broad daylight, reflect in cold blood upon life and death, but not upon flesh and the soul. hamlet was not reflecting upon the subtleties of some school, but upon human thoughts. on the contrary, it is this state of perpetual fluctuation in hamlet, this vagueness in which he holds himself, this want of decision in will and solution in thought, which makes him sublime. but _people of mind_ will have their characters all of a piece and _consistent_ (since they can have them so only in books). there is not an aim of the human soul which is not reflected in this conception. ulysses is perhaps the strongest type in all ancient literature, and hamlet of all modern. if i were not so weary, i should express my thought at greater length; it is so easy to prattle about the beautiful; but to say in proper style "shut the door," or "he has a desire to sleep," requires more genius than to make all the courses of literature in the world. criticism is the lowest round on the ladder of literature, nearly always in form and in moral value; incontestably it comes after the end-rhyme and the acrostic, which demand at least the work of some invention. now, adieu. to louis bouilhet. trouville, _aug. , _. what a confounded rain! how it falls! everything is imbedded in water! from my window i can see bonnets passing shielded by red umbrellas; barques are putting out to sea; i hear the chains of the anchors which they are raising with general imprecations addressed to the bad weather. if it lasts three or four days more, which seems to me probable, we shall pack up and return home. admire here one of the polite ways of providence which would be hard to believe: in whose house have i lodgings? in the house of a chemist! and of whom is he the pupil? of dupré! like him, he deals in seltzer water! "i am the only one in trouville who manufactures seltzer water" he says. in fact, at eight o'clock in the morning i am often awakened by the noise of corks which go off unexpectedly. pif! paf! the kitchen is the laboratory as well as kitchen; a monstrous still stands humbly among the stewpans: the frightful length of its copper smoking, and often they cannot put on the dinner-pot because of pharmaceutical preparations. in order to go into the yard, it is necessary to pass over baskets filled with bottles. there creaks a pump which wets your legs; two boys are rinsing decanters; a parrot repeats from morning till night: "have you breakfasted, jacko?" and finally, a brat about ten years old, the son of the house and the hope of the pharmacy, exercises in all sorts of athletics, such as raising himself from the ground by his teeth. this journey to trouville has brought the whole inner story of my life before me. i have dreamed much in this theatre of my passions. i now take leave of them forever, i hope; in the part of life that remains, there is time to say adieu to youthful sadness. i cannot conceal, however, that it has come back to me in waves, during the last three weeks. i have had two or three good afternoons in full sunlight, all alone upon the sand, where i found again some other sad things beside broken shells! but i have finished with it now, god be thanked! we shall now cultivate our garden and no more raise our head at the cry of the crows. how i long to finish _bovary_, _anubis_, and my three prefaces, in order to enter a new period and give myself up to the "purely beautiful!" the idleness in which i have lived for some time gives me the cutting desire to transform through art all that is "myself," all that i have felt. i feel no need of writing my memoirs; my personality even repels me, and immediate objects seem hideous or stupid. i go back to former ideas. i arrange the barques into old-time ships. i undress the sailors who pass, to make savages of them walking naked upon the silver shores; i think of india, of china, of my oriental story (of which fragments are coming to me), and i feel like undertaking gigantic epics. but life is so short! i never can write as i wish, nor the quarter part of what i dream. all that force that we feel and that stifles us must die with us without being allowed to overflow! i revisited yesterday a village two hours' journey from here, where i went with that good orlowski when i was eleven years old. nothing was changed about the houses, the cliff, or the fishing-boats. the women at the wash-house were sewing in the same position, the same number were beating their soiled linen in the same blue water, and it rained a little as in former times. it seemed, at certain moments that the universe had become immovable, that everything had become a statue, and that we alone were living. and how insolent nature is! what waggishness on her impudent visage! one tortures his mind trying to comprehend the abyss that separates him from her, but something comes up more farcical still, that is, the abyss that separates us from ourselves. when i think that here, in this place, on looking at this white wall off-setting the green, i had some heart throbs, and that i was full of "poesy," i am amazed, lost in a vertigo, as if i had suddenly discovered myself on the peak of a wall two thousand feet high. this little work that i am doing, i shall complete this winter, when you are no longer there, poor old man! to arrange, burn, and, classify all my scribblings. with the _bovary_ finished, the age of reason will begin. and then, why encumber ourselves with so many souvenirs? the past eats up too much and we are never in the present, which alone is important in life. how i philosophise! i have need to, since you are there! it is difficult to write; words are wanting, and i should prefer being extended on my bear-skin, near you, discoursing "melancholically" together. do you know that in the last number of the _review_ our friend leconte was very badly treated? they are definitely low rascals; and "the phalanx" is a dog-kennel. all the animals there are much more stupid than ferocious. you who love the word "paltry," be assured that is what it is. write me an immeasurable letter as soon as you can, and embrace yourself for me; adieu. to madame x. croisset, _wednesday evening, midnight_. i have taken up the _bovary_ again, and since monday have five pages almost done; _almost_ is the word, for it is necessary to take it up again. how difficult it is! i fear that my _comices_ (primary meetings) may be too long; it is a hard place. i have there all the personages of my book in action and in dialogue, mingled with one another, and beyond them all is a great landscape which envelopes them; if i can succeed with it, it will be very symphonic. bouilhet has finished the descriptive part of his _fossils_. his mastodon ruminating in the moonlight on a prairie is enormously full of poesy and will be, perhaps, to the public, the most effective of all his pieces! there only remains the philosophic part, which is the last. about the middle of next month, he will go to paris to select a lodging where he can install himself the first of november. would that i were in his place! decidedly, the article by verdun on leconte (which i have an idea is jourdan's) is more stupid than hostile; i have laughed much at the comparison they make with the _beautiful lines_ of the _fall of an angel_; what bearish politeness! as for the _indian poems_ and the piece about _dies iræ_, not a word. there is a certain ingenuousness about them, but why call the _sperchius_, _sperkhios_? that seems to me a true _janoterie_. what has become of the good leconte,--is he progressing with his celtic poem? i have been re-reading some of boileau, or rather all of boileau, and with my pencil on the margin. this seems to me truly strong; one does not tire of what is well written, for style is life! it is the blood of the thought! boileau has a little river, straight, not deep, but admirably limpid and well within its banks; and that is the reason why the waters have not dried up; nothing is lost of what he wishes to say. but how much art he has used and with so little effort! within the next two or three years, i intend to re-read attentively all the french classics and to annotate them; this is work that will serve me in _my prefaces_ (my work of literary critic, you know); i wish to state there the insufficiency of schools as they are, and to declare plainly that we make no claim to being one of them, we outsiders, nor is it necessary to be one of them. on the contrary, we are in the line of transmission; that seems to me strictly exact; it reassures and encourages me. what i admire in boileau is what i admire in hugo; and where one has been good, the other is excellent. there is only one standard of beauty; it is the same everywhere, although under different aspects, and more or less coloured by the reflections that dominate it. voltaire and chateaubriand, for example, were mediocre for the same reasons, etc. i shall try to make it seen why the æsthetic critic is so much behind the historic and scientific critic; he has never had any base. the knowledge that is wanting is that of the anatomy of style; to know how a phrase is constructed, and where it should be attached. they study manikins and translations with professors,--imbeciles incapable of holding the instrument of the science they teach (i mean the pen), and the result is, they lack life! love! love! the secret of the good god which does not easily give itself up,--the soul, without which nothing is understood. when i have finished that (and the _bovary_ and _anubis_ first of all), i shall without doubt, enter into a new phase, and it seems slow getting there; i, who write so slowly, am gnawed by my plans. i wish to produce two or three long, epic antiques--romances in a grandiose setting, where the action may be forcefully fertile and the details rich in themselves, and luxurious and tragic as a whole; books of grand mural painting, of heroic size. there was in the _revue de france_ (a fragment by michelet upon danton) a judgment of robespierre that pleased me much; it stamped him as being in himself a government; and it was for that reason that all republican governmental maniacs loved him. mediocrity cherishes rules, but i hate them. i feel myself against them and against all restrictions, corporations, caste, hierarchy, levels, and droves, with an execration that fills my soul; it is on this side, perhaps, that i comprehend the martyr. adieu, beautiful ex-democrat. to madame x. croisset, _wednesday, midnight_. have you still your tooth? take steps, then, immediately to have it removed. there is nothing in the world worse than physical pain; and it is worse than death for a man, as montaigne says, "to put himself under the skin of a calf to escape it." pain has this evil: it makes us feel life too much; it gives us, as it were, a proof of malediction to ourselves which weighs upon us; it humiliates us, and that is sad for beings that are sustained solely by their pride. certain natures suffer not so much, and people without nerves are happy; but of how many things are they not deprived? according as one rises in the scale of being, the nervous faculty increases, that is, the faculty for suffering. are to suffer and to think the same thing, then? is genius, after all, only a refinement of pain, that is to say, a meditation of the objective through the soul? the sadness of molière came wholly from the human stupidity which he felt contained in himself; he suffered from the diaforus and tartuffes which passed before the eyes of his brain. do you not suppose that the soul of a veronese imbibes colour like a piece of stuff plunged into the boiling vat of a dyer? all things appear to him as if magnifying glasses were before his eyes. michael-angelo said that marble trembled at his approach; what is sure is, that he himself trembled when he approached marble. mountains, for this man, had souls; they were of a corresponding nature and there was a sympathy between them like that between analogous elements. and this should establish, i know not where or how, some kind of volcanic train that would make poor human implements explode. i find myself nearly half through my _comices_. i have made fifteen pages this month, not finished them,--but whether they are good or bad, i know not. how difficult dialogue is when one especially wishes it to have character; to paint by dialogue, and keep it lively, precise, and distinguished while it remains commonplace is monstrous, and i know of no one who has done this in a book. it is necessary to write the dialogue in comedy, while the narrative takes the epic style. this evening i began again that accursed page about the lamps which i have already written four times; it is enough to make one beat his head against a wall! i am trying to paint (in one page) the gradations of the enthusiasm of a multitude watching a good man as he places many lamps in succession upon the outside of the mayor's residence; it is necessary to make seen the crowd howling with astonishment and joy, and that without any apparent motive or reflection on the part of the author. you are astonished at some of my letters, you say; you find in them well-written, pretty malice; well, i write what i think; but when it comes to writing for others, and making them speak as they would have spoken, what a difference! a moment ago, for example, i was trying to show in a dialogue a particular man who must be at the same time good-natured, commonplace, a little vulgar and pretentious! and beyond all this one must make sure that the point is clear. in a word, all the difficulties that we have in writing come from a lack of order. it is a conviction that i now have, that if you are troubled to give the right turn to an expression, it is sure that _you have not the idea_. a very clear image or sentiment in the head leads to the word on paper. the one flows from the other. "whatever is well conceived," etc.... i have been re-reading this in old father boileau; or rather i have read him entirely again (i am now on his prose works), and find him a master man and a great writer rather than a poet. but how stupid they have made him out! what paltry interpreters he has had! the race of college professors, pedants of pale ink, have lived upon him and stretched him thin, chattering over him like a cloud of locusts in a tree. he was not dense! no matter, he was solid of root and well planted, straight and well-poised. the literary critic seems to me a thing to be made anew; those who have meddled with it are not of the trade, and while perhaps they know the anatomy of a phrase, they have not a drop of the physiology of style. and about _la servante_? why was i afraid that it would not be long? because it is better to be too long than too short, although the general defect of poets is the length, as it is of prose writers, which makes the first wearisome and the second disgusting. lamartine, eugène suë.... verse in itself is so convenient for disguising the absence of ideas! analyse a beautiful passage of verse and another of prose, and you will see which is the fuller. prose, art aside, must needs bristle with things to be discovered; but in verse the most trifling things appear. thus we may say in comparison that the most unnoticed idea in a phrase of prose may suffice to make a whole sonnet; often, three or four plans are necessary in a prose work; do we expect to find this in poetry? i have at this moment a great rage for juvenal. what style! what style! and what a language latin is! i also flatter myself that i begin to understand sophocles a little. as for juvenal, it goes along smoothly enough, save here and there for some hidden meaning, which i quickly perceive. i should much like to know, and with many details, why saulcy refused leconte's article; what are the motives alleged? this must be interesting for us to know; try to get at the last word of the story. try to be better and to work better in paris than in the country, for you have all your time to yourself. i grudge this poor leconte his experience. in order to follow this trade as bouilhet has for four years, eight and ten hours a day (and he had the boarding-house keepers at his back more than leconte), i believe it is necessary to have the strongest constitution and a cerebral temperament of titanic endurance. he will have merited glory as much as the other, but one can go to heaven only as a martyr, mounting on high with a crown of thorns, a pierced heart, bleeding hands and radiant face. adieu; a thousand kisses for thee! to madame x. croisset, _wednesday, midnight_. my head is on fire, as i remember to have had it after passing long days on horseback, because to-day i have rudely ridden my pen. i have written since half-past twelve without stopping (save for five minutes at one time and another to smoke a pipe, and about an hour for dinner). my _comices_ were such a trial to me that i have broken loose from them, even to the extent of calling them finished, both greek and latin; from to-day, i do no more of them; it is too hard! it would be the death of me, and i wish to go to see you. bouilhet pretends that it will be the most beautiful scene in the book. what i am sure of is that it will be new and that the intention is good. if ever the effects of a symphony were reported in a book, it will be here. it is necessary for the roar to be heard through it all: the bellowing of the bulls, the sighs of love, and the phrases of the administrators at once distinguishable; and over all the sunlight and the gusts of wind that fan the large bonnets into motion. the most difficult passages of _saint antony_ were child's play in comparison. i have come to nothing dramatic except the interlacing of the dialogue and opposition in characters. i am now in the open; before another week, i shall have passed the knot upon which all depends. my brain seems too small to take in at a single glance this complex situation. i have written ten pages at a time, skipping from one phrase to another. i am almost sure that gautier did not see you in the street when he did not salute you; he is like myself, very near-sighted, and with me such things are customary. it would have been a gratuitous insolence, which is not his manner of behaviour; he is a great, good-natured man, very peaceful and very p----. as for espousing the animosities of a friend, i strongly doubt it, from the way in which he spoke to me in the first place. the dedication, in spite of your opinion, proves nothing at all _pro_ or _con_. the poor boy hangs to everything, tacks his name to everything that is descending this nile! if anyone could strengthen me in my literary theories, it would be he. the farther off the time when ducamp followed my advice, the more he goes down; for, between _galaor_ and the _nil_ there is a frightful decadence, and in the _livre posthume_, which is between them, he is at his lowest, and the force of the young delessert is no better. jacotot's proposition was strangely revolting to me, and you were in the right. you try to be polite to a scamp like that? oh! no, no, no! what a strange creature you are, dear friend, to send me diatribes still, as my chemist would call them. you ask me for a thing, i say "yes," and you still continue to mutter! oh, well! since you conceal nothing from me (which i approve), i will not conceal from you that this appears to me to be a bad habit with you. you wish to establish between relations of a different nature a bond of which i cannot see the sense or the utility. i do not at all comprehend how the kindnesses you show me when i am in paris, affect my mother in any way. for three years i have been at the schlesingers', where she has never set foot. in the same way, bouilhet has been coming here every sunday for eight years to sleep, dine and lunch, but we have not once seen his mother, who comes to rouen nearly every month; and i assure you that my mother is not at all shocked. nevertheless, it shall be according to your wish. i promise you, i swear it, that i will explain to her your reasons and that i will pray her to bring it about that you may see each other. as for the outcome, with the best will in the world, i can do nothing; perhaps you will please each other much, perhaps you will displease each other enormously. the good woman is not very approachable, and she has ceased to see not only all her old acquaintances but even her friends; i know only one of them and she does not live in the country. i have just finished boileau's correspondence; he was less narrow among his intimates than in _apollon_. i found there many confidences that corrected his judgments. _télémaque_ was harshly enough judged, etc., and he avows that malherbe was not a poet. but have you not noticed of how little value is the correspondence of the great men of that time? it is, in fact, all commonplace. lyricism in france is a new faculty; i believe that the education of the jesuits has been a considerable misfortune to letters. they have taken nature away from art. since the end of the sixteenth century, even to the time of hugo, all books, however beautiful they may be, smell of the dust of the college. i am now going to re-read all my french and to take a long time to prepare my history of the poetical sentiment of france. it is necessary to write criticism as one would write a natural history, _with the absence of moral idea_; it is not for us to declaim upon such and such a form, but to show in what it consists, how it is attached to another and by what it lives (æstheticism awaits its saint-hilaire, that great man who has shown the legitimacy of monsters). when the human soul is treated with the impartiality with which physical science is treated in the study of material things, an immense step will have been taken; it is the only means by which humanity can put itself above itself. it will then consider itself frankly through the mirror of its works; it will be like god and judge from on high. well, i believe that feasible; perhaps, as in mathematics, we have only to find the method. before all, it will be applicable to art and to religion, which are the two great manifestations of the idea. suppose one begins thus: the first idea of god being given (the most simple possible), the first poetic sentiment being born (the most slender that could be), each finds at first its manifestation, and easily finds it in the savage infant, etc.; here is, then, the first point: you have already established relations. now, if one were to continue, making count of all relative contingents, climate, language, etc.; then, from degree to degree one could come up to the art of the future, and the hypothesis of the beautiful, to a clear conception of its reality, to that ideal type where all our effort should tend; but it is not for me to charge myself with this task, for i have other pens to cut. adieu. to madame x. croisset, _friday, midnight, _. i have passed a sad week, not because of my work, but on your account, and because of my thoughts concerning you. i will tell you more privately the personal reflections that were the result of this state of mind. you believe that i do not love you, my poor dear friend, and say that you are only a secondary consideration in my life. i have hardly any human affection for anyone greater than i feel for you, and as for affection towards woman, i swear to you that you stand first in my heart,--the only one; and i will affirm further: i never have felt a similar love--so prolonged, so sweet, above all, so profound. as to the question of my immediate installation in paris, i must give up the plan at once; it is _impossible_ to carry it out now, to say nothing of the money i should have but have not. i know myself well: it would mean the loss of the winter; and perhaps of my book. bouilhet spoke very easily about it, he, who is fortunate enough to be able to write anywhere, who for twelve years worked in continual confusion. but for me it is like beginning a new life. i am like a pan of milk--in order that cream shall rise, i must not be disturbed! but i say to you again: if you _wish_ that i should come, now, instantly, for a month, two months, four months, cost what it may, i will go. if not, this is my plan: from the present time until i finish _bovary_, i will visit you oftener,--eight times in two months, without missing a week, except for that time when you will not be able to see me until the end of january. then we shall meet regularly through april, june, and september, and in a year i shall be very near the end of my book. i have talked over all this with my mother. do not accuse her, even in your heart, because she is on your side. i have concluded pecuniary settlements with her, and she is about to make arrangements for the care of my rooms, my linen, etc., for a year. i have engaged a servant whom i shall take to paris, so you see that my resolution is not wholly unshakeable, and if i am not buried here under about three hundred pages, you may see me before long installed in the capital. i shall disturb nothing at my rooms, because i always work best there, and i shall probably pass most of my time there, on account of my mother, who is growing old; so reassure yourself, i shall show enough filial affection, and be very good! do you know whither the sadness of all this has led me, and what i should like to do? i should like to throw literature to the winds forever, to do nothing more, but go and live with you! i say to myself; is art worth so much trouble, so much weariness for me, so many tears for her? of what use is all this effort, perhaps to arrive only at mediocrity in the end? for i own to you that i am not cheerful; i have sad doubts at times regarding myself and my work. i have just re-read _novembre_, from curiosity. i did the same thing eleven years ago to-day. i had so far forgotten it that it seemed quite new to me, but it is not good, and the effect is not satisfactory. i see no way of re-writing it; i should be compelled to recast it entirely, because although here and there i find a good phrase, a good comparison, there is no homogeneity of style. conclusion: _novembre_ will go the same way with _sentimental education_, and will remain with it indefinitely in my portfolio. ah, what good sense i showed in my youth not to publish! how i should have blushed for it now! i am about to write a monumental letter to the "crocodile." hasten to send me yours, because it is several days since my mother wrote to madame farmer, and she persecutes me to let her read my letter before i send it away. i am re-reading montaigne. it is singular how i am filled with the spirit of this good fellow! is this a coincidence, or is it because when i was eighteen years old i read only montaigne during a whole twelvemonth? i am really astonished, however, to find very often in his writings the most delicate analysis of my own sentiments. he has the same tastes, the same opinions, the same manner of living, the same manias. there are persons i admire more than montaigne, but there is no one i would evoke more gladly, or with whom i could talk better. thine ever. to laurent pichat (director of the _revue de paris_.) croisset, _thursday evening, _. my dear friend: i have just received the _bovary_, and i feel that i must thank you immediately (for if i am somewhat churlish, i am not an ingrate). you have rendered me a great service in accepting this work, such as it is, and i shall not forget it. confess that you have found me, and that you still find me (more than ever, perhaps) possessed of a ridiculous amount of vehemence. i should like to own some day that you are right; i promise that when that time comes i will make you the most abject excuses! but understand, dear friend, that it was only an experiment i attempted, and i hope the workmanship is not too crude. will you believe me when i tell you that the ignoble realism you find in my story, the reproduction of which disgusts you, revolts me quite as much? if you knew me better, you would know that i hold commonplace existence in execration. i always seclude myself from it as much as possible. but, for æsthetic purposes, i wished this time--and only this time--to exploit it from its very foundation. so i have undertaken the matter in a heroic way; i listened to the minutest details; i accepted all, said all, painted all,--an ambitious attempt. i explain myself badly, but it is enough that you comprehend the reason for my resistance of your criticisms, judicious as they were. you will make another book for me! you struck at the poetic foundation whence springs the type (as a philosopher would say) from which the work was conceived. in short, i should have failed in what i owe to myself, and also in what i owe to you, if i had yielded as an act of deference and not of conviction. art demands neither complaisance nor politeness,--nothing but faith--faith and liberty! and on that point we may join hands! under an unfruitful tree, whose branches are always green, i am faithfully yours. to ernest feydeau. . my good friend: i believe it is always considered proper to wash one's soiled linen. now i will wash mine immediately. you say you have been "very much vexed" at me, and you must feel so still, if you really suppose that i had, in company with aubeyet, said anything against either yourself or your works. i am writing this in all seriousness. such an accusation chokes me, wounds me. i am made so--i cannot help it. know, then, that such cowardly conduct is completely antipathetic to me. i do not allow anyone to say, in my presence, anything about my friends that i would not say myself to their faces. and if a stranger opens his mouth to lie about them, i close it for him immediately. the contrary custom is the usual thing, i know, but it is not my way. let us have no more discussion of this! if you do not know me better than that by this time, all the worse for you! let us consider less serious matters, and give me your word of honour, for the future, never again to judge me as if i were a stranger. know also, o feydeau! that i am not a bit of a _farceur_. there is no animal in the world more serious than i! sometimes i laugh, but i joke very little, and less now than ever before. i am sick, as a result of fear; all sorts of anguish fill my being. i am about to write once more! no, my good fellow, i'm not so stupid! i shall not show you anything of my story of carthage until the last line is written, because i am already assailed with doubts enough about it without adding to them those you would express. your observations would make me "lose the ball." as to the archæology, that will be "probable." and that's all! provided no one can prove that i have written absurdities, that is all i ask. as to the botanical queries that may arise, i can laugh at them. i have seen with my own eyes all the plants and all the trees that i need for my purpose. besides, all this matters very little; it is quite a secondary consideration. a book may be full of enormities and blunders, and yet be none the less beautiful. if this doctrine were admitted, it would be considered deplorable, of course; especially in france, where reigns the pedantry of ignorance! but i see in the contrary tendency (which is mine, alas!) a great danger. the study of the external makes us forget the soul. i would give the half-ream of notes that i have written during the past five months, and the ninety-eight books that i have read, to be, for three seconds only, really stirred by the passion and emotion experienced by my heroes! let us guard against the temptation to deal with trifles, or we shall find ourselves belonging to the coffee-cup school of the abbé delille. there is at present a school of painting which, in order to make us admire pompeii, adopts a style more _rococo_ than that of girodet. i believe, then, that one must love nothing, that is, we should preserve the strictest impartiality towards all objectives. why do you persist in irritating my nerves by saying that a field of cabbages is more beautiful than a desert? permit me first to beg that you will go and look at the desert before talking about it! and even if there is anything as beautiful, go there just the same. but in your expression of a preference for the _bourgeois_ vegetable, i see only an attempt to enrage me, which has been quite successful. you will not have from me any criticism written on _l'Été_ because, first, it would take too much of my time; and second, i might say things that would vex you. yes, i am afraid of compromising myself, for i am not sure of anything, and that which displeased me might, after all, be the best thing i could have said. i shall wait for your brutal and unwavering opinion regarding _l'automne_. _le printemps_ pleased and entranced me, without any restrictions. as to _l'Été_, i have made a few. now,--but i must stop, because my observations may be directed against an affair that is already settled, which perhaps is a good thing--i do not know. and as there is nothing in the world more tiresome or stupid than an unjust criticism, i will withhold mine, although it might have been good. so that is all, my dear old boy! you accused me in your mind of a cowardly action. this time you have reason to call me cowardly, but the cowardice is only that of prudence. are you amusing yourself? do you employ your preservatives, impure man? what a wicked fellow is my friend feydeau, and how i envy him! as for me, i worry myself immeasurably. i feel old, tired, withered. i am as sombre as a tomb and as crabbed as a hedgehog. i have just read cohan's book from one end to the other. i know that it is very faithful, very good, very wise, but i prefer the old _vulgate_, because of the latin. how swelling it is, compared with this poor, puny, pulmonic little frenchman! i will show you two or three mistranslations (or rather, embellishments) in the said _vulgate_, which have more beauty than the real meaning. go on and amuse yourself, and pray to apollo to inspire me, for i am sadly flattened out. thine ever. to ernest feydeau. croisset, _sunday evening, _. what has become of you? as for myself, i have passed nearly four days in sleeping, because of extreme fatigue; then i wrote my notes of travel, and my lord bouilhet has come to visit me. during the week that he has been here we have been digging ferociously. i must tell you that the story of carthage is to be completely changed, or rather, to be written over again, as i have destroyed the whole of the original! it was absurd, impossible, false! i believe now that i have struck the right note at last. i begin to comprehend my personages, and already feel a great interest in them. i do not know when i shall finish this colossal work. perhaps not before two or three years. from now on, i shall beg everyone that meets me not to talk to me. i should like to send out notes announcing my death! my course of action is planned. for me, the public, outside impressions, and time, exist no more. to work! i have re-read _fanny_, at a single sitting, although i already knew it by heart. my impression has not changed, but the whole effect seems to be more rapid in movement, which is good. do not disturb yourself about anything, nor think any more about this. when you come here next, i shall allow myself to point out to you two or three insignificant details. about the middle of next week, _montarcy_ is to be played. then, at the beginning of next month, bouilhet will return to mantes, and my mother will go to trouville for a little visit of about a week. after that, my dear sir, we shall expect you. will that be convenient and agreeable? why have you not sent me any news of yourself, you rascal? what are you writing? what are you doing? how about houssaye? etc. as for myself, i take a river bath every day. i swim like a triton. my health never has been better. my spirits are good, and i am full of hope. when one is in good health he should store up a reserve of courage, in order to meet disappointments in the future. they will come, alas! i believe that in the rue richer there is a photographer who sells views of algiers. if you could find me a view of medragen (the tomb of the numidian kings), near algiers, and send it to me, i should be very grateful. to jules duplan. . i have arrived, in my first chapter, at the description of my little woman. i am polishing up her costume--a task that pleases me. it has set me up not a little. i spread myself out, like a pig, on the stones by which i am surrounded; i think that the words "purple" or "diamond" are in every phrase in the chapter. and gold lace!--but i must not say any more about it. i shall certainly have finished my first chapter by the time you see me again (that will not be before december), and perhaps i shall have advanced considerably with the second, although it will be impossible to write it in haste. this book [_salammbô_] is above all things a grouping of effects. my processes in beginning this romance are not good, but it is necessary to make the surroundings _seem real_ at the very outset. after that there will be enough of details and ornament to give the thing a natural and simple effect. young bouilhet has begun his fourth act. have you had a good laugh at the fast ordered by her majesty queen victoria? i think it is one of the most magisterial pieces of absurdity that i ever have known; it is amazing! o rabelais, where is thy vast mouth? to mademoiselle leroyer de chantepie. _december , ._ you may think that i have forgotten you, but i have done nothing of the kind! my thoughts are often turned towards you, and i address myself to the "unknown god," of whom st. paul speaks, in prayers for the comfort and satisfaction of your spirit. you hold in my heart a very high and pure place; you would hardly believe me if i should tell you what a marvellous depth of sentiment your first letters touched in me. i must tell you of all that i feel, at some better time than this. we must meet soon, to clasp each other's hands, that i may press a kiss upon your brow! this is what has happened since i wrote my last letter: i was in paris for ten days, where i assisted and co-operated in the last performances of _hélène peyron_. this is a very beautiful play, and it is also a great success. making calls, reading the journals, etc., kept me very busy, and i returned here worn out, as usual, and as to the moral effect, i was disgusted with all that uproar. i fell upon my _salammbô_ again with fury. my mother has gone to paris, and for a month i have been entirely alone. i have begun my third chapter, and the story is to have twelve. you can judge how much remains for me to do. i have thrown the preface into the fire, although i worked two months on it this summer. but i am just beginning, _at last_, to feel entertained by my own work. every day i rise at noon, and i retire at four o'clock in the morning. a white bear is not more solitary and a god is not more calm. it was time! i think of nothing but carthage, and it is necessary that i should. to write a book has always meant to me the necessity of imagining myself to be actually living in the place described. this will explain my hesitations, my distress of mind, and my slowness. i shall not return to paris until the last of february. between now and that time you will see in the _revue contemporaine_ a romance by my friend feydeau, which is dedicated to me, and which i hope you will read. do you keep yourself informed as to the works of renan? they would interest you, and so would the new book by flourens, on the _siège de l'âme_. can you guess what occupies me at present? the maladies of serpents (always for my carthage book)! i am about to write to tunis to-day on this subject. when one wishes to be absolutely accurate in such writing, it costs something! all this may seem rather puerile, or even foolish. but what is the use of living if one may not indulge in dreams? adieu! a thousand embraces. write to me as often as you wish, and as freely as you can. to ernest feydeau. croisset, _thursday_. i have not forgotten you at all, my dear old boy, but i am working like thirty niggers! i have finally finished my interminable fourth chapter from which i have stricken out that which i liked best. then, i have made the plan of the fifth, written a quantity of notes, etc. the summer has not begun badly. i believe that the work will go smoothly now, but perhaps i delude myself. what a book! heavens! it is difficult! yes, i find, contrary to d'aurevilly, that there is now a question of hypocrisy and nothing else. i am alarmed, amazed, scandalised at the transcendent poltroonery that possesses the human race. everyone fears "being compromised." this is something new,--at least, to such a degree as appears. the desire for success, the necessity, even, of succeeding, _because of the profit to be made_, has so greatly demoralised literature that one becomes stupid through timidity. the idea of failure or of incurring censure makes the timid writer shake in his shoes. "that's all very well for you to say, you, who collect your rents," i think i hear you remark. a very clever response, the inference of which is that morality is to be relegated to a place among objects of luxury! the time is no more when writers were dragged to the bastille. it might be rebuilt, but no one could be found to put in it. all this will not be lost. the deeper i plunge into antiquity, the more i feel the necessity of reforming modern times, and i am ready to roast a number of worthy citizens! do not think any more about _daniel_. it is finished. it will be read, be sure of that. when you come to croisset, before setting out for luchon (about the beginning of july, i suppose), bring me the detailed plan of _catherine_. i have several ideas on your style in general and on your future book in particular. you are a rascal! you compromise my name in public places! i shall attack you in a court of justice for a theft of titles. i have two pretty neighbours who have read _daniel_, twice running. and the coachmen of rouen fall off their seats while reading _fanny_ (historic)! _À propos_ of morality, have you read that the inhabitants of glasgow have petitioned parliament to suppress the models of nude women in the schools of drawing? adieu, old boy; dig hard! what news of your wife? why is she at versailles? it is an atrocious place, colder than siberia. to edmond and jules de goncourt. croisset, _may, _. i must tell you of the pleasure i had in reading your two books. i found them charming, full of new details and having an excellent style, showing at the same time nervous power and lofty imagination. that is history, it seems to me, and original history. one sees in them always the soul within the body; the abundance of details does not stifle the psychological side. the moral is revealed beneath the facts, without declamation or digression. it _lives_,--a rare merit. the portrait of louis xv., that of bachelier, and above all, that of richelieu, seem to me to be products of the most finished art. how much you make me love madame de mailly! she actually excites me! "she was one of those beauties ... like the divinities of a bacchante!" heavens! you certainly write like angels! i know of nothing in the world that has interested me more than the finale of _madame de châteauroux_. your judgment of the pompadour will rest without appeal, i fancy. what could anyone say after you? that poor du barry! how you love her, do you not? i love her, too, i must confess. how fortunate you are, to be able to occupy yourselves with all that sort of thing, instead of diving into nothingness, or working upon nothingness, as i must work. it is altogether charming of you to send me the book, to have so much talent, and to love me a little! i clasp your four hands as warmly as possible, and am ever your g. flaubert, friend of franklin and of marat; factionist, and anarchist _of the first order_, and for twenty years a disorganiser of despotism on two hemispheres!!! to edmond and jules de goncourt. croisset, _july , _. since you appear to be interested in my _carthage_, this is what i have to tell you about it: i believe that my eyes have been larger than my belly! to present the _reality_ is almost impossible with such a subject. one's only resource is to make the thing poetic, but there is danger of falling into the way of employing the old, well-known tricks of speech that have been used from _télémaque_ to the _martyrs_. i say nothing of the archæological researches, the labour of gathering which must not be evident, nor of the language and the form, which are almost impossible to handle. if i tried to write with absolute accuracy of detail, the work would be obscure; i should be compelled to use abstruse terms, and to stuff the volumes with notes. and if i should preserve the usual french literary tone, the work would become simply banal. problem! as father hugo would say. in spite of all that, i continue, but i am devoured by anxiety and doubts. i console myself with the thought that at least i have attempted to do something worth while. that is all. the standard of the doctrine will be boldly carried this time, i assure you! but it proves nothing, it says nothing, it is neither historic, nor satirical, nor humorous. on the other hand, is it not stupid? i have just begun chapter viii., after which seven still remain to be written. i shall not finish the work before eighteen months have passed. it was not a mere bit of politeness on my part when i congratulated you on your work. i love history madly! the dead are far more agreeable to me than the living. whence comes this seduction of the past? why have you made me fall in love with the mistresses of louis xv.? a love like this is, now i think of it, a decided novelty in human emotion. the historic sense dates from yesterday, and it is perhaps the best characteristic of the nineteenth century. what are you doing now? as for myself, i am deep in kabbala, in mischna, in the military tactics of the ancients, etc. (a mass of reading that is of no particular use to me, but which i undertook through the urgency of my conscience, and also a little to amuse myself). i worry myself over the assonances that i find in my prose; my life is as flat as the table upon which i write. the days follow one another, each one appearing to be exactly like the preceding, externally, at least. in my despair, i sometimes dream of travel. sad remedy! both of you seem to me to have the air of stultifying yourselves virtuously in the bosom of your family, among the delights of the country! i comprehend that sort of thing, having undergone it several times. shall you be in paris from the first of august to the th? while waiting for the joy of seeing you, i clasp your hands with true affection. to ernest feydeau. croisset, _sunday, july , _. i reply immediately to your pretty letter, received this morning, to congratulate you, my dear sir, on the life you lead! accept the homage of my envy. since you ask me about _salammbô_, this is how it stands. i have just finished the ninth chapter, and am preparing the material for the tenth and eleventh, which i intend to write this winter, living here all alone, like a bear. i am occupied now with a quantity of reading, which i get through with great rapidity. for the last three days i have done nothing but swallow latin, following, at the same time, my studies of the early christians. as to the carthaginians, i really believe i have exhausted all texts on the subject. after my romance is finished, it would be easy for me to write a large volume of criticisms of these books, with strong citations. for instance, no longer ago than to-day, a passage in cicero led me to discover a form of tanith of which i had had no previous knowledge. i become wise--and sad! yes, i now lead a holy existence--i, who was born with so many appetites! but sacred literature has become a part of my very being. i pass my time in putting stones on the pit of my stomach, to prevent the feeling of hunger! this makes me fairly stupid at times. as to my "copy" (since that is the term), frankly, i do not know what to think. i fear i may fall into the way of making continual repetitions, of eternally rehashing the same things. sometimes my phrases seem to be all cut after the same fashion, and likely to bore anyone to death. my will does not weaken, but i find it very difficult to please myself. i feel like _eating_ my own words. you may judge of my agitation just now, when i tell you that i am actually preparing a grand _coup_, the finest effect in the book. it must be at once brutal and chaste, mystical yet realistic,--a kind of effect that never has been produced before, yet absolutely real and convincing. that which i predicted has come true; you are enamoured of arabian manners and morals! how much time you will lose, after you return, dreaming, beside the fire, of dark eyes beneath a cloudless sky! send me a line as soon as you return to paris. you said you expected to arrive by the end of the month. that time is now here. we must not let any longer time elapse without seeing each other. bouilhet's play will have its first performance about the th or the th of november. my mother and my niece are well, and thank you for your kind remembrance. as to my niece, i believe i shall be made a great-uncle next april. i am becoming a veteran, a sheikh, an old man, an idiot! may you enjoy the last days of your journey and have a good voyage home. i embrace thee! to mademoiselle leroyer de chantepie. croisset, _september , _. i received on tuesday morning your letter of the first of september. it saddened me to read the expression of your grief. besides your private sorrow, you are surrounded by exterior annoyances, as i understand, since you are forced to perceive the ingratitude and selfishness of those who are under obligations to you. i must tell you that such is _always_ the case,--a very poor consolation, it is true! but the conviction that rain is wet and that a rattlesnake is dangerous has its share in helping us to support our miseries. why is this so? but here we attempt to encroach upon the omniscience of god! let us try to forget evil, and turn to the sunshine and the good we may find in life. if a malicious person wounds you, try to remember the kindness of some noble heart, and fill your mind with that recollection. you tell me that you find absolutely no sympathy of ideas. that is one reason why you should live in paris. one always finds there some person to whom one can talk. you were not made for provincial life. i am convinced that among other surroundings you would have suffered less. each soul has its own atmosphere. you must suffer keenly, in the midst of the folly, lies, calumnies, jealousies, and indescribable pettiness which are almost the inevitable accompaniment of _bourgeois_ life in small towns. of course, that sort of thing exists in paris also, but in another form--less direct and less irritating. there is still time to form a good resolution. do not continue to live "on foot" as you have lived heretofore. tear yourself away! travel! do you think you may die on the way? ah, well, never mind! no, no, believe me when i tell you that you would be better for it, physically and morally. but you need a master, who would order you to go, and force you to it! i know you as well as if i had lived with you twenty years. is this presumption on my part,--an excessive sympathy that i feel for you? i assure you that i am very fond of you, and that i wish you to know, if not happiness, at least tranquillity. but it is not possible to enjoy the least serenity with your habit of delving incessantly among the greatest mysteries. you kill both your body and your soul in trying to conciliate two contradictory things: religion and philosophy. the liberalism of your mind revolts against the old rubbish of dogma, and your natural mysticism takes alarm at the extreme consequences whither your reason leads you. try to confine yourself to science, to pure science; learn to love facts for themselves. study ideas as naturalists study insects. such contemplation may be full of tenderness. the breasts of the muses are full of milk; and that liquid is the beverage of the strong. and--once more--leave the place where your soul is stifling. go at once, instantly, as if the house were afire! think of me sometimes, and believe always in my sincere affection. to edmond and jules de goncourt. . you must have found a letter from me at your house in paris, as i wrote to you the same day i received your book (last monday), after reading it from one end to the other without hastening. i was enchanted with it! it has an upspringing power that never flags for an instant. as to the analysis, it is perfect--it fairly dazzles me. in my former letter you will find my impression given immediately after the first reading. i should now be reading it a second time, if my mother had not three ladies under her roof, who are regaling themselves with it! it will certainly appeal to the fair sex, and therefore will be a success--i believe that is the general idea. but i have found opportunities to dip into your _philomène_ here and there, and i know the book perfectly. my opinion is this: you have done that which you wished to do, and have done it with great success. do not have any anxiety about it. your _réligieuse_ is not banal, thanks to the explanation at the beginning. that was the danger, but you have avoided it. but that which lends the book its simplicity has perhaps restricted its breadth a little. beside sister philoméne i should have wished to see contrasted the generality of _réligieuses_, who scarcely resemble her. and that is the only objection i have to make. it is true that you have not entitled your book: _morals of a hospital!_ this may be the cause of some criticism. i cannot find words to tell you how pleased i am with your work. i notice a new effect of realism in it,--the power to describe the natural connection of facts. your method of doing this is excellent. perhaps the strongest interest of the work springs from this. what an imbecile was levy! but he is very amusing, all the same. no, there are not too many "horrors" (for my personal taste, there are not even enough!--but that is a question of temperament). you stopped just at the very limit. there are exquisite traits,--the old man who coughs, for instance, and the head surgeon among his pupils, etc. the conclusion is superb--i mean the death of barnier. it was necessary, perhaps, for you to make your romance in six volumes, but it must have been a wearisome piece of work. they say it is impossible to please everyone; but i am convinced that your _sister philoméne_ will have a great success, and shall not be at all surprised at it. i have said nothing about your style, for it has been a long time since i first congratulated you upon that! romaine excites my admiration beyond bounds. "ah! to touch, as you touched, to cut, as you cut there yourself." here a true and deep note is sounded. i am as proud of you as i am displeased with myself. alas! my good friends, things do not go well. it seems to me that _salammbô_ is stupid enough to kill one! there is too much talk of the unsettled conditions of ancient times, always battles, always furious people. one longs for cradling verdure and a milk diet! berquin would seem delicious after this. in short, i am not contented. i believe my plan is bad, but it is too late to change it, because everything now is fully settled. what do you intend to do next? how goes _la jeune bourgeoise_? write to me when you have nothing better to do, for i think of you very often. adieu! a thousand thanks, and a thousand sincere compliments! i embrace you. to ernest feydeau. . what a man was old father hugo! heavens! what a poet! i have just devoured his two volumes. i need you! i need bouilhet! i need some intelligent auditor! i want to bawl three thousand verses as no one else ever has bawled them! did i say bawl?--i meant _howl_! i do not recognize myself--i do not know what possesses me! ah! that has done me good! i have found three superb details which are not at all historic and which are in my _salammbô_. i must cut them out, else some one would be sure to accuse me of plagiarism. it is the poor that are always charged with stealing! my work is progressing rather better. i am now engrossed in a battle of elephants, and i assure you that i kill men off like flies! i pour blood in torrents! i wished to write you a long letter, my poor old boy, about the annoyances you suffer, which seem to me rather serious, but frankly, it is time i went to bed. it will soon be four o'clock in the morning. father hugo has turned my brain topsy-turvy! i, too, have had for some time annoyances and anxieties that are not slight. but--_allah kherim!_ you appear to me to be in good condition. you are right. as your book will not be about belgium (the scene, i mean), it will have a freer colour and unity. but think seriously after that of your proposed work on the bourse, of which there is a crying need. to madame roger des genettes. . a good subject for a romance is one that is embodied in one idea, springing up like a single jet of water. it is the "mother idea," whence come all that follow. one is by no means free to write of such or such a thing; he does not _choose_ his subject. this is something that the public and the critics do not comprehend, but the secret of all masterpieces lies in the concordance between the subject and the temperament of the author. you are right; we must speak with respect of _lucrece_; i can compare it only to byron, and byron had not his gravity, nor his sincerity, nor his sadness. the melancholy of the olden time seems to me more profound than that of our day, which implies, more or less, the idea of immortality beyond the grave. but to the ancients the grave was infinity; their dreams were conceived and enacted against a black and unchangeable background. no cries, no convulsions, nothing but the fixity of a thoughtful visage! the gods no longer existed, and the christ had not yet come; and the ancients, from cicero to marcus aurelius, lived at a unique epoch when man alone was all-powerful. i do not find anything like such grandeur as this; but that which renders _lucrece_ intolerable is its philosophy, which the author presents as positive. it is because he does not suspect that it is weak; he wishes to explain, to conclude! if he had resembled epicurus only in mind and not in system, all parts of his work would have been immortal and radical. no matter! our modern poets are weak and puny compared with such a man! to madame roger des genettes. croisset, . to you i can say everything! well, our god has come down a peg! _les misérables_ exasperates me, yet one cannot say a word against it, for fear of being thought a _mouchard_! the position of the author is impregnable, unassailable. i, who have passed my life in adoring him, am actually indignant at him at present, and must burst out somehow! i find in this book neither verity nor grandeur. as to style, it seems to me intentionally incorrect and low, as if the story had been written thus to flatter the popular taste. hugo has a good word and kindly attention for everyone: saint simonians, philippists, even for innkeepers,--all receive equal adulation, and the types are like those found only in tragedies. where are there any prostitutes like fantine, convicts like valjean, and politicians like the stupid donkeys of the a, b, c? nowhere do we find the real suffering of the _soul_. these are only manikins, sugar dolls, beginning with monseigneur bienvenu. in a rage of socialism, hugo calumniates the church as he calumniates misery. where is the bishop who asks a benediction from a convention? where is the factory that turns away a girl because she has a child? and the digressions! how many of these do we find! the passage about manure should interest pelletan! this book was written for the low socialist class and for the philosophical-evangelical vermin. what a pretty character is monsieur marius, living for three days on a cutlet, and monsieur enjolras, who never had given but two kisses in his life, poor fellow! as to the conversations, they are good, but they are all alike. the eternal repetitions of père gillenormant, the final delirium of valjean, the humour of cholomiès and of gantaise--it is all in the same strain. always a straining after effects, attempts at jokes, an effort at gaiety, but nothing really comic. there are lengthy explanations of things quite outside the subject, and a lack of details that should be indispensable. then there are long sermons, saying that universal suffrage would be a very fine thing, and that it is necessary to instruct the masses,--all of which is repeated to satiety. decidedly, this book, in spite of some beautiful passages, is childish. personal observation is a secondary quality in literature, but one should not allow himself to paint society so falsely when he is the contemporary of balzac and of dickens. it was a splendid subject, but what calm philosophy it demanded in its treatment, and what breadth of scientific vision! it is true that father hugo disdains science,--and he proves it! in my mind this confirms descartes or spinoza. posterity will not pardon him for attempting to be a thinker, in spite of his nature. where has the rage for philosophic prose conducted him? and what kind of philosophy? that of prudhomme, of the bonhomme richard, or of béranger. he is no more of a thinker than racine, or la fontaine, whom he considers mediocre; that is, in this book he flows with the current, even as they; he gathers all the banal ideas of his epoch, and with such persistence that he forgets his work and his art. this is my opinion; i keep it to myself, you understand. anyone that handles a pen must feel too much gratitude towards hugo to permit himself to criticise him; but i find that externally, at least, even the gods grow old! i await your reply--and your anger! to theophile gautier. . what a charming article, my dear théo, and how can i thank you for it? if anyone had said to me, when i was twenty years old, that théophile gautier, with whom my imagination was filled, would write such things about me, i should have become delirious with pride! have you read the third philippic of sainte-beuve? but your panegyric of trajan avenges me. may i expect you the day after to-morrow? tell toto to give me an answer regarding this. your old friend. to thÉophile gautier. _monday evening, ._ my old thÉo: do not come wednesday. i am invited to dine with the princess mathilde that evening, and we should not have time for a chat before dinner. let us put it off until saturday. ducamp has been notified. my reply to my lord froehner will appear in _l'opinion_ next saturday, or perhaps thursday. i believe that you will not be displeased with the phrase that alludes to you. is it understood, then--saturday? to thÉophile gautier. croisset, _april , _. how goes it, dear old master? how comes on the _fracasse_? what do you think of _salammbô_? is there anything new to say about that young person? the _figaro-programme_ has mentioned it again, and verdi is in paris. as soon as you have finished your romance, come to my cabin and stay a week (or more) according to your promise, and we will lay out the scenario. i shall expect you in may. let me know two days in advance before you come. i am dreaming of writing two books, without having done any actual work upon them. i have nails in my throat--if i may so express myself. it seems to me a very long time since i have seen your dear face. i imagine that we shall enjoy here (far from courts and women) a great gossip. so run hither as soon as you are free! i kiss you on both cheeks. tenderest remembrances to all, especially to toto. i am a victim of the hhhhhatred of the priests, having been cursed by them in two churches--sainte-clotilde and trinity!! they accuse me of being the inventor of obscene travesties, and of wishing to restore paganism! to george sand. . dear madame: i cannot tell you how much pleased i am that you fulfilled what you called a duty. the kindness of your heart has touched me and your sympathy has made me proud. that is all. your letter, which i have just received, adds to your article and even surpasses it, and i do not know what to say to you unless i say frankly that i love you for it! it was not i that sent you a little flower in an envelope last september. but it is a strange coincidence that i received at the same time, sent in the same fashion, a leaf plucked from a tree. as to your cordial invitation, i reply neither yes nor no, like a true norman. i shall surprise you, perhaps, some day this summer. i have a great desire to see you and to talk with you. it would be very sweet to me to have your portrait to hang upon my study wall in the country, where i often pass long months entirely alone. is my request indiscreet? if not, i send you a thousand thanks in advance. take them in addition to my others, which i reiterate. to george sand. paris, . most certainly i count upon your visit at my private domicile. as for the inconveniences dreaded by the fair sex, you will not perceive more of them than have others (be sure of that). my little stories of the heart and of the sense do not come out of a back shop. but as it is a long distance from my home to yours, in order to save you a useless journey, let me meet you as soon as you arrive in paris, and we will dine together all by ourselves with our elbows on the table! i have sent bouilhet your kind message. at the present moment i am deafened by the crowd in the street under my window following the prize ox! and they say that intellect flourishes among the people of the street! to george sand. croisset, _tuesday, _. you are alone and sad where you are, and i am the same here. whence come the black moods that sometimes sweep over us? they creep up like the rising tide and we are suddenly overwhelmed and must flee. my method is to lie flat on my back and do nothing, and the wave passes after a time. my romance has been going badly for a quarter of an hour. then, too, i have just heard of two deaths, that of cormenin, a friend for the past twenty-five years, and of gavarni. other things have troubled me, too, but all this will soon pass over. you do not know what it is to sit a whole day with your head in your hands, squeezing your unhappy brain in trying to find a word. your ideas flow freely, incessantly, like a river. but with me they run slowly, like a tiny rill. i must have great works of art to occupy me in order to obtain a cascade. ah! i know what they are--the terrors of _style_! in short, i pass my life gnawing my heart and my brain--that is the real truth about your friend. you ask whether he thinks sometimes of his old troubadour of the clock. he does, indeed! and he regrets him. our little nocturnal chats were very charming. there were moments when i had to restrain myself to keep from babbling to you like a big baby. your ears must have burned last night. i dined with my brother and his family. we spoke of scarcely anyone but you, and everyone sang your praises, dear and well-beloved master! i re-read, _à propos_ of your last letter (and by a natural train of ideas), father montaigne's chapter entitled "some verses of virgil." that which he says about chastity is precisely my own belief. it is the effort that is difficult, and not abstinence in itself. otherwise, it would be a curse to the flesh. heaven knows whither this would lead. so, at the risk of eternal reiteration, and of being like prudhomme, i repeat that your young man was wrong. if he had been virtuous up to twenty years of age, his action would be an ignoble libertinage at fifty. everyone gets his deserts some time! great natures, that are also good, are above all things generous, and do not calculate expense. we must laugh and weep, work, play, and suffer, so that we may feel the divine vibration throughout our being. that, i believe, is the characteristic of true manhood. to george sand. croisset, _saturday night, _. at last i have it, that beautiful, dear, and illustrious face! i shall put it in a large frame and hang it on my wall, being able to say, as m. de talleyrand said to louis philippe: "it is the greatest honour my house ever has received." not quite appropriate, for you and i are better than those two worthies! of the two portraits, the one i like the better is the drawing by couture. as to marchal's conception, he has seen in you only "the good woman"; but i, who am an old romanticist, find in it "the head of the author" who gave me in my youth so many beautiful dreams! to george sand. croisset, . i, a mysterious being, dear master? what an idea! i find myself a walking platitude, and am sometimes bored to death by the _bourgeois_ i carry about under my skin! sainte-beuve, between you and me, does not know me at all, whatever he may say. i even swear to you (by the sweet smile of your grand-daughter!) that i know few men less "vicious" than myself. i have dreamed much, but have done little. that which is deceptive to superficial observers is the discord between my sentiments and my ideas. if you wish to have my confession, i will give it frankly. my sense of the grotesque has always restrained me from yielding to any inclination towards licentiousness. i maintain that cynicism protects chastity. we must discuss this matter at length (that is, if you choose) the next time we meet. this is the programme that i propose to you. during the next month my house will be in some disorder. but towards the end of october, or at the beginning of november (after the production of bouilhet's play), i hope nothing will prevent you from returning here with me, not for a day, as you say, but for a week at least. you shall have your room "with a round table and everything needful for writing." is that agreeable? about the fairy play [_the castle of hearts_] i thank you for your kindly offer of assistance. i will tell you all about the thing (i am writing it in collaboration with bouilhet). but i believe it is a mere trifle, and i am divided between the desire to gain a few piastres and shame at the idea of exhibiting such a piece of frivolity. i find you a little severe towards brittany, but not towards the bretons themselves, who appear to me a crabbed set of animals. _À propos_ of celtic archæology, i published, in _l'artiste_, in , a marvellous tale about the rocking stones, but i have not a copy of the number, and do not even remember in which month it appeared. i have read, continuously, the ten volumes of _l'histoire de ma vie_, of which i knew about two thirds, in fragments. that which struck me most forcibly was the account of life in the convent. on all these matters i have stored up a quantity of observations to submit to you when we meet. to george sand. croisset, _saturday night, _. the sending of the two portraits made me believe that you were in paris, dear master, and i wrote you a letter which now awaits you at the rue des feuillantines. i have not found my article on the dolmens. but i have the whole manuscript about my trip through brittany among my unedited works. we shall have it to let our tongues loose upon while you are here. take courage! i do not experience, as you do, that feeling as of the beginning of a new life, the bewilderment of a fresh existence newly opening. on the contrary, it seems to me that i have always existed, and i possess recollections that go back to the time of the pharaohs! i can see myself at various epochs in history very clearly, following various occupations, and placed in divers circumstances. the present individual is the product of my past individualities. i have been a boatman on the nile; a _leno_ at rome during the time of the punic wars; then a greek rhetorician at suburra, where i was devoured by bugs. i died, during the crusades, from eating grapes on the coast of syria. i have been a pirate and a monk; a clown and a coachman. perhaps, also, an emperor in the orient! many things would explain themselves if we could only know our true genealogy. for, the elements that go to make a man being limited, the same combinations must reproduce themselves. we must regard this matter as we regard many others. each of us takes hold of it by only one end, and never fully understands it. the psychological sciences remain where they have always lain, in folly and in darkness. all the more so since they possess no exact nomenclature, and we are compelled to employ the same expression to signify the most diverse ideas. when we mix up the categories, good-bye to the _morale_! do you not find that, since ' , we struggle with trifles? instead of continuing along the broad road, which was as wide and beautiful as a triumphal way, we run off into narrow paths, or struggle in the mire. it might be wiser to return temporarily to d'holbach. before admiring prudhon, we should know turgot! but "chic," that modern religion, what would become of that? "chic" (or "chique") opinions: to support catholicism, without believing a word of it; to approve of slavery; to praise the house of austria; to wear mourning for queen amélie; to admire _orphée aux enfers_; to occupy oneself with agriculture; to talk "sport;" to be cold; to be idiot enough to regret the treaties of . all this is the very newest thing! ah! you believe because i pass my life in trying to make harmonious phrases and to avoid assonances, that i do not form my own little judgments on the affairs of this world. alas! i do, and sometimes i boil with rage at not being able to express them. but enough of gossip, or i shall bore you. bouilhet's play will appear early in november. and we shall see each other in about a month from that time. i embrace you tenderly, dear master! to george sand. _monday night, ._ you are sad, my poor friend and dear master; i thought of you at once on learning of the death of duveyrier. since you loved him, i pity you. this loss is one of many. these deaths we feel in the depths of our hearts. each of us carries within himself his own burial ground. i am all _unscrewed_ since your departure; it seems to me now as if ten years have passed since last i saw you. my only topic of conversation with my mother is yourself; we all cherish the thought of you here. under what constellation were you born, to have united in your person qualities so diverse, so numerous, and so rare? i hardly know how to characterise the sentiment i feel for you, but i bear you a _particular_ tenderness, such as i never have felt for anyone else. we understand each other well, do we not? and that is charming! i regretted you especially last night at ten o'clock. there was a fire on my wood-merchant's premises. the sky was rosy, and the seine was the colour of gooseberry sirup. i worked at the pumps for three hours, and came home as weak as the turk of the giraffe. a journal of rouen, the _nouvelliste_, has mentioned your visit at rouen, and in such terms that on saturday, after you had gone, i met several worthy _bourgeois_ who were indignant at me because i had not exhibited you! the most absurd remark was made by an old sub-prefect:--"ah! if we had only known that she was here ... we should have ... we should have" ... pause of five minutes, while he searched for a word--"we should have ... _smiled_!" that would have been a great compliment, eh? to love you "more" is difficult, but i embrace you tenderly. your letter of this morning, so melancholy, has touched the depths of my heart. we are separated just at the time when we wish to say so many things. not all doors have yet been opened between you and me. you inspire me with a deep respect, and i dare not question you. to edmond and jules de goncourt. _friday, one o'clock, ._ my dear old boys! on arriving at paris, the day before yesterday, i learned of your nomination through scholl's article. so my pleasure was mingled with annoyance. then, last evening, the princess told me you were in paris. if you were in the habit of opening your door to the people that knock at it, i should have presented myself at midnight, to embrace you. how shall we meet?--for i must return this evening. it is not you, edmond, i wish to compliment so much as jules, to whom the nomination must give more pleasure than it gives to you. the fifteenth of next august will be the date for your turn, i suppose. adieu, dear old fellows, i embrace you both most tenderly. i wrote to you at trouville, _poste restante_. have you received my letter? p.s.--a sudden thought seizes me. what do you intend to do this evening? where shall you be at five minutes before midnight? is it not possible that i might dine with you? where shall we see each other? you know that this is worn as soon as the news is printed in the _moniteur_. so here is a little gift from your friend. cut the ribbon and wear it. cut it in half, because there is enough for two. to george sand. _wednesday night, ._ i have followed your advice, dear master, and i have taken exercise! am i not good, eh? sunday evening, at eleven o'clock, there was such beautiful moonlight on the river and across the snow, that i was seized with a wild desire to go out and bestir myself; so i walked for two hours and a half, showing the scenery to myself, and imagining i was travelling in russia or in norway! when the waves rose and cracked the ice along the edges of the river, it was, without joking, really superb. then i thought of you, and longed for your companionship. i do not like to eat alone. i find it necessary to associate the idea of some one to the things that give me pleasure. but the right "someone" is extremely rare. i ask myself why i love you. is it because you are a great "man" or simply a charming being? i do not know. the one thing i am sure of is that i feel for you a particular sentiment which i cannot define. _a propos_ of this, do you believe (you, who are a master in psychology) that one ever loves two persons in the same way, or that one ever experiences two identical sensations? i do not believe it, as i maintain that the individual changes every moment of his existence. you write me such pretty things regarding "disinterested affection." they are very true, but the contrary also is true. we always imagine god in our own image. at the foundation of all our loves and all our admirations we find--ourselves, or something resembling ourselves. but what matters it?--if we are admirable! my own _ego_ overwhelms me for a quarter of an hour. how heavily that rascal weighs upon me at times. he writes too slowly, and does not _pose_ the least in the world when he complains about his work. what a task! and what devil possessed him to induce him to seek such a subject? you ought to give me a recipe for writing faster; yet you complain of having to seek fortune! you! i have had a little note from sainte-beuve, reassuring me as to his health, but rather sad in tone. he seems to be very sorry not to be able to haunt the woods of cyprus. he is right, after all, or at least, it seems right to him, which amounts to the same thing. perhaps i shall resemble him when i reach his age, but somehow, i believe not. as i had not the same kind of youth, my old age will probably be different. this reminds me that i have sometimes dreamed of writing a book on saint périne. champfleury has treated this subject very badly. i see nothing whatever in it of a comical nature; i should bring out its painful and lamentable character. i believe that the heart never grows old; there are people in whom it even grows stronger with age. i was drier and harsher at twenty than i am to-day. i have become softened and feminised by wear and tear, while others have hardened and withered, and that almost makes me indignant. i feel that i am becoming a _cow_! a mere nothing stirs my emotions; everything troubles and agitates me and shakes me as a reed is shaken in the north wind. one word of yours, which i have just recollected, made me wish to re-read _the fair maid of perth_. she was something of a coquette, whatever they say of her. that good fellow had some imagination, decidedly. now, adieu. think of me! i send you my tenderest thoughts. to george sand. _wednesday night, ._ dear master, dear friend of the good god, "let us talk a little of dozenval," let us growl about monsieur thiers! could there ever be a more triumphant imbecile, a more abject fellow, a meaner _bourgeois_! no, no words could ever give an idea of the nausea that overcomes me when i contemplate that old pumpkin of a diplomat, fattening his stupidity under the muck of the _bourgeoisie_. would it be possible to treat with more naïve and more inappropriate unceremoniousness, matters of religion, the people, liberty, the past and the future, national history and natural history, everything? he seems to me as eternal as mediocrity itself! he prostrates me! but the finest thing of all is the spectacle of the brave national guards, whom he threw out in , now beginning to applaud him! what absolute lunacy! it proves that everything depends upon temperament. prostitutes--represented in this case by france--are said to have always a weakness for old rascals! i shall attempt, in the third part of my romance (when i shall have had the reaction following the june days), to insinuate a panegyric about him, _à propos_ of his book: _de la propriété_, and i hope that he will be pleased with me! what care should one take sometimes, in expressing an opinion on things of this world, not to risk being considered an imbecile later? it is a rude problem. it seems to me that the best way is to describe, with the simplest precision, those things that exasperate one. the dissection itself is a vengeance! ah, well! it is not at him alone that i am enraged, nor at the others--it is at our people in general. however, if we had spent our time in instructing the higher classes on the subject of agriculture; if we had thought more of our stomachs than of our heads, probably we should resemble him! i have just read the preface of buchez to his _histoire parlementaire_. like other similar publications, it is full of stupidities, of which we feel the weight to this day. it is not kind to say i do not think of my "old troubadour;" of what else should i think? of my little book, perhaps,--but that is more difficult and not nearly so agreeable. how long do you remain at cannes? after cannes, does not one usually return to paris? i shall be there towards the end of january. in order that my book may be finished in the spring of , from this time on, i shall not allow myself even a week's holiday. this is the reason why i do not go to nohant. i am still on the history of the amazons. in order to draw the bow with the best effect, they used to cut off one breast! was that a good way, after all? adieu, dear master; write to me. i embrace thee tenderly! to jules michelet. _wednesday, ._ no, my dear master, i have not received your book, but i have already read it, and am re-reading it. what a mountain is yours! where will you stop? i am overwhelmed by this mass of ideas, and amazed at their profundity. i believe i never have read anything that impressed me more deeply than that part about the baths of acqui. you bring the pyrenees and the alps before our very eyes. but in your company one is always on the heights! the weighty romance in which you express an interest (weighty for me, while waiting to see what it will be for others!), will not be finished in less than a whole year. i am full of it now, in the history of ' . my profound conviction is that the clergy has acted amazingly. the dangers of democratic catholicism, pointed out by you in the preface to your _revolution_, are already here. ah! we are indeed alone. but you remain to us, you! i clasp your hand warmly, and beg you to believe me yours, with true affection. to george sand. croisset, _wednesday evening, sept. , _. is this handsome conduct, dear master? two months have passed since you wrote last to your old troubadour! are you in paris, nohant, or where? they say that _cadio_ is being rehearsed at the porte saint-martin (are you very sorry, you and chilly?). they say also, that thuillier will make her reappearance in your play. (i thought she was dying--i mean thuillier, not your play.) and when will _cadio_ be produced. are you pleased? i live absolutely like an oyster. my romance is the rock to which i cling, and i know nothing of what is going on in the world. i do not even read, or rather, i read only the _lanterne_. rochefort bores me, to tell the truth. one must, however, have considerable bravery to dare to say, even timidly, that perhaps he is not the first writer of the century! o _velches! velches!_ as monsieur de voltaire would sigh, or rather, roar! and sainte-beuve--do you see him? i am working furiously. i have just written a description of the forest of fontainebleau, which has filled me with a desire to hang myself on one of its trees! i was interrupted for three weeks, and had a hard task to put myself in train to work again. i have the peculiarity of a camel--i find it difficult to stop when once i get started, and hard to start after i have been resting. i have worked steadily for a year at a time. after which i loafed definitely, like a _bourgeois_. it was difficult at first, and not at all pleasant. it is time now that i should do something fine, something that shall please me. that which would please me greatly for a quarter of an hour would be to embrace you! when shall i be able to do so? from now until that time, i send you a thousand sweet thoughts. to maxime ducamp. croisset, _july , _. my good old max: i feel the need of writing you a long letter. i do not know whether i shall have strength, but i will try. since his return to rouen, after receiving his nomination for the place of librarian (august, ), our poor bouilhet was convinced that he should leave his bones there. everyone, including myself, pitied him for his sadness. he did not appear the man he was formerly; he was completely changed, except for his literary intelligence, which remained the same. in short, when i returned to paris, in june, i found him a lamentable figure. a journey that he made to paris on account of his _mademoiselle aïssé_, because the manager demanded that certain changes be made in the second act, was so difficult for him that he could scarcely drag himself to the theatre. on visiting him at his house, the last sunday in june, i found dr. p---- of paris, x---- of rouen, morel, the alienist, and a good chemist, one of bouilhet's friends, named dupré. bouilhet dared not ask for a consultation with my brother, realising that he was very ill and fearing to hear the truth. dr. p---- sent him to vichy, whence villemain hastened to despatch him back to rouen. on debarking at rouen, he finally summoned my brother. the evil was found to be irreparable, as indeed villemain had written me. during these last two weeks my mother has been at verneuil, at the house of the mesdames v----, and letters have been delayed three days, so you see what anxiety i have had. i went to see bouilhet both days that he was here, and observed some amelioration in his condition. his appetite was excellent, as well as his courage, and the tumour on his leg had diminished. his sisters came from carny in order to speak to him of religious matters, and were so violent that they really scandalised a worthy canon of the cathedral. our poor bouilhet was superb--he sent them packing! when i left him for the last time, on saturday, he had a volume of lamettrie on his night-table, which recalled to my mind my poor friend alfred le poittevin reading spinoza. no priest was summoned. his anger against his sisters appeared to sustain him until saturday, and then i departed for paris, in the hope that he would live a long time. on sunday, at five o'clock, he became delirious, and recited aloud the scenario of a drama of the middle ages on the inquisition. he called for me, in order to show it to me, and was very enthusiastic over it. then a trembling seized him; he murmured, "adieu! adieu!" his head sank under léonie's chin, and he died very quietly. monday morning my porter awakened me with a telegram that announced the death in the usual terse fashion of a despatch. i was alone; i packed my things, sent the news to you, and went to tell it to duplan, who was engaged in his business affairs. then i walked the streets an hour, and it was very hot near the railway station. from paris to rouen in a coach filled with people. opposite me was a damsel that smoked cigarettes, stretched her feet out on the seat and sang. when i saw once more the towers of mantes i thought i should go mad, and i believe i was not far from it. seeing me very pale, the damsel offered me her _eau de cologne_. it revived me a little, but what a thirst! that of the desert of sahara was nothing to it. at last i arrived at the rue de bihorel; but here i will spare you details. i never met a better fellow than little philip; he and that good léonie took admirable care of bouilhet. i approved of everything they had done. in order to reassure bouilhet, and to persuade him that he was not dangerously ill, léonie had refused to marry him, and her son encouraged her in this resistance. this marriage was so much the fixed intention of bouilhet, however, that he had had all the necessary papers drawn. as for the young man, i found that he had behaved in every way like a gentleman. d'osmoy and i conducted the ceremonies. a great many persons came to the funeral, two thousand at least; the prefect, the procurer-general, etc.,--all the little dignitaries! would you believe that even while following his coffin, i realised keenly the grotesqueness of the ceremony? i fancied i could hear him speaking to me; i felt that he was there, at my side, and it seemed as if he and i were following the corpse of some one else! the weather was very hot, threatening a storm. i was covered with perspiration, and the walk to the cemetery finished me. his friend caudron had chosen the spot for the grave, near that of flaubert senior. i leaned against a railing to breathe. the coffin stood on the trestles over the grave. the discourses began (there were three!); then i fainted, and my brother and a stranger took me away. the next day i went to my mother, at serquigny. yesterday i went to rouen, to take charge of bouilhet's papers; to-day i have read the letters that have been sent to me, and oh! dear max, it was hard! in his will he left instructions to léonie that all his books and papers should be given to philip, charging the latter to consult with four friends in order to decide what to do with the unedited works: myself, d'osmoy, you, and caudron. he left a volume of excellent poems, four plays in prose, and _mademoiselle aïssé_. the manager of the odéon does not like the second act of this play; i do not know what he will do. it will be necessary for you and d'osmoy to come here this winter, so that we may decide what shall be published. my head troubles me too much for me to continue now, and besides, what more can i say? adieu! i embrace you tenderly. there is only you now, only you! do you remember when we wrote _solus ad solum_? in all the letters i have received i find this phrase: "we must close up our ranks." one gentleman, whom i do not know, has sent his card, with these two words: _sunt lacrymæ!_ to edmond de goncourt. _sunday evening, ._ how i pity you, my poor friend! your letter overcame me this morning. except for the personal confidence you made me (which you may be sure i shall keep), it told me nothing new, or rather, i mean that i had guessed all that you wrote me. i think of you every day and many times a day. the memory of my lost friends leads me fatally to the thought of you! the schedule has been well filled during the past year--your brother, bouilhet, sainte-beuve, and duplan! my dreams are darkened by the shadows of tombs, among which i walk. but i dare not complain to you; for your grief must surpass all those one could feel or imagine. do you wish me to speak of myself, my dear edmond? well, i am engrossed in a work that gives me much pain,--it is the preface to bouilhet's book. i have glided over the biographical part as much as possible. i shall write more at length after an examination of his works, and still more upon his (or our) literary doctrines. i have re-read all that he ever wrote. i have run through our old letters. i have found a series of souvenirs, some of which are thirty years old. it is not very cheerful work, as you may imagine! and besides, here at croisset, i am pursued by his phantom, which i find behind every bush in the garden, on the divan in my study, and even among my garments--in my dressing-gown, which sometimes he used to wear. i hope to think less about him when this sad work is finished,--in about six weeks. after that i shall try to re-write _saint antony_, although my heart is not in it now. you know well that one always writes with the thought of some particular person in view. the particular person being, for me, no more, my courage fails me. i live alone here with only my mother, who grows visibly older from day to day. it has become impossible to hold any serious conversation with her, and i have no one to whom i can talk. i hope to go to paris in august, and then i shall see you. but where shall you be? write to me about yourself sometimes, my poor edmond! no one pities you more than i. i embrace you warmly. to george sand. _sunday, june , ._ someone forgets her old troubadour, who has just come from the funeral of a friend. of the seven friends that used to gather at the magny dinners, only three remain! i am stuffed with coffins, like an old churchyard! i have had enough of it, frankly! yet in the midst of all this, i go on working! i finished last night the preface to my poor bouilhet's book. i intend to see whether some means may not be found to produce a comedy of his in prose. after that i shall take up _saint antony_ once more. and you, dear master, what has become of you and yours? my niece is in the pyrenees, and i live here alone with my mother, who grows more and more deaf, so that my existence is far from lively. i should go to some warmer climate. but to do that i have neither time nor money. so i must erase and re-write, and dig away as hard as possible. i shall go to paris early in august. i shall stay here through october, in order to see the performance of _aïssé_. my absence will be limited to a week at dieppe about the end of the month. these are my projects. the funeral of jules de goncourt was very sad. théo was there and shed floods of tears. to madame regnier. _thursday evening, o'clock, ._ dear madame: i have had to occupy me during the last few weeks _first_: the arrangements regarding bouilhet's tomb; _second_: plans about his monument; _third_: looking after his volume of poems, which has just gone to press; _fourth_: finding an engraver to make his portrait; _fifth_: all my time for two weeks was taken up with _aïssé_, i shall read it to-morrow to the actors. the rehearsals will begin next saturday, and the play will be produced about the first of january. i was obliged to leave croisset so unexpectedly that my servant and my belongings will not arrive until three days later. a detailed account of the intrigues i have had to demolish would fill a volume. i have engaged the actors. i have worked myself on the costumes at the cabinet des estampes; in short, i have not had a moment's rest for two weeks; and this petty life, so exasperating and so busy, will last at this rate at least two full months. what a world! i am not surprised that it killed my good bouilhet! besides, i have re-written my preface to his books, as it displeased me in its former state. i beg you, for heaven's sake, to give me a little liberty for the moment because with the best will in the world, it is impossible for me to do everything at once. i must attend first to the most pressing affairs. besides, you are wrong to wish to publish _now_. what good will it do? where would you find readers? i do not hide from you the fact that i find rather unjust your amiable reproaches regarding the voyage to mantes. why can you not understand that it would be very painful to me to go to mantes? every time i pass before the buffet, i turn away my head! nevertheless, i will keep my promise. but it would be easier for me to go from paris to mantes than to stop there in passing. do not be vexed with me any longer; pity me, rather! to george sand. _tuesday, april , ._ dear good master: i ought to have replied at once to your first letter, so sweet and tender. but i was too sad. the physical force to do it failed me. to-day, at last, i have begun to hear the birds sing and to notice the green leaves. the sunshine no longer irritates me, which is a good sign. if i could only follow my inclination to travel, i should be saved. your second letter (that of yesterday) moved me to tears. how good you are! what a kind heart! i have no need of money just at present, thank you. but if i were in need of it, i should certainly ask you for it. my mother left croisset to caroline, on condition that i should retain my apartments there. so until the complete liquidation of the succession, i shall remain here. before deciding upon the future, i must know what i shall have to live upon; after that, we shall see. shall i have the courage to live absolutely alone in a solitary place? i doubt it. i am growing old. caroline cannot live here now. she has two places already, and the house at croisset is expensive to keep up. i believe that i shall give up my lodgings in paris. nothing calls me there any more. all my friends are dead, and the last, my poor théo, is not likely to be here long. i fear it! ah, it is hard to make oneself over at fifty years! i have realised during the last two weeks that my poor good mamma was the being i have loved most! to lose her is like tearing away a part of my own body. to the baroness lepic. at my hermitage, september (the month called boédromion by the greeks), . i take up my pen to write to you, and, shutting myself up in the silence of my study, i permit myself, o beautiful lady, to burn at your feet some grains of purest incense! i say to myself: she has gone to the new athens with the foster-sons of mars! their limbs are covered with brilliant blue, while i wear a rustic coat! glittering swords dangle at their sides, while i carry only my pens! plumes ornament their heads, while i have scarcely any hair! many cares and much study have ravished from me that crown of youth--that forest which the hand of time, the destroyer, strips from our brows. this is the reason why my breast is torn by blackest jealousy, o lovely lady! but your missive, thank the gods! came to me like a refreshing breeze, like a veritable perfume of dittany. if i could only have the certainty of seeing you, at no distant time, amid our fields, settled near us! the rigour of the approaching blasts of winter would be softened by your presence. as to the political outlook, your anxieties are, perhaps, greater than they need be. we must hope that our great national historian will close, for a time, the era of revolutions. may we see the doors of the temple of janus shut forever! that is the desire of my heart, as a friend of the arts and of innocent gaiety. ah, if all men, fleeing the pomp of courts and the agitations of the forum, would listen to the simple voice of nature, there would be only happiness here below, the dances of shepherds, fond embraces beneath the trees on one side and another--here, there, everywhere! but my ideas run away with me. will madame your mother devote herself always to the occupations of thalia? very well! she proposes to face the public in the house of molière. i comprehend that, but i believe it would be better (in the interest of her dramatic lucubration) if i myself should take this fruit of her muse to the director of that establishment. then, as soon as i should arrive in the capital, i should make my toilet, call my servant and command him to go and find a coach for me in the public square; i should enter the vehicle, drive through the streets, arrive at the théâtre française, and finish by finding our man. all this would be for me only the affair of a moment! in declaring myself, madame, your unworthy slave, i depose prud' homme. to emile zola. croisset, near rouen, _june , _. i have read it--_la conquête de plassans_--read it all at one breath, as one swallows a glass of good wine; then i ruminated over it, and now, my dear friend, i can talk sensibly about it. i feared, after the _ventre de paris_, that you would bury yourself in the "system" in your resolution. but no! you are a good fellow! and your latest book is a fine, swaggering production! perhaps it fails in making prominent any special place, or having a central scene (a thing that never happens in real life), and perhaps also there is a little too much dialogue among the accessory characters. there! in picking you to pieces carefully, these are the only defects i discover. but what power of observation! what depth! what a masterly hand! that which struck me most forcibly in the general tone of the work was the ferocity of passion underlying the surface of good-fellowship. that is very strong, old friend, very strong and broad, and well sustained. what a perfect _bourgeois_ is mouret, with his curiosity, his avarice, his resignation, and his flatness! the abbé faujas is sinister and great--a true director! how well he manages the woman, how ably he makes himself her master, first in taking her up through charity, and then in brutalising her! as to her (marthe), i cannot express to you how much i admire her, and the art displayed in developing her character, or rather her malady. her hysteric state and her final avowal are marvellous. how well you describe the breaking-up of the household! i forgot to mention the tronches, who are adorable ruffians, and the abbé bouvelle, who is exquisite with his fears and his sensibility. provincial life, the little gardens, the paloque family, the rastoil, and the tennis-parties,--perfect, perfect! your treatment of details is excellent, and you use the happiest words and phrases: "the tonsure like a cicatrice;" "i should like it better if he went to see the women;" "mouret had stuffed the stove," etc. and the circle of youth--that was a true invention! i have noted many other things on the margins, viz.: the physical details which olympe gives regarding her brother; the strawberry; the mother of the abbé ready to become his pander; and her old trunk. the harshness of the priest, who waves away the handkerchief of his poor sweetheart, because he detects thereon "an odour of woman." the description of the sacristy, with the name of m. delangre on the wall--the whole phrase is a jewel. but that which surpasses everything, that which crowns the whole work, is the end! i know of nothing more powerful than that _dénouement_. marthe's visit at her uncle's house, the return of mouret, and his inspection of the house! one is seized by fear, as in the reading of some fantastic tale, and one arrives at this effect by the tremendous realism, the intensity of truth. the reader feels his head turned, in sympathy with mouret. the insensibility of the _bourgeois_, who watches the fire seated in his armchair, is charming, and you wind up with one sublime stroke: the apparition of the _soutane_ of the abbé serge at the bedside of his dying mother, as a consolation or a chastisement! there is one bit of chicanery, however. the reader (that has no memory) does not know by instinct what motive prompts m. rougon and uncle macquart to act as they do. two paragraphs of explanation would have been sufficient. never mind! it is what it is, and i thank you for the pleasure it has given me. sleep on both ears, now your work is done! lay aside for me all the stupid criticisms it draws forth. that kind of document interests me very much. to guy de maupassant. dieppe, _july , _. my dear friend: as saturday is for you a kind of consecrated day, and as i could be in paris only one day, which was last saturday, i shall not be able to see you on your return from helvetia. know, then, that _le sexe faible_ was enthusiastically received at the cluny theatre, and it will be acted there after zola's piece, that is, about the last of november. winschenk, the director of this little box of a theatre, predicts a great pecuniary success. amen! it goes without saying, it is the general opinion that i lower myself in making my appearance in an inferior theatre. but this is the story: among the artists engaged by winschenk for my play was mlle. alice regnault. he feared that she would be taken by the vaudeville theatre, and that the vaudeville would not allow her to appear in my play. will you be kind enough to inform yourself discreetly of the state of the case when you are in paris? i shall return to croisset friday evening, and saturday i shall begin _bouvard et pécuchet_. i tremble at the prospect, as one would the night before embarking for a voyage around the world! all the more reason why we should meet and embrace. to maurice sand. croisset, _sunday, june , _. you have forestalled me, my dear maurice! i wished to write to you, but i waited until you should be a little more free, more alone. i thank you for your kind thought. yes, there are few of us left now. and if i do not remain here long, it is because my former friends have drawn me to them. this has seemed to me like burying my mother a second time. poor, dear, great woman! what genius and what a heart! but she lacked nothing; it is not she who calls for pity! what shall you do now? shall you remain at nohant? that dear old house must seem terribly empty to you. but you, at least, are not alone. you have a wife--a rare woman!--and two exquisite children. while i was with you there, i felt above all my sadness, two desires: to run away with aurore, and to kill monsieur ...! that is the truth: it is useless to try to analyse the psychology of the thing. i received yesterday a very tender letter from the good tourgueneff. he, too, loved her! but who did not love her? if you had beheld the grief of martine in paris! it was overwhelming. plauchut is still at nohant, i suppose. tell him i love him after seeing him weep so bitterly. and let your own tears flow freely, my dear friend! do not try to console yourself--it would be almost impossible. some day you will find within yourself a deep and sweet certainty that you were always a good son, and that she knew it well. she spoke of you as a blessing. and after you shall have joined her once more, and after the great-grandchildren of the grandchildren of your two little daughters also shall have rejoined her, and when for a long time people have ceased to talk of the things and the persons that surround us at present--in some centuries to come--there will still be hearts that will palpitate at her words! people will read her books, will ponder over her thoughts, will love as she loved. but all that _does not give her back to you_! with what shall we sustain ourselves, then, if pride fails us, and what man can feel more of that for his mother than yourself? now, my dear friend, adieu! when shall we meet again? for i feel an insatiable desire to talk of _her_! embrace madame maurice for me, as i embraced her on the stairs at nohant, also your little ones. yours, from the depths of my heart. to guy de maupassant. _night of august , ._ your letter has rejoiced me, young man! but i advise you to moderate yourself, in the interest of literature. take care! all depends upon the end one wishes to attain. a man who has accredited himself an artist has no right to live like other men. all that which you tell me about catulle mendès does not surprise me at all. he wrote to me the day before yesterday, to ask me to give him _gratis_ the fragments of the _château des coeurs_, and also the unedited stories that i had just finished. i replied that it was quite impossible, which is true. yesterday i wrote him a rather sharp letter, as i was indignant at the article on renan. it attacked him in the grossest fashion, and there was also some humbug about berthelot. have you read it, and what do you think of it? in short, i said to catulle, first, that i wished him to efface my name from the list of his collaborators; and, second, not to send me his journal any more! i do not wish to have anything in common with such fellows! it is a very bad set, my dear friend, and i advise you to do as i have done--let them entirely alone. catulle will probably reply to my letter, but my decision is taken, and that is an end of it. that which i cannot pardon is the base democratic envy. the tiresome article on offenbach goes to the extremest limits about his comic spirit. and what stupidity! i mean the joke that was invented by fiorantino in , and is still alive to-day! in order to make a triad, add the name of littré, the gentleman who pretends that we are all descended from apes; and last friday the butchery of sainte-beuve! oh, the idiocy of it! as to myself, i am working very hard, seeing no one, reading no journals, and bawling away like a maniac in the seclusion of my study. i pass the whole day, and almost the whole night, bent over my table, and admire the sunrise with great regularity! before my dinner (about seven o'clock) i splash about in the _bourgeoise_ waves of the seine.--_À propos_ of health, you do not appear to me to look very ill. all the better! think no more about it! to guy de maupassant. _wednesday night, ._ my dear friend: i do not know yet what day de goncourt, zola, alphonse daudet and charpentier will come here to breakfast and dine, and perhaps to sleep. they must decide this evening, so that i may know by friday morning. i think they will come on monday. if your eye will permit you then, kindly transport your person to the dwelling of one of these rascals, learn when they expect to leave, and come along with them. should they all pass monday night at croisset, as i have only four beds to offer, you will take that of the _femme de chambre_--who is absent just now. commentary: i have conjured up so many alarms and improbabilities regarding your malady, that i should be glad, purely for my own satisfaction, to have you examined by _my_ doctor fortin, a simple health officer, but a man i consider very able. another observation: if you have not the wherewithal to make the journey, i have a superb double louis at your service. to refuse through mere delicacy would be a very stupid thing to do! a last note: jules lemaître, to whom i have promised your protection in regard to graziani, will present himself at your place. he has talent and is a true littérateur,--a _rara avis_, to whom we must give a cage larger than havre. perhaps he too will come to croisset on monday; and as it is my intention to stuff you all, i have invited doctor fortin, so then he may extend his services to the sick ones! the festival would lack much in splendour if my "disciple" were not there. thy old friend. p.s.--i received this morning an incomprehensible letter, four pages long, signed harry alis. it appears that i have wounded him! how? in any case, i shall ask his pardon. _vive_ the young bloods! i have re-read _boule de suif_, and i maintain that it is a masterpiece. try to write a dozen stories like that, and you will be a man! the article by wolff has filled me with joy! o eunuchs! madame brainne has written me that she was enchanted with it. so did madame lapierre! you will remember that you promised me to make some inquiries of d'aurevilly. he has written this of me: "can no one persuade m. flaubert not to write any more?" it might be a good time now to make certain extracts from this gentleman's works. there is need of it! how about the _botanique_? how is your health? and how goes the volume of verse? sarah bernhardt seems to me gigantic! and the "fathers of families" petition for the congregations! decidedly, this is a farcical epoch! [illustration] * * * * * typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: erected a sanctury=> erected a sanctuary {pg } pecuchet=> pécuchet {pg } two abysse's, twixt=> two abysses, 'twixt {pg rabelais} le deluge=> le déluge {pg preface to lost songs} which theophile gautier called=> which théophile gautier called {pg preface to lost songs} comedie française=> comédie française {pg letter to municipality} m. faure=> m. fauré {pg letter to municipality} moliere's=> molière's {pg letter to municipality} ex-rue de l'imperatrice=> ex-rue de l'impératrice {pg letter to municipality} a seeond-rate=> a second-rate {pg letter to municipality} alalthough=> although {pg letter to municipality} eugene suë=> eugène suë {pg correspondence} archælogical researches=> archæological researches {pg correspondence} l'historie de ma vie=> l'histoire de ma vie {pg correspondence} transcribed from the a. c. fifield edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk the way of all flesh "we know that all things work together for good to them that love god."--rom. viii. preface samuel butleter began to write "the way of all flesh" about the year , and was engaged upon it intermittently until . it is therefore, to a great extent, contemporaneous with "life and habit," and may be taken as a practical illustration of the theory of heredity embodied in that book. he did not work at it after , but for various reasons he postponed its publication. he was occupied in other ways, and he professed himself dissatisfied with it as a whole, and always intended to rewrite or at any rate to revise it. his death in prevented him from doing this, and on his death-bed he gave me clearly to understand that he wished it to be published in its present form. i found that the ms. of the fourth and fifth chapters had disappeared, but by consulting and comparing various notes and sketches, which remained among his papers, i have been able to supply the missing chapters in a form which i believe does not differ materially from that which he finally adopted. with regard to the chronology of the events recorded, the reader will do well to bear in mind that the main body of the novel is supposed to have been written in the year , and the last chapter added as a postscript in . r. a. streatfeild. chapter i when i was a small boy at the beginning of the century i remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick. he must have been getting on for eighty in the year , earlier than which date i suppose i can hardly remember him, for i was born in . a few white locks hung about his ears, his shoulders were bent and his knees feeble, but he was still hale, and was much respected in our little world of paleham. his name was pontifex. his wife was said to be his master; i have been told she brought him a little money, but it cannot have been much. she was a tall, square-shouldered person (i have heard my father call her a gothic woman) who had insisted on being married to mr pontifex when he was young and too good-natured to say nay to any woman who wooed him. the pair had lived not unhappily together, for mr pontifex's temper was easy and he soon learned to bow before his wife's more stormy moods. mr pontifex was a carpenter by trade; he was also at one time parish clerk; when i remember him, however, he had so far risen in life as to be no longer compelled to work with his own hands. in his earlier days he had taught himself to draw. i do not say he drew well, but it was surprising he should draw as well as he did. my father, who took the living of paleham about the year , became possessed of a good many of old mr pontifex's drawings, which were always of local subjects, and so unaffectedly painstaking that they might have passed for the work of some good early master. i remember them as hanging up framed and glazed in the study at the rectory, and tinted, as all else in the room was tinted, with the green reflected from the fringe of ivy leaves that grew around the windows. i wonder how they will actually cease and come to an end as drawings, and into what new phases of being they will then enter. not content with being an artist, mr pontifex must needs also be a musician. he built the organ in the church with his own hands, and made a smaller one which he kept in his own house. he could play as much as he could draw, not very well according to professional standards, but much better than could have been expected. i myself showed a taste for music at an early age, and old mr pontifex on finding it out, as he soon did, became partial to me in consequence. it may be thought that with so many irons in the fire he could hardly be a very thriving man, but this was not the case. his father had been a day labourer, and he had himself begun life with no other capital than his good sense and good constitution; now, however, there was a goodly show of timber about his yard, and a look of solid comfort over his whole establishment. towards the close of the eighteenth century and not long before my father came to paleham, he had taken a farm of about ninety acres, thus making a considerable rise in life. along with the farm there went an old-fashioned but comfortable house with a charming garden and an orchard. the carpenter's business was now carried on in one of the outhouses that had once been part of some conventual buildings, the remains of which could be seen in what was called the abbey close. the house itself, embosomed in honeysuckles and creeping roses, was an ornament to the whole village, nor were its internal arrangements less exemplary than its outside was ornamental. report said that mrs pontifex starched the sheets for her best bed, and i can well believe it. how well do i remember her parlour half filled with the organ which her husband had built, and scented with a withered apple or two from the _pyrus japonica_ that grew outside the house; the picture of the prize ox over the chimney-piece, which mr pontifex himself had painted; the transparency of the man coming to show light to a coach upon a snowy night, also by mr pontifex; the little old man and little old woman who told the weather; the china shepherd and shepherdess; the jars of feathery flowering grasses with a peacock's feather or two among them to set them off, and the china bowls full of dead rose leaves dried with bay salt. all has long since vanished and become a memory, faded but still fragrant to myself. nay, but her kitchen--and the glimpses into a cavernous cellar beyond it, wherefrom came gleams from the pale surfaces of milk cans, or it may be of the arms and face of a milkmaid skimming the cream; or again her storeroom, where among other treasures she kept the famous lipsalve which was one of her especial glories, and of which she would present a shape yearly to those whom she delighted to honour. she wrote out the recipe for this and gave it to my mother a year or two before she died, but we could never make it as she did. when we were children she used sometimes to send her respects to my mother, and ask leave for us to come and take tea with her. right well she used to ply us. as for her temper, we never met such a delightful old lady in our lives; whatever mr pontifex may have had to put up with, we had no cause for complaint, and then mr pontifex would play to us upon the organ, and we would stand round him open-mouthed and think him the most wonderfully clever man that ever was born, except of course our papa. mrs pontifex had no sense of humour, at least i can call to mind no signs of this, but her husband had plenty of fun in him, though few would have guessed it from his appearance. i remember my father once sent me down to his workship to get some glue, and i happened to come when old pontifex was in the act of scolding his boy. he had got the lad--a pudding-headed fellow--by the ear and was saying, "what? lost again--smothered o' wit." (i believe it was the boy who was himself supposed to be a wandering soul, and who was thus addressed as lost.) "now, look here, my lad," he continued, "some boys are born stupid, and thou art one of them; some achieve stupidity--that's thee again, jim--thou wast both born stupid and hast greatly increased thy birthright--and some" (and here came a climax during which the boy's head and ear were swayed from side to side) "have stupidity thrust upon them, which, if it please the lord, shall not be thy case, my lad, for i will thrust stupidity from thee, though i have to box thine ears in doing so," but i did not see that the old man really did box jim's ears, or do more than pretend to frighten him, for the two understood one another perfectly well. another time i remember hearing him call the village rat-catcher by saying, "come hither, thou three-days-and-three-nights, thou," alluding, as i afterwards learned, to the rat-catcher's periods of intoxication; but i will tell no more of such trifles. my father's face would always brighten when old pontifex's name was mentioned. "i tell you, edward," he would say to me, "old pontifex was not only an able man, but he was one of the very ablest men that ever i knew." this was more than i as a young man was prepared to stand. "my dear father," i answered, "what did he do? he could draw a little, but could he to save his life have got a picture into the royal academy exhibition? he built two organs and could play the minuet in _samson_ on one and the march in _scipio_ on the other; he was a good carpenter and a bit of a wag; he was a good old fellow enough, but why make him out so much abler than he was?" "my boy," returned my father, "you must not judge by the work, but by the work in connection with the surroundings. could giotto or filippo lippi, think you, have got a picture into the exhibition? would a single one of those frescoes we went to see when we were at padua have the remotest chance of being hung, if it were sent in for exhibition now? why, the academy people would be so outraged that they would not even write to poor giotto to tell him to come and take his fresco away. phew!" continued he, waxing warm, "if old pontifex had had cromwell's chances he would have done all that cromwell did, and have done it better; if he had had giotto's chances he would have done all that giotto did, and done it no worse; as it was, he was a village carpenter, and i will undertake to say he never scamped a job in the whole course of his life." "but," said i, "we cannot judge people with so many 'ifs.' if old pontifex had lived in giotto's time he might have been another giotto, but he did not live in giotto's time." "i tell you, edward," said my father with some severity, "we must judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to do. if a man has done enough either in painting, music or the affairs of life, to make me feel that i might trust him in an emergency he has done enough. it is not by what a man has actually put upon his canvas, nor yet by the acts which he has set down, so to speak, upon the canvas of his life that i will judge him, but by what he makes me feel that he felt and aimed at. if he has made me feel that he felt those things to be loveable which i hold loveable myself i ask no more; his grammar may have been imperfect, but still i have understood him; he and i are _en rapport_; and i say again, edward, that old pontifex was not only an able man, but one of the very ablest men i ever knew." against this there was no more to be said, and my sisters eyed me to silence. somehow or other my sisters always did eye me to silence when i differed from my father. "talk of his successful son," snorted my father, whom i had fairly roused. "he is not fit to black his father's boots. he has his thousands of pounds a year, while his father had perhaps three thousand shillings a year towards the end of his life. he _is_ a successful man; but his father, hobbling about paleham street in his grey worsted stockings, broad brimmed hat and brown swallow-tailed coat was worth a hundred of george pontifexes, for all his carriages and horses and the airs he gives himself." "but yet," he added, "george pontifex is no fool either." and this brings us to the second generation of the pontifex family with whom we need concern ourselves. chapter ii old mr pontifex had married in the year , but for fifteen years his wife bore no children. at the end of that time mrs pontifex astonished the whole village by showing unmistakable signs of a disposition to present her husband with an heir or heiress. hers had long ago been considered a hopeless case, and when on consulting the doctor concerning the meaning of certain symptoms she was informed of their significance, she became very angry and abused the doctor roundly for talking nonsense. she refused to put so much as a piece of thread into a needle in anticipation of her confinement and would have been absolutely unprepared, if her neighbours had not been better judges of her condition than she was, and got things ready without telling her anything about it. perhaps she feared nemesis, though assuredly she knew not who or what nemesis was; perhaps she feared the doctor had made a mistake and she should be laughed at; from whatever cause, however, her refusal to recognise the obvious arose, she certainly refused to recognise it, until one snowy night in january the doctor was sent for with all urgent speed across the rough country roads. when he arrived he found two patients, not one, in need of his assistance, for a boy had been born who was in due time christened george, in honour of his then reigning majesty. to the best of my belief george pontifex got the greater part of his nature from this obstinate old lady, his mother--a mother who though she loved no one else in the world except her husband (and him only after a fashion) was most tenderly attached to the unexpected child of her old age; nevertheless she showed it little. the boy grew up into a sturdy bright-eyed little fellow, with plenty of intelligence, and perhaps a trifle too great readiness at book learning. being kindly treated at home, he was as fond of his father and mother as it was in his nature to be of anyone, but he was fond of no one else. he had a good healthy sense of _meum_, and as little of _tuum_ as he could help. brought up much in the open air in one of the best situated and healthiest villages in england, his little limbs had fair play, and in those days children's brains were not overtasked as they now are; perhaps it was for this very reason that the boy showed an avidity to learn. at seven or eight years old he could read, write and sum better than any other boy of his age in the village. my father was not yet rector of paleham, and did not remember george pontifex's childhood, but i have heard neighbours tell him that the boy was looked upon as unusually quick and forward. his father and mother were naturally proud of their offspring, and his mother was determined that he should one day become one of the kings and councillors of the earth. it is one thing however to resolve that one's son shall win some of life's larger prizes, and another to square matters with fortune in this respect. george pontifex might have been brought up as a carpenter and succeeded in no other way than as succeeding his father as one of the minor magnates of paleham, and yet have been a more truly successful man than he actually was--for i take it there is not much more solid success in this world than what fell to the lot of old mr and mrs pontifex; it happened, however, that about the year , when george was a boy of fifteen, a sister of mrs pontifex's, who had married a mr fairlie, came to pay a few days' visit at paleham. mr fairlie was a publisher, chiefly of religious works, and had an establishment in paternoster row; he had risen in life, and his wife had risen with him. no very close relations had been maintained between the sisters for some years, and i forget exactly how it came about that mr and mrs fairlie were guests in the quiet but exceedingly comfortable house of their sister and brother-in- law; but for some reason or other the visit was paid, and little george soon succeeded in making his way into his uncle and aunt's good graces. a quick, intelligent boy with a good address, a sound constitution, and coming of respectable parents, has a potential value which a practised business man who has need of many subordinates is little likely to overlook. before his visit was over mr fairlie proposed to the lad's father and mother that he should put him into his own business, at the same time promising that if the boy did well he should not want some one to bring him forward. mrs pontifex had her son's interest too much at heart to refuse such an offer, so the matter was soon arranged, and about a fortnight after the fairlies had left, george was sent up by coach to london, where he was met by his uncle and aunt, with whom it was arranged that he should live. this was george's great start in life. he now wore more fashionable clothes than he had yet been accustomed to, and any little rusticity of gait or pronunciation which he had brought from paleham, was so quickly and completely lost that it was ere long impossible to detect that he had not been born and bred among people of what is commonly called education. the boy paid great attention to his work, and more than justified the favourable opinion which mr fairlie had formed concerning him. sometimes mr fairlie would send him down to paleham for a few days' holiday, and ere long his parents perceived that he had acquired an air and manner of talking different from any that he had taken with him from paleham. they were proud of him, and soon fell into their proper places, resigning all appearance of a parental control, for which indeed there was no kind of necessity. in return, george was always kindly to them, and to the end of his life retained a more affectionate feeling towards his father and mother than i imagine him ever to have felt again for man, woman, or child. george's visits to paleham were never long, for the distance from london was under fifty miles and there was a direct coach, so that the journey was easy; there was not time, therefore, for the novelty to wear off either on the part of the young man or of his parents. george liked the fresh country air and green fields after the darkness to which he had been so long accustomed in paternoster row, which then, as now, was a narrow gloomy lane rather than a street. independently of the pleasure of seeing the familiar faces of the farmers and villagers, he liked also being seen and being congratulated on growing up such a fine-looking and fortunate young fellow, for he was not the youth to hide his light under a bushel. his uncle had had him taught latin and greek of an evening; he had taken kindly to these languages and had rapidly and easily mastered what many boys take years in acquiring. i suppose his knowledge gave him a self-confidence which made itself felt whether he intended it or not; at any rate, he soon began to pose as a judge of literature, and from this to being a judge of art, architecture, music and everything else, the path was easy. like his father, he knew the value of money, but he was at once more ostentatious and less liberal than his father; while yet a boy he was a thorough little man of the world, and did well rather upon principles which he had tested by personal experiment, and recognised as principles, than from those profounder convictions which in his father were so instinctive that he could give no account concerning them. his father, as i have said, wondered at him and let him alone. his son had fairly distanced him, and in an inarticulate way the father knew it perfectly well. after a few years he took to wearing his best clothes whenever his son came to stay with him, nor would he discard them for his ordinary ones till the young man had returned to london. i believe old mr pontifex, along with his pride and affection, felt also a certain fear of his son, as though of something which he could not thoroughly understand, and whose ways, notwithstanding outward agreement, were nevertheless not as his ways. mrs pontifex felt nothing of this; to her george was pure and absolute perfection, and she saw, or thought she saw, with pleasure, that he resembled her and her family in feature as well as in disposition rather than her husband and his. when george was about twenty-five years old his uncle took him into partnership on very liberal terms. he had little cause to regret this step. the young man infused fresh vigour into a concern that was already vigorous, and by the time he was thirty found himself in the receipt of not less than pounds a year as his share of the profits. two years later he married a lady about seven years younger than himself, who brought him a handsome dowry. she died in , when her youngest child alethea was born, and her husband did not marry again. chapter iii in the early years of the century five little children and a couple of nurses began to make periodical visits to paleham. it is needless to say they were a rising generation of pontifexes, towards whom the old couple, their grandparents, were as tenderly deferential as they would have been to the children of the lord lieutenant of the county. their names were eliza, maria, john, theobald (who like myself was born in ), and alethea. mr pontifex always put the prefix "master" or "miss" before the names of his grandchildren, except in the case of alethea, who was his favourite. to have resisted his grandchildren would have been as impossible for him as to have resisted his wife; even old mrs pontifex yielded before her son's children, and gave them all manner of licence which she would never have allowed even to my sisters and myself, who stood next in her regard. two regulations only they must attend to; they must wipe their shoes well on coming into the house, and they must not overfeed mr pontifex's organ with wind, nor take the pipes out. by us at the rectory there was no time so much looked forward to as the annual visit of the little pontifexes to paleham. we came in for some of the prevailing licence; we went to tea with mrs pontifex to meet her grandchildren, and then our young friends were asked to the rectory to have tea with us, and we had what we considered great times. i fell desperately in love with alethea, indeed we all fell in love with each other, plurality and exchange whether of wives or husbands being openly and unblushingly advocated in the very presence of our nurses. we were very merry, but it is so long ago that i have forgotten nearly everything save that we _were_ very merry. almost the only thing that remains with me as a permanent impression was the fact that theobald one day beat his nurse and teased her, and when she said she should go away cried out, "you shan't go away--i'll keep you on purpose to torment you." one winter's morning, however, in the year , we heard the church bell tolling while we were dressing in the back nursery and were told it was for old mrs pontifex. our man-servant john told us and added with grim levity that they were ringing the bell to come and take her away. she had had a fit of paralysis which had carried her off quite suddenly. it was very shocking, the more so because our nurse assured us that if god chose we might all have fits of paralysis ourselves that very day and be taken straight off to the day of judgement. the day of judgement indeed, according to the opinion of those who were most likely to know, would not under any circumstances be delayed more than a few years longer, and then the whole world would be burned, and we ourselves be consigned to an eternity of torture, unless we mended our ways more than we at present seemed at all likely to do. all this was so alarming that we fell to screaming and made such a hullabaloo that the nurse was obliged for her own peace to reassure us. then we wept, but more composedly, as we remembered that there would be no more tea and cakes for us now at old mrs pontifex's. on the day of the funeral, however, we had a great excitement; old mr pontifex sent round a penny loaf to every inhabitant of the village according to a custom still not uncommon at the beginning of the century; the loaf was called a dole. we had never heard of this custom before, besides, though we had often heard of penny loaves, we had never before seen one; moreover, they were presents to us as inhabitants of the village, and we were treated as grown up people, for our father and mother and the servants had each one loaf sent them, but only one. we had never yet suspected that we were inhabitants at all; finally, the little loaves were new, and we were passionately fond of new bread, which we were seldom or never allowed to have, as it was supposed not to be good for us. our affection, therefore, for our old friend had to stand against the combined attacks of archaeological interest, the rights of citizenship and property, the pleasantness to the eye and goodness for food of the little loaves themselves, and the sense of importance which was given us by our having been intimate with someone who had actually died. it seemed upon further inquiry that there was little reason to anticipate an early death for anyone of ourselves, and this being so, we rather liked the idea of someone else's being put away into the churchyard; we passed, therefore, in a short time from extreme depression to a no less extreme exultation; a new heaven and a new earth had been revealed to us in our perception of the possibility of benefiting by the death of our friends, and i fear that for some time we took an interest in the health of everyone in the village whose position rendered a repetition of the dole in the least likely. those were the days in which all great things seemed far off, and we were astonished to find that napoleon buonaparte was an actually living person. we had thought such a great man could only have lived a very long time ago, and here he was after all almost as it were at our own doors. this lent colour to the view that the day of judgement might indeed be nearer than we had thought, but nurse said that was all right now, and she knew. in those days the snow lay longer and drifted deeper in the lanes than it does now, and the milk was sometimes brought in frozen in winter, and we were taken down into the back kitchen to see it. i suppose there are rectories up and down the country now where the milk comes in frozen sometimes in winter, and the children go down to wonder at it, but i never see any frozen milk in london, so i suppose the winters are warmer than they used to be. about one year after his wife's death mr pontifex also was gathered to his fathers. my father saw him the day before he died. the old man had a theory about sunsets, and had had two steps built up against a wall in the kitchen garden on which he used to stand and watch the sun go down whenever it was clear. my father came on him in the afternoon, just as the sun was setting, and saw him with his arms resting on the top of the wall looking towards the sun over a field through which there was a path on which my father was. my father heard him say "good-bye, sun; good- bye, sun," as the sun sank, and saw by his tone and manner that he was feeling very feeble. before the next sunset he was gone. there was no dole. some of his grandchildren were brought to the funeral and we remonstrated with them, but did not take much by doing so. john pontifex, who was a year older than i was, sneered at penny loaves, and intimated that if i wanted one it must be because my papa and mamma could not afford to buy me one, whereon i believe we did something like fighting, and i rather think john pontifex got the worst of it, but it may have been the other way. i remember my sister's nurse, for i was just outgrowing nurses myself, reported the matter to higher quarters, and we were all of us put to some ignominy, but we had been thoroughly awakened from our dream, and it was long enough before we could hear the words "penny loaf" mentioned without our ears tingling with shame. if there had been a dozen doles afterwards we should not have deigned to touch one of them. george pontifex put up a monument to his parents, a plain slab in paleham church, inscribed with the following epitaph:-- sacred to the memory of john pontifex who was born august th, , and died february , , in his th year, and of ruth pontifex, his wife, who was born october , , and died january , , in her th year. they were unostentatious but exemplary in the discharge of their religious, moral, and social duties. this monument was placed by their only son. chapter iv in a year or two more came waterloo and the european peace. then mr george pontifex went abroad more than once. i remember seeing at battersby in after years the diary which he kept on the first of these occasions. it is a characteristic document. i felt as i read it that the author before starting had made up his mind to admire only what he thought it would be creditable in him to admire, to look at nature and art only through the spectacles that had been handed down to him by generation after generation of prigs and impostors. the first glimpse of mont blanc threw mr pontifex into a conventional ecstasy. "my feelings i cannot express. i gasped, yet hardly dared to breathe, as i viewed for the first time the monarch of the mountains. i seemed to fancy the genius seated on his stupendous throne far above his aspiring brethren and in his solitary might defying the universe. i was so overcome by my feelings that i was almost bereft of my faculties, and would not for worlds have spoken after my first exclamation till i found some relief in a gush of tears. with pain i tore myself from contemplating for the first time 'at distance dimly seen' (though i felt as if i had sent my soul and eyes after it), this sublime spectacle." after a nearer view of the alps from above geneva he walked nine out of the twelve miles of the descent: "my mind and heart were too full to sit still, and i found some relief by exhausting my feelings through exercise." in the course of time he reached chamonix and went on a sunday to the montanvert to see the mer de glace. there he wrote the following verses for the visitors' book, which he considered, so he says, "suitable to the day and scene":-- lord, while these wonders of thy hand i see, my soul in holy reverence bends to thee. these awful solitudes, this dread repose, yon pyramid sublime of spotless snows, these spiry pinnacles, those smiling plains, this sea where one eternal winter reigns, these are thy works, and while on them i gaze i hear a silent tongue that speaks thy praise. some poets always begin to get groggy about the knees after running for seven or eight lines. mr pontifex's last couplet gave him a lot of trouble, and nearly every word has been erased and rewritten once at least. in the visitors' book at the montanvert, however, he must have been obliged to commit himself definitely to one reading or another. taking the verses all round, i should say that mr pontifex was right in considering them suitable to the day; i don't like being too hard even on the mer de glace, so will give no opinion as to whether they are suitable to the scene also. mr pontifex went on to the great st bernard and there he wrote some more verses, this time i am afraid in latin. he also took good care to be properly impressed by the hospice and its situation. "the whole of this most extraordinary journey seemed like a dream, its conclusion especially, in gentlemanly society, with every comfort and accommodation amidst the rudest rocks and in the region of perpetual snow. the thought that i was sleeping in a convent and occupied the bed of no less a person than napoleon, that i was in the highest inhabited spot in the old world and in a place celebrated in every part of it, kept me awake some time." as a contrast to this, i may quote here an extract from a letter written to me last year by his grandson ernest, of whom the reader will hear more presently. the passage runs: "i went up to the great st bernard and saw the dogs." in due course mr pontifex found his way into italy, where the pictures and other works of art--those, at least, which were fashionable at that time--threw him into genteel paroxysms of admiration. of the uffizi gallery at florence he writes: "i have spent three hours this morning in the gallery and i have made up my mind that if of all the treasures i have seen in italy i were to choose one room it would be the tribune of this gallery. it contains the venus de' medici, the explorator, the pancratist, the dancing faun and a fine apollo. these more than outweigh the laocoon and the belvedere apollo at rome. it contains, besides, the st john of raphael and many other _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the greatest masters in the world." it is interesting to compare mr pontifex's effusions with the rhapsodies of critics in our own times. not long ago a much esteemed writer informed the world that he felt "disposed to cry out with delight" before a figure by michael angelo. i wonder whether he would feel disposed to cry out before a real michael angelo, if the critics had decided that it was not genuine, or before a reputed michael angelo which was really by someone else. but i suppose that a prig with more money than brains was much the same sixty or seventy years ago as he is now. look at mendelssohn again about this same tribune on which mr pontifex felt so safe in staking his reputation as a man of taste and culture. he feels no less safe and writes, "i then went to the tribune. this room is so delightfully small you can traverse it in fifteen paces, yet it contains a world of art. i again sought out my favourite arm chair which stands under the statue of the 'slave whetting his knife' (l'arrotino), and taking possession of it i enjoyed myself for a couple of hours; for here at one glance i had the 'madonna del cardellino,' pope julius ii., a female portrait by raphael, and above it a lovely holy family by perugino; and so close to me that i could have touched it with my hand the venus de' medici; beyond, that of titian . . . the space between is occupied by other pictures of raphael's, a portrait by titian, a domenichino, etc., etc., all these within the circumference of a small semi-circle no larger than one of your own rooms. this is a spot where a man feels his own insignificance and may well learn to be humble." the tribune is a slippery place for people like mendelssohn to study humility in. they generally take two steps away from it for one they take towards it. i wonder how many chalks mendelssohn gave himself for having sat two hours on that chair. i wonder how often he looked at his watch to see if his two hours were up. i wonder how often he told himself that he was quite as big a gun, if the truth were known, as any of the men whose works he saw before him, how often he wondered whether any of the visitors were recognizing him and admiring him for sitting such a long time in the same chair, and how often he was vexed at seeing them pass him by and take no notice of him. but perhaps if the truth were known his two hours was not quite two hours. returning to mr pontifex, whether he liked what he believed to be the masterpieces of greek and italian art or no he brought back some copies by italian artists, which i have no doubt he satisfied himself would bear the strictest examination with the originals. two of these copies fell to theobald's share on the division of his father's furniture, and i have often seen them at battersby on my visits to theobald and his wife. the one was a madonna by sassoferrato with a blue hood over her head which threw it half into shadow. the other was a magdalen by carlo dolci with a very fine head of hair and a marble vase in her hands. when i was a young man i used to think these pictures were beautiful, but with each successive visit to battersby i got to dislike them more and more and to see "george pontifex" written all over both of them. in the end i ventured after a tentative fashion to blow on them a little, but theobald and his wife were up in arms at once. they did not like their father and father-in-law, but there could be no question about his power and general ability, nor about his having been a man of consummate taste both in literature and art--indeed the diary he kept during his foreign tour was enough to prove this. with one more short extract i will leave this diary and proceed with my story. during his stay in florence mr pontifex wrote: "i have just seen the grand duke and his family pass by in two carriages and six, but little more notice is taken of them than if i, who am utterly unknown here, were to pass by." i don't think that he half believed in his being utterly unknown in florence or anywhere else! chapter v fortune, we are told, is a blind and fickle foster-mother, who showers her gifts at random upon her nurslings. but we do her a grave injustice if we believe such an accusation. trace a man's career from his cradle to his grave and mark how fortune has treated him. you will find that when he is once dead she can for the most part be vindicated from the charge of any but very superficial fickleness. her blindness is the merest fable; she can espy her favourites long before they are born. we are as days and have had our parents for our yesterdays, but through all the fair weather of a clear parental sky the eye of fortune can discern the coming storm, and she laughs as she places her favourites it may be in a london alley or those whom she is resolved to ruin in kings' palaces. seldom does she relent towards those whom she has suckled unkindly and seldom does she completely fail a favoured nursling. was george pontifex one of fortune's favoured nurslings or not? on the whole i should say that he was not, for he did not consider himself so; he was too religious to consider fortune a deity at all; he took whatever she gave and never thanked her, being firmly convinced that whatever he got to his own advantage was of his own getting. and so it was, after fortune had made him able to get it. "nos te, nos facimus, fortuna, deam," exclaimed the poet. "it is we who make thee, fortune, a goddess"; and so it is, after fortune has made us able to make her. the poet says nothing as to the making of the "nos." perhaps some men are independent of antecedents and surroundings and have an initial force within themselves which is in no way due to causation; but this is supposed to be a difficult question and it may be as well to avoid it. let it suffice that george pontifex did not consider himself fortunate, and he who does not consider himself fortunate is unfortunate. true, he was rich, universally respected and of an excellent natural constitution. if he had eaten and drunk less he would never have known a day's indisposition. perhaps his main strength lay in the fact that though his capacity was a little above the average, it was not too much so. it is on this rock that so many clever people split. the successful man will see just so much more than his neighbours as they will be able to see too when it is shown them, but not enough to puzzle them. it is far safer to know too little than too much. people will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other. the best example of mr pontifex's good sense in matters connected with his business which i can think of at this moment is the revolution which he effected in the style of advertising works published by the firm. when he first became a partner one of the firm's advertisements ran thus:-- "books proper to be given away at this season.-- "the pious country parishioner, being directions how a christian may manage every day in the course of his whole life with safety and success; how to spend the sabbath day; what books of the holy scripture ought to be read first; the whole method of education; collects for the most important virtues that adorn the soul; a discourse on the lord's supper; rules to set the soul right in sickness; so that in this treatise are contained all the rules requisite for salvation. the th edition with additions. price d. *** an allowance will be made to those who give them away." before he had been many years a partner the advertisement stood as follows:-- "the pious country parishioner. a complete manual of christian devotion. price d. a reduction will be made to purchasers for gratuitous distribution." what a stride is made in the foregoing towards the modern standard, and what intelligence is involved in the perception of the unseemliness of the old style, when others did not perceive it! where then was the weak place in george pontifex's armour? i suppose in the fact that he had risen too rapidly. it would almost seem as if a transmitted education of some generations is necessary for the due enjoyment of great wealth. adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime. nevertheless a certain kind of good fortune generally attends self-made men to the last. it is their children of the first, or first and second, generation who are in greater danger, for the race can no more repeat its most successful performances suddenly and without its ebbings and flowings of success than the individual can do so, and the more brilliant the success in any one generation, the greater as a general rule the subsequent exhaustion until time has been allowed for recovery. hence it oftens happens that the grandson of a successful man will be more successful than the son--the spirit that actuated the grandfather having lain fallow in the son and being refreshed by repose so as to be ready for fresh exertion in the grandson. a very successful man, moreover, has something of the hybrid in him; he is a new animal, arising from the coming together of many unfamiliar elements and it is well known that the reproduction of abnormal growths, whether animal or vegetable, is irregular and not to be depended upon, even when they are not absolutely sterile. and certainly mr pontifex's success was exceedingly rapid. only a few years after he had become a partner his uncle and aunt both died within a few months of one another. it was then found that they had made him their heir. he was thus not only sole partner in the business but found himself with a fortune of some , pounds into the bargain, and this was a large sum in those days. money came pouring in upon him, and the faster it came the fonder he became of it, though, as he frequently said, he valued it not for its own sake, but only as a means of providing for his dear children. yet when a man is very fond of his money it is not easy for him at all times to be very fond of his children also. the two are like god and mammon. lord macaulay has a passage in which he contrasts the pleasures which a man may derive from books with the inconveniences to which he may be put by his acquaintances. "plato," he says, "is never sullen. cervantes is never petulant. demosthenes never comes unseasonably. dante never stays too long. no difference of political opinion can alienate cicero. no heresy can excite the horror of bossuet." i dare say i might differ from lord macaulay in my estimate of some of the writers he has named, but there can be no disputing his main proposition, namely, that we need have no more trouble from any of them than we have a mind to, whereas our friends are not always so easily disposed of. george pontifex felt this as regards his children and his money. his money was never naughty; his money never made noise or litter, and did not spill things on the tablecloth at meal times, or leave the door open when it went out. his dividends did not quarrel among themselves, nor was he under any uneasiness lest his mortgages should become extravagant on reaching manhood and run him up debts which sooner or later he should have to pay. there were tendencies in john which made him very uneasy, and theobald, his second son, was idle and at times far from truthful. his children might, perhaps, have answered, had they known what was in their father's mind, that he did not knock his money about as he not infrequently knocked his children. he never dealt hastily or pettishly with his money, and that was perhaps why he and it got on so well together. it must be remembered that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the relations between parents and children were still far from satisfactory. the violent type of father, as described by fielding, richardson, smollett and sheridan, is now hardly more likely to find a place in literature than the original advertisement of messrs. fairlie & pontifex's "pious country parishioner," but the type was much too persistent not to have been drawn from nature closely. the parents in miss austen's novels are less like savage wild beasts than those of her predecessors, but she evidently looks upon them with suspicion, and an uneasy feeling that _le pere de famille est capable de tout_ makes itself sufficiently apparent throughout the greater part of her writings. in the elizabethan time the relations between parents and children seem on the whole to have been more kindly. the fathers and the sons are for the most part friends in shakespeare, nor does the evil appear to have reached its full abomination till a long course of puritanism had familiarised men's minds with jewish ideals as those which we should endeavour to reproduce in our everyday life. what precedents did not abraham, jephthah and jonadab the son of rechab offer? how easy was it to quote and follow them in an age when few reasonable men or women doubted that every syllable of the old testament was taken down _verbatim_ from the mouth of god. moreover, puritanism restricted natural pleasures; it substituted the jeremiad for the paean, and it forgot that the poor abuses of all times want countenance. mr pontifex may have been a little sterner with his children than some of his neighbours, but not much. he thrashed his boys two or three times a week and some weeks a good deal oftener, but in those days fathers were always thrashing their boys. it is easy to have juster views when everyone else has them, but fortunately or unfortunately results have nothing whatever to do with the moral guilt or blamelessness of him who brings them about; they depend solely upon the thing done, whatever it may happen to be. the moral guilt or blamelessness in like manner has nothing to do with the result; it turns upon the question whether a sufficient number of reasonable people placed as the actor was placed would have done as the actor has done. at that time it was universally admitted that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, and st paul had placed disobedience to parents in very ugly company. if his children did anything which mr pontifex disliked they were clearly disobedient to their father. in this case there was obviously only one course for a sensible man to take. it consisted in checking the first signs of self- will while his children were too young to offer serious resistance. if their wills were "well broken" in childhood, to use an expression then much in vogue, they would acquire habits of obedience which they would not venture to break through till they were over twenty-one years old. then they might please themselves; he should know how to protect himself; till then he and his money were more at their mercy than he liked. how little do we know our thoughts--our reflex actions indeed, yes; but our reflex reflections! man, forsooth, prides himself on his consciousness! we boast that we differ from the winds and waves and falling stones and plants, which grow they know not why, and from the wandering creatures which go up and down after their prey, as we are pleased to say without the help of reason. we know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? i fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us. chapter vi mr pontifex was not the man to trouble himself much about his motives. people were not so introspective then as we are now; they lived more according to a rule of thumb. dr arnold had not yet sown that crop of earnest thinkers which we are now harvesting, and men did not see why they should not have their own way if no evil consequences to themselves seemed likely to follow upon their doing so. then as now, however, they sometimes let themselves in for more evil consequences than they had bargained for. like other rich men at the beginning of this century he ate and drank a good deal more than was enough to keep him in health. even his excellent constitution was not proof against a prolonged course of overfeeding and what we should now consider overdrinking. his liver would not unfrequently get out of order, and he would come down to breakfast looking yellow about the eyes. then the young people knew that they had better look out. it is not as a general rule the eating of sour grapes that causes the children's teeth to be set on edge. well-to-do parents seldom eat many sour grapes; the danger to the children lies in the parents eating too many sweet ones. i grant that at first sight it seems very unjust, that the parents should have the fun and the children be punished for it, but young people should remember that for many years they were part and parcel of their parents and therefore had a good deal of the fun in the person of their parents. if they have forgotten the fun now, that is no more than people do who have a headache after having been tipsy overnight. the man with a headache does not pretend to be a different person from the man who got drunk, and claim that it is his self of the preceding night and not his self of this morning who should be punished; no more should offspring complain of the headache which it has earned when in the person of its parents, for the continuation of identity, though not so immediately apparent, is just as real in one case as in the other. what is really hard is when the parents have the fun after the children have been born, and the children are punished for this. on these, his black days, he would take very gloomy views of things and say to himself that in spite of all his goodness to them his children did not love him. but who can love any man whose liver is out of order? how base, he would exclaim to himself, was such ingratitude! how especially hard upon himself, who had been such a model son, and always honoured and obeyed his parents though they had not spent one hundredth part of the money upon him which he had lavished upon his own children. "it is always the same story," he would say to himself, "the more young people have the more they want, and the less thanks one gets; i have made a great mistake; i have been far too lenient with my children; never mind, i have done my duty by them, and more; if they fail in theirs to me it is a matter between god and them. i, at any rate, am guiltless. why, i might have married again and become the father of a second and perhaps more affectionate family, etc., etc." he pitied himself for the expensive education which he was giving his children; he did not see that the education cost the children far more than it cost him, inasmuch as it cost them the power of earning their living easily rather than helped them towards it, and ensured their being at the mercy of their father for years after they had come to an age when they should be independent. a public school education cuts off a boy's retreat; he can no longer become a labourer or a mechanic, and these are the only people whose tenure of independence is not precarious--with the exception of course of those who are born inheritors of money or who are placed young in some safe and deep groove. mr pontifex saw nothing of this; all he saw was that he was spending much more money upon his children than the law would have compelled him to do, and what more could you have? might he not have apprenticed both his sons to greengrocers? might he not even yet do so to-morrow morning if he were so minded? the possibility of this course being adopted was a favourite topic with him when he was out of temper; true, he never did apprentice either of his sons to greengrocers, but his boys comparing notes together had sometimes come to the conclusion that they wished he would. at other times when not quite well he would have them in for the fun of shaking his will at them. he would in his imagination cut them all out one after another and leave his money to found almshouses, till at last he was obliged to put them back, so that he might have the pleasure of cutting them out again the next time he was in a passion. of course if young people allow their conduct to be in any way influenced by regard to the wills of living persons they are doing very wrong and must expect to be sufferers in the end, nevertheless the powers of will- dangling and will-shaking are so liable to abuse and are continually made so great an engine of torture that i would pass a law, if i could, to incapacitate any man from making a will for three months from the date of each offence in either of the above respects and let the bench of magistrates or judge, before whom he has been convicted, dispose of his property as they shall think right and reasonable if he dies during the time that his will-making power is suspended. mr pontifex would have the boys into the dining-room. "my dear john, my dear theobald," he would say, "look at me. i began life with nothing but the clothes with which my father and mother sent me up to london. my father gave me ten shillings and my mother five for pocket money and i thought them munificent. i never asked my father for a shilling in the whole course of my life, nor took aught from him beyond the small sum he used to allow me monthly till i was in receipt of a salary. i made my own way and i shall expect my sons to do the same. pray don't take it into your heads that i am going to wear my life out making money that my sons may spend it for me. if you want money you must make it for yourselves as i did, for i give you my word i will not leave a penny to either of you unless you show that you deserve it. young people seem nowadays to expect all kinds of luxuries and indulgences which were never heard of when i was a boy. why, my father was a common carpenter, and here you are both of you at public schools, costing me ever so many hundreds a year, while i at your age was plodding away behind a desk in my uncle fairlie's counting house. what should i not have done if i had had one half of your advantages? you should become dukes or found new empires in undiscovered countries, and even then i doubt whether you would have done proportionately so much as i have done. no, no, i shall see you through school and college and then, if you please, you will make your own way in the world." in this manner he would work himself up into such a state of virtuous indignation that he would sometimes thrash the boys then and there upon some pretext invented at the moment. and yet, as children went, the young pontifexes were fortunate; there would be ten families of young people worse off for one better; they ate and drank good wholesome food, slept in comfortable beds, had the best doctors to attend them when they were ill and the best education that could be had for money. the want of fresh air does not seem much to affect the happiness of children in a london alley: the greater part of them sing and play as though they were on a moor in scotland. so the absence of a genial mental atmosphere is not commonly recognised by children who have never known it. young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. even if they are unhappy--very unhappy--it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness. to parents who wish to lead a quiet life i would say: tell your children that they are very naughty--much naughtier than most children. point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority. you carry so many more guns than they do that they cannot fight you. this is called moral influence, and it will enable you to bounce them as much as you please. they think you know and they will not have yet caught you lying often enough to suspect that you are not the unworldly and scrupulously truthful person which you represent yourself to be; nor yet will they know how great a coward you are, nor how soon you will run away, if they fight you with persistency and judgement. you keep the dice and throw them both for your children and yourself. load them then, for you can easily manage to stop your children from examining them. tell them how singularly indulgent you are; insist on the incalculable benefit you conferred upon them, firstly in bringing them into the world at all, but more particularly in bringing them into it as your own children rather than anyone else's. say that you have their highest interests at stake whenever you are out of temper and wish to make yourself unpleasant by way of balm to your soul. harp much upon these highest interests. feed them spiritually upon such brimstone and treacle as the late bishop of winchester's sunday stories. you hold all the trump cards, or if you do not you can filch them; if you play them with anything like judgement you will find yourselves heads of happy, united, god-fearing families, even as did my old friend mr pontifex. true, your children will probably find out all about it some day, but not until too late to be of much service to them or inconvenience to yourself. some satirists have complained of life inasmuch as all the pleasures belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle till we are left, it may be, with the miseries of a decrepit old age. to me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season--delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. fontenelle at the age of ninety, being asked what was the happiest time of his life, said he did not know that he had ever been much happier than he then was, but that perhaps his best years had been those when he was between fifty-five and seventy-five, and dr johnson placed the pleasures of old age far higher than those of youth. true, in old age we live under the shadow of death, which, like a sword of damocles, may descend at any moment, but we have so long found life to be an affair of being rather frightened than hurt that we have become like the people who live under vesuvius, and chance it without much misgiving. chapter vii a few words may suffice for the greater number of the young people to whom i have been alluding in the foregoing chapter. eliza and maria, the two elder girls, were neither exactly pretty nor exactly plain, and were in all respects model young ladies, but alethea was exceedingly pretty and of a lively, affectionate disposition, which was in sharp contrast with those of her brothers and sisters. there was a trace of her grandfather, not only in her face, but in her love of fun, of which her father had none, though not without a certain boisterous and rather coarse quasi-humour which passed for wit with many. john grew up to be a good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, with features a trifle too regular and finely chiselled. he dressed himself so nicely, had such good address, and stuck so steadily to his books that he became a favourite with his masters; he had, however, an instinct for diplomacy, and was less popular with the boys. his father, in spite of the lectures he would at times read him, was in a way proud of him as he grew older; he saw in him, moreover, one who would probably develop into a good man of business, and in whose hands the prospects of his house would not be likely to decline. john knew how to humour his father, and was at a comparatively early age admitted to as much of his confidence as it was in his nature to bestow on anyone. his brother theobald was no match for him, knew it, and accepted his fate. he was not so good-looking as his brother, nor was his address so good; as a child he had been violently passionate; now, however, he was reserved and shy, and, i should say, indolent in mind and body. he was less tidy than john, less well able to assert himself, and less skilful in humouring the caprices of his father. i do not think he could have loved anyone heartily, but there was no one in his family circle who did not repress, rather than invite his affection, with the exception of his sister alethea, and she was too quick and lively for his somewhat morose temper. he was always the scapegoat, and i have sometimes thought he had two fathers to contend against--his father and his brother john; a third and fourth also might almost be added in his sisters eliza and maria. perhaps if he had felt his bondage very acutely he would not have put up with it, but he was constitutionally timid, and the strong hand of his father knitted him into the closest outward harmony with his brother and sisters. the boys were of use to their father in one respect. i mean that he played them off against each other. he kept them but poorly supplied with pocket money, and to theobald would urge that the claims of his elder brother were naturally paramount, while he insisted to john upon the fact that he had a numerous family, and would affirm solemnly that his expenses were so heavy that at his death there would be very little to divide. he did not care whether they compared notes or no, provided they did not do so in his presence. theobald did not complain even behind his father's back. i knew him as intimately as anyone was likely to know him as a child, at school, and again at cambridge, but he very rarely mentioned his father's name even while his father was alive, and never once in my hearing afterwards. at school he was not actively disliked as his brother was, but he was too dull and deficient in animal spirits to be popular. before he was well out of his frocks it was settled that he was to be a clergyman. it was seemly that mr pontifex, the well-known publisher of religious books, should devote at least one of his sons to the church; this might tend to bring business, or at any rate to keep it in the firm; besides, mr pontifex had more or less interest with bishops and church dignitaries and might hope that some preferment would be offered to his son through his influence. the boy's future destiny was kept well before his eyes from his earliest childhood and was treated as a matter which he had already virtually settled by his acquiescence. nevertheless a certain show of freedom was allowed him. mr pontifex would say it was only right to give a boy his option, and was much too equitable to grudge his son whatever benefit he could derive from this. he had the greatest horror, he would exclaim, of driving any young man into a profession which he did not like. far be it from him to put pressure upon a son of his as regards any profession and much less when so sacred a calling as the ministry was concerned. he would talk in this way when there were visitors in the house and when his son was in the room. he spoke so wisely and so well that his listening guests considered him a paragon of right-mindedness. he spoke, too, with such emphasis and his rosy gills and bald head looked so benevolent that it was difficult not to be carried away by his discourse. i believe two or three heads of families in the neighbourhood gave their sons absolute liberty of choice in the matter of their professions--and am not sure that they had not afterwards considerable cause to regret having done so. the visitors, seeing theobald look shy and wholly unmoved by the exhibition of so much consideration for his wishes, would remark to themselves that the boy seemed hardly likely to be equal to his father and would set him down as an unenthusiastic youth, who ought to have more life in him and be more sensible of his advantages than he appeared to be. no one believed in the righteousness of the whole transaction more firmly than the boy himself; a sense of being ill at ease kept him silent, but it was too profound and too much without break for him to become fully alive to it, and come to an understanding with himself. he feared the dark scowl which would come over his father's face upon the slightest opposition. his father's violent threats, or coarse sneers, would not have been taken _au serieux_ by a stronger boy, but theobald was not a strong boy, and rightly or wrongly, gave his father credit for being quite ready to carry his threats into execution. opposition had never got him anything he wanted yet, nor indeed had yielding, for the matter of that, unless he happened to want exactly what his father wanted for him. if he had ever entertained thoughts of resistance, he had none now, and the power to oppose was so completely lost for want of exercise that hardly did the wish remain; there was nothing left save dull acquiescence as of an ass crouched between two burdens. he may have had an ill-defined sense of ideals that were not his actuals; he might occasionally dream of himself as a soldier or a sailor far away in foreign lands, or even as a farmer's boy upon the wolds, but there was not enough in him for there to be any chance of his turning his dreams into realities, and he drifted on with his stream, which was a slow, and, i am afraid, a muddy one. i think the church catechism has a good deal to do with the unhappy relations which commonly even now exist between parents and children. that work was written too exclusively from the parental point of view; the person who composed it did not get a few children to come in and help him; he was clearly not young himself, nor should i say it was the work of one who liked children--in spite of the words "my good child" which, if i remember rightly, are once put into the mouth of the catechist and, after all, carry a harsh sound with them. the general impression it leaves upon the mind of the young is that their wickedness at birth was but very imperfectly wiped out at baptism, and that the mere fact of being young at all has something with it that savours more or less distinctly of the nature of sin. if a new edition of the work is ever required i should like to introduce a few words insisting on the duty of seeking all reasonable pleasure and avoiding all pain that can be honourably avoided. i should like to see children taught that they should not say they like things which they do not like, merely because certain other people say they like them, and how foolish it is to say they believe this or that when they understand nothing about it. if it be urged that these additions would make the catechism too long i would curtail the remarks upon our duty towards our neighbour and upon the sacraments. in the place of the paragraph beginning "i desire my lord god our heavenly father" i would--but perhaps i had better return to theobald, and leave the recasting of the catechism to abler hands. chapter viii mr pontifex had set his heart on his son's becoming a fellow of a college before he became a clergyman. this would provide for him at once and would ensure his getting a living if none of his father's ecclesiastical friends gave him one. the boy had done just well enough at school to render this possible, so he was sent to one of the smaller colleges at cambridge and was at once set to read with the best private tutors that could be found. a system of examination had been adopted a year or so before theobald took his degree which had improved his chances of a fellowship, for whatever ability he had was classical rather than mathematical, and this system gave more encouragement to classical studies than had been given hitherto. theobald had the sense to see that he had a chance of independence if he worked hard, and he liked the notion of becoming a fellow. he therefore applied himself, and in the end took a degree which made his getting a fellowship in all probability a mere question of time. for a while mr pontifex senior was really pleased, and told his son he would present him with the works of any standard writer whom he might select. the young man chose the works of bacon, and bacon accordingly made his appearance in ten nicely bound volumes. a little inspection, however, showed that the copy was a second hand one. now that he had taken his degree the next thing to look forward to was ordination--about which theobald had thought little hitherto beyond acquiescing in it as something that would come as a matter of course some day. now, however, it had actually come and was asserting itself as a thing which should be only a few months off, and this rather frightened him inasmuch as there would be no way out of it when he was once in it. he did not like the near view of ordination as well as the distant one, and even made some feeble efforts to escape, as may be perceived by the following correspondence which his son ernest found among his father's papers written on gilt-edged paper, in faded ink and tied neatly round with a piece of tape, but without any note or comment. i have altered nothing. the letters are as follows:-- "my dear father,--i do not like opening up a question which has been considered settled, but as the time approaches i begin to be very doubtful how far i am fitted to be a clergyman. not, i am thankful to say, that i have the faintest doubts about the church of england, and i could subscribe cordially to every one of the thirty-nine articles which do indeed appear to me to be the _ne plus ultra_ of human wisdom, and paley, too, leaves no loop-hole for an opponent; but i am sure i should be running counter to your wishes if i were to conceal from you that i do not feel the inward call to be a minister of the gospel that i shall have to say i have felt when the bishop ordains me. i try to get this feeling, i pray for it earnestly, and sometimes half think that i have got it, but in a little time it wears off, and though i have no absolute repugnance to being a clergyman and trust that if i am one i shall endeavour to live to the glory of god and to advance his interests upon earth, yet i feel that something more than this is wanted before i am fully justified in going into the church. i am aware that i have been a great expense to you in spite of my scholarships, but you have ever taught me that i should obey my conscience, and my conscience tells me i should do wrong if i became a clergyman. god may yet give me the spirit for which i assure you i have been and am continually praying, but he may not, and in that case would it not be better for me to try and look out for something else? i know that neither you nor john wish me to go into your business, nor do i understand anything about money matters, but is there nothing else that i can do? i do not like to ask you to maintain me while i go in for medicine or the bar; but when i get my fellowship, which should not be long first, i will endeavour to cost you nothing further, and i might make a little money by writing or taking pupils. i trust you will not think this letter improper; nothing is further from my wish than to cause you any uneasiness. i hope you will make allowance for my present feelings which, indeed, spring from nothing but from that respect for my conscience which no one has so often instilled into me as yourself. pray let me have a few lines shortly. i hope your cold is better. with love to eliza and maria, i am, your affectionate son, "theobald pontifex." "dear theobald,--i can enter into your feelings and have no wish to quarrel with your expression of them. it is quite right and natural that you should feel as you do except as regards one passage, the impropriety of which you will yourself doubtless feel upon reflection, and to which i will not further allude than to say that it has wounded me. you should not have said 'in spite of my scholarships.' it was only proper that if you could do anything to assist me in bearing the heavy burden of your education, the money should be, as it was, made over to myself. every line in your letter convinces me that you are under the influence of a morbid sensitiveness which is one of the devil's favourite devices for luring people to their destruction. i have, as you say, been at great expense with your education. nothing has been spared by me to give you the advantages, which, as an english gentleman, i was anxious to afford my son, but i am not prepared to see that expense thrown away and to have to begin again from the beginning, merely because you have taken some foolish scruples into your head, which you should resist as no less unjust to yourself than to me. "don't give way to that restless desire for change which is the bane of so many persons of both sexes at the present day. "of course you needn't be ordained: nobody will compel you; you are perfectly free; you are twenty-three years of age, and should know your own mind; but why not have known it sooner, instead of never so much as breathing a hint of opposition until i have had all the expense of sending you to the university, which i should never have done unless i had believed you to have made up your mind about taking orders? i have letters from you in which you express the most perfect willingness to be ordained, and your brother and sisters will bear me out in saying that no pressure of any sort has been put upon you. you mistake your own mind, and are suffering from a nervous timidity which may be very natural but may not the less be pregnant with serious consequences to yourself. i am not at all well, and the anxiety occasioned by your letter is naturally preying upon me. may god guide you to a better judgement.--your affectionate father, g. pontifex." on the receipt of this letter theobald plucked up his spirits. "my father," he said to himself, "tells me i need not be ordained if i do not like. i do not like, and therefore i will not be ordained. but what was the meaning of the words 'pregnant with serious consequences to yourself'? did there lurk a threat under these words--though it was impossible to lay hold of it or of them? were they not intended to produce all the effect of a threat without being actually threatening?" theobald knew his father well enough to be little likely to misapprehend his meaning, but having ventured so far on the path of opposition, and being really anxious to get out of being ordained if he could, he determined to venture farther. he accordingly wrote the following: "my dear father,--you tell me--and i heartily thank you--that no one will compel me to be ordained. i knew you would not press ordination upon me if my conscience was seriously opposed to it; i have therefore resolved on giving up the idea, and believe that if you will continue to allow me what you do at present, until i get my fellowship, which should not be long, i will then cease putting you to further expense. i will make up my mind as soon as possible what profession i will adopt, and will let you know at once.--your affectionate son, theobald pontifex." the remaining letter, written by return of post, must now be given. it has the merit of brevity. "dear theobald,--i have received yours. i am at a loss to conceive its motive, but am very clear as to its effect. you shall not receive a single sixpence from me till you come to your senses. should you persist in your folly and wickedness, i am happy to remember that i have yet other children whose conduct i can depend upon to be a source of credit and happiness to me.--your affectionate but troubled father, g. pontifex." i do not know the immediate sequel to the foregoing correspondence, but it all came perfectly right in the end. either theobald's heart failed him, or he interpreted the outward shove which his father gave him, as the inward call for which i have no doubt he prayed with great earnestness--for he was a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer. and so am i under certain circumstances. tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he has wisely refrained from saying whether they are good things or bad things. it might perhaps be as well if the world were to dream of, or even become wide awake to, some of the things that are being wrought by prayer. but the question is avowedly difficult. in the end theobald got his fellowship by a stroke of luck very soon after taking his degree, and was ordained in the autumn of the same year, . chapter ix mr allaby was rector of crampsford, a village a few miles from cambridge. he, too, had taken a good degree, had got a fellowship, and in the course of time had accepted a college living of about pounds a year and a house. his private income did not exceed pounds a year. on resigning his fellowship he married a woman a good deal younger than himself who bore him eleven children, nine of whom--two sons and seven daughters--were living. the two eldest daughters had married fairly well, but at the time of which i am now writing there were still five unmarried, of ages varying between thirty and twenty-two--and the sons were neither of them yet off their father's hands. it was plain that if anything were to happen to mr allaby the family would be left poorly off, and this made both mr and mrs allaby as unhappy as it ought to have made them. reader, did you ever have an income at best none too large, which died with you all except pounds a year? did you ever at the same time have two sons who must be started in life somehow, and five daughters still unmarried for whom you would only be too thankful to find husbands--if you knew how to find them? if morality is that which, on the whole, brings a man peace in his declining years--if, that is to say, it is not an utter swindle, can you under these circumstances flatter yourself that you have led a moral life? and this, even though your wife has been so good a woman that you have not grown tired of her, and has not fallen into such ill-health as lowers your own health in sympathy; and though your family has grown up vigorous, amiable, and blessed with common sense. i know many old men and women who are reputed moral, but who are living with partners whom they have long ceased to love, or who have ugly disagreeable maiden daughters for whom they have never been able to find husbands--daughters whom they loathe and by whom they are loathed in secret, or sons whose folly or extravagance is a perpetual wear and worry to them. is it moral for a man to have brought such things upon himself? someone should do for morals what that old pecksniff bacon has obtained the credit of having done for science. but to return to mr and mrs allaby. mrs allaby talked about having married two of her daughters as though it had been the easiest thing in the world. she talked in this way because she heard other mothers do so, but in her heart of hearts she did not know how she had done it, nor indeed, if it had been her doing at all. first there had been a young man in connection with whom she had tried to practise certain manoeuvres which she had rehearsed in imagination over and over again, but which she found impossible to apply in practice. then there had been weeks of a _wurra wurra_ of hopes and fears and little stratagems which as often as not proved injudicious, and then somehow or other in the end, there lay the young man bound and with an arrow through his heart at her daughter's feet. it seemed to her to be all a fluke which she could have little or no hope of repeating. she had indeed repeated it once, and might perhaps with good luck repeat it yet once again--but five times over! it was awful: why she would rather have three confinements than go through the wear and tear of marrying a single daughter. nevertheless it had got to be done, and poor mrs allaby never looked at a young man without an eye to his being a future son-in-law. papas and mammas sometimes ask young men whether their intentions are honourable towards their daughters. i think young men might occasionally ask papas and mammas whether their intentions are honourable before they accept invitations to houses where there are still unmarried daughters. "i can't afford a curate, my dear," said mr allaby to his wife when the pair were discussing what was next to be done. "it will be better to get some young man to come and help me for a time upon a sunday. a guinea a sunday will do this, and we can chop and change till we get someone who suits." so it was settled that mr allaby's health was not so strong as it had been, and that he stood in need of help in the performance of his sunday duty. mrs allaby had a great friend--a certain mrs cowey, wife of the celebrated professor cowey. she was what was called a truly spiritually minded woman, a trifle portly, with an incipient beard, and an extensive connection among undergraduates, more especially among those who were inclined to take part in the great evangelical movement which was then at its height. she gave evening parties once a fortnight at which prayer was part of the entertainment. she was not only spiritually minded, but, as enthusiastic mrs allaby used to exclaim, she was a thorough woman of the world at the same time and had such a fund of strong masculine good sense. she too had daughters, but, as she used to say to mrs allaby, she had been less fortunate than mrs allaby herself, for one by one they had married and left her so that her old age would have been desolate indeed if her professor had not been spared to her. mrs cowey, of course, knew the run of all the bachelor clergy in the university, and was the very person to assist mrs allaby in finding an eligible assistant for her husband, so this last named lady drove over one morning in the november of , by arrangement, to take an early dinner with mrs cowey and spend the afternoon. after dinner the two ladies retired together, and the business of the day began. how they fenced, how they saw through one another, with what loyalty they pretended not to see through one another, with what gentle dalliance they prolonged the conversation discussing the spiritual fitness of this or that deacon, and the other pros and cons connected with him after his spiritual fitness had been disposed of, all this must be left to the imagination of the reader. mrs cowey had been so accustomed to scheming on her own account that she would scheme for anyone rather than not scheme at all. many mothers turned to her in their hour of need and, provided they were spiritually minded, mrs cowey never failed to do her best for them; if the marriage of a young bachelor of arts was not made in heaven, it was probably made, or at any rate attempted, in mrs cowey's drawing-room. on the present occasion all the deacons of the university in whom there lurked any spark of promise were exhaustively discussed, and the upshot was that our friend theobald was declared by mrs cowey to be about the best thing she could do that afternoon. "i don't know that he's a particularly fascinating young man, my dear," said mrs cowey, "and he's only a second son, but then he's got his fellowship, and even the second son of such a man as mr pontifex the publisher should have something very comfortable." "why yes, my dear," rejoined mrs allaby complacently, "that's what one rather feels." chapter x the interview, like all other good things had to come to an end; the days were short, and mrs allaby had a six miles' drive to crampsford. when she was muffled up and had taken her seat, mr allaby's _factotum_, james, could perceive no change in her appearance, and little knew what a series of delightful visions he was driving home along with his mistress. professor cowey had published works through theobald's father, and theobald had on this account been taken in tow by mrs cowey from the beginning of his university career. she had had her eye upon him for some time past, and almost as much felt it her duty to get him off her list of young men for whom wives had to be provided, as poor mrs allaby did to try and get a husband for one of her daughters. she now wrote and asked him to come and see her, in terms that awakened his curiosity. when he came she broached the subject of mr allaby's failing health, and after the smoothing away of such difficulties as were only mrs cowey's due, considering the interest she had taken, it was allowed to come to pass that theobald should go to crampsford for six successive sundays and take the half of mr allaby's duty at half a guinea a sunday, for mrs cowey cut down the usual stipend mercilessly, and theobald was not strong enough to resist. ignorant of the plots which were being prepared for his peace of mind and with no idea beyond that of earning his three guineas, and perhaps of astonishing the inhabitants of crampsford by his academic learning, theobald walked over to the rectory one sunday morning early in december--a few weeks only after he had been ordained. he had taken a great deal of pains with his sermon, which was on the subject of geology--then coming to the fore as a theological bugbear. he showed that so far as geology was worth anything at all--and he was too liberal entirely to pooh-pooh it--it confirmed the absolutely historical character of the mosaic account of the creation as given in genesis. any phenomena which at first sight appeared to make against this view were only partial phenomena and broke down upon investigation. nothing could be in more excellent taste, and when theobald adjourned to the rectory, where he was to dine between the services, mr allaby complimented him warmly upon his debut, while the ladies of the family could hardly find words with which to express their admiration. theobald knew nothing about women. the only women he had been thrown in contact with were his sisters, two of whom were always correcting him, and a few school friends whom these had got their father to ask to elmhurst. these young ladies had either been so shy that they and theobald had never amalgamated, or they had been supposed to be clever and had said smart things to him. he did not say smart things himself and did not want other people to say them. besides, they talked about music--and he hated music--or pictures--and he hated pictures--or books--and except the classics he hated books. and then sometimes he was wanted to dance with them, and he did not know how to dance, and did not want to know. at mrs cowey's parties again he had seen some young ladies and had been introduced to them. he had tried to make himself agreeable, but was always left with the impression that he had not been successful. the young ladies of mrs cowey's set were by no means the most attractive that might have been found in the university, and theobald may be excused for not losing his heart to the greater number of them, while if for a minute or two he was thrown in with one of the prettier and more agreeable girls he was almost immediately cut out by someone less bashful than himself, and sneaked off, feeling as far as the fair sex was concerned, like the impotent man at the pool of bethesda. what a really nice girl might have done with him i cannot tell, but fate had thrown none such in his way except his youngest sister alethea, whom he might perhaps have liked if she had not been his sister. the result of his experience was that women had never done him any good and he was not accustomed to associate them with any pleasure; if there was a part of hamlet in connection with them it had been so completely cut out in the edition of the play in which he was required to act that he had come to disbelieve in its existence. as for kissing, he had never kissed a woman in his life except his sister--and my own sisters when we were all small children together. over and above these kisses, he had until quite lately been required to imprint a solemn flabby kiss night and morning upon his father's cheek, and this, to the best of my belief, was the extent of theobald's knowledge in the matter of kissing, at the time of which i am now writing. the result of the foregoing was that he had come to dislike women, as mysterious beings whose ways were not as his ways, nor their thoughts as his thoughts. with these antecedents theobald naturally felt rather bashful on finding himself the admired of five strange young ladies. i remember when i was a boy myself i was once asked to take tea at a girls' school where one of my sisters was boarding. i was then about twelve years old. everything went off well during tea-time, for the lady principal of the establishment was present. but there came a time when she went away and i was left alone with the girls. the moment the mistress's back was turned the head girl, who was about my own age, came up, pointed her finger at me, made a face and said solemnly, "a na-a-sty bo-o-y!" all the girls followed her in rotation making the same gesture and the same reproach upon my being a boy. it gave me a great scare. i believe i cried, and i know it was a long time before i could again face a girl without a strong desire to run away. theobald felt at first much as i had myself done at the girls' school, but the miss allabys did not tell him he was a nasty bo-o-oy. their papa and mamma were so cordial and they themselves lifted him so deftly over conversational stiles that before dinner was over theobald thought the family to be a really very charming one, and felt as though he were being appreciated in a way to which he had not hitherto been accustomed. with dinner his shyness wore off. he was by no means plain, his academic prestige was very fair. there was nothing about him to lay hold of as unconventional or ridiculous; the impression he created upon the young ladies was quite as favourable as that which they had created upon himself; for they knew not much more about men than he about women. as soon as he was gone, the harmony of the establishment was broken by a storm which arose upon the question which of them it should be who should become mrs pontifex. "my dears," said their father, when he saw that they did not seem likely to settle the matter among themselves, "wait till to-morrow, and then play at cards for him." having said which he retired to his study, where he took a nightly glass of whisky and a pipe of tobacco. chapter xi the next morning saw theobald in his rooms coaching a pupil, and the miss allabys in the eldest miss allaby's bedroom playing at cards with theobald for the stakes. the winner was christina, the second unmarried daughter, then just twenty- seven years old and therefore four years older than theobald. the younger sisters complained that it was throwing a husband away to let christina try and catch him, for she was so much older that she had no chance; but christina showed fight in a way not usual with her, for she was by nature yielding and good tempered. her mother thought it better to back her up, so the two dangerous ones were packed off then and there on visits to friends some way off, and those alone allowed to remain at home whose loyalty could be depended upon. the brothers did not even suspect what was going on and believed their father's getting assistance was because he really wanted it. the sisters who remained at home kept their words and gave christina all the help they could, for over and above their sense of fair play they reflected that the sooner theobald was landed, the sooner another deacon might be sent for who might be won by themselves. so quickly was all managed that the two unreliable sisters were actually out of the house before theobald's next visit--which was on the sunday following his first. this time theobald felt quite at home in the house of his new friends--for so mrs allaby insisted that he should call them. she took, she said, such a motherly interest in young men, especially in clergymen. theobald believed every word she said, as he had believed his father and all his elders from his youth up. christina sat next him at dinner and played her cards no less judiciously than she had played them in her sister's bedroom. she smiled (and her smile was one of her strong points) whenever he spoke to her; she went through all her little artlessnesses and set forth all her little wares in what she believed to be their most taking aspect. who can blame her? theobald was not the ideal she had dreamed of when reading byron upstairs with her sisters, but he was an actual within the bounds of possibility, and after all not a bad actual as actuals went. what else could she do? run away? she dared not. marry beneath her and be considered a disgrace to her family? she dared not. remain at home and become an old maid and be laughed at? not if she could help it. she did the only thing that could reasonably be expected. she was drowning; theobald might be only a straw, but she could catch at him and catch at him she accordingly did. if the course of true love never runs smooth, the course of true match- making sometimes does so. the only ground for complaint in the present case was that it was rather slow. theobald fell into the part assigned to him more easily than mrs cowey and mrs allaby had dared to hope. he was softened by christina's winning manners: he admired the high moral tone of everything she said; her sweetness towards her sisters and her father and mother, her readiness to undertake any small burden which no one else seemed willing to undertake, her sprightly manners, all were fascinating to one who, though unused to woman's society, was still a human being. he was flattered by her unobtrusive but obviously sincere admiration for himself; she seemed to see him in a more favourable light, and to understand him better than anyone outside of this charming family had ever done. instead of snubbing him as his father, brother and sisters did, she drew him out, listened attentively to all he chose to say, and evidently wanted him to say still more. he told a college friend that he knew he was in love now; he really was, for he liked miss allaby's society much better than that of his sisters. over and above the recommendations already enumerated, she had another in the possession of what was supposed to be a very beautiful contralto voice. her voice was certainly contralto, for she could not reach higher than d in the treble; its only defect was that it did not go correspondingly low in the bass: in those days, however, a contralto voice was understood to include even a soprano if the soprano could not reach soprano notes, and it was not necessary that it should have the quality which we now assign to contralto. what her voice wanted in range and power was made up in the feeling with which she sang. she had transposed "angels ever bright and fair" into a lower key, so as to make it suit her voice, thus proving, as her mamma said, that she had a thorough knowledge of the laws of harmony; not only did she do this, but at every pause added an embellishment of arpeggios from one end to the other of the keyboard, on a principle which her governess had taught her; she thus added life and interest to an air which everyone--so she said--must feel to be rather heavy in the form in which handel left it. as for her governess, she indeed had been a rarely accomplished musician: she was a pupil of the famous dr clarke of cambridge, and used to play the overture to _atalanta_, arranged by mazzinghi. nevertheless, it was some time before theobald could bring his courage to the sticking point of actually proposing. he made it quite clear that he believed himself to be much smitten, but month after month went by, during which there was still so much hope in theobald that mr allaby dared not discover that he was able to do his duty for himself, and was getting impatient at the number of half-guineas he was disbursing--and yet there was no proposal. christina's mother assured him that she was the best daughter in the whole world, and would be a priceless treasure to the man who married her. theobald echoed mrs allaby's sentiments with warmth, but still, though he visited the rectory two or three times a week, besides coming over on sundays--he did not propose. "she is heart-whole yet, dear mr pontifex," said mrs allaby, one day, "at least i believe she is. it is not for want of admirers--oh! no--she has had her full share of these, but she is too, too difficult to please. i think, however, she would fall before a _great and good_ man." and she looked hard at theobald, who blushed; but the days went by and still he did not propose. another time theobald actually took mrs cowey into his confidence, and the reader may guess what account of christina he got from her. mrs cowey tried the jealousy manoeuvre and hinted at a possible rival. theobald was, or pretended to be, very much alarmed; a little rudimentary pang of jealousy shot across his bosom and he began to believe with pride that he was not only in love, but desperately in love or he would never feel so jealous. nevertheless, day after day still went by and he did not propose. the allabys behaved with great judgement. they humoured him till his retreat was practically cut off, though he still flattered himself that it was open. one day about six months after theobald had become an almost daily visitor at the rectory the conversation happened to turn upon long engagements. "i don't like long engagements, mr allaby, do you?" said theobald imprudently. "no," said mr allaby in a pointed tone, "nor long courtships," and he gave theobald a look which he could not pretend to misunderstand. he went back to cambridge as fast as he could go, and in dread of the conversation with mr allaby which he felt to be impending, composed the following letter which he despatched that same afternoon by a private messenger to crampsford. the letter was as follows:-- "dearest miss christina,--i do not know whether you have guessed the feelings that i have long entertained for you--feelings which i have concealed as much as i could through fear of drawing you into an engagement which, if you enter into it, must be prolonged for a considerable time, but, however this may be, it is out of my power to conceal them longer; i love you, ardently, devotedly, and send these few lines asking you to be my wife, because i dare not trust my tongue to give adequate expression to the magnitude of my affection for you. "i cannot pretend to offer you a heart which has never known either love or disappointment. i have loved already, and my heart was years in recovering from the grief i felt at seeing her become another's. that, however, is over, and having seen yourself i rejoice over a disappointment which i thought at one time would have been fatal to me. it has left me a less ardent lover than i should perhaps otherwise have been, but it has increased tenfold my power of appreciating your many charms and my desire that you should become my wife. please let me have a few lines of answer by the bearer to let me know whether or not my suit is accepted. if you accept me i will at once come and talk the matter over with mr and mrs allaby, whom i shall hope one day to be allowed to call father and mother. "i ought to warn you that in the event of your consenting to be my wife it may be years before our union can be consummated, for i cannot marry till a college living is offered me. if, therefore, you see fit to reject me, i shall be grieved rather than surprised.--ever most devotedly yours, "theobald pontifex." and this was all that his public school and university education had been able to do for theobald! nevertheless for his own part he thought his letter rather a good one, and congratulated himself in particular upon his cleverness in inventing the story of a previous attachment, behind which he intended to shelter himself if christina should complain of any lack of fervour in his behaviour to her. i need not give christina's answer, which of course was to accept. much as theobald feared old mr allaby i do not think he would have wrought up his courage to the point of actually proposing but for the fact of the engagement being necessarily a long one, during which a dozen things might turn up to break it off. however much he may have disapproved of long engagements for other people, i doubt whether he had any particular objection to them in his own case. a pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them. theobald posed as the most ardent lover imaginable, but, to use the vulgarism for the moment in fashion, it was all "side." christina was in love, as indeed she had been twenty times already. but then christina was impressionable and could not even hear the name "missolonghi" mentioned without bursting into tears. when theobald accidentally left his sermon case behind him one sunday, she slept with it in her bosom and was forlorn when she had as it were to disgorge it on the following sunday; but i do not think theobald ever took so much as an old toothbrush of christina's to bed with him. why, i knew a young man once who got hold of his mistress's skates and slept with them for a fortnight and cried when he had to give them up. chapter xii theobald's engagement was all very well as far as it went, but there was an old gentleman with a bald head and rosy cheeks in a counting-house in paternoster row who must sooner or later be told of what his son had in view, and theobald's heart fluttered when he asked himself what view this old gentleman was likely to take of the situation. the murder, however, had to come out, and theobald and his intended, perhaps imprudently, resolved on making a clean breast of it at once. he wrote what he and christina, who helped him to draft the letter, thought to be everything that was filial, and expressed himself as anxious to be married with the least possible delay. he could not help saying this, as christina was at his shoulder, and he knew it was safe, for his father might be trusted not to help him. he wound up by asking his father to use any influence that might be at his command to help him to get a living, inasmuch as it might be years before a college living fell vacant, and he saw no other chance of being able to marry, for neither he nor his intended had any money except theobald's fellowship, which would, of course, lapse on his taking a wife. any step of theobald's was sure to be objectionable in his father's eyes, but that at three-and-twenty he should want to marry a penniless girl who was four years older than himself, afforded a golden opportunity which the old gentleman--for so i may now call him, as he was at least sixty--embraced with characteristic eagerness. "the ineffable folly," he wrote, on receiving his son's letter, "of your fancied passion for miss allaby fills me with the gravest apprehensions. making every allowance for a lover's blindness, i still have no doubt that the lady herself is a well-conducted and amiable young person, who would not disgrace our family, but were she ten times more desirable as a daughter-in-law than i can allow myself to hope, your joint poverty is an insuperable objection to your marriage. i have four other children besides yourself, and my expenses do not permit me to save money. this year they have been especially heavy, indeed i have had to purchase two not inconsiderable pieces of land which happened to come into the market and were necessary to complete a property which i have long wanted to round off in this way. i gave you an education regardless of expense, which has put you in possession of a comfortable income, at an age when many young men are dependent. i have thus started you fairly in life, and may claim that you should cease to be a drag upon me further. long engagements are proverbially unsatisfactory, and in the present case the prospect seems interminable. what interest, pray, do you suppose i have that i could get a living for you? can i go up and down the country begging people to provide for my son because he has taken it into his head to want to get married without sufficient means? "i do not wish to write unkindly, nothing can be farther from my real feelings towards you, but there is often more kindness in plain speaking than in any amount of soft words which can end in no substantial performance. of course, i bear in mind that you are of age, and can therefore please yourself, but if you choose to claim the strict letter of the law, and act without consideration for your father's feelings, you must not be surprised if you one day find that i have claimed a like liberty for myself.--believe me, your affectionate father, g. pontifex." i found this letter along with those already given and a few more which i need not give, but throughout which the same tone prevails, and in all of which there is the more or less obvious shake of the will near the end of the letter. remembering theobald's general dumbness concerning his father for the many years i knew him after his father's death, there was an eloquence in the preservation of the letters and in their endorsement "letters from my father," which seemed to have with it some faint odour of health and nature. theobald did not show his father's letter to christina, nor, indeed, i believe to anyone. he was by nature secretive, and had been repressed too much and too early to be capable of railing or blowing off steam where his father was concerned. his sense of wrong was still inarticulate, felt as a dull dead weight ever present day by day, and if he woke at night-time still continually present, but he hardly knew what it was. i was about the closest friend he had, and i saw but little of him, for i could not get on with him for long together. he said i had no reverence; whereas i thought that i had plenty of reverence for what deserved to be revered, but that the gods which he deemed golden were in reality made of baser metal. he never, as i have said, complained of his father to me, and his only other friends were, like himself, staid and prim, of evangelical tendencies, and deeply imbued with a sense of the sinfulness of any act of insubordination to parents--good young men, in fact--and one cannot blow off steam to a good young man. when christina was informed by her lover of his father's opposition, and of the time which must probably elapse before they could be married, she offered--with how much sincerity i know not--to set him free from his engagement; but theobald declined to be released--"not at least," as he said, "at present." christina and mrs allaby knew they could manage him, and on this not very satisfactory footing the engagement was continued. his engagement and his refusal to be released at once raised theobald in his own good opinion. dull as he was, he had no small share of quiet self-approbation. he admired himself for his university distinction, for the purity of his life (i said of him once that if he had only a better temper he would be as innocent as a new-laid egg) and for his unimpeachable integrity in money matters. he did not despair of advancement in the church when he had once got a living, and of course it was within the bounds of possibility that he might one day become a bishop, and christina said she felt convinced that this would ultimately be the case. as was natural for the daughter and intended wife of a clergyman, christina's thoughts ran much upon religion, and she was resolved that even though an exalted position in this world were denied to her and theobald, their virtues should be fully appreciated in the next. her religious opinions coincided absolutely with theobald's own, and many a conversation did she have with him about the glory of god, and the completeness with which they would devote themselves to it, as soon as theobald had got his living and they were married. so certain was she of the great results which would then ensue that she wondered at times at the blindness shown by providence towards its own truest interests in not killing off the rectors who stood between theobald and his living a little faster. in those days people believed with a simple downrightness which i do not observe among educated men and women now. it had never so much as crossed theobald's mind to doubt the literal accuracy of any syllable in the bible. he had never seen any book in which this was disputed, nor met with anyone who doubted it. true, there was just a little scare about geology, but there was nothing in it. if it was said that god made the world in six days, why he did make it in six days, neither in more nor less; if it was said that he put adam to sleep, took out one of his ribs and made a woman of it, why it was so as a matter of course. he, adam, went to sleep as it might be himself, theobald pontifex, in a garden, as it might be the garden at crampsford rectory during the summer months when it was so pretty, only that it was larger, and had some tame wild animals in it. then god came up to him, as it might be mr allaby or his father, dexterously took out one of his ribs without waking him, and miraculously healed the wound so that no trace of the operation remained. finally, god had taken the rib perhaps into the greenhouse, and had turned it into just such another young woman as christina. that was how it was done; there was neither difficulty nor shadow of difficulty about the matter. could not god do anything he liked, and had he not in his own inspired book told us that he had done this? this was the average attitude of fairly educated young men and women towards the mosaic cosmogony fifty, forty, or even twenty years ago. the combating of infidelity, therefore, offered little scope for enterprising young clergymen, nor had the church awakened to the activity which she has since displayed among the poor in our large towns. these were then left almost without an effort at resistance or co-operation to the labours of those who had succeeded wesley. missionary work indeed in heathen countries was being carried on with some energy, but theobald did not feel any call to be a missionary. christina suggested this to him more than once, and assured him of the unspeakable happiness it would be to her to be the wife of a missionary, and to share his dangers; she and theobald might even be martyred; of course they would be martyred simultaneously, and martyrdom many years hence as regarded from the arbour in the rectory garden was not painful, it would ensure them a glorious future in the next world, and at any rate posthumous renown in this--even if they were not miraculously restored to life again--and such things had happened ere now in the case of martyrs. theobald, however, had not been kindled by christina's enthusiasm, so she fell back upon the church of rome--an enemy more dangerous, if possible, than paganism itself. a combat with romanism might even yet win for her and theobald the crown of martyrdom. true, the church of rome was tolerably quiet just then, but it was the calm before the storm, of this she was assured, with a conviction deeper than she could have attained by any argument founded upon mere reason. "we, dearest theobald," she exclaimed, "will be ever faithful. we will stand firm and support one another even in the hour of death itself. god in his mercy may spare us from being burnt alive. he may or may not do so. oh lord" (and she turned her eyes prayerfully to heaven), "spare my theobald, or grant that he may be beheaded." "my dearest," said theobald gravely, "do not let us agitate ourselves unduly. if the hour of trial comes we shall be best prepared to meet it by having led a quiet unobtrusive life of self-denial and devotion to god's glory. such a life let us pray god that it may please him to enable us to pray that we may lead." "dearest theobald," exclaimed christina, drying the tears that had gathered in her eyes, "you are always, always right. let us be self-denying, pure, upright, truthful in word and deed." she clasped her hands and looked up to heaven as she spoke. "dearest," rejoined her lover, "we have ever hitherto endeavoured to be all of these things; we have not been worldly people; let us watch and pray that we may so continue to the end." the moon had risen and the arbour was getting damp, so they adjourned further aspirations for a more convenient season. at other times christina pictured herself and theobald as braving the scorn of almost every human being in the achievement of some mighty task which should redound to the honour of her redeemer. she could face anything for this. but always towards the end of her vision there came a little coronation scene high up in the golden regions of the heavens, and a diadem was set upon her head by the son of man himself, amid a host of angels and archangels who looked on with envy and admiration--and here even theobald himself was out of it. if there could be such a thing as the mammon of righteousness christina would have assuredly made friends with it. her papa and mamma were very estimable people and would in the course of time receive heavenly mansions in which they would be exceedingly comfortable; so doubtless would her sisters; so perhaps, even might her brothers; but for herself she felt that a higher destiny was preparing, which it was her duty never to lose sight of. the first step towards it would be her marriage with theobald. in spite, however, of these flights of religious romanticism, christina was a good-tempered kindly-natured girl enough, who, if she had married a sensible layman--we will say a hotel-keeper--would have developed into a good landlady and been deservedly popular with her guests. such was theobald's engaged life. many a little present passed between the pair, and many a small surprise did they prepare pleasantly for one another. they never quarrelled, and neither of them ever flirted with anyone else. mrs allaby and his future sisters-in-law idolised theobald in spite of its being impossible to get another deacon to come and be played for as long as theobald was able to help mr allaby, which now of course he did free gratis and for nothing; two of the sisters, however, did manage to find husbands before christina was actually married, and on each occasion theobald played the part of decoy elephant. in the end only two out of the seven daughters remained single. after three or four years, old mr pontifex became accustomed to his son's engagement and looked upon it as among the things which had now a prescriptive right to toleration. in the spring of , more than five years after theobald had first walked over to crampsford, one of the best livings in the gift of the college unexpectedly fell vacant, and was for various reasons declined by the two fellows senior to theobald, who might each have been expected to take it. the living was then offered to and of course accepted by theobald, being in value not less than pounds a year with a suitable house and garden. old mr pontifex then came down more handsomely than was expected and settled , pounds on his son and daughter-in-law for life with remainder to such of their issue as they might appoint. in the month of july, theobald and christina became man and wife. chapter xiii a due number of old shoes had been thrown at the carriage in which the happy pair departed from the rectory, and it had turned the corner at the bottom of the village. it could then be seen for two or three hundred yards creeping past a fir coppice, and after this was lost to view. "john," said mr allaby to his man-servant, "shut the gate;" and he went indoors with a sigh of relief which seemed to say: "i have done it, and i am alive." this was the reaction after a burst of enthusiastic merriment during which the old gentleman had run twenty yards after the carriage to fling a slipper at it--which he had duly flung. but what were the feelings of theobald and christina when the village was passed and they were rolling quietly by the fir plantation? it is at this point that even the stoutest heart must fail, unless it beat in the breast of one who is over head and ears in love. if a young man is in a small boat on a choppy sea, along with his affianced bride and both are sea-sick, and if the sick swain can forget his own anguish in the happiness of holding the fair one's head when she is at her worst--then he is in love, and his heart will be in no danger of failing him as he passes his fir plantation. other people, and unfortunately by far the greater number of those who get married must be classed among the "other people," will inevitably go through a quarter or half an hour of greater or less badness as the case may be. taking numbers into account, i should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from st george's, hanover square, than in the condemned cells of newgate. there is no time at which what the italians call _la figlia della morte_ lays her cold hand upon a man more awfully than during the first half hour that he is alone with a woman whom he has married but never genuinely loved. death's daughter did not spare theobald. he had behaved very well hitherto. when christina had offered to let him go, he had stuck to his post with a magnanimity on which he had plumed himself ever since. from that time forward he had said to himself: "i, at any rate, am the very soul of honour; i am not," etc., etc. true, at the moment of magnanimity the actual cash payment, so to speak, was still distant; when his father gave formal consent to his marriage things began to look more serious; when the college living had fallen vacant and been accepted they looked more serious still; but when christina actually named the day, then theobald's heart fainted within him. the engagement had gone on so long that he had got into a groove, and the prospect of change was disconcerting. christina and he had got on, he thought to himself, very nicely for a great number of years; why--why--why should they not continue to go on as they were doing now for the rest of their lives? but there was no more chance of escape for him than for the sheep which is being driven to the butcher's back premises, and like the sheep he felt that there was nothing to be gained by resistance, so he made none. he behaved, in fact, with decency, and was declared on all hands to be one of the happiest men imaginable. now, however, to change the metaphor, the drop had actually fallen, and the poor wretch was hanging in mid air along with the creature of his affections. this creature was now thirty-three years old, and looked it: she had been weeping, and her eyes and nose were reddish; if "i have done it and i am alive," was written on mr allaby's face after he had thrown the shoe, "i have done it, and i do not see how i can possibly live much longer" was upon the face of theobald as he was being driven along by the fir plantation. this, however, was not apparent at the rectory. all that could be seen there was the bobbing up and down of the postilion's head, which just over-topped the hedge by the roadside as he rose in his stirrups, and the black and yellow body of the carriage. for some time the pair said nothing: what they must have felt during their first half hour, the reader must guess, for it is beyond my power to tell him; at the end of that time, however, theobald had rummaged up a conclusion from some odd corner of his soul to the effect that now he and christina were married the sooner they fell into their future mutual relations the better. if people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognise as reasonable, they will always find the next step more easy both to see and take. what, then, thought theobald, was here at this moment the first and most obvious matter to be considered, and what would be an equitable view of his and christina's relative positions in respect to it? clearly their first dinner was their first joint entry into the duties and pleasures of married life. no less clearly it was christina's duty to order it, and his own to eat it and pay for it. the arguments leading to this conclusion, and the conclusion itself, flashed upon theobald about three and a half miles after he had left crampsford on the road to newmarket. he had breakfasted early, but his usual appetite had failed him. they had left the vicarage at noon without staying for the wedding breakfast. theobald liked an early dinner; it dawned upon him that he was beginning to be hungry; from this to the conclusion stated in the preceding paragraph the steps had been easy. after a few minutes' further reflection he broached the matter to his bride, and thus the ice was broken. mrs theobald was not prepared for so sudden an assumption of importance. her nerves, never of the strongest, had been strung to their highest tension by the event of the morning. she wanted to escape observation; she was conscious of looking a little older than she quite liked to look as a bride who had been married that morning; she feared the landlady, the chamber-maid, the waiter--everybody and everything; her heart beat so fast that she could hardly speak, much less go through the ordeal of ordering dinner in a strange hotel with a strange landlady. she begged and prayed to be let off. if theobald would only order dinner this once, she would order it any day and every day in future. but the inexorable theobald was not to be put off with such absurd excuses. he was master now. had not christina less than two hours ago promised solemnly to honour and obey him, and was she turning restive over such a trifle as this? the loving smile departed from his face, and was succeeded by a scowl which that old turk, his father, might have envied. "stuff and nonsense, my dearest christina," he exclaimed mildly, and stamped his foot upon the floor of the carriage. "it is a wife's duty to order her husband's dinner; you are my wife, and i shall expect you to order mine." for theobald was nothing if he was not logical. the bride began to cry, and said he was unkind; whereon he said nothing, but revolved unutterable things in his heart. was this, then, the end of his six years of unflagging devotion? was it for this that when christina had offered to let him off, he had stuck to his engagement? was this the outcome of her talks about duty and spiritual mindedness--that now upon the very day of her marriage she should fail to see that the first step in obedience to god lay in obedience to himself? he would drive back to crampsford; he would complain to mr and mrs allaby; he didn't mean to have married christina; he hadn't married her; it was all a hideous dream; he would--but a voice kept ringing in his ears which said: "you can't, can't, can't." "can't i?" screamed the unhappy creature to himself. "no," said the remorseless voice, "you can't. you are a married man." he rolled back in his corner of the carriage and for the first time felt how iniquitous were the marriage laws of england. but he would buy milton's prose works and read his pamphlet on divorce. he might perhaps be able to get them at newmarket. so the bride sat crying in one corner of the carriage; and the bridegroom sulked in the other, and he feared her as only a bridegroom can fear. presently, however, a feeble voice was heard from the bride's corner saying: "dearest theobald--dearest theobald, forgive me; i have been very, very wrong. please do not be angry with me. i will order the--the--" but the word "dinner" was checked by rising sobs. when theobald heard these words a load began to be lifted from his heart, but he only looked towards her, and that not too pleasantly. "please tell me," continued the voice, "what you think you would like, and i will tell the landlady when we get to newmar--" but another burst of sobs checked the completion of the word. the load on theobald's heart grew lighter and lighter. was it possible that she might not be going to henpeck him after all? besides, had she not diverted his attention from herself to his approaching dinner? he swallowed down more of his apprehensions and said, but still gloomily, "i think we might have a roast fowl with bread sauce, new potatoes and green peas, and then we will see if they could let us have a cherry tart and some cream." after a few minutes more he drew her towards him, kissed away her tears, and assured her that he knew she would be a good wife to him. "dearest theobald," she exclaimed in answer, "you are an angel." theobald believed her, and in ten minutes more the happy couple alighted at the inn at newmarket. bravely did christina go through her arduous task. eagerly did she beseech the landlady, in secret, not to keep her theobald waiting longer than was absolutely necessary. "if you have any soup ready, you know, mrs barber, it might save ten minutes, for we might have it while the fowl was browning." see how necessity had nerved her! but in truth she had a splitting headache, and would have given anything to have been alone. the dinner was a success. a pint of sherry had warmed theobald's heart, and he began to hope that, after all, matters might still go well with him. he had conquered in the first battle, and this gives great prestige. how easy it had been too! why had he never treated his sisters in this way? he would do so next time he saw them; he might in time be able to stand up to his brother john, or even his father. thus do we build castles in air when flushed with wine and conquest. the end of the honeymoon saw mrs theobald the most devotedly obsequious wife in all england. according to the old saying, theobald had killed the cat at the beginning. it had been a very little cat, a mere kitten in fact, or he might have been afraid to face it, but such as it had been he had challenged it to mortal combat, and had held up its dripping head defiantly before his wife's face. the rest had been easy. strange that one whom i have described hitherto as so timid and easily put upon should prove such a tartar all of a sudden on the day of his marriage. perhaps i have passed over his years of courtship too rapidly. during these he had become a tutor of his college, and had at last been junior dean. i never yet knew a man whose sense of his own importance did not become adequately developed after he had held a resident fellowship for five or six years. true--immediately on arriving within a ten mile radius of his father's house, an enchantment fell upon him, so that his knees waxed weak, his greatness departed, and he again felt himself like an overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud; but then he was not often at elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the spell was taken off again; once more he became the fellow and tutor of his college, the junior dean, the betrothed of christina, the idol of the allaby womankind. from all which it may be gathered that if christina had been a barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any show of resistance theobald would not have ventured to swagger with her, but she was not a barbary hen, she was only a common hen, and that too with rather a smaller share of personal bravery than hens generally have. chapter xiv battersby-on-the-hill was the name of the village of which theobald was now rector. it contained or inhabitants, scattered over a rather large area, and consisting entirely of farmers and agricultural labourers. the rectory was commodious, and placed on the brow of a hill which gave it a delightful prospect. there was a fair sprinkling of neighbours within visiting range, but with one or two exceptions they were the clergymen and clergymen's families of the surrounding villages. by these the pontifexes were welcomed as great acquisitions to the neighbourhood. mr pontifex, they said was so clever; he had been senior classic and senior wrangler; a perfect genius in fact, and yet with so much sound practical common sense as well. as son of such a distinguished man as the great mr pontifex the publisher he would come into a large property by-and-by. was there not an elder brother? yes, but there would be so much that theobald would probably get something very considerable. of course they would give dinner parties. and mrs pontifex, what a charming woman she was; she was certainly not exactly pretty perhaps, but then she had such a sweet smile and her manner was so bright and winning. she was so devoted too to her husband and her husband to her; they really did come up to one's ideas of what lovers used to be in days of old; it was rare to meet with such a pair in these degenerate times; it was quite beautiful, etc., etc. such were the comments of the neighbours on the new arrivals. as for theobald's own parishioners, the farmers were civil and the labourers and their wives obsequious. there was a little dissent, the legacy of a careless predecessor, but as mrs theobald said proudly, "i think theobald may be trusted to deal with _that_." the church was then an interesting specimen of late norman, with some early english additions. it was what in these days would be called in a very bad state of repair, but forty or fifty years ago few churches were in good repair. if there is one feature more characteristic of the present generation than another it is that it has been a great restorer of churches. horace preached church restoration in his ode:-- delicta majorum immeritus lues, romane, donec templa refeceris aedesque labentes deorum et foeda nigro simulacra fumo. nothing went right with rome for long together after the augustan age, but whether it was because she did restore the temples or because she did not restore them i know not. they certainly went all wrong after constantine's time and yet rome is still a city of some importance. i may say here that before theobald had been many years at battersby he found scope for useful work in the rebuilding of battersby church, which he carried out at considerable cost, towards which he subscribed liberally himself. he was his own architect, and this saved expense; but architecture was not very well understood about the year , when theobald commenced operations, and the result is not as satisfactory as it would have been if he had waited a few years longer. every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him. i may very likely be condemning myself, all the time that i am writing this book, for i know that whether i like it or no i am portraying myself more surely than i am portraying any of the characters whom i set before the reader. i am sorry that it is so, but i cannot help it--after which sop to nemesis i will say that battersby church in its amended form has always struck me as a better portrait of theobald than any sculptor or painter short of a great master would be able to produce. i remember staying with theobald some six or seven months after he was married, and while the old church was still standing. i went to church, and felt as naaman must have felt on certain occasions when he had to accompany his master on his return after having been cured of his leprosy. i have carried away a more vivid recollection of this and of the people, than of theobald's sermon. even now i can see the men in blue smock frocks reaching to their heels, and more than one old woman in a scarlet cloak; the row of stolid, dull, vacant plough-boys, ungainly in build, uncomely in face, lifeless, apathetic, a race a good deal more like the pre-revolution french peasant as described by carlyle than is pleasant to reflect upon--a race now supplanted by a smarter, comelier and more hopeful generation, which has discovered that it too has a right to as much happiness as it can get, and with clearer ideas about the best means of getting it. they shamble in one after another, with steaming breath, for it is winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, and through the opened door i catch a momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and snow-clad tombstones. somehow or other i find the strain which handel has wedded to the words "there the ploughman near at hand," has got into my head and there is no getting it out again. how marvellously old handel understood these people! they bob to theobald as they passed the reading desk ("the people hereabouts are truly respectful," whispered christina to me, "they know their betters."), and take their seats in a long row against the wall. the choir clamber up into the gallery with their instruments--a violoncello, a clarinet and a trombone. i see them and soon i hear them, for there is a hymn before the service, a wild strain, a remnant, if i mistake not, of some pre-reformation litany. i have heard what i believe was its remote musical progenitor in the church of ss. giovanni e paolo at venice not five years since; and again i have heard it far away in mid- atlantic upon a grey sea-sabbath in june, when neither winds nor waves are stirring, so that the emigrants gather on deck, and their plaintive psalm goes forth upon the silver haze of the sky, and on the wilderness of a sea that has sighed till it can sigh no longer. or it may be heard at some methodist camp meeting upon a welsh hillside, but in the churches it is gone for ever. if i were a musician i would take it as the subject for the _adagio_ in a wesleyan symphony. gone now are the clarinet, the violoncello and the trombone, wild minstrelsy as of the doleful creatures in ezekiel, discordant, but infinitely pathetic. gone is that scarebabe stentor, that bellowing bull of bashan the village blacksmith, gone is the melodious carpenter, gone the brawny shepherd with the red hair, who roared more lustily than all, until they came to the words, "shepherds with your flocks abiding," when modesty covered him with confusion, and compelled him to be silent, as though his own health were being drunk. they were doomed and had a presentiment of evil, even when first i saw them, but they had still a little lease of choir life remaining, and they roared out [wick-ed hands have pierced and nailed him, pierced and nailed him to a tree.] but no description can give a proper idea of the effect. when i was last in battersby church there was a harmonium played by a sweet-looking girl with a choir of school children around her, and they chanted the canticles to the most correct of chants, and they sang hymns ancient and modern; the high pews were gone, nay, the very gallery in which the old choir had sung was removed as an accursed thing which might remind the people of the high places, and theobald was old, and christina was lying under the yew trees in the churchyard. but in the evening later on i saw three very old men come chuckling out of a dissenting chapel, and surely enough they were my old friends the blacksmith, the carpenter and the shepherd. there was a look of content upon their faces which made me feel certain they had been singing; not doubtless with the old glory of the violoncello, the clarinet and the trombone, but still songs of sion and no new fangled papistry. chapter xv the hymn had engaged my attention; when it was over i had time to take stock of the congregation. they were chiefly farmers--fat, very well-to- do folk, who had come some of them with their wives and children from outlying farms two and three miles away; haters of popery and of anything which any one might choose to say was popish; good, sensible fellows who detested theory of any kind, whose ideal was the maintenance of the _status quo_ with perhaps a loving reminiscence of old war times, and a sense of wrong that the weather was not more completely under their control, who desired higher prices and cheaper wages, but otherwise were most contented when things were changing least; tolerators, if not lovers, of all that was familiar, haters of all that was unfamiliar; they would have been equally horrified at hearing the christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practised. "what can there be in common between theobald and his parishioners?" said christina to me, in the course of the evening, when her husband was for a few moments absent. "of course one must not complain, but i assure you it grieves me to see a man of theobald's ability thrown away upon such a place as this. if we had only been at gaysbury, where there are the a's, the b's, the c's, and lord d's place, as you know, quite close, i should not then have felt that we were living in such a desert; but i suppose it is for the best," she added more cheerfully; "and then of course the bishop will come to us whenever he is in the neighbourhood, and if we were at gaysbury he might have gone to lord d's." perhaps i have now said enough to indicate the kind of place in which theobald's lines were cast, and the sort of woman he had married. as for his own habits, i see him trudging through muddy lanes and over long sweeps of plover-haunted pastures to visit a dying cottager's wife. he takes her meat and wine from his own table, and that not a little only but liberally. according to his lights also, he administers what he is pleased to call spiritual consolation. "i am afraid i'm going to hell, sir," says the sick woman with a whine. "oh, sir, save me, save me, don't let me go there. i couldn't stand it, sir, i should die with fear, the very thought of it drives me into a cold sweat all over." "mrs thompson," says theobald gravely, "you must have faith in the precious blood of your redeemer; it is he alone who can save you." "but are you sure, sir," says she, looking wistfully at him, "that he will forgive me--for i've not been a very good woman, indeed i haven't--and if god would only say 'yes' outright with his mouth when i ask whether my sins are forgiven me--" "but they _are_ forgiven you, mrs thompson," says theobald with some sternness, for the same ground has been gone over a good many times already, and he has borne the unhappy woman's misgivings now for a full quarter of an hour. then he puts a stop to the conversation by repeating prayers taken from the "visitation of the sick," and overawes the poor wretch from expressing further anxiety as to her condition. "can't you tell me, sir," she exclaims piteously, as she sees that he is preparing to go away, "can't you tell me that there is no day of judgement, and that there is no such place as hell? i can do without the heaven, sir, but i cannot do with the hell." theobald is much shocked. "mrs thompson," he rejoins impressively, "let me implore you to suffer no doubt concerning these two cornerstones of our religion to cross your mind at a moment like the present. if there is one thing more certain than another it is that we shall all appear before the judgement seat of christ, and that the wicked will be consumed in a lake of everlasting fire. doubt this, mrs thompson, and you are lost." the poor woman buries her fevered head in the coverlet in a paroxysm of fear which at last finds relief in tears. "mrs thompson," says theobald, with his hand on the door, "compose yourself, be calm; you must please to take my word for it that at the day of judgement your sins will be all washed white in the blood of the lamb, mrs thompson. yea," he exclaims frantically, "though they be as scarlet, yet shall they be as white as wool," and he makes off as fast as he can from the fetid atmosphere of the cottage to the pure air outside. oh, how thankful he is when the interview is over! he returns home, conscious that he has done his duty, and administered the comforts of religion to a dying sinner. his admiring wife awaits him at the rectory, and assures him that never yet was clergyman so devoted to the welfare of his flock. he believes her; he has a natural tendency to believe everything that is told him, and who should know the facts of the case better than his wife? poor fellow! he has done his best, but what does a fish's best come to when the fish is out of water? he has left meat and wine--that he can do; he will call again and will leave more meat and wine; day after day he trudges over the same plover-haunted fields, and listens at the end of his walk to the same agony of forebodings, which day after day he silences, but does not remove, till at last a merciful weakness renders the sufferer careless of her future, and theobald is satisfied that her mind is now peacefully at rest in jesus. chapter xvi he does not like this branch of his profession--indeed he hates it--but will not admit it to himself. the habit of not admitting things to himself has become a confirmed one with him. nevertheless there haunts him an ill defined sense that life would be pleasanter if there were no sick sinners, or if they would at any rate face an eternity of torture with more indifference. he does not feel that he is in his element. the farmers look as if they were in their element. they are full-bodied, healthy and contented; but between him and them there is a great gulf fixed. a hard and drawn look begins to settle about the corners of his mouth, so that even if he were not in a black coat and white tie a child might know him for a parson. he knows that he is doing his duty. every day convinces him of this more firmly; but then there is not much duty for him to do. he is sadly in want of occupation. he has no taste for any of those field sports which were not considered unbecoming for a clergyman forty years ago. he does not ride, nor shoot, nor fish, nor course, nor play cricket. study, to do him justice, he had never really liked, and what inducement was there for him to study at battersby? he reads neither old books nor new ones. he does not interest himself in art or science or politics, but he sets his back up with some promptness if any of them show any development unfamiliar to himself. true, he writes his own sermons, but even his wife considers that his _forte_ lies rather in the example of his life (which is one long act of self-devotion) than in his utterances from the pulpit. after breakfast he retires to his study; he cuts little bits out of the bible and gums them with exquisite neatness by the side of other little bits; this he calls making a harmony of the old and new testaments. alongside the extracts he copies in the very perfection of hand-writing extracts from mede (the only man, according to theobald, who really understood the book of revelation), patrick, and other old divines. he works steadily at this for half an hour every morning during many years, and the result is doubtless valuable. after some years have gone by he hears his children their lessons, and the daily oft-repeated screams that issue from the study during the lesson hours tell their own horrible story over the house. he has also taken to collecting a _hortus siccus_, and through the interest of his father was once mentioned in the saturday magazine as having been the first to find a plant, whose name i have forgotten, in the neighbourhood of battersby. this number of the saturday magazine has been bound in red morocco, and is kept upon the drawing-room table. he potters about his garden; if he hears a hen cackling he runs and tells christina, and straightway goes hunting for the egg. when the two miss allabys came, as they sometimes did, to stay with christina, they said the life led by their sister and brother-in-law was an idyll. happy indeed was christina in her choice, for that she had had a choice was a fiction which soon took root among them--and happy theobald in his christina. somehow or other christina was always a little shy of cards when her sisters were staying with her, though at other times she enjoyed a game of cribbage or a rubber of whist heartily enough, but her sisters knew they would never be asked to battersby again if they were to refer to that little matter, and on the whole it was worth their while to be asked to battersby. if theobald's temper was rather irritable he did not vent it upon them. by nature reserved, if he could have found someone to cook his dinner for him, he would rather have lived in a desert island than not. in his heart of hearts he held with pope that "the greatest nuisance to mankind is man" or words to that effect--only that women, with the exception perhaps of christina, were worse. yet for all this when visitors called he put a better face on it than anyone who was behind the scenes would have expected. he was quick too at introducing the names of any literary celebrities whom he had met at his father's house, and soon established an all-round reputation which satisfied even christina herself. who so _integer vitae scelerisque purus_, it was asked, as mr pontifex of battersby? who so fit to be consulted if any difficulty about parish management should arise? who such a happy mixture of the sincere uninquiring christian and of the man of the world? for so people actually called him. they said he was such an admirable man of business. certainly if he had said he would pay a sum of money at a certain time, the money would be forthcoming on the appointed day, and this is saying a good deal for any man. his constitutional timidity rendered him incapable of an attempt to overreach when there was the remotest chance of opposition or publicity, and his correct bearing and somewhat stern expression were a great protection to him against being overreached. he never talked of money, and invariably changed the subject whenever money was introduced. his expression of unutterable horror at all kinds of meanness was a sufficient guarantee that he was not mean himself. besides he had no business transactions save of the most ordinary butcher's book and baker's book description. his tastes--if he had any--were, as we have seen, simple; he had pounds a year and a house; the neighbourhood was cheap, and for some time he had no children to be a drag upon him. who was not to be envied, and if envied why then respected, if theobald was not enviable? yet i imagine that christina was on the whole happier than her husband. she had not to go and visit sick parishioners, and the management of her house and the keeping of her accounts afforded as much occupation as she desired. her principal duty was, as she well said, to her husband--to love him, honour him, and keep him in a good temper. to do her justice she fulfilled this duty to the uttermost of her power. it would have been better perhaps if she had not so frequently assured her husband that he was the best and wisest of mankind, for no one in his little world ever dreamed of telling him anything else, and it was not long before he ceased to have any doubt upon the matter. as for his temper, which had become very violent at times, she took care to humour it on the slightest sign of an approaching outbreak. she had early found that this was much the easiest plan. the thunder was seldom for herself. long before her marriage even she had studied his little ways, and knew how to add fuel to the fire as long as the fire seemed to want it, and then to damp it judiciously down, making as little smoke as possible. in money matters she was scrupulousness itself. theobald made her a quarterly allowance for her dress, pocket money and little charities and presents. in these last items she was liberal in proportion to her income; indeed she dressed with great economy and gave away whatever was over in presents or charity. oh, what a comfort it was to theobald to reflect that he had a wife on whom he could rely never to cost him a sixpence of unauthorised expenditure! letting alone her absolute submission, the perfect coincidence of her opinion with his own upon every subject and her constant assurances to him that he was right in everything which he took it into his head to say or do, what a tower of strength to him was her exactness in money matters! as years went by he became as fond of his wife as it was in his nature to be of any living thing, and applauded himself for having stuck to his engagement--a piece of virtue of which he was now reaping the reward. even when christina did outrun her quarterly stipend by some thirty shillings or a couple of pounds, it was always made perfectly clear to theobald how the deficiency had arisen--there had been an unusually costly evening dress bought which was to last a long time, or somebody's unexpected wedding had necessitated a more handsome present than the quarter's balance would quite allow: the excess of expenditure was always repaid in the following quarter or quarters even though it were only ten shillings at a time. i believe, however, that after they had been married some twenty years, christina had somewhat fallen from her original perfection as regards money. she had got gradually in arrear during many successive quarters, till she had contracted a chronic loan a sort of domestic national debt, amounting to between seven and eight pounds. theobald at length felt that a remonstrance had become imperative, and took advantage of his silver wedding day to inform christina that her indebtedness was cancelled, and at the same time to beg that she would endeavour henceforth to equalise her expenditure and her income. she burst into tears of love and gratitude, assured him that he was the best and most generous of men, and never during the remainder of her married life was she a single shilling behind hand. christina hated change of all sorts no less cordially than her husband. she and theobald had nearly everything in this world that they could wish for; why, then, should people desire to introduce all sorts of changes of which no one could foresee the end? religion, she was deeply convinced, had long since attained its final development, nor could it enter into the heart of reasonable man to conceive any faith more perfect than was inculcated by the church of england. she could imagine no position more honourable than that of a clergyman's wife unless indeed it were a bishop's. considering his father's influence it was not at all impossible that theobald might be a bishop some day--and then--then would occur to her that one little flaw in the practice of the church of england--a flaw not indeed in its doctrine, but in its policy, which she believed on the whole to be a mistaken one in this respect. i mean the fact that a bishop's wife does not take the rank of her husband. this had been the doing of elizabeth, who had been a bad woman, of exceeding doubtful moral character, and at heart a papist to the last. perhaps people ought to have been above mere considerations of worldly dignity, but the world was as it was, and such things carried weight with them, whether they ought to do so or no. her influence as plain mrs pontifex, wife, we will say, of the bishop of winchester, would no doubt be considerable. such a character as hers could not fail to carry weight if she were ever in a sufficiently conspicuous sphere for its influence to be widely felt; but as lady winchester--or the bishopess--which would sound quite nicely--who could doubt that her power for good would be enhanced? and it would be all the nicer because if she had a daughter the daughter would not be a bishopess unless indeed she were to marry a bishop too, which would not be likely. these were her thoughts upon her good days; at other times she would, to do her justice, have doubts whether she was in all respects as spiritually minded as she ought to be. she must press on, press on, till every enemy to her salvation was surmounted and satan himself lay bruised under her feet. it occurred to her on one of these occasions that she might steal a march over some of her contemporaries if she were to leave off eating black puddings, of which whenever they had killed a pig she had hitherto partaken freely; and if she were also careful that no fowls were served at her table which had had their necks wrung, but only such as had had their throats cut and been allowed to bleed. st paul and the church of jerusalem had insisted upon it as necessary that even gentile converts should abstain from things strangled and from blood, and they had joined this prohibition with that of a vice about the abominable nature of which there could be no question; it would be well therefore to abstain in future and see whether any noteworthy spiritual result ensued. she did abstain, and was certain that from the day of her resolve she had felt stronger, purer in heart, and in all respects more spiritually minded than she had ever felt hitherto. theobald did not lay so much stress on this as she did, but as she settled what he should have at dinner she could take care that he got no strangled fowls; as for black puddings, happily, he had seen them made when he was a boy, and had never got over his aversion for them. she wished the matter were one of more general observance than it was; this was just a case in which as lady winchester she might have been able to do what as plain mrs pontifex it was hopeless even to attempt. and thus this worthy couple jogged on from month to month and from year to year. the reader, if he has passed middle life and has a clerical connection, will probably remember scores and scores of rectors and rectors' wives who differed in no material respect from theobald and christina. speaking from a recollection and experience extending over nearly eighty years from the time when i was myself a child in the nursery of a vicarage, i should say i had drawn the better rather than the worse side of the life of an english country parson of some fifty years ago. i admit, however, that there are no such people to be found nowadays. a more united or, on the whole, happier, couple could not have been found in england. one grief only overshadowed the early years of their married life: i mean the fact that no living children were born to them. chapter xvii in the course of time this sorrow was removed. at the beginning of the fifth year of her married life christina was safely delivered of a boy. this was on the sixth of september . word was immediately sent to old mr pontifex, who received the news with real pleasure. his son john's wife had borne daughters only, and he was seriously uneasy lest there should be a failure in the male line of his descendants. the good news, therefore, was doubly welcome, and caused as much delight at elmhurst as dismay in woburn square, where the john pontifexes were then living. here, indeed, this freak of fortune was felt to be all the more cruel on account of the impossibility of resenting it openly; but the delighted grandfather cared nothing for what the john pontifexes might feel or not feel; he had wanted a grandson and he had got a grandson, and this should be enough for everybody; and, now that mrs theobald had taken to good ways, she might bring him more grandsons, which would be desirable, for he should not feel safe with fewer than three. he rang the bell for the butler. "gelstrap," he said solemnly, "i want to go down into the cellar." then gelstrap preceded him with a candle, and he went into the inner vault where he kept his choicest wines. he passed many bins: there was port, imperial tokay, claret, sherry, these and many others were passed, but it was not for them that the head of the pontifex family had gone down into his inner cellar. a bin, which had appeared empty until the full light of the candle had been brought to bear upon it, was now found to contain a single pint bottle. this was the object of mr pontifex's search. gelstrap had often pondered over this bottle. it had been placed there by mr pontifex himself about a dozen years previously, on his return from a visit to his friend the celebrated traveller dr jones--but there was no tablet above the bin which might give a clue to the nature of its contents. on more than one occasion when his master had gone out and left his keys accidentally behind him, as he sometimes did, gelstrap had submitted the bottle to all the tests he could venture upon, but it was so carefully sealed that wisdom remained quite shut out from that entrance at which he would have welcomed her most gladly--and indeed from all other entrances, for he could make out nothing at all. and now the mystery was to be solved. but alas! it seemed as though the last chance of securing even a sip of the contents was to be removed for ever, for mr pontifex took the bottle into his own hands and held it up to the light after carefully examining the seal. he smiled and left the bin with the bottle in his hands. then came a catastrophe. he stumbled over an empty hamper; there was the sound of a fall--a smash of broken glass, and in an instant the cellar floor was covered with the liquid that had been preserved so carefully for so many years. with his usual presence of mind mr pontifex gasped out a month's warning to gelstrap. then he got up, and stamped as theobald had done when christina had wanted not to order his dinner. "it's water from the jordan," he exclaimed furiously, "which i have been saving for the baptism of my eldest grandson. damn you, gelstrap, how dare you be so infernally careless as to leave that hamper littering about the cellar?" i wonder the water of the sacred stream did not stand upright as an heap upon the cellar floor and rebuke him. gelstrap told the other servants afterwards that his master's language had made his backbone curdle. the moment, however, that he heard the word "water," he saw his way again, and flew to the pantry. before his master had well noted his absence he returned with a little sponge and a basin, and had begun sopping up the waters of the jordan as though they had been a common slop. "i'll filter it, sir," said gelstrap meekly. "it'll come quite clean." mr pontifex saw hope in this suggestion, which was shortly carried out by the help of a piece of blotting paper and a funnel, under his own eyes. eventually it was found that half a pint was saved, and this was held to be sufficient. then he made preparations for a visit to battersby. he ordered goodly hampers of the choicest eatables, he selected a goodly hamper of choice drinkables. i say choice and not choicest, for although in his first exaltation he had selected some of his very best wine, yet on reflection he had felt that there was moderation in all things, and as he was parting with his best water from the jordan, he would only send some of his second best wine. before he went to battersby he stayed a day or two in london, which he now seldom did, being over seventy years old, and having practically retired from business. the john pontifexes, who kept a sharp eye on him, discovered to their dismay that he had had an interview with his solicitors. chapter xviii for the first time in his life theobald felt that he had done something right, and could look forward to meeting his father without alarm. the old gentleman, indeed, had written him a most cordial letter, announcing his intention of standing godfather to the boy--nay, i may as well give it in full, as it shows the writer at his best. it runs: "dear theobald,--your letter gave me very sincere pleasure, the more so because i had made up my mind for the worst; pray accept my most hearty congratulations for my daughter-in-law and for yourself. "i have long preserved a phial of water from the jordan for the christening of my first grandson, should it please god to grant me one. it was given me by my old friend dr jones. you will agree with me that though the efficacy of the sacrament does not depend upon the source of the baptismal waters, yet, _ceteris paribus_, there is a sentiment attaching to the waters of the jordan which should not be despised. small matters like this sometimes influence a child's whole future career. "i shall bring my own cook, and have told him to get everything ready for the christening dinner. ask as many of your best neighbours as your table will hold. by the way, i have told lesueur _not to get a lobster_--you had better drive over yourself and get one from saltness (for battersby was only fourteen or fifteen miles from the sea coast); they are better there, at least i think so, than anywhere else in england. "i have put your boy down for something in the event of his attaining the age of twenty-one years. if your brother john continues to have nothing but girls i may do more later on, but i have many claims upon me, and am not as well off as you may imagine.--your affectionate father, "g. pontifex." a few days afterwards the writer of the above letter made his appearance in a fly which had brought him from gildenham to battersby, a distance of fourteen miles. there was lesueur, the cook, on the box with the driver, and as many hampers as the fly could carry were disposed upon the roof and elsewhere. next day the john pontifexes had to come, and eliza and maria, as well as alethea, who, by her own special request, was godmother to the boy, for mr pontifex had decided that they were to form a happy family party; so come they all must, and be happy they all must, or it would be the worse for them. next day the author of all this hubbub was actually christened. theobald had proposed to call him george after old mr pontifex, but strange to say, mr pontifex over-ruled him in favour of the name ernest. the word "earnest" was just beginning to come into fashion, and he thought the possession of such a name might, like his having been baptised in water from the jordan, have a permanent effect upon the boy's character, and influence him for good during the more critical periods of his life. i was asked to be his second godfather, and was rejoiced to have an opportunity of meeting alethea, whom i had not seen for some few years, but with whom i had been in constant correspondence. she and i had always been friends from the time we had played together as children onwards. when the death of her grandfather and grandmother severed her connection with paleham my intimacy with the pontifexes was kept up by my having been at school and college with theobald, and each time i saw her i admired her more and more as the best, kindest, wittiest, most lovable, and, to my mind, handsomest woman whom i had ever seen. none of the pontifexes were deficient in good looks; they were a well-grown shapely family enough, but alethea was the flower of the flock even as regards good looks, while in respect of all other qualities that make a woman lovable, it seemed as though the stock that had been intended for the three daughters, and would have been about sufficient for them, had all been allotted to herself, her sisters getting none, and she all. it is impossible for me to explain how it was that she and i never married. we two knew exceedingly well, and that must suffice for the reader. there was the most perfect sympathy and understanding between us; we knew that neither of us would marry anyone else. i had asked her to marry me a dozen times over; having said this much i will say no more upon a point which is in no way necessary for the development of my story. for the last few years there had been difficulties in the way of our meeting, and i had not seen her, though, as i have said, keeping up a close correspondence with her. naturally i was overjoyed to meet her again; she was now just thirty years old, but i thought she looked handsomer than ever. her father, of course, was the lion of the party, but seeing that we were all meek and quite willing to be eaten, he roared to us rather than at us. it was a fine sight to see him tucking his napkin under his rosy old gills, and letting it fall over his capacious waistcoat while the high light from the chandelier danced about the bump of benevolence on his bald old head like a star of bethlehem. the soup was real turtle; the old gentleman was evidently well pleased and he was beginning to come out. gelstrap stood behind his master's chair. i sat next mrs theobald on her left hand, and was thus just opposite her father-in-law, whom i had every opportunity of observing. during the first ten minutes or so, which were taken up with the soup and the bringing in of the fish, i should probably have thought, if i had not long since made up my mind about him, what a fine old man he was and how proud his children should be of him; but suddenly as he was helping himself to lobster sauce, he flushed crimson, a look of extreme vexation suffused his face, and he darted two furtive but fiery glances to the two ends of the table, one for theobald and one for christina. they, poor simple souls, of course saw that something was exceedingly wrong, and so did i, but i couldn't guess what it was till i heard the old man hiss in christina's ear: "it was not made with a hen lobster. what's the use," he continued, "of my calling the boy ernest, and getting him christened in water from the jordan, if his own father does not know a cock from a hen lobster?" this cut me too, for i felt that till that moment i had not so much as known that there were cocks and hens among lobsters, but had vaguely thought that in the matter of matrimony they were even as the angels in heaven, and grew up almost spontaneously from rocks and sea-weed. before the next course was over mr pontifex had recovered his temper, and from that time to the end of the evening he was at his best. he told us all about the water from the jordan; how it had been brought by dr jones along with some stone jars of water from the rhine, the rhone, the elbe and the danube, and what trouble he had had with them at the custom houses, and how the intention had been to make punch with waters from all the greatest rivers in europe; and how he, mr pontifex, had saved the jordan water from going into the bowl, etc., etc. "no, no, no," he continued, "it wouldn't have done at all, you know; very profane idea; so we each took a pint bottle of it home with us, and the punch was much better without it. i had a narrow escape with mine, though, the other day; i fell over a hamper in the cellar, when i was getting it up to bring to battersby, and if i had not taken the greatest care the bottle would certainly have been broken, but i saved it." and gelstrap was standing behind his chair all the time! nothing more happened to ruffle mr pontifex, so we had a delightful evening, which has often recurred to me while watching the after career of my godson. i called a day or two afterwards and found mr pontifex still at battersby, laid up with one of those attacks of liver and depression to which he was becoming more and more subject. i stayed to luncheon. the old gentleman was cross and very difficult; he could eat nothing--had no appetite at all. christina tried to coax him with a little bit of the fleshy part of a mutton chop. "how in the name of reason can i be asked to eat a mutton chop?" he exclaimed angrily; "you forget, my dear christina, that you have to deal with a stomach that is totally disorganised," and he pushed the plate from him, pouting and frowning like a naughty old child. writing as i do by the light of a later knowledge, i suppose i should have seen nothing in this but the world's growing pains, the disturbance inseparable from transition in human things. i suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling--but surely nature might find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it. why should the generations overlap one another at all? why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in bank of england notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account? about a year and a half afterwards the tables were turned on battersby--for mrs john pontifex was safely delivered of a boy. a year or so later still, george pontifex was himself struck down suddenly by a fit of paralysis, much as his mother had been, but he did not see the years of his mother. when his will was opened, it was found that an original bequest of , pounds to theobald himself (over and above the sum that had been settled upon him and christina at the time of his marriage) had been cut down to , pounds when mr pontifex left "something" to ernest. the "something" proved to be pounds, which was to accumulate in the hands of trustees. the rest of the property went to john pontifex, except that each of the daughters was left with about , pounds over and above pounds a piece which they inherited from their mother. theobald's father then had told him the truth but not the whole truth. nevertheless, what right had theobald to complain? certainly it was rather hard to make him think that he and his were to be gainers, and get the honour and glory of the bequest, when all the time the money was virtually being taken out of theobald's own pocket. on the other hand the father doubtless argued that he had never told theobald he was to have anything at all; he had a full right to do what he liked with his own money; if theobald chose to indulge in unwarrantable expectations that was no affair of his; as it was he was providing for him liberally; and if he did take pounds of theobald's share he was still leaving it to theobald's son, which, of course, was much the same thing in the end. no one can deny that the testator had strict right upon his side; nevertheless the reader will agree with me that theobald and christina might not have considered the christening dinner so great a success if all the facts had been before them. mr pontifex had during his own lifetime set up a monument in elmhurst church to the memory of his wife (a slab with urns and cherubs like illegitimate children of king george the fourth, and all the rest of it), and had left space for his own epitaph underneath that of his wife. i do not know whether it was written by one of his children, or whether they got some friend to write it for them. i do not believe that any satire was intended. i believe that it was the intention to convey that nothing short of the day of judgement could give anyone an idea how good a man mr pontifex had been, but at first i found it hard to think that it was free from guile. the epitaph begins by giving dates of birth and death; then sets out that the deceased was for many years head of the firm of fairlie and pontifex, and also resident in the parish of elmhurst. there is not a syllable of either praise or dispraise. the last lines run as follows:-- he now lies awaiting a joyful resurrection at the last day. what manner of man he was that day will discover. chapter xix this much, however, we may say in the meantime, that having lived to be nearly seventy-three years old and died rich he must have been in very fair harmony with his surroundings. i have heard it said sometimes that such and such a person's life was a lie: but no man's life can be a very bad lie; as long as it continues at all it is at worst nine-tenths of it true. mr pontifex's life not only continued a long time, but was prosperous right up to the end. is not this enough? being in this world is it not our most obvious business to make the most of it--to observe what things do _bona fide_ tend to long life and comfort, and to act accordingly? all animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it--and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow. he has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most; god will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us. if mr pontifex is to be blamed it is for not having eaten and drunk less and thus suffered less from his liver, and lived perhaps a year or two longer. goodness is naught unless it tends towards old age and sufficiency of means. i speak broadly and _exceptis excipiendis_. so the psalmist says, "the righteous shall not lack anything that is good." either this is mere poetical license, or it follows that he who lacks anything that is good is not righteous; there is a presumption also that he who has passed a long life without lacking anything that is good has himself also been good enough for practical purposes. mr pontifex never lacked anything he much cared about. true, he might have been happier than he was if he had cared about things which he did not care for, but the gist of this lies in the "if he had cared." we have all sinned and come short of the glory of making ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done, but in this particular case mr pontifex did not care, and would not have gained much by getting what he did not want. there is no casting of swine's meat before men worse than that which would flatter virtue as though her true origin were not good enough for her, but she must have a lineage, deduced as it were by spiritual heralds, from some stock with which she has nothing to do. virtue's true lineage is older and more respectable than any that can be invented for her. she springs from man's experience concerning his own well-being--and this, though not infallible, is still the least fallible thing we have. a system which cannot stand without a better foundation than this must have something so unstable within itself that it will topple over on whatever pedestal we place it. the world has long ago settled that morality and virtue are what bring men peace at the last. "be virtuous," says the copy-book, "and you will be happy." surely if a reputed virtue fails often in this respect it is only an insidious form of vice, and if a reputed vice brings no very serious mischief on a man's later years it is not so bad a vice as it is said to be. unfortunately though we are all of a mind about the main opinion that virtue is what tends to happiness, and vice what ends in sorrow, we are not so unanimous about details--that is to say as to whether any given course, such, we will say, as smoking, has a tendency to happiness or the reverse. i submit it as the result of my own poor observation, that a good deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards children is not generally followed by ill consequences to the parents themselves. they may cast a gloom over their children's lives for many years without having to suffer anything that will hurt them. i should say, then, that it shows no great moral obliquity on the part of parents if within certain limits they make their children's lives a burden to them. granted that mr pontifex's was not a very exalted character, ordinary men are not required to have very exalted characters. it is enough if we are of the same moral and mental stature as the "main" or "mean" part of men--that is to say as the average. it is involved in the very essence of things that rich men who die old shall have been mean. the greatest and wisest of mankind will be almost always found to be the meanest--the ones who have kept the "mean" best between excess either of virtue or vice. they hardly ever have been prosperous if they have not done this, and, considering how many miscarry altogether, it is no small feather in a man's cap if he has been no worse than his neighbours. homer tells us about some one who made it his business [greek text]--always to excel and to stand higher than other people. what an uncompanionable disagreeable person he must have been! homer's heroes generally came to a bad end, and i doubt not that this gentleman, whoever he was, did so sooner or later. a very high standard, again, involves the possession of rare virtues, and rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. a virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal. people divide off vice and virtue as though they were two things, neither of which had with it anything of the other. this is not so. there is no useful virtue which has not some alloy of vice, and hardly any vice, if any, which carries not with it a little dash of virtue; virtue and vice are like life and death, or mind and matter--things which cannot exist without being qualified by their opposite. the most absolute life contains death, and the corpse is still in many respects living; so also it has been said, "if thou, lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss," which shows that even the highest ideal we can conceive will yet admit so much compromise with vice as shall countenance the poor abuses of the time, if they are not too outrageous. that vice pays homage to virtue is notorious; we call this hypocrisy; there should be a word found for the homage which virtue not unfrequently pays, or at any rate would be wise in paying, to vice. i grant that some men will find happiness in having what we all feel to be a higher moral standard than others. if they go in for this, however, they must be content with virtue as her own reward, and not grumble if they find lofty quixotism an expensive luxury, whose rewards belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. they must not wonder if they cut a poor figure in trying to make the most of both worlds. disbelieve as we may the details of the accounts which record the growth of the christian religion, yet a great part of christian teaching will remain as true as though we accepted the details. we cannot serve god and mammon; strait is the way and narrow is the gate which leads to what those who live by faith hold to be best worth having, and there is no way of saying this better than the bible has done. it is well there should be some who think thus, as it is well there should be speculators in commerce, who will often burn their fingers--but it is not well that the majority should leave the "mean" and beaten path. for most men, and most circumstances, pleasure--tangible material prosperity in this world--is the safest test of virtue. progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. to use a commercial metaphor, competition is so keen, and the margin of profits has been cut down so closely that virtue cannot afford to throw any _bona fide_ chance away, and must base her action rather on the actual moneying out of conduct than on a flattering prospectus. she will not therefore neglect--as some do who are prudent and economical enough in other matters--the important factor of our chance of escaping detection, or at any rate of our dying first. a reasonable virtue will give this chance its due value, neither more nor less. pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty. for hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are often still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them, will lead us into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure. when men burn their fingers through following after pleasure they find out their mistake and get to see where they have gone wrong more easily than when they have burnt them through following after a fancied duty, or a fancied idea concerning right virtue. the devil, in fact, when he dresses himself in angel's clothes, can only be detected by experts of exceptional skill, and so often does he adopt this disguise that it is hardly safe to be seen talking to an angel at all, and prudent people will follow after pleasure as a more homely but more respectable and on the whole much more trustworthy guide. returning to mr pontifex, over and above his having lived long and prosperously, he left numerous offspring, to all of whom he communicated not only his physical and mental characteristics, with no more than the usual amount of modification, but also no small share of characteristics which are less easily transmitted--i mean his pecuniary characteristics. it may be said that he acquired these by sitting still and letting money run, as it were, right up against him, but against how many does not money run who do not take it when it does, or who, even if they hold it for a little while, cannot so incorporate it with themselves that it shall descend through them to their offspring? mr pontifex did this. he kept what he may be said to have made, and money is like a reputation for ability--more easily made than kept. take him, then, for all in all, i am not inclined to be so severe upon him as my father was. judge him according to any very lofty standard, and he is nowhere. judge him according to a fair average standard, and there is not much fault to be found with him. i have said what i have said in the foregoing chapter once for all, and shall not break my thread to repeat it. it should go without saying in modification of the verdict which the reader may be inclined to pass too hastily, not only upon mr george pontifex, but also upon theobald and christina. and now i will continue my story. chapter xx the birth of his son opened theobald's eyes to a good deal which he had but faintly realised hitherto. he had had no idea how great a nuisance a baby was. babies come into the world so suddenly at the end, and upset everything so terribly when they do come: why cannot they steal in upon us with less of a shock to the domestic system? his wife, too, did not recover rapidly from her confinement; she remained an invalid for months; here was another nuisance and an expensive one, which interfered with the amount which theobald liked to put by out of his income against, as he said, a rainy day, or to make provision for his family if he should have one. now he was getting a family, so that it became all the more necessary to put money by, and here was the baby hindering him. theorists may say what they like about a man's children being a continuation of his own identity, but it will generally be found that those who talk in this way have no children of their own. practical family men know better. about twelve months after the birth of ernest there came a second, also a boy, who was christened joseph, and in less than twelve months afterwards, a girl, to whom was given the name of charlotte. a few months before this girl was born christina paid a visit to the john pontifexes in london, and, knowing her condition, passed a good deal of time at the royal academy exhibition looking at the types of female beauty portrayed by the academicians, for she had made up her mind that the child this time was to be a girl. alethea warned her not to do this, but she persisted, and certainly the child turned out plain, but whether the pictures caused this or no i cannot say. theobald had never liked children. he had always got away from them as soon as he could, and so had they from him; oh, why, he was inclined to ask himself, could not children be born into the world grown up? if christina could have given birth to a few full-grown clergymen in priest's orders--of moderate views, but inclining rather to evangelicalism, with comfortable livings and in all respects facsimiles of theobald himself--why, there might have been more sense in it; or if people could buy ready-made children at a shop of whatever age and sex they liked, instead of always having to make them at home and to begin at the beginning with them--that might do better, but as it was he did not like it. he felt as he had felt when he had been required to come and be married to christina--that he had been going on for a long time quite nicely, and would much rather continue things on their present footing. in the matter of getting married he had been obliged to pretend he liked it; but times were changed, and if he did not like a thing now, he could find a hundred unexceptionable ways of making his dislike apparent. it might have been better if theobald in his younger days had kicked more against his father: the fact that he had not done so encouraged him to expect the most implicit obedience from his own children. he could trust himself, he said (and so did christina), to be more lenient than perhaps his father had been to himself; his danger, he said (and so again did christina), would be rather in the direction of being too indulgent; he must be on his guard against this, for no duty could be more important than that of teaching a child to obey its parents in all things. he had read not long since of an eastern traveller, who, while exploring somewhere in the more remote parts of arabia and asia minor, had come upon a remarkably hardy, sober, industrious little christian community--all of them in the best of health--who had turned out to be the actual living descendants of jonadab, the son of rechab; and two men in european costume, indeed, but speaking english with a broken accent, and by their colour evidently oriental, had come begging to battersby soon afterwards, and represented themselves as belonging to this people; they had said they were collecting funds to promote the conversion of their fellow tribesmen to the english branch of the christian religion. true, they turned out to be impostors, for when he gave them a pound and christina five shillings from her private purse, they went and got drunk with it in the next village but one to battersby; still, this did not invalidate the story of the eastern traveller. then there were the romans--whose greatness was probably due to the wholesome authority exercised by the head of a family over all its members. some romans had even killed their children; this was going too far, but then the romans were not christians, and knew no better. the practical outcome of the foregoing was a conviction in theobald's mind, and if in his, then in christina's, that it was their duty to begin training up their children in the way they should go, even from their earliest infancy. the first signs of self-will must be carefully looked for, and plucked up by the roots at once before they had time to grow. theobald picked up this numb serpent of a metaphor and cherished it in his bosom. before ernest could well crawl he was taught to kneel; before he could well speak he was taught to lisp the lord's prayer, and the general confession. how was it possible that these things could be taught too early? if his attention flagged or his memory failed him, here was an ill weed which would grow apace, unless it were plucked out immediately, and the only way to pluck it out was to whip him, or shut him up in a cupboard, or dock him of some of the small pleasures of childhood. before he was three years old he could read and, after a fashion, write. before he was four he was learning latin, and could do rule of three sums. as for the child himself, he was naturally of an even temper, he doted upon his nurse, on kittens and puppies, and on all things that would do him the kindness of allowing him to be fond of them. he was fond of his mother, too, but as regards his father, he has told me in later life he could remember no feeling but fear and shrinking. christina did not remonstrate with theobald concerning the severity of the tasks imposed upon their boy, nor yet as to the continual whippings that were found necessary at lesson times. indeed, when during any absence of theobald's the lessons were entrusted to her, she found to her sorrow that it was the only thing to do, and she did it no less effectually than theobald himself, nevertheless she was fond of her boy, which theobald never was, and it was long before she could destroy all affection for herself in the mind of her first-born. but she persevered. chapter xxi strange! for she believed she doted upon him, and certainly she loved him better than either of her other children. her version of the matter was that there had never yet been two parents so self-denying and devoted to the highest welfare of their children as theobald and herself. for ernest, a very great future--she was certain of it--was in store. this made severity all the more necessary, so that from the first he might have been kept pure from every taint of evil. she could not allow herself the scope for castle building which, we read, was indulged in by every jewish matron before the appearance of the messiah, for the messiah had now come, but there was to be a millennium shortly, certainly not later than , when ernest would be just about the right age for it, and a modern elias would be wanted to herald its approach. heaven would bear her witness that she had never shrunk from the idea of martyrdom for herself and theobald, nor would she avoid it for her boy, if his life was required of her in her redeemer's service. oh, no! if god told her to offer up her first-born, as he had told abraham, she would take him up to pigbury beacon and plunge the--no, that she could not do, but it would be unnecessary--some one else might do that. it was not for nothing that ernest had been baptised in water from the jordan. it had not been her doing, nor yet theobald's. they had not sought it. when water from the sacred stream was wanted for a sacred infant, the channel had been found through which it was to flow from far palestine over land and sea to the door of the house where the child was lying. why, it was a miracle! it was! it was! she saw it all now. the jordan had left its bed and flowed into her own house. it was idle to say that this was not a miracle. no miracle was effected without means of some kind; the difference between the faithful and the unbeliever consisted in the very fact that the former could see a miracle where the latter could not. the jews could see no miracle even in the raising of lazarus and the feeding of the five thousand. the john pontifexes would see no miracle in this matter of the water from the jordan. the essence of a miracle lay not in the fact that means had been dispensed with, but in the adoption of means to a great end that had not been available without interference; and no one would suppose that dr jones would have brought the water unless he had been directed. she would tell this to theobald, and get him to see it in the . . . and yet perhaps it would be better not. the insight of women upon matters of this sort was deeper and more unerring than that of men. it was a woman and not a man who had been filled most completely with the whole fulness of the deity. but why had they not treasured up the water after it was used? it ought never, never to have been thrown away, but it had been. perhaps, however, this was for the best too--they might have been tempted to set too much store by it, and it might have become a source of spiritual danger to them--perhaps even of spiritual pride, the very sin of all others which she most abhorred. as for the channel through which the jordan had flowed to battersby, that mattered not more than the earth through which the river ran in palestine itself. dr jones was certainly worldly--very worldly; so, she regretted to feel, had been her father-in-law, though in a less degree; spiritual, at heart, doubtless, and becoming more and more spiritual continually as he grew older, still he was tainted with the world, till a very few hours, probably, before his death, whereas she and theobald had given up all for christ's sake. _they_ were not worldly. at least theobald was not. she had been, but she was sure she had grown in grace since she had left off eating things strangled and blood--this was as the washing in jordan as against abana and pharpar, rivers of damascus. her boy should never touch a strangled fowl nor a black pudding--that, at any rate, she could see to. he should have a coral from the neighbourhood of joppa--there were coral insects on those coasts, so that the thing could easily be done with a little energy; she would write to dr jones about it, etc. and so on for hours together day after day for years. truly, mrs theobald loved her child according to her lights with an exceeding great fondness, but the dreams she had dreamed in sleep were sober realities in comparison with those she indulged in while awake. when ernest was in his second year, theobald, as i have already said, began to teach him to read. he began to whip him two days after he had begun to teach him. "it was painful," as he said to christina, but it was the only thing to do and it was done. the child was puny, white and sickly, so they sent continually for the doctor who dosed him with calomel and james's powder. all was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity, and impatience. they were stupid in little things; and he that is stupid in little will be stupid also in much. presently old mr pontifex died, and then came the revelation of the little alteration he had made in his will simultaneously with his bequest to ernest. it was rather hard to bear, especially as there was no way of conveying a bit of their minds to the testator now that he could no longer hurt them. as regards the boy himself anyone must see that the bequest would be an unmitigated misfortune to him. to leave him a small independence was perhaps the greatest injury which one could inflict upon a young man. it would cripple his energies, and deaden his desire for active employment. many a youth was led into evil courses by the knowledge that on arriving at majority he would come into a few thousands. they might surely have been trusted to have their boy's interests at heart, and must be better judges of those interests than he, at twenty-one, could be expected to be: besides if jonadab, the son of rechab's father--or perhaps it might be simpler under the circumstances to say rechab at once--if rechab, then, had left handsome legacies to his grandchildren--why jonadab might not have found those children so easy to deal with, etc. "my dear," said theobald, after having discussed the matter with christina for the twentieth time, "my dear, the only thing to guide and console us under misfortunes of this kind is to take refuge in practical work. i will go and pay a visit to mrs thompson." on those days mrs thompson would be told that her sins were all washed white, etc., a little sooner and a little more peremptorily than on others. chapter xxii i used to stay at battersby for a day or two sometimes, while my godson and his brother and sister were children. i hardly know why i went, for theobald and i grew more and more apart, but one gets into grooves sometimes, and the supposed friendship between myself and the pontifexes continued to exist, though it was now little more than rudimentary. my godson pleased me more than either of the other children, but he had not much of the buoyancy of childhood, and was more like a puny, sallow little old man than i liked. the young people, however, were very ready to be friendly. i remember ernest and his brother hovered round me on the first day of one of these visits with their hands full of fading flowers, which they at length proffered me. on this i did what i suppose was expected: i inquired if there was a shop near where they could buy sweeties. they said there was, so i felt in my pockets, but only succeeded in finding two pence halfpenny in small money. this i gave them, and the youngsters, aged four and three, toddled off alone. ere long they returned, and ernest said, "we can't get sweeties for all this money" (i felt rebuked, but no rebuke was intended); "we can get sweeties for this" (showing a penny), "and for this" (showing another penny), "but we cannot get them for all this," and he added the halfpenny to the two pence. i suppose they had wanted a twopenny cake, or something like that. i was amused, and left them to solve the difficulty their own way, being anxious to see what they would do. presently ernest said, "may we give you back this" (showing the halfpenny) "and not give you back this and this?" (showing the pence). i assented, and they gave a sigh of relief and went on their way rejoicing. a few more presents of pence and small toys completed the conquest, and they began to take me into their confidence. they told me a good deal which i am afraid i ought not to have listened to. they said that if grandpapa had lived longer he would most likely have been made a lord, and that then papa would have been the honourable and reverend, but that grandpapa was now in heaven singing beautiful hymns with grandmamma allaby to jesus christ, who was very fond of them; and that when ernest was ill, his mamma had told him he need not be afraid of dying for he would go straight to heaven, if he would only be sorry for having done his lessons so badly and vexed his dear papa, and if he would promise never, never to vex him any more; and that when he got to heaven grandpapa and grandmamma allaby would meet him, and he would be always with them, and they would be very good to him and teach him to sing ever such beautiful hymns, more beautiful by far than those which he was now so fond of, etc., etc.; but he did not wish to die, and was glad when he got better, for there were no kittens in heaven, and he did not think there were cowslips to make cowslip tea with. their mother was plainly disappointed in them. "my children are none of them geniuses, mr overton," she said to me at breakfast one morning. "they have fair abilities, and, thanks to theobald's tuition, they are forward for their years, but they have nothing like genius: genius is a thing apart from this, is it not?" of course i said it was "a thing quite apart from this," but if my thoughts had been laid bare, they would have appeared as "give me my coffee immediately, ma'am, and don't talk nonsense." i have no idea what genius is, but so far as i can form any conception about it, i should say it was a stupid word which cannot be too soon abandoned to scientific and literary _claqueurs_. i do not know exactly what christina expected, but i should imagine it was something like this: "my children ought to be all geniuses, because they are mine and theobald's, and it is naughty of them not to be; but, of course, they cannot be so good and clever as theobald and i were, and if they show signs of being so it will be naughty of them. happily, however, they are not this, and yet it is very dreadful that they are not. as for genius--hoity-toity, indeed--why, a genius should turn intellectual summersaults as soon as it is born, and none of my children have yet been able to get into the newspapers. i will not have children of mine give themselves airs--it is enough for them that theobald and i should do so." she did not know, poor woman, that the true greatness wears an invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and out among men without being suspected; if its cloak does not conceal it from itself always, and from all others for many years, its greatness will ere long shrink to very ordinary dimensions. what, then, it may be asked, is the good of being great? the answer is that you may understand greatness better in others, whether alive or dead, and choose better company from these and enjoy and understand that company better when you have chosen it--also that you may be able to give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of those who are yet unborn. this, one would think, was substantial gain enough for greatness without its wanting to ride rough-shod over us, even when disguised as humility. i was there on a sunday, and observed the rigour with which the young people were taught to observe the sabbath; they might not cut out things, nor use their paintbox on a sunday, and this they thought rather hard, because their cousins the john pontifexes might do these things. their cousins might play with their toy train on sunday, but though they had promised that they would run none but sunday trains, all traffic had been prohibited. one treat only was allowed them--on sunday evenings they might choose their own hymns. in the course of the evening they came into the drawing-room, and, as an especial treat, were to sing some of their hymns to me, instead of saying them, so that i might hear how nicely they sang. ernest was to choose the first hymn, and he chose one about some people who were to come to the sunset tree. i am no botanist, and do not know what kind of tree a sunset tree is, but the words began, "come, come, come; come to the sunset tree for the day is past and gone." the tune was rather pretty and had taken ernest's fancy, for he was unusually fond of music and had a sweet little child's voice which he liked using. he was, however, very late in being able to sound a hard it "c" or "k," and, instead of saying "come," he said "tum tum, tum." "ernest," said theobald, from the arm-chair in front of the fire, where he was sitting with his hands folded before him, "don't you think it would be very nice if you were to say 'come' like other people, instead of 'tum'?" "i do say tum," replied ernest, meaning that he had said "come." theobald was always in a bad temper on sunday evening. whether it is that they are as much bored with the day as their neighbours, or whether they are tired, or whatever the cause may be, clergymen are seldom at their best on sunday evening; i had already seen signs that evening that my host was cross, and was a little nervous at hearing ernest say so promptly "i do say tum," when his papa had said he did not say it as he should. theobald noticed the fact that he was being contradicted in a moment. he got up from his arm-chair and went to the piano. "no, ernest, you don't," he said, "you say nothing of the kind, you say 'tum,' not 'come.' now say 'come' after me, as i do." "tum," said ernest, at once; "is that better?" i have no doubt he thought it was, but it was not. "now, ernest, you are not taking pains: you are not trying as you ought to do. it is high time you learned to say 'come,' why, joey can say 'come,' can't you, joey?" "yeth, i can," replied joey, and he said something which was not far off "come." "there, ernest, do you hear that? there's no difficulty about it, nor shadow of difficulty. now, take your own time, think about it, and say 'come' after me." the boy remained silent a few seconds and then said "tum" again. i laughed, but theobald turned to me impatiently and said, "please do not laugh, overton; it will make the boy think it does not matter, and it matters a great deal;" then turning to ernest he said, "now, ernest, i will give you one more chance, and if you don't say 'come,' i shall know that you are self-willed and naughty." he looked very angry, and a shade came over ernest's face, like that which comes upon the face of a puppy when it is being scolded without understanding why. the child saw well what was coming now, was frightened, and, of course, said "tum" once more. "very well, ernest," said his father, catching him angrily by the shoulder. "i have done my best to save you, but if you will have it so, you will," and he lugged the little wretch, crying by anticipation, out of the room. a few minutes more and we could hear screams coming from the dining-room, across the hall which separated the drawing-room from the dining-room, and knew that poor ernest was being beaten. "i have sent him up to bed," said theobald, as he returned to the drawing- room, "and now, christina, i think we will have the servants in to prayers," and he rang the bell for them, red-handed as he was. chapter xxiii the man-servant william came and set the chairs for the maids, and presently they filed in. first christina's maid, then the cook, then the housemaid, then william, and then the coachman. i sat opposite them, and watched their faces as theobald read a chapter from the bible. they were nice people, but more absolute vacancy i never saw upon the countenances of human beings. theobald began by reading a few verses from the old testament, according to some system of his own. on this occasion the passage came from the fifteenth chapter of numbers: it had no particular bearing that i could see upon anything which was going on just then, but the spirit which breathed throughout the whole seemed to me to be so like that of theobald himself, that i could understand better after hearing it, how he came to think as he thought, and act as he acted. the verses are as follows-- "but the soul that doeth aught presumptuously, whether he be born in the land or a stranger, the same reproacheth the lord; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people. "because he hath despised the word of the lord, and hath broken his commandments, that soul shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be upon him. "and while the children of israel were in the wilderness they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. "and they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto moses and aaron, and unto all the congregation. "and they put him in ward because it was not declared what should be done to him. "and the lord said unto moses, the man shall be surely put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. "and all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the lord commanded moses. "and the lord spake unto moses, saying, "speak unto the children of israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue. "and it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the lord, and do them, and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes. "that ye may remember and do all my commandments and be holy unto your god. "i am the lord your god which brought you out of the land of egypt, to be your god: i am the lord your god." my thoughts wandered while theobald was reading the above, and reverted to a little matter which i had observed in the course of the afternoon. it happened that some years previously, a swarm of bees had taken up their abode in the roof of the house under the slates, and had multiplied so that the drawing-room was a good deal frequented by these bees during the summer, when the windows were open. the drawing-room paper was of a pattern which consisted of bunches of red and white roses, and i saw several bees at different times fly up to these bunches and try them, under the impression that they were real flowers; having tried one bunch, they tried the next, and the next, and the next, till they reached the one that was nearest the ceiling, then they went down bunch by bunch as they had ascended, till they were stopped by the back of the sofa; on this they ascended bunch by bunch to the ceiling again; and so on, and so on till i was tired of watching them. as i thought of the family prayers being repeated night and morning, week by week, month by month, and year by year, i could nor help thinking how like it was to the way in which the bees went up the wall and down the wall, bunch by bunch, without ever suspecting that so many of the associated ideas could be present, and yet the main idea be wanting hopelessly, and for ever. when theobald had finished reading we all knelt down and the carlo dolci and the sassoferrato looked down upon a sea of upturned backs, as we buried our faces in our chairs. i noted that theobald prayed that we might be made "truly honest and conscientious" in all our dealings, and smiled at the introduction of the "truly." then my thoughts ran back to the bees and i reflected that after all it was perhaps as well at any rate for theobald that our prayers were seldom marked by any very encouraging degree of response, for if i had thought there was the slightest chance of my being heard i should have prayed that some one might ere long treat him as he had treated ernest. then my thoughts wandered on to those calculations which people make about waste of time and how much one can get done if one gives ten minutes a day to it, and i was thinking what improper suggestion i could make in connection with this and the time spent on family prayers which should at the same time be just tolerable, when i heard theobald beginning "the grace of our lord jesus christ" and in a few seconds the ceremony was over, and the servants filed out again as they had filed in. as soon as they had left the drawing-room, christina, who was a little ashamed of the transaction to which i had been a witness, imprudently returned to it, and began to justify it, saying that it cut her to the heart, and that it cut theobald to the heart and a good deal more, but that "it was the only thing to be done." i received this as coldly as i decently could, and by my silence during the rest of the evening showed that i disapproved of what i had seen. next day i was to go back to london, but before i went i said i should like to take some new-laid eggs back with me, so theobald took me to the house of a labourer in the village who lived a stone's throw from the rectory as being likely to supply me with them. ernest, for some reason or other, was allowed to come too. i think the hens had begun to sit, but at any rate eggs were scarce, and the cottager's wife could not find me more than seven or eight, which we proceeded to wrap up in separate pieces of paper so that i might take them to town safely. this operation was carried on upon the ground in front of the cottage door, and while we were in the midst of it the cottager's little boy, a lad much about ernest's age, trod upon one of the eggs that was wrapped up in paper and broke it. "there now, jack," said his mother, "see what you've done, you've broken a nice egg and cost me a penny--here, emma," she added, calling her daughter, "take the child away, there's a dear." emma came at once, and walked off with the youngster, taking him out of harm's way. "papa," said ernest, after we had left the house, "why didn't mrs heaton whip jack when he trod on the egg?" i was spiteful enough to give theobald a grim smile which said as plainly as words could have done that i thought ernest had hit him rather hard. theobald coloured and looked angry. "i dare say," he said quickly, "that his mother will whip him now that we are gone." i was not going to have this and said i did not believe it, and so the matter dropped, but theobald did not forget it and my visits to battersby were henceforth less frequent. on our return to the house we found the postman had arrived and had brought a letter appointing theobald to a rural deanery which had lately fallen vacant by the death of one of the neighbouring clergy who had held the office for many years. the bishop wrote to theobald most warmly, and assured him that he valued him as among the most hard-working and devoted of his parochial clergy. christina of course was delighted, and gave me to understand that it was only an instalment of the much higher dignities which were in store for theobald when his merits were more widely known. i did not then foresee how closely my godson's life and mine were in after years to be bound up together; if i had, i should doubtless have looked upon him with different eyes and noted much to which i paid no attention at the time. as it was, i was glad to get away from him, for i could do nothing for him, or chose to say that i could not, and the sight of so much suffering was painful to me. a man should not only have his own way as far as possible, but he should only consort with things that are getting their own way so far that they are at any rate comfortable. unless for short times under exceptional circumstances, he should not even see things that have been stunted or starved, much less should he eat meat that has been vexed by having been over-driven or underfed, or afflicted with any disease; nor should he touch vegetables that have not been well grown. for all these things cross a man; whatever a man comes in contact with in any way forms a cross with him which will leave him better or worse, and the better things he is crossed with the more likely he is to live long and happily. all things must be crossed a little or they would cease to live--but holy things, such for example as giovanni bellini's saints, have been crossed with nothing but what is good of its kind, chapter xxiv the storm which i have described in the previous chapter was a sample of those that occurred daily for many years. no matter how clear the sky, it was always liable to cloud over now in one quarter now in another, and the thunder and lightning were upon the young people before they knew where they were. "and then, you know," said ernest to me, when i asked him not long since to give me more of his childish reminiscences for the benefit of my story, "we used to learn mrs barbauld's hymns; they were in prose, and there was one about the lion which began, 'come, and i will show you what is strong. the lion is strong; when he raiseth himself from his lair, when he shaketh his mane, when the voice of his roaring is heard the cattle of the field fly, and the beasts of the desert hide themselves, for he is very terrible.' i used to say this to joey and charlotte about my father himself when i got a little older, but they were always didactic, and said it was naughty of me. "one great reason why clergymen's households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house. the doctor is out visiting patients half his time: the lawyer and the merchant have offices away from home, but the clergyman has no official place of business which shall ensure his being away from home for many hours together at stated times. our great days were when my father went for a day's shopping to gildenham. we were some miles from this place, and commissions used to accumulate on my father's list till he would make a day of it and go and do the lot. as soon as his back was turned the air felt lighter; as soon as the hall door opened to let him in again, the law with its all-reaching 'touch not, taste not, handle not' was upon us again. the worst of it was that i could never trust joey and charlotte; they would go a good way with me and then turn back, or even the whole way and then their consciences would compel them to tell papa and mamma. they liked running with the hare up to a certain point, but their instinct was towards the hounds. "it seems to me," he continued, "that the family is a survival of the principle which is more logically embodied in the compound animal--and the compound animal is a form of life which has been found incompatible with high development. i would do with the family among mankind what nature has done with the compound animal, and confine it to the lower and less progressive races. certainly there is no inherent love for the family system on the part of nature herself. poll the forms of life and you will find it in a ridiculously small minority. the fishes know it not, and they get along quite nicely. the ants and the bees, who far outnumber man, sting their fathers to death as a matter of course, and are given to the atrocious mutilation of nine-tenths of the offspring committed to their charge, yet where shall we find communities more universally respected? take the cuckoo again--is there any bird which we like better?" i saw he was running off from his own reminiscences and tried to bring him back to them, but it was no use. "what a fool," he said, "a man is to remember anything that happened more than a week ago unless it was pleasant, or unless he wants to make some use of it. "sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime. a man at five and thirty should no more regret not having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having been born a prince of the blood. he might be happier if he had been more fortunate in childhood, but, for aught he knows, if he had, something else might have happened which might have killed him long ago. if i had to be born again i would be born at battersby of the same father and mother as before, and i would not alter anything that has ever happened to me." the most amusing incident that i can remember about his childhood was that when he was about seven years old he told me he was going to have a natural child. i asked him his reasons for thinking this, and he explained that papa and mamma had always told him that nobody had children till they were married, and as long as he had believed this of course he had had no idea of having a child, till he was grown up; but not long since he had been reading mrs markham's history of england and had come upon the words "john of gaunt had several natural children" he had therefore asked his governess what a natural child was--were not all children natural? "oh, my dear," said she, "a natural child is a child a person has before he is married." on this it seemed to follow logically that if john of gaunt had had children before he was married, he, ernest pontifex, might have them also, and he would be obliged to me if i would tell him what he had better do under the circumstances. i enquired how long ago he had made this discovery. he said about a fortnight, and he did not know where to look for the child, for it might come at any moment. "you know," he said, "babies come so suddenly; one goes to bed one night and next morning there is a baby. why, it might die of cold if we are not on the look-out for it. i hope it will be a boy." "and you have told your governess about this?" "yes, but she puts me off and does not help me: she says it will not come for many years, and she hopes not then." "are you quite sure that you have not made any mistake in all this?" "oh, no; because mrs burne, you know, called here a few days ago, and i was sent for to be looked at. and mamma held me out at arm's length and said, 'is he mr pontifex's child, mrs burne, or is he mine?' of course, she couldn't have said this if papa had not had some of the children himself. i did think the gentleman had all the boys and the lady all the girls; but it can't be like this, or else mamma would not have asked mrs burne to guess; but then mrs burne said, 'oh, he's mr pontifex's child _of course_,' and i didn't quite know what she meant by saying 'of course': it seemed as though i was right in thinking that the husband has all the boys and the wife all the girls; i wish you would explain to me all about it." this i could hardly do, so i changed the conversation, after reassuring him as best i could. chapter xxv three or four years after the birth of her daughter, christina had had one more child. she had never been strong since she married, and had a presentiment that she should not survive this last confinement. she accordingly wrote the following letter, which was to be given, as she endorsed upon it, to her sons when ernest was sixteen years old. it reached him on his mother's death many years later, for it was the baby who died now, and not christina. it was found among papers which she had repeatedly and carefully arranged, with the seal already broken. this, i am afraid, shows that christina had read it and thought it too creditable to be destroyed when the occasion that had called it forth had gone by. it is as follows-- "battersby, march th, . "my two dear boys,--when this is put into your hands will you try to bring to mind the mother whom you lost in your childhood, and whom, i fear, you will almost have forgotten? you, ernest, will remember her best, for you are past five years old, and the many, many times that she has taught you your prayers and hymns and sums and told you stories, and our happy sunday evenings will not quite have passed from your mind, and you, joey, though only four, will perhaps recollect some of these things. my dear, dear boys, for the sake of that mother who loved you very dearly--and for the sake of your own happiness for ever and ever--attend to and try to remember, and from time to time read over again the last words she can ever speak to you. when i think about leaving you all, two things press heavily upon me: one, your father's sorrow (for you, my darlings, after missing me a little while, will soon forget your loss), the other, the everlasting welfare of my children. i know how long and deep the former will be, and i know that he will look to his children to be almost his only earthly comfort. you know (for i am certain that it will have been so), how he has devoted his life to you and taught you and laboured to lead you to all that is right and good. oh, then, be sure that you _are_ his comforts. let him find you obedient, affectionate and attentive to his wishes, upright, self-denying and diligent; let him never blush for or grieve over the sins and follies of those who owe him such a debt of gratitude, and whose first duty it is to study his happiness. you have both of you a name which must not be disgraced, a father and a grandfather of whom to show yourselves worthy; your respectability and well-doing in life rest mainly with yourselves, but far, far beyond earthly respectability and well-doing, and compared with which they are as nothing, your eternal happiness rests with yourselves. you know your duty, but snares and temptations from without beset you, and the nearer you approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel this. with god's help, with god's word, and with humble hearts you will stand in spite of everything, but should you leave off seeking in earnest for the first, and applying to the second, should you learn to trust in yourselves, or to the advice and example of too many around you, you will, you must fall. oh, 'let god be true and every man a liar.' he says you cannot serve him and mammon. he says that strait is the gate that leads to eternal life. many there are who seek to widen it; they will tell you that such and such self-indulgences are but venial offences--that this and that worldly compliance is excusable and even necessary. the thing _cannot be_; for in a hundred and a hundred places he tells you so--look to your bibles and seek there whether such counsel is true--and if not, oh, 'halt not between two opinions,' if god is the lord follow him; only be strong and of a good courage, and he will never leave you nor forsake you. remember, there is not in the bible one law for the rich, and one for the poor--one for the educated and one for the ignorant. to _all_ there is but one thing needful. _all_ are to be living to god and their fellow-creatures, and not to themselves. _all_ must seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness--must _deny themselves_, be pure and chaste and charitable in the fullest and widest sense--all, 'forgetting those things that are behind,' must 'press forward towards the mark, for the prize of the high calling of god.' "and now i will add but two things more. be true through life to each other, love as only brothers should do, strengthen, warn, encourage one another, and let who will be against you, let each feel that in his brother he has a firm and faithful friend who will be so to the end; and, oh! be kind and watchful over your dear sister; without mother or sisters she will doubly need her brothers' love and tenderness and confidence. i am certain she will seek them, and will love you and try to make you happy; be sure then that you do not fail her, and remember, that were she to lose her father and remain unmarried, she would doubly need protectors. to you, then, i especially commend her. oh! my three darling children, be true to each other, your father, and your god. may he guide and bless you, and grant that in a better and happier world i and mine may meet again.--your most affectionate mother, christina pontifex." from enquiries i have made, i have satisfied myself that most mothers write letters like this shortly before their confinements, and that fifty per cent. keep them afterwards, as christina did. chapter xxvi the foregoing letter shows how much greater was christina's anxiety for the eternal than for the temporal welfare of her sons. one would have thought she had sowed enough of such religious wild oats by this time, but she had plenty still to sow. to me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not, and that thus in the event of a resurrection and day of judgement, they will be the most likely to be deemed worthy of a heavenly mansion. perhaps a dim unconscious perception of this was the reason why christina was so anxious for theobald's earthly happiness, or was it merely due to a conviction that his eternal welfare was so much a matter of course, that it only remained to secure his earthly happiness? he was to "find his sons obedient, affectionate, attentive to his wishes, self-denying and diligent," a goodly string forsooth of all the virtues most convenient to parents; he was never to have to blush for the follies of those "who owed him such a debt of gratitude," and "whose first duty it was to study his happiness." how like maternal solicitude is this! solicitude for the most part lest the offspring should come to have wishes and feelings of its own, which may occasion many difficulties, fancied or real. it is this that is at the bottom of the whole mischief; but whether this last proposition is granted or no, at any rate we observe that christina had a sufficiently keen appreciation of the duties of children towards their parents, and felt the task of fulfilling them adequately to be so difficult that she was very doubtful how far ernest and joey would succeed in mastering it. it is plain in fact that her supposed parting glance upon them was one of suspicion. but there was no suspicion of theobald; that he should have devoted his life to his children--why this was such a mere platitude, as almost to go without saying. how, let me ask, was it possible that a child only a little past five years old, trained in such an atmosphere of prayers and hymns and sums and happy sunday evenings--to say nothing of daily repeated beatings over the said prayers and hymns, etc., about which our authoress is silent--how was it possible that a lad so trained should grow up in any healthy or vigorous development, even though in her own way his mother was undoubtedly very fond of him, and sometimes told him stories? can the eye of any reader fail to detect the coming wrath of god as about to descend upon the head of him who should be nurtured under the shadow of such a letter as the foregoing? i have often thought that the church of rome does wisely in not allowing her priests to marry. certainly it is a matter of common observation in england that the sons of clergymen are frequently unsatisfactory. the explanation is very simple, but is so often lost sight of that i may perhaps be pardoned for giving it here. the clergyman is expected to be a kind of human sunday. things must not be done in him which are venial in the week-day classes. he is paid for this business of leading a stricter life than other people. it is his _raison d'etre_. if his parishioners feel that he does this, they approve of him, for they look upon him as their own contribution towards what they deem a holy life. this is why the clergyman is so often called a vicar--he being the person whose vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge. but his home is his castle as much as that of any other englishman, and with him, as with others, unnatural tension in public is followed by exhaustion when tension is no longer necessary. his children are the most defenceless things he can reach, and it is on them in nine cases out of ten that he will relieve his mind. a clergyman, again, can hardly ever allow himself to look facts fairly in the face. it is his profession to support one side; it is impossible, therefore, for him to make an unbiassed examination of the other. we forget that every clergyman with a living or curacy, is as much a paid advocate as the barrister who is trying to persuade a jury to acquit a prisoner. we should listen to him with the same suspense of judgment, the same full consideration of the arguments of the opposing counsel, as a judge does when he is trying a case. unless we know these, and can state them in a way that our opponents would admit to be a fair representation of their views, we have no right to claim that we have formed an opinion at all. the misfortune is that by the law of the land one side only can be heard. theobald and christina were no exceptions to the general rule. when they came to battersby they had every desire to fulfil the duties of their position, and to devote themselves to the honour and glory of god. but it was theobald's duty to see the honour and glory of god through the eyes of a church which had lived three hundred years without finding reason to change a single one of its opinions. i should doubt whether he ever got as far as doubting the wisdom of his church upon any single matter. his scent for possible mischief was tolerably keen; so was christina's, and it is likely that if either of them detected in him or herself the first faint symptoms of a want of faith they were nipped no less peremptorily in the bud, than signs of self-will in ernest were--and i should imagine more successfully. yet theobald considered himself, and was generally considered to be, and indeed perhaps was, an exceptionally truthful person; indeed he was generally looked upon as an embodiment of all those virtues which make the poor respectable and the rich respected. in the course of time he and his wife became persuaded even to unconsciousness, that no one could even dwell under their roof without deep cause for thankfulness. their children, their servants, their parishioners must be fortunate _ipso facto_ that they were theirs. there was no road to happiness here or hereafter, but the road that they had themselves travelled, no good people who did not think as they did upon every subject, and no reasonable person who had wants the gratification of which would be inconvenient to them--theobald and christina. this was how it came to pass that their children were white and puny; they were suffering from _home-sickness_. they were starving, through being over-crammed with the wrong things. nature came down upon them, but she did not come down on theobald and christina. why should she? they were not leading a starved existence. there are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against; if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second. chapter xxvii i will give no more of the details of my hero's earlier years. enough that he struggled through them, and at twelve years old knew every page of his latin and greek grammars by heart. he had read the greater part of virgil, horace and livy, and i do not know how many greek plays: he was proficient in arithmetic, knew the first four books of euclid thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge of french. it was now time he went to school, and to school he was accordingly to go, under the famous dr skinner of roughborough. theobald had known dr skinner slightly at cambridge. he had been a burning and a shining light in every position he had filled from his boyhood upwards. he was a very great genius. everyone knew this; they said, indeed, that he was one of the few people to whom the word genius could be applied without exaggeration. had he not taken i don't know how many university scholarships in his freshman's year? had he not been afterwards senior wrangler, first chancellor's medallist and i do not know how many more things besides? and then, he was such a wonderful speaker; at the union debating club he had been without a rival, and had, of course, been president; his moral character,--a point on which so many geniuses were weak--was absolutely irreproachable; foremost of all, however, among his many great qualities, and perhaps more remarkable even than his genius was what biographers have called "the simple-minded and child-like earnestness of his character," an earnestness which might be perceived by the solemnity with which he spoke even about trifles. it is hardly necessary to say he was on the liberal side in politics. his personal appearance was not particularly prepossessing. he was about the middle height, portly, and had a couple of fierce grey eyes, that flashed fire from beneath a pair of great bushy beetling eyebrows and overawed all who came near him. it was in respect of his personal appearance, however, that, if he was vulnerable at all, his weak place was to be found. his hair when he was a young man was red, but after he had taken his degree he had a brain fever which caused him to have his head shaved; when he reappeared, he did so wearing a wig, and one which was a good deal further off red than his own hair had been. he not only had never discarded his wig, but year by year it had edged itself a little more and a little more off red, till by the time he was forty, there was not a trace of red remaining, and his wig was brown. when dr skinner was a very young man, hardly more than five-and-twenty, the head-mastership of roughborough grammar school had fallen vacant, and he had been unhesitatingly appointed. the result justified the selection. dr skinner's pupils distinguished themselves at whichever university they went to. he moulded their minds after the model of his own, and stamped an impression upon them which was indelible in after- life; whatever else a roughborough man might be, he was sure to make everyone feel that he was a god-fearing earnest christian and a liberal, if not a radical, in politics. some boys, of course, were incapable of appreciating the beauty and loftiness of dr skinner's nature. some such boys, alas! there will be in every school; upon them dr skinner's hand was very properly a heavy one. his hand was against them, and theirs against him during the whole time of the connection between them. they not only disliked him, but they hated all that he more especially embodied, and throughout their lives disliked all that reminded them of him. such boys, however, were in a minority, the spirit of the place being decidedly skinnerian. i once had the honour of playing a game of chess with this great man. it was during the christmas holidays, and i had come down to roughborough for a few days to see alethea pontifex (who was then living there) on business. it was very gracious of him to take notice of me, for if i was a light of literature at all it was of the very lightest kind. it is true that in the intervals of business i had written a good deal, but my works had been almost exclusively for the stage, and for those theatres that devoted themselves to extravaganza and burlesque. i had written many pieces of this description, full of puns and comic songs, and they had had a fair success, but my best piece had been a treatment of english history during the reformation period, in the course of which i had introduced cranmer, sir thomas more, henry the eighth, catherine of arragon, and thomas cromwell (in his youth better known as the _malleus monachorum_), and had made them dance a break-down. i had also dramatised "the pilgrim's progress" for a christmas pantomime, and made an important scene of vanity fair, with mr greatheart, apollyon, christiana, mercy, and hopeful as the principal characters. the orchestra played music taken from handel's best known works, but the time was a good deal altered, and altogether the tunes were not exactly as handel left them. mr greatheart was very stout and he had a red nose; he wore a capacious waistcoat, and a shirt with a huge frill down the middle of the front. hopeful was up to as much mischief as i could give him; he wore the costume of a young swell of the period, and had a cigar in his mouth which was continually going out. christiana did not wear much of anything: indeed it was said that the dress which the stage manager had originally proposed for her had been considered inadequate even by the lord chamberlain, but this is not the case. with all these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural that i should feel convinced of sin while playing chess (which i hate) with the great dr skinner of roughborough--the historian of athens and editor of demosthenes. dr skinner, moreover, was one of those who pride themselves on being able to set people at their ease at once, and i had been sitting on the edge of my chair all the evening. but i have always been very easily overawed by a schoolmaster. the game had been a long one, and at half-past nine, when supper came in, we had each of us a few pieces remaining. "what will you take for supper, dr skinner?" said mrs skinner in a silvery voice. he made no answer for some time, but at last in a tone of almost superhuman solemnity, he said, first, "nothing," and then "nothing whatever." by and by, however, i had a sense come over me as though i were nearer the consummation of all things than i had ever yet been. the room seemed to grow dark, as an expression came over dr skinner's face, which showed that he was about to speak. the expression gathered force, the room grew darker and darker. "stay," he at length added, and i felt that here at any rate was an end to a suspense which was rapidly becoming unbearable. "stay--i may presently take a glass of cold water--and a small piece of bread and butter." as he said the word "butter" his voice sank to a hardly audible whisper; then there was a sigh as though of relief when the sentence was concluded, and the universe this time was safe. another ten minutes of solemn silence finished the game. the doctor rose briskly from his seat and placed himself at the supper table. "mrs skinner," he exclaimed jauntily, "what are those mysterious-looking objects surrounded by potatoes?" "those are oysters, dr skinner." "give me some, and give overton some." and so on till he had eaten a good plate of oysters, a scallop shell of minced veal nicely browned, some apple tart, and a hunk of bread and cheese. this was the small piece of bread and butter. the cloth was now removed and tumblers with teaspoons in them, a lemon or two and a jug of boiling water were placed upon the table. then the great man unbent. his face beamed. "and what shall it be to drink?" he exclaimed persuasively. "shall it be brandy and water? no. it shall be gin and water. gin is the more wholesome liquor." so gin it was, hot and stiff too. who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him? was he not head-master of roughborough school? to whom had he owed money at any time? whose ox had he taken, whose ass had he taken, or whom had he defrauded? what whisper had ever been breathed against his moral character? if he had become rich it was by the most honourable of all means--his literary attainments; over and above his great works of scholarship, his "meditations upon the epistle and character of st jude" had placed him among the most popular of english theologians; it was so exhaustive that no one who bought it need ever meditate upon the subject again--indeed it exhausted all who had anything to do with it. he had made pounds by this work alone, and would very likely make another pounds before he died. a man who had done all this and wanted a piece of bread and butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp and circumstance. nor should his words be taken without searching for what he used to call a "deeper and more hidden meaning." those who searched for this even in his lightest utterances would not be without their reward. they would find that "bread and butter" was skinnerese for oyster-patties and apple tart, and "gin hot" the true translation of water. but independently of their money value, his works had made him a lasting name in literature. so probably gallio was under the impression that his fame would rest upon the treatises on natural history which we gather from seneca that he compiled, and which for aught we know may have contained a complete theory of evolution; but the treatises are all gone and gallio has become immortal for the very last reason in the world that he expected, and for the very last reason that would have flattered his vanity. he has become immortal because he cared nothing about the most important movement with which he was ever brought into connection (i wish people who are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and not make so much noise about important movements), and so, if dr skinner becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason very different from the one which he so fondly imagined. could it be expected to enter into the head of such a man as this that in reality he was making his money by corrupting youth; that it was his paid profession to make the worse appear the better reason in the eyes of those who were too young and inexperienced to be able to find him out; that he kept out of the sight of those whom he professed to teach material points of the argument, for the production of which they had a right to rely upon the honour of anyone who made professions of sincerity; that he was a passionate half-turkey-cock half-gander of a man whose sallow, bilious face and hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid, but who would take to his heels readily enough if he were met firmly; that his "meditations on st jude," such as they were, were cribbed without acknowledgment, and would have been beneath contempt if so many people did not believe them to have been written honestly? mrs skinner might have perhaps kept him a little more in his proper place if she had thought it worth while to try, but she had enough to attend to in looking after her household and seeing that the boys were well fed and, if they were ill, properly looked after--which she took good care they were. chapter xxviii ernest had heard awful accounts of dr skinner's temper, and of the bullying which the younger boys at roughborough had to put up with at the hands of the bigger ones. he had now got about as much as he could stand, and felt as though it must go hard with him if his burdens of whatever kind were to be increased. he did not cry on leaving home, but i am afraid he did on being told that he was getting near roughborough. his father and mother were with him, having posted from home in their own carriage; roughborough had as yet no railway, and as it was only some forty miles from battersby, this was the easiest way of getting there. on seeing him cry, his mother felt flattered and caressed him. she said she knew he must feel very sad at leaving such a happy home, and going among people who, though they would be very good to him, could never, never be as good as his dear papa and she had been; still, she was herself, if he only knew it, much more deserving of pity than he was, for the parting was more painful to her than it could possibly be to him, etc., and ernest, on being told that his tears were for grief at leaving home, took it all on trust, and did not trouble to investigate the real cause of his tears. as they approached roughborough he pulled himself together, and was fairly calm by the time he reached dr skinner's. on their arrival they had luncheon with the doctor and his wife, and then mrs skinner took christina over the bedrooms, and showed her where her dear little boy was to sleep. whatever men may think about the study of man, women do really believe the noblest study for womankind to be woman, and christina was too much engrossed with mrs skinner to pay much attention to anything else; i daresay mrs skinner, too, was taking pretty accurate stock of christina. christina was charmed, as indeed she generally was with any new acquaintance, for she found in them (and so must we all) something of the nature of a cross; as for mrs skinner, i imagine she had seen too many christinas to find much regeneration in the sample now before her; i believe her private opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known head-master who declared that all parents were fools, but more especially mothers; she was, however, all smiles and sweetness, and christina devoured these graciously as tributes paid more particularly to herself, and such as no other mother would have been at all likely to have won. in the meantime theobald and ernest were with dr skinner in his library--the room where new boys were examined and old ones had up for rebuke or chastisement. if the walls of that room could speak, what an amount of blundering and capricious cruelty would they not bear witness to! like all houses, dr skinner's had its peculiar smell. in this case the prevailing odour was one of russia leather, but along with it there was a subordinate savour as of a chemist's shop. this came from a small laboratory in one corner of the room--the possession of which, together with the free chattery and smattery use of such words as "carbonate," "hyposulphite," "phosphate," and "affinity," were enough to convince even the most sceptical that dr skinner had a profound knowledge of chemistry. i may say in passing that dr skinner had dabbled in a great many other things as well as chemistry. he was a man of many small knowledges, and each of them dangerous. i remember alethea pontifex once said in her wicked way to me, that dr skinner put her in mind of the bourbon princes on their return from exile after the battle of waterloo, only that he was their exact converse; for whereas they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, dr skinner had learned everything and forgotten everything. and this puts me in mind of another of her wicked sayings about dr skinner. she told me one day that he had the harmlessness of the serpent and the wisdom of the dove. but to return to dr skinner's library; over the chimney-piece there was a bishop's half length portrait of dr skinner himself, painted by the elder pickersgill, whose merit dr skinner had been among the first to discern and foster. there were no other pictures in the library, but in the dining-room there was a fine collection, which the doctor had got together with his usual consummate taste. he added to it largely in later life, and when it came to the hammer at christie's, as it did not long since, it was found to comprise many of the latest and most matured works of solomon hart, o'neil, charles landseer, and more of our recent academicians than i can at the moment remember. there were thus brought together and exhibited at one view many works which had attracted attention at the academy exhibitions, and as to whose ultimate destiny there had been some curiosity. the prices realised were disappointing to the executors, but, then, these things are so much a matter of chance. an unscrupulous writer in a well-known weekly paper had written the collection down. moreover there had been one or two large sales a short time before dr skinner's, so that at this last there was rather a panic, and a reaction against the high prices that had ruled lately. the table of the library was loaded with books many deep; mss. of all kinds were confusedly mixed up with them,--boys' exercises, probably, and examination papers--but all littering untidily about. the room in fact was as depressing from its slatternliness as from its atmosphere of erudition. theobald and ernest as they entered it, stumbled over a large hole in the turkey carpet, and the dust that rose showed how long it was since it had been taken up and beaten. this, i should say, was no fault of mrs skinner's but was due to the doctor himself, who declared that if his papers were once disturbed it would be the death of him. near the window was a green cage containing a pair of turtle doves, whose plaintive cooing added to the melancholy of the place. the walls were covered with book shelves from floor to ceiling, and on every shelf the books stood in double rows. it was horrible. prominent among the most prominent upon the most prominent shelf were a series of splendidly bound volumes entitled "skinner's works." boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions, and ernest believed that dr skinner knew all the books in this terrible library, and that he, if he were to be any good, should have to learn them too. his heart fainted within him. he was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did so, while dr skinner talked to theobald upon the topics of the day. he talked about the hampden controversy then raging, and discoursed learnedly about "praemunire"; then he talked about the revolution which had just broken out in sicily, and rejoiced that the pope had refused to allow foreign troops to pass through his dominions in order to crush it. dr skinner and the other masters took in the times among them, and dr skinner echoed the _times_' leaders. in those days there were no penny papers and theobald only took in the _spectator_--for he was at that time on the whig side in politics; besides this he used to receive the _ecclesiastical gazette_ once a month, but he saw no other papers, and was amazed at the ease and fluency with which dr skinner ran from subject to subject. the pope's action in the matter of the sicilian revolution naturally led the doctor to the reforms which his holiness had introduced into his dominions, and he laughed consumedly over the joke which had not long since appeared in _punch_, to the effect that pio "no, no," should rather have been named pio "yes, yes," because, as the doctor explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for. anything like a pun went straight to dr skinner's heart. then he went on to the matter of these reforms themselves. they opened up a new era in the history of christendom, and would have such momentous and far-reaching consequences, that they might even lead to a reconciliation between the churches of england and rome. dr skinner had lately published a pamphlet upon this subject, which had shown great learning, and had attacked the church of rome in a way which did not promise much hope of reconciliation. he had grounded his attack upon the letters a.m.d.g., which he had seen outside a roman catholic chapel, and which of course stood for _ad mariam dei genetricem_. could anything be more idolatrous? i am told, by the way, that i must have let my memory play me one of the tricks it often does play me, when i said the doctor proposed _ad mariam dei genetricem_ as the full harmonies, so to speak, which should be constructed upon the bass a.m.d.g., for that this is bad latin, and that the doctor really harmonised the letters thus: _ave maria dei genetrix_. no doubt the doctor did what was right in the matter of latinity--i have forgotten the little latin i ever knew, and am not going to look the matter up, but i believe the doctor said _ad mariam dei genetricem_, and if so we may be sure that _ad mariam dei genetricem_, is good enough latin at any rate for ecclesiastical purposes. the reply of the local priest had not yet appeared, and dr skinner was jubilant, but when the answer appeared, and it was solemnly declared that a.m.d.g. stood for nothing more dangerous than _ad majorem dei gloriam_, it was felt that though this subterfuge would not succeed with any intelligent englishman, still it was a pity dr skinner had selected this particular point for his attack, for he had to leave his enemy in possession of the field. when people are left in possession of the field, spectators have an awkward habit of thinking that their adversary does not dare to come to the scratch. dr skinner was telling theobald all about his pamphlet, and i doubt whether this gentleman was much more comfortable than ernest himself. he was bored, for in his heart he hated liberalism, though he was ashamed to say so, and, as i have said, professed to be on the whig side. he did not want to be reconciled to the church of rome; he wanted to make all roman catholics turn protestants, and could never understand why they would not do so; but the doctor talked in such a truly liberal spirit, and shut him up so sharply when he tried to edge in a word or two, that he had to let him have it all his own way, and this was not what he was accustomed to. he was wondering how he could bring it to an end, when a diversion was created by the discovery that ernest had begun to cry--doubtless through an intense but inarticulate sense of a boredom greater than he could bear. he was evidently in a highly nervous state, and a good deal upset by the excitement of the morning, mrs skinner therefore, who came in with christina at this juncture, proposed that he should spend the afternoon with mrs jay, the matron, and not be introduced to his young companions until the following morning. his father and mother now bade him an affectionate farewell, and the lad was handed over to mrs jay. o schoolmasters--if any of you read this book--bear in mind when any particularly timid drivelling urchin is brought by his papa into your study, and you treat him with the contempt which he deserves, and afterwards make his life a burden to him for years--bear in mind that it is exactly in the disguise of such a boy as this that your future chronicler will appear. never see a wretched little heavy-eyed mite sitting on the edge of a chair against your study wall without saying to yourselves, "perhaps this boy is he who, if i am not careful, will one day tell the world what manner of man i was." if even two or three schoolmasters learn this lesson and remember it, the preceding chapters will not have been written in vain. chapter xxix soon after his father and mother had left him ernest dropped asleep over a book which mrs jay had given him, and he did not awake till dusk. then he sat down on a stool in front of the fire, which showed pleasantly in the late january twilight, and began to muse. he felt weak, feeble, ill at ease and unable to see his way out of the innumerable troubles that were before him. perhaps, he said to himself, he might even die, but this, far from being an end of his troubles, would prove the beginning of new ones; for at the best he would only go to grandpapa pontifex and grandmamma allaby, and though they would perhaps be more easy to get on with than papa and mamma, yet they were undoubtedly not so really good, and were more worldly; moreover they were grown-up people--especially grandpapa pontifex, who so far as he could understand had been very much grown-up, and he did not know why, but there was always something that kept him from loving any grown-up people very much--except one or two of the servants, who had indeed been as nice as anything that he could imagine. besides even if he were to die and go to heaven he supposed he should have to complete his education somewhere. in the meantime his father and mother were rolling along the muddy roads, each in his or her own corner of the carriage, and each revolving many things which were and were not to come to pass. times have changed since i last showed them to the reader as sitting together silently in a carriage, but except as regards their mutual relations, they have altered singularly little. when i was younger i used to think the prayer book was wrong in requiring us to say the general confession twice a week from childhood to old age, without making provision for our not being quite such great sinners at seventy as we had been at seven; granted that we should go to the wash like table-cloths at least once a week, still i used to think a day ought to come when we should want rather less rubbing and scrubbing at. now that i have grown older myself i have seen that the church has estimated probabilities better than i had done. the pair said not a word to one another, but watched the fading light and naked trees, the brown fields with here and there a melancholy cottage by the road side, and the rain that fell fast upon the carriage windows. it was a kind of afternoon on which nice people for the most part like to be snug at home, and theobald was a little snappish at reflecting how many miles he had to post before he could be at his own fireside again. however there was nothing for it, so the pair sat quietly and watched the roadside objects flit by them, and get greyer and grimmer as the light faded. though they spoke not to one another, there was one nearer to each of them with whom they could converse freely. "i hope," said theobald to himself, "i hope he'll work--or else that skinner will make him. i don't like skinner, i never did like him, but he is unquestionably a man of genius, and no one turns out so many pupils who succeed at oxford and cambridge, and that is the best test. i have done my share towards starting him well. skinner said he had been well grounded and was very forward. i suppose he will presume upon it now and do nothing, for his nature is an idle one. he is not fond of me, i'm sure he is not. he ought to be after all the trouble i have taken with him, but he is ungrateful and selfish. it is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be fond of his own father. if he was fond of me i should be fond of him, but i cannot like a son who, i am sure, dislikes me. he shrinks out of my way whenever he sees me coming near him. he will not stay five minutes in the same room with me if he can help it. he is deceitful. he would not want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful. that is a bad sign and one which makes me fear he will grow up extravagant. i am sure he will grow up extravagant. i should have given him more pocket-money if i had not known this--but what is the good of giving him pocket-money? it is all gone directly. if he doesn't buy something with it he gives it away to the first little boy or girl he sees who takes his fancy. he forgets that it's my money he is giving away. i give him money that he may have money and learn to know its uses, not that he may go and squander it immediately. i wish he was not so fond of music, it will interfere with his latin and greek. i will stop it as much as i can. why, when he was translating livy the other day he slipped out handel's name in mistake for hannibal's, and his mother tells me he knows half the tunes in the 'messiah' by heart. what should a boy of his age know about the 'messiah'? if i had shown half as many dangerous tendencies when i was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of that i'm very sure," etc., etc. then his thoughts turned to egypt and the tenth plague. it seemed to him that if the little egyptians had been anything like ernest, the plague must have been something very like a blessing in disguise. if the israelites were to come to england now he should be greatly tempted not to let them go. mrs theobald's thoughts ran in a different current. "lord lonsford's grandson--it's a pity his name is figgins; however, blood is blood as much through the female line as the male, indeed, perhaps even more so if the truth were known. i wonder who mr figgins was. i think mrs skinner said he was dead, however, i must find out all about him. it would be delightful if young figgins were to ask ernest home for the holidays. who knows but he might meet lord lonsford himself, or at any rate some of lord lonsford's other descendants?" meanwhile the boy himself was still sitting moodily before the fire in mrs jay's room. "papa and mamma," he was saying to himself, "are much better and cleverer than anyone else, but, i, alas! shall never be either good or clever." mrs pontifex continued-- "perhaps it would be best to get young figgins on a visit to ourselves first. that would be charming. theobald would not like it, for he does not like children; i must see how i can manage it, for it would be so nice to have young figgins--or stay! ernest shall go and stay with figgins and meet the future lord lonsford, who i should think must be about ernest's age, and then if he and ernest were to become friends ernest might ask him to battersby, and he might fall in love with charlotte. i think we have done _most wisely_ in sending ernest to dr skinner's. dr skinner's piety is no less remarkable than his genius. one can tell these things at a glance, and he must have felt it about me no less strongly than i about him. i think he seemed much struck with theobald and myself--indeed, theobald's intellectual power must impress any one, and i was showing, i do believe, to my best advantage. when i smiled at him and said i left my boy in his hands with the most entire confidence that he would be as well cared for as if he were at my own house, i am sure he was greatly pleased. i should not think many of the mothers who bring him boys can impress him so favourably, or say such nice things to him as i did. my smile is sweet when i desire to make it so. i never was perhaps exactly pretty, but i was always admitted to be fascinating. dr skinner is a very handsome man--too good on the whole i should say for mrs skinner. theobald says he is not handsome, but men are no judges, and he has such a pleasant bright face. i think my bonnet became me. as soon as i get home i will tell chambers to trim my blue and yellow merino with--" etc., etc. all this time the letter which has been given above was lying in christina's private little japanese cabinet, read and re-read and approved of many times over, not to say, if the truth were known, rewritten more than once, though dated as in the first instance--and this, too, though christina was fond enough of a joke in a small way. ernest, still in mrs jay's room mused onward. "grown-up people," he said to himself, "when they were ladies and gentlemen, never did naughty things, but he was always doing them. he had heard that some grown-up people were worldly, which of course was wrong, still this was quite distinct from being naughty, and did not get them punished or scolded. his own papa and mamma were not even worldly; they had often explained to him that they were exceptionally unworldly; he well knew that they had never done anything naughty since they had been children, and that even as children they had been nearly faultless. oh! how different from himself! when should he learn to love his papa and mamma as they had loved theirs? how could he hope ever to grow up to be as good and wise as they, or even tolerably good and wise? alas! never. it could not be. he did not love his papa and mamma, in spite of all their goodness both in themselves and to him. he hated papa, and did not like mamma, and this was what none but a bad and ungrateful boy would do after all that had been done for him. besides he did not like sunday; he did not like anything that was really good; his tastes were low and such as he was ashamed of. he liked people best if they sometimes swore a little, so long as it was not at him. as for his catechism and bible readings he had no heart in them. he had never attended to a sermon in his life. even when he had been taken to hear mr vaughan at brighton, who, as everyone knew, preached such beautiful sermons for children, he had been very glad when it was all over, nor did he believe he could get through church at all if it was not for the voluntary upon the organ and the hymns and chanting. the catechism was awful. he had never been able to understand what it was that he desired of his lord god and heavenly father, nor had he yet got hold of a single idea in connection with the word sacrament. his duty towards his neighbour was another bugbear. it seemed to him that he had duties towards everybody, lying in wait for him upon every side, but that nobody had any duties towards him. then there was that awful and mysterious word 'business.' what did it all mean? what was 'business'? his papa was a wonderfully good man of business, his mamma had often told him so--but he should never be one. it was hopeless, and very awful, for people were continually telling him that he would have to earn his own living. no doubt, but how--considering how stupid, idle, ignorant, self-indulgent, and physically puny he was? all grown-up people were clever, except servants--and even these were cleverer than ever he should be. oh, why, why, why, could not people be born into the world as grown-up persons? then he thought of casabianca. he had been examined in that poem by his father not long before. 'when only would he leave his position? to whom did he call? did he get an answer? why? how many times did he call upon his father? what happened to him? what was the noblest life that perished there? do you think so? why do you think so?' and all the rest of it. of course he thought casabianca's was the noblest life that perished there; there could be no two opinions about that; it never occurred to him that the moral of the poem was that young people cannot begin too soon to exercise discretion in the obedience they pay to their papa and mamma. oh, no! the only thought in his mind was that he should never, never have been like casabianca, and that casabianca would have despised him so much, if he could have known him, that he would not have condescended to speak to him. there was nobody else in the ship worth reckoning at all: it did not matter how much they were blown up. mrs hemans knew them all and they were a very indifferent lot. besides casabianca was so good-looking and came of such a good family." and thus his small mind kept wandering on till he could follow it no longer, and again went off into a doze. chapter xxx next morning theobald and christina arose feeling a little tired from their journey, but happy in that best of all happiness, the approbation of their consciences. it would be their boy's fault henceforth if he were not good, and as prosperous as it was at all desirable that he should be. what more could parents do than they had done? the answer "nothing" will rise as readily to the lips of the reader as to those of theobald and christina themselves. a few days later the parents were gratified at receiving the following letter from their son-- "my dear mamma,--i am very well. dr skinner made me do about the horse free and exulting roaming in the wide fields in latin verse, but as i had done it with papa i knew how to do it, and it was nearly all right, and he put me in the fourth form under mr templer, and i have to begin a new latin grammar not like the old, but much harder. i know you wish me to work, and i will try very hard. with best love to joey and charlotte, and to papa, i remain, your affectionate son, ernest." nothing could be nicer or more proper. it really did seem as though he were inclined to turn over a new leaf. the boys had all come back, the examinations were over, and the routine of the half year began; ernest found that his fears about being kicked about and bullied were exaggerated. nobody did anything very dreadful to him. he had to run errands between certain hours for the elder boys, and to take his turn at greasing the footballs, and so forth, but there was an excellent spirit in the school as regards bullying. nevertheless, he was far from happy. dr skinner was much too like his father. true, ernest was not thrown in with him much yet, but he was always there; there was no knowing at what moment he might not put in an appearance, and whenever he did show, it was to storm about something. he was like the lion in the bishop of oxford's sunday story--always liable to rush out from behind some bush and devour some one when he was least expected. he called ernest "an audacious reptile" and said he wondered the earth did not open and swallow him up because he pronounced thalia with a short i. "and this to me," he thundered, "who never made a false quantity in my life." surely he would have been a much nicer person if he had made false quantities in his youth like other people. ernest could not imagine how the boys in dr skinner's form continued to live; but yet they did, and even throve, and, strange as it may seem, idolised him, or professed to do so in after life. to ernest it seemed like living on the crater of vesuvius. he was himself, as has been said, in mr templer's form, who was snappish, but not downright wicked, and was very easy to crib under. ernest used to wonder how mr templer could be so blind, for he supposed mr templer must have cribbed when he was at school, and would ask himself whether he should forget his youth when he got old, as mr templer had forgotten his. he used to think he never could possibly forget any part of it. then there was mrs jay, who was sometimes very alarming. a few days after the half year had commenced, there being some little extra noise in the hall, she rushed in with her spectacles on her forehead and her cap strings flying, and called the boy whom ernest had selected as his hero the "rampingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the whole school." but she used to say things that ernest liked. if the doctor went out to dinner, and there were no prayers, she would come in and say, "young gentlemen, prayers are excused this evening"; and, take her for all in all, she was a kindly old soul enough. most boys soon discover the difference between noise and actual danger, but to others it is so unnatural to menace, unless they mean mischief, that they are long before they leave off taking turkey-cocks and ganders _au serieux_. ernest was one of the latter sort, and found the atmosphere of roughborough so gusty that he was glad to shrink out of sight and out of mind whenever he could. he disliked the games worse even than the squalls of the class-room and hall, for he was still feeble, not filling out and attaining his full strength till a much later age than most boys. this was perhaps due to the closeness with which his father had kept him to his books in childhood, but i think in part also to a tendency towards lateness in attaining maturity, hereditary in the pontifex family, which was one also of unusual longevity. at thirteen or fourteen he was a mere bag of bones, with upper arms about as thick as the wrists of other boys of his age; his little chest was pigeon-breasted; he appeared to have no strength or stamina whatever, and finding he always went to the wall in physical encounters, whether undertaken in jest or earnest, even with boys shorter than himself, the timidity natural to childhood increased upon him to an extent that i am afraid amounted to cowardice. this rendered him even less capable than he might otherwise have been, for as confidence increases power, so want of confidence increases impotence. after he had had the breath knocked out of him and been well shinned half a dozen times in scrimmages at football--scrimmages in which he had become involved sorely against his will--he ceased to see any further fun in football, and shirked that noble game in a way that got him into trouble with the elder boys, who would stand no shirking on the part of the younger ones. he was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with football, nor in spite of all his efforts could he ever throw a ball or a stone. it soon became plain, therefore, to everyone that pontifex was a young muff, a mollycoddle, not to be tortured, but still not to be rated highly. he was not however, actively unpopular, for it was seen that he was quite square _inter pares_, not at all vindictive, easily pleased, perfectly free with whatever little money he had, no greater lover of his school work than of the games, and generally more inclinable to moderate vice than to immoderate virtue. these qualities will prevent any boy from sinking very low in the opinion of his schoolfellows; but ernest thought he had fallen lower than he probably had, and hated and despised himself for what he, as much as anyone else, believed to be his cowardice. he did not like the boys whom he thought like himself. his heroes were strong and vigorous, and the less they inclined towards him the more he worshipped them. all this made him very unhappy, for it never occurred to him that the instinct which made him keep out of games for which he was ill adapted, was more reasonable than the reason which would have driven him into them. nevertheless he followed his instinct for the most part, rather than his reason. _sapiens suam si sapientiam norit_. chapter xxxi with the masters ernest was ere long in absolute disgrace. he had more liberty now than he had known heretofore. the heavy hand and watchful eye of theobald were no longer about his path and about his bed and spying out all his ways; and punishment by way of copying out lines of virgil was a very different thing from the savage beatings of his father. the copying out in fact was often less trouble than the lesson. latin and greek had nothing in them which commended them to his instinct as likely to bring him peace even at the last; still less did they hold out any hope of doing so within some more reasonable time. the deadness inherent in these defunct languages themselves had never been artificially counteracted by a system of _bona fide_ rewards for application. there had been any amount of punishments for want of application, but no good comfortable bribes had baited the hook which was to allure him to his good. indeed, the more pleasant side of learning to do this or that had always been treated as something with which ernest had no concern. we had no business with pleasant things at all, at any rate very little business, at any rate not he, ernest. we were put into this world not for pleasure but duty, and pleasure had in it something more or less sinful in its very essence. if we were doing anything we liked, we, or at any rate he, ernest, should apologise and think he was being very mercifully dealt with, if not at once told to go and do something else. with what he did not like, however, it was different; the more he disliked a thing the greater the presumption that it was right. it never occurred to him that the presumption was in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant, and that the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who disputed its being so. i have said more than once that he believed in his own depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to accept without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority over him: he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew nothing of that other ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much stronger and more real than the ernest of which he was conscious. the dumb ernest persuaded with inarticulate feelings too swift and sure to be translated into such debateable things as words, but practically insisted as follows-- "growing is not the easy plain sailing business that it is commonly supposed to be: it is hard work--harder than any but a growing boy can understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too. besides, latin and greek are great humbug; the more people know of them the more odious they generally are; the nice people whom you delight in either never knew any at all or forgot what they had learned as soon as they could; they never turned to the classics after they were no longer forced to read them; therefore they are nonsense, all very well in their own time and country, but out of place here. never learn anything until you find you have been made uncomfortable for a good long while by not knowing it; when you find that you have occasion for this or that knowledge, or foresee that you will have occasion for it shortly, the sooner you learn it the better, but till then spend your time in growing bone and muscle; these will be much more useful to you than latin and greek, nor will you ever be able to make them if you do not do so now, whereas latin and greek can be acquired at any time by those who want them. "you are surrounded on every side by lies which would deceive even the elect, if the elect were not generally so uncommonly wide awake; the self of which you are conscious, your reasoning and reflecting self, will believe these lies and bid you act in accordance with them. this conscious self of yours, ernest, is a prig begotten of prigs and trained in priggishness; i will not allow it to shape your actions, though it will doubtless shape your words for many a year to come. your papa is not here to beat you now; this is a change in the conditions of your existence, and should be followed by changed actions. obey me, your true self, and things will go tolerably well with you, but only listen to that outward and visible old husk of yours which is called your father, and i will rend you in pieces even unto the third and fourth generation as one who has hated god; for i, ernest, am the god who made you." how shocked ernest would have been if he could have heard the advice he was receiving; what consternation too there would have been at battersby; but the matter did not end here, for this same wicked inner self gave him bad advice about his pocket money, the choice of his companions and on the whole ernest was attentive and obedient to its behests, more so than theobald had been. the consequence was that he learned little, his mind growing more slowly and his body rather faster than heretofore: and when by and by his inner self urged him in directions where he met obstacles beyond his strength to combat, he took--though with passionate compunctions of conscience--the nearest course to the one from which he was debarred which circumstances would allow. it may be guessed that ernest was not the chosen friend of the more sedate and well-conducted youths then studying at roughborough. some of the less desirable boys used to go to public-houses and drink more beer than was good for them; ernest's inner self can hardly have told him to ally himself to these young gentlemen, but he did so at an early age, and was sometimes made pitiably sick by an amount of beer which would have produced no effect upon a stronger boy. ernest's inner self must have interposed at this point and told him that there was not much fun in this, for he dropped the habit ere it had taken firm hold of him, and never resumed it; but he contracted another at the disgracefully early age of between thirteen and fourteen which he did not relinquish, though to the present day his conscious self keeps dinging it into him that the less he smokes the better. and so matters went on till my hero was nearly fourteen years old. if by that time he was not actually a young blackguard, he belonged to a debateable class between the sub-reputable and the upper disreputable, with perhaps rather more leaning to the latter except so far as vices of meanness were concerned, from which he was fairly free. i gather this partly from what ernest has told me, and partly from his school bills which i remember theobald showed me with much complaining. there was an institution at roughborough called the monthly merit money; the maximum sum which a boy of ernest's age could get was four shillings and sixpence; several boys got four shillings and few less than sixpence, but ernest never got more than half-a-crown and seldom more than eighteen pence; his average would, i should think, be about one and nine pence, which was just too much for him to rank among the downright bad boys, but too little to put him among the good ones. chapter xxxii i must now return to miss alethea pontifex, of whom i have said perhaps too little hitherto, considering how great her influence upon my hero's destiny proved to be. on the death of her father, which happened when she was about thirty-two years old, she parted company with her sisters, between whom and herself there had been little sympathy, and came up to london. she was determined, so she said, to make the rest of her life as happy as she could, and she had clearer ideas about the best way of setting to work to do this than women, or indeed men, generally have. her fortune consisted, as i have said, of pounds, which had come to her by her mother's marriage settlements, and , pounds left her by her father, over both which sums she had now absolute control. these brought her in about pounds a year, and the money being invested in none but the soundest securities, she had no anxiety about her income. she meant to be rich, so she formed a scheme of expenditure which involved an annual outlay of about pounds, and determined to put the rest by. "if i do this," she said laughingly, "i shall probably just succeed in living comfortably within my income." in accordance with this scheme she took unfurnished apartments in a house in gower street, of which the lower floors were let out as offices. john pontifex tried to get her to take a house to herself, but alethea told him to mind his own business so plainly that he had to beat a retreat. she had never liked him, and from that time dropped him almost entirely. without going much into society she yet became acquainted with most of the men and women who had attained a position in the literary, artistic and scientific worlds, and it was singular how highly her opinion was valued in spite of her never having attempted in any way to distinguish herself. she could have written if she had chosen, but she enjoyed seeing others write and encouraging them better than taking a more active part herself. perhaps literary people liked her all the better because she did not write. i, as she very well knew, had always been devoted to her, and she might have had a score of other admirers if she had liked, but she had discouraged them all, and railed at matrimony as women seldom do unless they have a comfortable income of their own. she by no means, however, railed at man as she railed at matrimony, and though living after a fashion in which even the most censorious could find nothing to complain of, as far as she properly could she defended those of her own sex whom the world condemned most severely. in religion she was, i should think, as nearly a freethinker as anyone could be whose mind seldom turned upon the subject. she went to church, but disliked equally those who aired either religion or irreligion. i remember once hearing her press a late well-known philosopher to write a novel instead of pursuing his attacks upon religion. the philosopher did not much like this, and dilated upon the importance of showing people the folly of much that they pretended to believe. she smiled and said demurely, "have they not moses and the prophets? let them hear them." but she would say a wicked thing quietly on her own account sometimes, and called my attention once to a note in her prayer-book which gave account of the walk to emmaus with the two disciples, and how christ had said to them "o fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken"--the "all" being printed in small capitals. though scarcely on terms with her brother john, she had kept up closer relations with theobald and his family, and had paid a few days' visit to battersby once in every two years or so. alethea had always tried to like theobald and join forces with him as much as she could (for they two were the hares of the family, the rest being all hounds), but it was no use. i believe her chief reason for maintaining relations with her brother was that she might keep an eye on his children and give them a lift if they proved nice. when miss pontifex had come down to battersby in old times the children had not been beaten, and their lessons had been made lighter. she easily saw that they were overworked and unhappy, but she could hardly guess how all-reaching was the regime under which they lived. she knew she could not interfere effectually then, and wisely forbore to make too many enquiries. her time, if ever it was to come, would be when the children were no longer living under the same roof as their parents. it ended in her making up her mind to have nothing to do with either joey or charlotte, but to see so much of ernest as should enable her to form an opinion about his disposition and abilities. he had now been a year and a half at roughborough and was nearly fourteen years old, so that his character had begun to shape. his aunt had not seen him for some little time and, thinking that if she was to exploit him she could do so now perhaps better than at any other time, she resolved to go down to roughborough on some pretext which should be good enough for theobald, and to take stock of her nephew under circumstances in which she could get him for some few hours to herself. accordingly in august , when ernest was just entering on his fourth half year a cab drove up to dr skinner's door with miss pontifex, who asked and obtained leave for ernest to come and dine with her at the swan hotel. she had written to ernest to say she was coming and he was of course on the look- out for her. he had not seen her for so long that he was rather shy at first, but her good nature soon set him at his ease. she was so strongly biassed in favour of anything young that her heart warmed towards him at once, though his appearance was less prepossessing than she had hoped. she took him to a cake shop and gave him whatever he liked as soon as she had got him off the school premises; and ernest felt at once that she contrasted favourably even with his aunts the misses allaby, who were so very sweet and good. the misses allaby were very poor; sixpence was to them what five shillings was to alethea. what chance had they against one who, if she had a mind, could put by out of her income twice as much as they, poor women, could spend? the boy had plenty of prattle in him when he was not snubbed, and alethea encouraged him to chatter about whatever came uppermost. he was always ready to trust anyone who was kind to him; it took many years to make him reasonably wary in this respect--if indeed, as i sometimes doubt, he ever will be as wary as he ought to be--and in a short time he had quite dissociated his aunt from his papa and mamma and the rest, with whom his instinct told him he should be on his guard. little did he know how great, as far as he was concerned, were the issues that depended upon his behaviour. if he had known, he would perhaps have played his part less successfully. his aunt drew from him more details of his home and school life than his papa and mamma would have approved of, but he had no idea that he was being pumped. she got out of him all about the happy sunday evenings, and how he and joey and charlotte quarrelled sometimes, but she took no side and treated everything as though it were a matter of course. like all the boys, he could mimic dr skinner, and when warmed with dinner, and two glasses of sherry which made him nearly tipsy, he favoured his aunt with samples of the doctor's manner and spoke of him familiarly as "sam." "sam," he said, "is an awful old humbug." it was the sherry that brought out this piece of swagger, for whatever else he was dr skinner was a reality to master ernest, before which, indeed, he sank into his boots in no time. alethea smiled and said, "i must not say anything to that, must i?" ernest said, "i suppose not," and was checked. by-and-by he vented a number of small second-hand priggishnesses which he had caught up believing them to be the correct thing, and made it plain that even at that early age ernest believed in ernest with a belief which was amusing from its absurdity. his aunt judged him charitably as she was sure to do; she knew very well where the priggishness came from, and seeing that the string of his tongue had been loosened sufficiently gave him no more sherry. it was after dinner, however, that he completed the conquest of his aunt. she then discovered that, like herself, he was passionately fond of music, and that, too, of the highest class. he knew, and hummed or whistled to her all sorts of pieces out of the works of the great masters, which a boy of his age could hardly be expected to know, and it was evident that this was purely instinctive, inasmuch as music received no kind of encouragement at roughborough. there was no boy in the school as fond of music as he was. he picked up his knowledge, he said, from the organist of st michael's church who used to practise sometimes on a week-day afternoon. ernest had heard the organ booming away as he was passing outside the church and had sneaked inside and up into the organ loft. in the course of time the organist became accustomed to him as a familiar visitant, and the pair became friends. it was this which decided alethea that the boy was worth taking pains with. "he likes the best music," she thought, "and he hates dr skinner. this is a very fair beginning." when she sent him away at night with a sovereign in his pocket (and he had only hoped to get five shillings) she felt as though she had had a good deal more than her money's worth for her money. chapter xxxiii next day miss pontifex returned to town, with her thoughts full of her nephew and how she could best be of use to him. it appeared to her that to do him any real service she must devote herself almost entirely to him; she must in fact give up living in london, at any rate for a long time, and live at roughborough where she could see him continually. this was a serious undertaking; she had lived in london for the last twelve years, and naturally disliked the prospect of a small country town such as roughborough. was it a prudent thing to attempt so much? must not people take their chances in this world? can anyone do much for anyone else unless by making a will in his favour and dying then and there? should not each look after his own happiness, and will not the world be best carried on if everyone minds his own business and leaves other people to mind theirs? life is not a donkey race in which everyone is to ride his neighbour's donkey and the last is to win, and the psalmist long since formulated a common experience when he declared that no man may deliver his brother nor make agreement unto god for him, for it cost more to redeem their souls, so that he must let that alone for ever. all these excellent reasons for letting her nephew alone occurred to her, and many more, but against them there pleaded a woman's love for children, and her desire to find someone among the younger branches of her own family to whom she could become warmly attached, and whom she could attach warmly to herself. over and above this she wanted someone to leave her money to; she was not going to leave it to people about whom she knew very little, merely because they happened to be sons and daughters of brothers and sisters whom she had never liked. she knew the power and value of money exceedingly well, and how many lovable people suffer and die yearly for the want of it; she was little likely to leave it without being satisfied that her legatees were square, lovable, and more or less hard up. she wanted those to have it who would be most likely to use it genially and sensibly, and whom it would thus be likely to make most happy; if she could find one such among her nephews and nieces, so much the better; it was worth taking a great deal of pains to see whether she could or could not; but if she failed, she must find an heir who was not related to her by blood. "of course," she had said to me, more than once, "i shall make a mess of it. i shall choose some nice-looking, well-dressed screw, with gentlemanly manners which will take me in, and he will go and paint academy pictures, or write for the _times_, or do something just as horrid the moment the breath is out of my body." as yet, however, she had made no will at all, and this was one of the few things that troubled her. i believe she would have left most of her money to me if i had not stopped her. my father left me abundantly well off, and my mode of life has been always simple, so that i have never known uneasiness about money; moreover i was especially anxious that there should be no occasion given for ill-natured talk; she knew well, therefore, that her leaving her money to me would be of all things the most likely to weaken the ties that existed between us, provided that i was aware of it, but i did not mind her talking about whom she should make her heir, so long as it was well understood that i was not to be the person. ernest had satisfied her as having enough in him to tempt her strongly to take him up, but it was not till after many days' reflection that she gravitated towards actually doing so, with all the break in her daily ways that this would entail. at least, she said it took her some days, and certainly it appeared to do so, but from the moment she had begun to broach the subject, i had guessed how things were going to end. it was now arranged she should take a house at roughborough, and go and live there for a couple of years. as a compromise, however, to meet some of my objections, it was also arranged that she should keep her rooms in gower street, and come to town for a week once in each month; of course, also, she would leave roughborough for the greater part of the holidays. after two years, the thing was to come to an end, unless it proved a great success. she should by that time, at any rate, have made up her mind what the boy's character was, and would then act as circumstances might determine. the pretext she put forward ostensibly was that her doctor said she ought to be a year or two in the country after so many years of london life, and had recommended roughborough on account of the purity of its air, and its easy access to and from london--for by this time the railway had reached it. she was anxious not to give her brother and sister any right to complain, if on seeing more of her nephew she found she could not get on with him, and she was also anxious not to raise false hopes of any kind in the boy's own mind. having settled how everything was to be, she wrote to theobald and said she meant to take a house in roughborough from the michaelmas then approaching, and mentioned, as though casually, that one of the attractions of the place would be that her nephew was at school there and she should hope to see more of him than she had done hitherto. theobald and christina knew how dearly alethea loved london, and thought it very odd that she should want to go and live at roughborough, but they did not suspect that she was going there solely on her nephew's account, much less that she had thought of making ernest her heir. if they had guessed this, they would have been so jealous that i half believe they would have asked her to go and live somewhere else. alethea however, was two or three years younger than theobald; she was still some years short of fifty, and might very well live to eighty-five or ninety; her money, therefore, was not worth taking much trouble about, and her brother and sister-in-law had dismissed it, so to speak, from their minds with costs, assuming, however, that if anything did happen to her while they were still alive, the money would, as a matter of course, come to them. the prospect of alethea seeing much of ernest was a serious matter. christina smelt mischief from afar, as indeed she often did. alethea was worldly--as worldly, that is to say, as a sister of theobald's could be. in her letter to theobald she had said she knew how much of his and christina's thoughts were taken up with anxiety for the boy's welfare. alethea had thought this handsome enough, but christina had wanted something better and stronger. "how can she know how much we think of our darling?" she had exclaimed, when theobald showed her his sister's letter. "i think, my dear, alethea would understand these things better if she had children of her own." the least that would have satisfied christina was to have been told that there never yet had been any parents comparable to theobald and herself. she did not feel easy that an alliance of some kind would not grow up between aunt and nephew, and neither she nor theobald wanted ernest to have any allies. joey and charlotte were quite as many allies as were good for him. after all, however, if alethea chose to go and live at roughborough, they could not well stop her, and must make the best of it. in a few weeks' time alethea did choose to go and live at roughborough. a house was found with a field and a nice little garden which suited her very well. "at any rate," she said to herself, "i will have fresh eggs and flowers." she even considered the question of keeping a cow, but in the end decided not to do so. she furnished her house throughout anew, taking nothing whatever from her establishment in gower street, and by michaelmas--for the house was empty when she took it--she was settled comfortably, and had begun to make herself at home. one of miss pontifex's first moves was to ask a dozen of the smartest and most gentlemanly boys to breakfast with her. from her seat in church she could see the faces of the upper-form boys, and soon made up her mind which of them it would be best to cultivate. miss pontifex, sitting opposite the boys in church, and reckoning them up with her keen eyes from under her veil by all a woman's criteria, came to a truer conclusion about the greater number of those she scrutinized than even dr skinner had done. she fell in love with one boy from seeing him put on his gloves. miss pontifex, as i have said, got hold of some of these youngsters through ernest, and fed them well. no boy can resist being fed well by a good-natured and still handsome woman. boys are very like nice dogs in this respect--give them a bone and they will like you at once. alethea employed every other little artifice which she thought likely to win their allegiance to herself, and through this their countenance for her nephew. she found the football club in a slight money difficulty and at once gave half a sovereign towards its removal. the boys had no chance against her, she shot them down one after another as easily as though they had been roosting pheasants. nor did she escape scathless herself, for, as she wrote to me, she quite lost her heart to half a dozen of them. "how much nicer they are," she said, "and how much more they know than those who profess to teach them!" i believe it has been lately maintained that it is the young and fair who are the truly old and truly experienced, inasmuch as it is they who alone have a living memory to guide them; "the whole charm," it has been said, "of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect of experience, and when this has for some reason failed or been misapplied, the charm is broken. when we say that we are getting old, we should say rather that we are getting new or young, and are suffering from inexperience; trying to do things which we have never done before, and failing worse and worse, till in the end we are landed in the utter impotence of death." miss pontifex died many a long year before the above passage was written, but she had arrived independently at much the same conclusion. she first, therefore, squared the boys. dr skinner was even more easily dealt with. he and mrs skinner called, as a matter of course, as soon as miss pontifex was settled. she fooled him to the top of his bent, and obtained the promise of a ms. copy of one of his minor poems (for dr skinner had the reputation of being quite one of our most facile and elegant minor poets) on the occasion of his first visit. the other masters and masters' wives were not forgotten. alethea laid herself out to please, as indeed she did wherever she went, and if any woman lays herself out to do this, she generally succeeds. chapter xxxiv miss pontifex soon found out that ernest did not like games, but she saw also that he could hardly be expected to like them. he was perfectly well shaped but unusually devoid of physical strength. he got a fair share of this in after life, but it came much later with him than with other boys, and at the time of which i am writing he was a mere little skeleton. he wanted something to develop his arms and chest without knocking him about as much as the school games did. to supply this want by some means which should add also to his pleasure was alethea's first anxiety. rowing would have answered every purpose, but unfortunately there was no river at roughborough. whatever it was to be, it must be something which he should like as much as other boys liked cricket or football, and he must think the wish for it to have come originally from himself; it was not very easy to find anything that would do, but ere long it occurred to her that she might enlist his love of music on her side, and asked him one day when he was spending a half-holiday at her house whether he would like her to buy an organ for him to play on. of course, the boy said yes; then she told him about her grandfather and the organs he had built. it had never entered into his head that he could make one, but when he gathered from what his aunt had said that this was not out of the question, he rose as eagerly to the bait as she could have desired, and wanted to begin learning to saw and plane so that he might make the wooden pipes at once. miss pontifex did not see how she could have hit upon anything more suitable, and she liked the idea that he would incidentally get a knowledge of carpentering, for she was impressed, perhaps foolishly, with the wisdom of the german custom which gives every boy a handicraft of some sort. writing to me on this matter, she said "professions are all very well for those who have connection and interest as well as capital, but otherwise they are white elephants. how many men do not you and i know who have talent, assiduity, excellent good sense, straightforwardness, every quality in fact which should command success, and who yet go on from year to year waiting and hoping against hope for the work which never comes? how, indeed, is it likely to come unless to those who either are born with interest, or who marry in order to get it? ernest's father and mother have no interest, and if they had they would not use it. i suppose they will make him a clergyman, or try to do so--perhaps it is the best thing to do with him, for he could buy a living with the money his grandfather left him, but there is no knowing what the boy will think of it when the time comes, and for aught we know he may insist on going to the backwoods of america, as so many other young men are doing now." . . . but, anyway, he would like making an organ, and this could do him no harm, so the sooner he began the better. alethea thought it would save trouble in the end if she told her brother and sister-in-law of this scheme. "i do not suppose," she wrote, "that dr skinner will approve very cordially of my attempt to introduce organ- building into the _curriculum_ of roughborough, but i will see what i can do with him, for i have set my heart on owning an organ built by ernest's own hands, which he may play on as much as he likes while it remains in my house and which i will lend him permanently as soon as he gets one of his own, but which is to be my property for the present, inasmuch as i mean to pay for it." this was put in to make it plain to theobald and christina that they should not be out of pocket in the matter. if alethea had been as poor as the misses allaby, the reader may guess what ernest's papa and mamma would have said to this proposal; but then, if she had been as poor as they, she would never have made it. they did not like ernest's getting more and more into his aunt's good books, still it was perhaps better that he should do so than that she should be driven back upon the john pontifexes. the only thing, said theobald, which made him hesitate, was that the boy might be thrown with low associates later on if he were to be encouraged in his taste for music--a taste which theobald had always disliked. he had observed with regret that ernest had ere now shown rather a hankering after low company, and he might make acquaintance with those who would corrupt his innocence. christina shuddered at this, but when they had aired their scruples sufficiently they felt (and when people begin to "feel," they are invariably going to take what they believe to be the more worldly course) that to oppose alethea's proposal would be injuring their son's prospects more than was right, so they consented, but not too graciously. after a time, however, christina got used to the idea, and then considerations occurred to her which made her throw herself into it with characteristic ardour. if miss pontifex had been a railway stock she might have been said to have been buoyant in the battersby market for some few days; buoyant for long together she could never be, still for a time there really was an upward movement. christina's mind wandered to the organ itself; she seemed to have made it with her own hands; there would be no other in england to compare with it for combined sweetness and power. she already heard the famous dr walmisley of cambridge mistaking it for a father smith. it would come, no doubt, in reality to battersby church, which wanted an organ, for it must be all nonsense about alethea's wishing to keep it, and ernest would not have a house of his own for ever so many years, and they could never have it at the rectory. oh, no! battersby church was the only proper place for it. of course, they would have a grand opening, and the bishop would come down, and perhaps young figgins might be on a visit to them--she must ask ernest if young figgins had yet left roughborough--he might even persuade his grandfather lord lonsford to be present. lord lonsford and the bishop and everyone else would then compliment her, and dr wesley or dr walmisley, who should preside (it did not much matter which), would say to her, "my dear mrs pontifex, i never yet played upon so remarkable an instrument." then she would give him one of her very sweetest smiles and say she feared he was flattering her, on which he would rejoin with some pleasant little trifle about remarkable men (the remarkable man being for the moment ernest) having invariably had remarkable women for their mothers--and so on and so on. the advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. theobald wrote ernest a short and surly letter _a propos_ of his aunt's intentions in this matter. "i will not commit myself," he said, "to an opinion whether anything will come of it; this will depend entirely upon your own exertions; you have had singular advantages hitherto, and your kind aunt is showing every desire to befriend you, but you must give greater proof of stability and steadiness of character than you have given yet if this organ matter is not to prove in the end to be only one disappointment the more. "i must insist on two things: firstly that this new iron in the fire does not distract your attention from your latin and greek"--("they aren't mine," thought ernest, "and never have been")--"and secondly, that you bring no smell of glue or shavings into the house here, if you make any part of the organ during your holidays." ernest was still too young to know how unpleasant a letter he was receiving. he believed the innuendoes contained in it to be perfectly just. he knew he was sadly deficient in perseverance. he liked some things for a little while, and then found he did not like them any more--and this was as bad as anything well could be. his father's letter gave him one of his many fits of melancholy over his own worthlessness, but the thought of the organ consoled him, and he felt sure that here at any rate was something to which he could apply himself steadily without growing tired of it. it was settled that the organ was not to be begun before the christmas holidays were over, and that till then ernest should do a little plain carpentering, so as to get to know how to use his tools. miss pontifex had a carpenter's bench set up in an outhouse upon her own premises, and made terms with the most respectable carpenter in roughborough, by which one of his men was to come for a couple of hours twice a week and set ernest on the right way; then she discovered she wanted this or that simple piece of work done, and gave the boy a commission to do it, paying him handsomely as well as finding him in tools and materials. she never gave him a syllable of good advice, or talked to him about everything's depending upon his own exertions, but she kissed him often, and would come into the workshop and act the part of one who took an interest in what was being done so cleverly as ere long to become really interested. what boy would not take kindly to almost anything with such assistance? all boys like making things; the exercise of sawing, planing and hammering, proved exactly what his aunt had wanted to find--something that should exercise, but not too much, and at the same time amuse him; when ernest's sallow face was flushed with his work, and his eyes were sparkling with pleasure, he looked quite a different boy from the one his aunt had taken in hand only a few months earlier. his inner self never told him that this was humbug, as it did about latin and greek. making stools and drawers was worth living for, and after christmas there loomed the organ, which was scarcely ever absent from his mind. his aunt let him invite his friends, encouraging him to bring those whom her quick sense told her were the most desirable. she smartened him up also in his personal appearance, always without preaching to him. indeed she worked wonders during the short time that was allowed her, and if her life had been spared i cannot think that my hero would have come under the shadow of that cloud which cast so heavy a gloom over his younger manhood; but unfortunately for him his gleam of sunshine was too hot and too brilliant to last, and he had many a storm yet to weather, before he became fairly happy. for the present, however, he was supremely so, and his aunt was happy and grateful for his happiness, the improvement she saw in him, and his unrepressed affection for herself. she became fonder of him from day to day in spite of his many faults and almost incredible foolishnesses. it was perhaps on account of these very things that she saw how much he had need of her; but at any rate, from whatever cause, she became strengthened in her determination to be to him in the place of parents, and to find in him a son rather than a nephew. but still she made no will. chapter xxxv all went well for the first part of the following half year. miss pontifex spent the greater part of her holidays in london, and i also saw her at roughborough, where i spent a few days, staying at the "swan." i heard all about my godson in whom, however, i took less interest than i said i did. i took more interest in the stage at that time than in anything else, and as for ernest, i found him a nuisance for engrossing so much of his aunt's attention, and taking her so much from london. the organ was begun, and made fair progress during the first two months of the half year. ernest was happier than he had ever been before, and was struggling upwards. the best boys took more notice of him for his aunt's sake, and he consorted less with those who led him into mischief. but much as miss pontifex had done, she could not all at once undo the effect of such surroundings as the boy had had at battersby. much as he feared and disliked his father (though he still knew not how much this was), he had caught much from him; if theobald had been kinder ernest would have modelled himself upon him entirely, and ere long would probably have become as thorough a little prig as could have easily been found. fortunately his temper had come to him from his mother, who, when not frightened, and when there was nothing on the horizon which might cross the slightest whim of her husband, was an amiable, good-natured woman. if it was not such an awful thing to say of anyone, i should say that she meant well. ernest had also inherited his mother's love of building castles in the air, and--so i suppose it must be called--her vanity. he was very fond of showing off, and, provided he could attract attention, cared little from whom it came, nor what it was for. he caught up, parrot-like, whatever jargon he heard from his elders, which he thought was the correct thing, and aired it in season and out of season, as though it were his own. miss pontifex was old enough and wise enough to know that this is the way in which even the greatest men as a general rule begin to develop, and was more pleased with his receptiveness and reproductiveness than alarmed at the things he caught and reproduced. she saw that he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this rather than to anything else. she saw also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation had been. his impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than any other point in his character; she saw clearly that he would have to find himself rudely undeceived many a time and oft, before he would learn to distinguish friend from foe within reasonable time. it was her perception of this which led her to take the action which she was so soon called upon to take. her health was for the most part excellent, and she had never had a serious illness in her life. one morning, however, soon after easter , she awoke feeling seriously unwell. for some little time there had been a talk of fever in the neighbourhood, but in those days the precautions that ought to be taken against the spread of infection were not so well understood as now, and nobody did anything. in a day or two it became plain that miss pontifex had got an attack of typhoid fever and was dangerously ill. on this she sent off a messenger to town, and desired him not to return without her lawyer and myself. we arrived on the afternoon of the day on which we had been summoned, and found her still free from delirium: indeed, the cheery way in which she received us made it difficult to think she could be in danger. she at once explained her wishes, which had reference, as i expected, to her nephew, and repeated the substance of what i have already referred to as her main source of uneasiness concerning him. then she begged me by our long and close intimacy, by the suddenness of the danger that had fallen on her and her powerlessness to avert it, to undertake what she said she well knew, if she died, would be an unpleasant and invidious trust. she wanted to leave the bulk of her money ostensibly to me, but in reality to her nephew, so that i should hold it in trust for him till he was twenty-eight years old, but neither he nor anyone else, except her lawyer and myself, was to know anything about it. she would leave pounds in other legacies, and , pounds to ernest--which by the time he was twenty-eight would have accumulated to, say, , pounds. "sell out the debentures," she said, "where the money now is--and put it into midland ordinary." "let him make his mistakes," she said, "upon the money his grandfather left him. i am no prophet, but even i can see that it will take that boy many years to see things as his neighbours see them. he will get no help from his father and mother, who would never forgive him for his good luck if i left him the money outright; i daresay i am wrong, but i think he will have to lose the greater part or all of what he has, before he will know how to keep what he will get from me." supposing he went bankrupt before he was twenty-eight years old, the money was to be mine absolutely, but she could trust me, she said, to hand it over to ernest in due time. "if," she continued, "i am mistaken, the worst that can happen is that he will come into a larger sum at twenty-eight instead of a smaller sum at, say, twenty-three, for i would never trust him with it earlier, and--if he knows nothing about it he will not be unhappy for the want of it." she begged me to take pounds in return for the trouble i should have in taking charge of the boy's estate, and as a sign of the testatrix's hope that i would now and again look after him while he was still young. the remaining pounds i was to pay in legacies and annuities to friends and servants. in vain both her lawyer and myself remonstrated with her on the unusual and hazardous nature of this arrangement. we told her that sensible people will not take a more sanguine view concerning human nature than the courts of chancery do. we said, in fact, everything that anyone else would say. she admitted everything, but urged that her time was short, that nothing would induce her to leave her money to her nephew in the usual way. "it is an unusually foolish will," she said, "but he is an unusually foolish boy;" and she smiled quite merrily at her little sally. like all the rest of her family, she was very stubborn when her mind was made up. so the thing was done as she wished it. no provision was made for either my death or ernest's--miss pontifex had settled it that we were neither of us going to die, and was too ill to go into details; she was so anxious, moreover, to sign her will while still able to do so that we had practically no alternative but to do as she told us. if she recovered we could see things put on a more satisfactory footing, and further discussion would evidently impair her chances of recovery; it seemed then only too likely that it was a case of this will or no will at all. when the will was signed i wrote a letter in duplicate, saying that i held all miss pontifex had left me in trust for ernest except as regards pounds, but that he was not to come into the bequest, and was to know nothing whatever about it directly or indirectly, till he was twenty- eight years old, and if he was bankrupt before he came into it the money was to be mine absolutely. at the foot of each letter miss pontifex wrote, "the above was my understanding when i made my will," and then signed her name. the solicitor and his clerk witnessed; i kept one copy myself and handed the other to miss pontifex's solicitor. when all this had been done she became more easy in her mind. she talked principally about her nephew. "don't scold him," she said, "if he is volatile, and continually takes things up only to throw them down again. how can he find out his strength or weakness otherwise? a man's profession," she said, and here she gave one of her wicked little laughs, "is not like his wife, which he must take once for all, for better for worse, without proof beforehand. let him go here and there, and learn his truest liking by finding out what, after all, he catches himself turning to most habitually--then let him stick to this; but i daresay ernest will be forty or five and forty before he settles down. then all his previous infidelities will work together to him for good if he is the boy i hope he is. "above all," she continued, "do not let him work up to his full strength, except once or twice in his lifetime; nothing is well done nor worth doing unless, take it all round, it has come pretty easily. theobald and christina would give him a pinch of salt and tell him to put it on the tails of the seven deadly virtues;"--here she laughed again in her old manner at once so mocking and so sweet--"i think if he likes pancakes he had perhaps better eat them on shrove tuesday, but this is enough." these were the last coherent words she spoke. from that time she grew continually worse, and was never free from delirium till her death--which took place less than a fortnight afterwards, to the inexpressible grief of those who knew and loved her. chapter xxxvi letters had been written to miss pontifex's brothers and sisters, and one and all came post-haste to roughborough. before they arrived the poor lady was already delirious, and for the sake of her own peace at the last i am half glad she never recovered consciousness. i had known these people all their lives, as none can know each other but those who have played together as children; i knew how they had all of them--perhaps theobald least, but all of them more or less--made her life a burden to her until the death of her father had made her her own mistress, and i was displeased at their coming one after the other to roughborough, and inquiring whether their sister had recovered consciousness sufficiently to be able to see them. it was known that she had sent for me on being taken ill, and that i remained at roughborough, and i own i was angered by the mingled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with which they regarded me. they would all, except theobald, i believe have cut me downright if they had not believed me to know something they wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance of learning from me--for it was plain i had been in some way concerned with the making of their sister's will. none of them suspected what the ostensible nature of this would be, but i think they feared miss pontifex was about to leave money for public uses. john said to me in his blandest manner that he fancied he remembered to have heard his sister say that she thought of leaving money to found a college for the relief of dramatic authors in distress; to this i made no rejoinder, and i have no doubt his suspicions were deepened. when the end came, i got miss pontifex's solicitor to write and tell her brothers and sisters how she had left her money: they were not unnaturally furious, and went each to his or her separate home without attending the funeral, and without paying any attention to myself. this was perhaps the kindest thing they could have done by me, for their behaviour made me so angry that i became almost reconciled to alethea's will out of pleasure at the anger it had aroused. but for this i should have felt the will keenly, as having been placed by it in the position which of all others i had been most anxious to avoid, and as having saddled me with a very heavy responsibility. still it was impossible for me to escape, and i could only let things take their course. miss pontifex had expressed a wish to be buried at paleham; in the course of the next few days i therefore took the body thither. i had not been to paleham since the death of my father some six years earlier. i had often wished to go there, but had shrunk from doing so though my sister had been two or three times. i could not bear to see the house which had been my home for so many years of my life in the hands of strangers; to ring ceremoniously at a bell which i had never yet pulled except as a boy in jest; to feel that i had nothing to do with a garden in which i had in childhood gathered so many a nosegay, and which had seemed my own for many years after i had reached man's estate; to see the rooms bereft of every familiar feature, and made so unfamiliar in spite of their familiarity. had there been any sufficient reason, i should have taken these things as a matter of course, and should no doubt have found them much worse in anticipation than in reality, but as there had been no special reason why i should go to paleham i had hitherto avoided doing so. now, however, my going was a necessity, and i confess i never felt more subdued than i did on arriving there with the dead playmate of my childhood. i found the village more changed than i had expected. the railway had come there, and a brand new yellow brick station was on the site of old mr and mrs pontifex's cottage. nothing but the carpenter's shop was now standing. i saw many faces i knew, but even in six years they seemed to have grown wonderfully older. some of the very old were dead, and the old were getting very old in their stead. i felt like the changeling in the fairy story who came back after a seven years' sleep. everyone seemed glad to see me, though i had never given them particular cause to be so, and everyone who remembered old mr and mrs pontifex spoke warmly of them and were pleased at their granddaughter's wishing to be laid near them. entering the churchyard and standing in the twilight of a gusty cloudy evening on the spot close beside old mrs pontifex's grave which i had chosen for alethea's, i thought of the many times that she, who would lie there henceforth, and i, who must surely lie one day in some such another place though when and where i knew not, had romped over this very spot as childish lovers together. next morning i followed her to the grave, and in due course set up a plain upright slab to her memory as like as might be to those over the graves of her grandmother and grandfather. i gave the dates and places of her birth and death, but added nothing except that this stone was set up by one who had known and loved her. knowing how fond she had been of music i had been half inclined at one time to inscribe a few bars of music, if i could find any which seemed suitable to her character, but i knew how much she would have disliked anything singular in connection with her tombstone and did not do it. before, however, i had come to this conclusion, i had thought that ernest might be able to help me to the right thing, and had written to him upon the subject. the following is the answer i received-- "dear godpapa,--i send you the best bit i can think of; it is the subject of the last of handel's six grand fugues and goes thus:-- [music score] it would do better for a man, especially for an old man who was very sorry for things, than for a woman, but i cannot think of anything better; if you do not like it for aunt alethea i shall keep it for myself.--your affectionate godson, ernest pontifex." was this the little lad who could get sweeties for two-pence but not for two-pence-halfpenny? dear, dear me, i thought to myself, how these babes and sucklings do give us the go-by surely. choosing his own epitaph at fifteen as for a man who "had been very sorry for things," and such a strain as that--why it might have done for leonardo da vinci himself. then i set the boy down as a conceited young jackanapes, which no doubt he was,--but so are a great many other young people of ernest's age. chapter xxxvii if theobald and christina had not been too well pleased when miss pontifex first took ernest in hand, they were still less so when the connection between the two was interrupted so prematurely. they said they had made sure from what their sister had said that she was going to make ernest her heir. i do not think she had given them so much as a hint to this effect. theobald indeed gave ernest to understand that she had done so in a letter which will be given shortly, but if theobald wanted to make himself disagreeable, a trifle light as air would forthwith assume in his imagination whatever form was most convenient to him. i do not think they had even made up their minds what alethea was to do with her money before they knew of her being at the point of death, and as i have said already, if they had thought it likely that ernest would be made heir over their own heads without their having at any rate a life interest in the bequest, they would have soon thrown obstacles in the way of further intimacy between aunt and nephew. this, however, did not bar their right to feeling aggrieved now that neither they nor ernest had taken anything at all, and they could profess disappointment on their boy's behalf which they would have been too proud to admit upon their own. in fact, it was only amiable of them to be disappointed under these circumstances. christina said that the will was simply fraudulent, and was convinced that it could be upset if she and theobald went the right way to work. theobald, she said, should go before the lord chancellor, not in full court but in chambers, where he could explain the whole matter; or, perhaps it would be even better if she were to go herself--and i dare not trust myself to describe the reverie to which this last idea gave rise. i believe in the end theobald died, and the lord chancellor (who had become a widower a few weeks earlier) made her an offer, which, however, she firmly but not ungratefully declined; she should ever, she said, continue to think of him as a friend--at this point the cook came in, saying the butcher had called, and what would she please to order. i think theobald must have had an idea that there was something behind the bequest to me, but he said nothing about it to christina. he was angry and felt wronged, because he could not get at alethea to give her a piece of his mind any more than he had been able to get at his father. "it is so mean of people," he exclaimed to himself, "to inflict an injury of this sort, and then shirk facing those whom they have injured; let us hope that, at any rate, they and i may meet in heaven." but of this he was doubtful, for when people had done so great a wrong as this, it was hardly to be supposed that they would go to heaven at all--and as for his meeting them in another place, the idea never so much as entered his mind. one so angry and, of late, so little used to contradiction might be trusted, however, to avenge himself upon someone, and theobald had long since developed the organ, by means of which he might vent spleen with least risk and greatest satisfaction to himself. this organ, it may be guessed, was nothing else than ernest; to ernest therefore he proceeded to unburden himself, not personally, but by letter. "you ought to know," he wrote, "that your aunt alethea had given your mother and me to understand that it was her wish to make you her heir--in the event, of course, of your conducting yourself in such a manner as to give her confidence in you; as a matter of fact, however, she has left you nothing, and the whole of her property has gone to your godfather, mr overton. your mother and i are willing to hope that if she had lived longer you would yet have succeeded in winning her good opinion, but it is too late to think of this now. "the carpentering and organ-building must at once be discontinued. i never believed in the project, and have seen no reason to alter my original opinion. i am not sorry for your own sake, that it is to be at an end, nor, i am sure, will you regret it yourself in after years. "a few words more as regards your own prospects. you have, as i believe you know, a small inheritance, which is yours legally under your grandfather's will. this bequest was made inadvertently, and, i believe, entirely through a misunderstanding on the lawyer's part. the bequest was probably intended not to take effect till after the death of your mother and myself; nevertheless, as the will is actually worded, it will now be at your command if you live to be twenty-one years old. from this, however, large deductions must be made. there will be legacy duty, and i do not know whether i am not entitled to deduct the expenses of your education and maintenance from birth to your coming of age; i shall not in all likelihood insist on this right to the full, if you conduct yourself properly, but a considerable sum should certainly be deducted, there will therefore remain very little--say pounds or pounds at the outside, as what will be actually yours--but the strictest account shall be rendered you in due time. "this, let me warn you most seriously, is all that you must expect from me (even ernest saw that it was not from theobald at all) at any rate till after my death, which for aught any of us know may be yet many years distant. it is not a large sum, but it is sufficient if supplemented by steadiness and earnestness of purpose. your mother and i gave you the name ernest, hoping that it would remind you continually of--" but i really cannot copy more of this effusion. it was all the same old will- shaking game and came practically to this, that ernest was no good, and that if he went on as he was going on now, he would probably have to go about the streets begging without any shoes or stockings soon after he had left school, or at any rate, college; and that he, theobald, and christina were almost too good for this world altogether. after he had written this theobald felt quite good-natured, and sent to the mrs thompson of the moment even more soup and wine than her usual not illiberal allowance. ernest was deeply, passionately upset by his father's letter; to think that even his dear aunt, the one person of his relations whom he really loved, should have turned against him and thought badly of him after all. this was the unkindest cut of all. in the hurry of her illness miss pontifex, while thinking only of his welfare, had omitted to make such small present mention of him as would have made his father's innuendoes stingless; and her illness being infectious, she had not seen him after its nature was known. i myself did not know of theobald's letter, nor think enough about my godson to guess what might easily be his state. it was not till many years afterwards that i found theobald's letter in the pocket of an old portfolio which ernest had used at school, and in which other old letters and school documents were collected which i have used in this book. he had forgotten that he had it, but told me when he saw it that he remembered it as the first thing that made him begin to rise against his father in a rebellion which he recognised as righteous, though he dared not openly avow it. not the least serious thing was that it would, he feared, be his duty to give up the legacy his grandfather had left him; for if it was his only through a mistake, how could he keep it? during the rest of the half year ernest was listless and unhappy. he was very fond of some of his schoolfellows, but afraid of those whom he believed to be better than himself, and prone to idealise everyone into being his superior except those who were obviously a good deal beneath him. he held himself much too cheap, and because he was without that physical strength and vigour which he so much coveted, and also because he knew he shirked his lessons, he believed that he was without anything which could deserve the name of a good quality; he was naturally bad, and one of those for whom there was no place for repentance, though he sought it even with tears. so he shrank out of sight of those whom in his boyish way he idolised, never for a moment suspecting that he might have capacities to the full as high as theirs though of a different kind, and fell in more with those who were reputed of the baser sort, with whom he could at any rate be upon equal terms. before the end of the half year he had dropped from the estate to which he had been raised during his aunt's stay at roughborough, and his old dejection, varied, however, with bursts of conceit rivalling those of his mother, resumed its sway over him. "pontifex," said dr skinner, who had fallen upon him in hall one day like a moral landslip, before he had time to escape, "do you never laugh? do you always look so preternaturally grave?" the doctor had not meant to be unkind, but the boy turned crimson, and escaped. there was one place only where he was happy, and that was in the old church of st michael, when his friend the organist was practising. about this time cheap editions of the great oratorios began to appear, and ernest got them all as soon as they were published; he would sometimes sell a school-book to a second-hand dealer, and buy a number or two of the "messiah," or the "creation," or "elijah," with the proceeds. this was simply cheating his papa and mamma, but ernest was falling low again--or thought he was--and he wanted the music much, and the sallust, or whatever it was, little. sometimes the organist would go home, leaving his keys with ernest, so that he could play by himself and lock up the organ and the church in time to get back for calling over. at other times, while his friend was playing, he would wander round the church, looking at the monuments and the old stained glass windows, enchanted as regards both ears and eyes, at once. once the old rector got hold of him as he was watching a new window being put in, which the rector had bought in germany--the work, it was supposed, of albert durer. he questioned ernest, and finding that he was fond of music, he said in his old trembling voice (for he was over eighty), "then you should have known dr burney who wrote the history of music. i knew him exceedingly well when i was a young man." that made ernest's heart beat, for he knew that dr burney, when a boy at school at chester, used to break bounds that he might watch handel smoking his pipe in the exchange coffee house--and now he was in the presence of one who, if he had not seen handel himself, had at least seen those who had seen him. these were oases in his desert, but, as a general rule, the boy looked thin and pale, and as though he had a secret which depressed him, which no doubt he had, but for which i cannot blame him. he rose, in spite of himself, higher in the school, but fell ever into deeper and deeper disgrace with the masters, and did not gain in the opinion of those boys about whom he was persuaded that they could assuredly never know what it was to have a secret weighing upon their minds. this was what ernest felt so keenly; he did not much care about the boys who liked him, and idolised some who kept him as far as possible at a distance, but this is pretty much the case with all boys everywhere. at last things reached a crisis, below which they could not very well go, for at the end of the half year but one after his aunt's death, ernest brought back a document in his portmanteau, which theobald stigmatised as "infamous and outrageous." i need hardly say i am alluding to his school bill. this document was always a source of anxiety to ernest, for it was gone into with scrupulous care, and he was a good deal cross-examined about it. he would sometimes "write in" for articles necessary for his education, such as a portfolio, or a dictionary, and sell the same, as i have explained, in order to eke out his pocket money, probably to buy either music or tobacco. these frauds were sometimes, as ernest thought, in imminent danger of being discovered, and it was a load off his breast when the cross-examination was safely over. this time theobald had made a great fuss about the extras, but had grudgingly passed them; it was another matter, however, with the character and the moral statistics, with which the bill concluded. the page on which these details were to be found was as follows: report of the conduct and progress of ernest pontifex. upper fifth form, half year ending midsummer classics--idle, listless and unimproving. mathematics " " " divinity " " " conduct in house.--orderly. general conduct--not satisfactory, on account of his great unpunctuality and inattention to duties. monthly merit money s. d. d. d. d. total s. d. number of merit marks total number of penal marks total number of extra penals total i recommend that his pocket money be made to depend upon his merit money. s. skinner, head-master. chapter xxxviii ernest was thus in disgrace from the beginning of the holidays, but an incident soon occurred which led him into delinquencies compared with which all his previous sins were venial. among the servants at the rectory was a remarkably pretty girl named ellen. she came from devonshire, and was the daughter of a fisherman who had been drowned when she was a child. her mother set up a small shop in the village where her husband had lived, and just managed to make a living. ellen remained with her till she was fourteen, when she first went out to service. four years later, when she was about eighteen, but so well grown that she might have passed for twenty, she had been strongly recommended to christina, who was then in want of a housemaid, and had now been at battersby about twelve months. as i have said the girl was remarkably pretty; she looked the perfection of health and good temper, indeed there was a serene expression upon her face which captivated almost all who saw her; she looked as if matters had always gone well with her and were always going to do so, and as if no conceivable combination of circumstances could put her for long together out of temper either with herself or with anyone else. her complexion was clear, but high; her eyes were grey and beautifully shaped; her lips were full and restful, with something of an egyptian sphinx-like character about them. when i learned that she came from devonshire i fancied i saw a strain of far away egyptian blood in her, for i had heard, though i know not what foundation there was for the story, that the egyptians made settlements on the coast of devonshire and cornwall long before the romans conquered britain. her hair was a rich brown, and her figure--of about the middle height--perfect, but erring if at all on the side of robustness. altogether she was one of those girls about whom one is inclined to wonder how they can remain unmarried a week or a day longer. her face (as indeed faces generally are, though i grant they lie sometimes) was a fair index to her disposition. she was good nature itself, and everyone in the house, not excluding i believe even theobald himself after a fashion, was fond of her. as for christina she took the very warmest interest in her, and used to have her into the dining-room twice a week, and prepare her for confirmation (for by some accident she had never been confirmed) by explaining to her the geography of palestine and the routes taken by st paul on his various journeys in asia minor. when bishop treadwell did actually come down to battersby and hold a confirmation there (christina had her wish, he slept at battersby, and she had a grand dinner party for him, and called him "my lord" several times), he was so much struck with her pretty face and modest demeanour when he laid his hands upon her that he asked christina about her. when she replied that ellen was one of her own servants, the bishop seemed, so she thought or chose to think, quite pleased that so pretty a girl should have found so exceptionally good a situation. ernest used to get up early during the holidays so that he might play the piano before breakfast without disturbing his papa and mamma--or rather, perhaps, without being disturbed by them. ellen would generally be there sweeping the drawing-room floor and dusting while he was playing, and the boy, who was ready to make friends with most people, soon became very fond of her. he was not as a general rule sensitive to the charms of the fair sex, indeed he had hardly been thrown in with any women except his aunts allaby, and his aunt alethea, his mother, his sister charlotte and mrs jay; sometimes also he had had to take off his hat to the miss skinners, and had felt as if he should sink into the earth on doing so, but his shyness had worn off with ellen, and the pair had become fast friends. perhaps it was well that ernest was not at home for very long together, but as yet his affection though hearty was quite platonic. he was not only innocent, but deplorably--i might even say guiltily--innocent. his preference was based upon the fact that ellen never scolded him, but was always smiling and good tempered; besides she used to like to hear him play, and this gave him additional zest in playing. the morning access to the piano was indeed the one distinct advantage which the holidays had in ernest's eyes, for at school he could not get at a piano except quasi- surreptitiously at the shop of mr pearsall, the music-seller. on returning this midsummer he was shocked to find his favourite looking pale and ill. all her good spirits had left her, the roses had fled from her cheek, and she seemed on the point of going into a decline. she said she was unhappy about her mother, whose health was failing, and was afraid she was herself not long for this world. christina, of course, noticed the change. "i have often remarked," she said, "that those very fresh-coloured, healthy-looking girls are the first to break up. i have given her calomel and james's powders repeatedly, and though she does not like it, i think i must show her to dr martin when he next comes here." "very well, my dear," said theobald, and so next time dr martin came ellen was sent for. dr martin soon discovered what would probably have been apparent to christina herself if she had been able to conceive of such an ailment in connection with a servant who lived under the same roof as theobald and herself--the purity of whose married life should have preserved all unmarried people who came near them from any taint of mischief. when it was discovered that in three or four months more ellen would become a mother, christina's natural good nature would have prompted her to deal as leniently with the case as she could, if she had not been panic-stricken lest any mercy on her and theobald's part should be construed into toleration, however partial, of so great a sin; hereon she dashed off into the conviction that the only thing to do was to pay ellen her wages, and pack her off on the instant bag and baggage out of the house which purity had more especially and particularly singled out for its abiding city. when she thought of the fearful contamination which ellen's continued presence even for a week would occasion, she could not hesitate. then came the question--horrid thought!--as to who was the partner of ellen's guilt? was it, could it be, her own son, her darling ernest? ernest was getting a big boy now. she could excuse any young woman for taking a fancy to him; as for himself, why she was sure he was behind no young man of his age in appreciation of the charms of a nice-looking young woman. so long as he was innocent she did not mind this, but oh, if he were guilty! she could not bear to think of it, and yet it would be mere cowardice not to look such a matter in the face--her hope was in the lord, and she was ready to bear cheerfully and make the best of any suffering he might think fit to lay upon her. that the baby must be either a boy or girl--this much, at any rate, was clear. no less clear was it that the child, if a boy, would resemble theobald, and if a girl, herself. resemblance, whether of body or mind, generally leaped over a generation. the guilt of the parents must not be shared by the innocent offspring of shame--oh! no--and such a child as this would be . . . she was off in one of her reveries at once. the child was in the act of being consecrated archbishop of canterbury when theobald came in from a visit in the parish, and was told of the shocking discovery. christina said nothing about ernest, and i believe was more than half angry when the blame was laid upon other shoulders. she was easily consoled, however, and fell back on the double reflection, firstly, that her son was pure, and secondly, that she was quite sure he would not have been so had it not been for his religious convictions which had held him back--as, of course, it was only to be expected they would. theobald agreed that no time must be lost in paying ellen her wages and packing her off. so this was done, and less than two hours after dr martin had entered the house ellen was sitting beside john the coachman, with her face muffled up so that it could not be seen, weeping bitterly as she was being driven to the station. chapter xxxix ernest had been out all the morning, but came in to the yard of the rectory from the spinney behind the house just as ellen's things were being put into the carriage. he thought it was ellen whom he then saw get into the carriage, but as her face had been hidden by her handkerchief he had not been able to see plainly who it was, and dismissed the idea as improbable. he went to the back-kitchen window, at which the cook was standing peeling the potatoes for dinner, and found her crying bitterly. ernest was much distressed, for he liked the cook, and, of course, wanted to know what all the matter was, who it was that had just gone off in the pony carriage, and why? the cook told him it was ellen, but said that no earthly power should make it cross her lips why it was she was going away; when, however, ernest took her _au pied de la lettre_ and asked no further questions, she told him all about it after extorting the most solemn promises of secrecy. it took ernest some minutes to arrive at the facts of the case, but when he understood them he leaned against the pump, which stood near the back- kitchen window, and mingled his tears with the cook's. then his blood began to boil within him. he did not see that after all his father and mother could have done much otherwise than they actually did. they might perhaps have been less precipitate, and tried to keep the matter a little more quiet, but this would not have been easy, nor would it have mended things very materially. the bitter fact remains that if a girl does certain things she must do them at her peril, no matter how young and pretty she is nor to what temptation she has succumbed. this is the way of the world, and as yet there has been no help found for it. ernest could only see what he gathered from the cook, namely, that his favourite, ellen, was being turned adrift with a matter of three pounds in her pocket, to go she knew not where, and to do she knew not what, and that she had said she should hang or drown herself, which the boy implicitly believed she would. with greater promptitude than he had shown yet, he reckoned up his money and found he had two shillings and threepence at his command; there was his knife which might sell for a shilling, and there was the silver watch his aunt alethea had given him shortly before she died. the carriage had been gone now a full quarter of an hour, and it must have got some distance ahead, but he would do his best to catch it up, and there were short cuts which would perhaps give him a chance. he was off at once, and from the top of the hill just past the rectory paddock he could see the carriage, looking very small, on a bit of road which showed perhaps a mile and a half in front of him. one of the most popular amusements at roughborough was an institution called "the hounds"--more commonly known elsewhere as "hare and hounds," but in this case the hare was a couple of boys who were called foxes, and boys are so particular about correctness of nomenclature where their sports are concerned that i dare not say they played "hare and hounds"; these were "the hounds," and that was all. ernest's want of muscular strength did not tell against him here; there was no jostling up against boys who, though neither older nor taller than he, were yet more robustly built; if it came to mere endurance he was as good as any one else, so when his carpentering was stopped he had naturally taken to "the hounds" as his favourite amusement. his lungs thus exercised had become developed, and as a run of six or seven miles across country was not more than he was used to, he did not despair by the help of the short cuts of overtaking the carriage, or at the worst of catching ellen at the station before the train left. so he ran and ran and ran till his first wind was gone and his second came, and he could breathe more easily. never with "the hounds" had he run so fast and with so few breaks as now, but with all his efforts and the help of the short cuts he did not catch up the carriage, and would probably not have done so had not john happened to turn his head and seen him running and making signs for the carriage to stop a quarter of a mile off. he was now about five miles from home, and was nearly done up. he was crimson with his exertion; covered with dust, and with his trousers and coat sleeves a trifle short for him he cut a poor figure enough as he thrust on ellen his watch, his knife, and the little money he had. the one thing he implored of her was not to do those dreadful things which she threatened--for his sake if for no other reason. ellen at first would not hear of taking anything from him, but the coachman, who was from the north country, sided with ernest. "take it, my lass," he said kindly, "take what thou canst get whiles thou canst get it; as for master ernest here--he has run well after thee; therefore let him give thee what he is minded." ellen did what she was told, and the two parted with many tears, the girl's last words being that she should never forget him, and that they should meet again hereafter, she was sure they should, and then she would repay him. then ernest got into a field by the roadside, flung himself on the grass, and waited under the shadow of a hedge till the carriage should pass on its return from the station and pick him up, for he was dead beat. thoughts which had already occurred to him with some force now came more strongly before him, and he saw that he had got himself into one mess--or rather into half-a-dozen messes--the more. in the first place he should be late for dinner, and this was one of the offences on which theobald had no mercy. also he should have to say where he had been, and there was a danger of being found out if he did not speak the truth. not only this, but sooner or later it must come out that he was no longer possessed of the beautiful watch which his dear aunt had given him--and what, pray, had he done with it, or how had he lost it? the reader will know very well what he ought to have done. he should have gone straight home, and if questioned should have said, "i have been running after the carriage to catch our housemaid ellen, whom i am very fond of; i have given her my watch, my knife and all my pocket money, so that i have now no pocket money at all and shall probably ask you for some more sooner than i otherwise might have done, and you will also have to buy me a new watch and a knife." but then fancy the consternation which such an announcement would have occasioned! fancy the scowl and flashing eyes of the infuriated theobald! "you unprincipled young scoundrel," he would exclaim, "do you mean to vilify your own parents by implying that they have dealt harshly by one whose profligacy has disgraced their house?" or he might take it with one of those sallies of sarcastic calm, of which he believed himself to be a master. "very well, ernest, very well: i shall say nothing; you can please yourself; you are not yet twenty-one, but pray act as if you were your own master; your poor aunt doubtless gave you the watch that you might fling it away upon the first improper character you came across; i think i can now understand, however, why she did not leave you her money; and, after all, your godfather may just as well have it as the kind of people on whom you would lavish it if it were yours." then his mother would burst into tears and implore him to repent and seek the things belonging to his peace while there was yet time, by falling on his knees to theobald and assuring him of his unfailing love for him as the kindest and tenderest father in the universe. ernest could do all this just as well as they could, and now, as he lay on the grass, speeches, some one or other of which was as certain to come as the sun to set, kept running in his head till they confuted the idea of telling the truth by reducing it to an absurdity. truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics. having settled then that he was to tell a lie, what lie should he tell? should he say he had been robbed? he had enough imagination to know that he had not enough imagination to carry him out here. young as he was, his instinct told him that the best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way--who husbands it too carefully to waste it where it can be dispensed with. the simplest course would be to say that he had lost the watch, and was late for dinner because he had been looking for it. he had been out for a long walk--he chose the line across the fields that he had actually taken--and the weather being very hot, he had taken off his coat and waistcoat; in carrying them over his arm his watch, his money, and his knife had dropped out of them. he had got nearly home when he found out his loss, and had run back as fast as he could, looking along the line he had followed, till at last he had given it up; seeing the carriage coming back from the station, he had let it pick him up and bring him home. this covered everything, the running and all; for his face still showed that he must have been running hard; the only question was whether he had been seen about the rectory by any but the servants for a couple of hours or so before ellen had gone, and this he was happy to believe was not the case; for he had been out except during his few minutes' interview with the cook. his father had been out in the parish; his mother had certainly not come across him, and his brother and sister had also been out with the governess. he knew he could depend upon the cook and the other servants--the coachman would see to this; on the whole, therefore, both he and the coachman thought the story as proposed by ernest would about meet the requirements of the case. chapter xl when ernest got home and sneaked in through the back door, he heard his father's voice in its angriest tones, inquiring whether master ernest had already returned. he felt as jack must have felt in the story of jack and the bean stalk, when from the oven in which he was hidden he heard the ogre ask his wife what young children she had got for his supper. with much courage, and, as the event proved, with not less courage than discretion, he took the bull by the horns, and announced himself at once as having just come in after having met with a terrible misfortune. little by little he told his story, and though theobald stormed somewhat at his "incredible folly and carelessness," he got off better than he expected. theobald and christina had indeed at first been inclined to connect his absence from dinner with ellen's dismissal, but on finding it clear, as theobald said--everything was always clear with theobald--that ernest had not been in the house all the morning, and could therefore have known nothing of what had happened, he was acquitted on this account for once in a way, without a stain upon his character. perhaps theobald was in a good temper; he may have seen from the paper that morning that his stocks had been rising; it may have been this or twenty other things, but whatever it was, he did not scold so much as ernest had expected, and, seeing the boy look exhausted and believing him to be much grieved at the loss of his watch, theobald actually prescribed a glass of wine after his dinner, which, strange to say, did not choke him, but made him see things more cheerfully than was usual with him. that night when he said his prayers, he inserted a few paragraphs to the effect that he might not be discovered, and that things might go well with ellen, but he was anxious and ill at ease. his guilty conscience pointed out to him a score of weak places in his story, through any one of which detection might even yet easily enter. next day and for many days afterwards he fled when no man was pursuing, and trembled each time he heard his father's voice calling for him. he had already so many causes of anxiety that he could stand little more, and in spite of all his endeavours to look cheerful, even his mother could see that something was preying upon his mind. then the idea returned to her that, after all, her son might not be innocent in the ellen matter--and this was so interesting that she felt bound to get as near the truth as she could. "come here, my poor, pale-faced, heavy-eyed boy," she said to him one day in her kindest manner; "come and sit down by me, and we will have a little quiet confidential talk together, will we not?" the boy went mechanically to the sofa. whenever his mother wanted what she called a confidential talk with him she always selected the sofa as the most suitable ground on which to open her campaign. all mothers do this; the sofa is to them what the dining-room is to fathers. in the present case the sofa was particularly well adapted for a strategic purpose, being an old-fashioned one with a high back, mattress, bolsters and cushions. once safely penned into one of its deep corners, it was like a dentist's chair, not too easy to get out of again. here she could get at him better to pull him about, if this should seem desirable, or if she thought fit to cry she could bury her head in the sofa cushion and abandon herself to an agony of grief which seldom failed of its effect. none of her favourite manoeuvres were so easily adopted in her usual seat, the arm-chair on the right hand side of the fireplace, and so well did her son know from his mother's tone that this was going to be a sofa conversation that he took his place like a lamb as soon as she began to speak and before she could reach the sofa herself. "my dearest boy," began his mother, taking hold of his hand and placing it within her own, "promise me never to be afraid either of your dear papa or of me; promise me this, my dear, as you love me, promise it to me," and she kissed him again and again and stroked his hair. but with her other hand she still kept hold of his; she had got him and she meant to keep him. the lad hung down his head and promised. what else could he do? "you know there is no one, dear, dear ernest, who loves you so much as your papa and i do; no one who watches so carefully over your interests or who is so anxious to enter into all your little joys and troubles as we are; but my dearest boy, it grieves me to think sometimes that you have not that perfect love for and confidence in us which you ought to have. you know, my darling, that it would be as much our pleasure as our duty to watch over the development of your moral and spiritual nature, but alas! you will not let us see your moral and spiritual nature. at times we are almost inclined to doubt whether you have a moral and spiritual nature at all. of your inner life, my dear, we know nothing beyond such scraps as we can glean in spite of you, from little things which escape you almost before you know that you have said them." the boy winced at this. it made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. he knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve. his mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch she had given him. had she felt less confident of victory she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns in order to enjoy seeing the snail draw them in again--but she knew that when she had got him well down into the sofa, and held his hand, she had the enemy almost absolutely at her mercy, and could do pretty much what she liked. "papa does not feel," she continued, "that you love him with that fulness and unreserve which would prompt you to have no concealment from him, and to tell him everything freely and fearlessly as your most loving earthly friend next only to your heavenly father. perfect love, as we know, casteth out fear: your father loves you perfectly, my darling, but he does not feel as though you loved him perfectly in return. if you fear him it is because you do not love him as he deserves, and i know it sometimes cuts him to the very heart to think that he has earned from you a deeper and more willing sympathy than you display towards him. oh, ernest, ernest, do not grieve one who is so good and noble-hearted by conduct which i can call by no other name than ingratitude." ernest could never stand being spoken to in this way by his mother: for he still believed that she loved him, and that he was fond of her and had a friend in her--up to a certain point. but his mother was beginning to come to the end of her tether; she had played the domestic confidence trick upon him times without number already. over and over again had she wheedled from him all she wanted to know, and afterwards got him into the most horrible scrape by telling the whole to theobald. ernest had remonstrated more than once upon these occasions, and had pointed out to his mother how disastrous to him his confidences had been, but christina had always joined issue with him and showed him in the clearest possible manner that in each case she had been right, and that he could not reasonably complain. generally it was her conscience that forbade her to be silent, and against this there was no appeal, for we are all bound to follow the dictates of our conscience. ernest used to have to recite a hymn about conscience. it was to the effect that if you did not pay attention to its voice it would soon leave off speaking. "my mamma's conscience has not left off speaking," said ernest to one of his chums at roughborough; "it's always jabbering." when a boy has once spoken so disrespectfully as this about his mother's conscience it is practically all over between him and her. ernest through sheer force of habit, of the sofa, and of the return of the associated ideas, was still so moved by the siren's voice as to yearn to sail towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but it would not do; there were other associated ideas that returned also, and the mangled bones of too many murdered confessions were lying whitening round the skirts of his mother's dress, to allow him by any possibility to trust her further. so he hung his head and looked sheepish, but kept his own counsel. "i see, my dearest," continued his mother, "either that i am mistaken, and that there is nothing on your mind, or that you will not unburden yourself to me: but oh, ernest, tell me at least this much; is there nothing that you repent of, nothing which makes you unhappy in connection with that miserable girl ellen?" ernest's heart failed him. "i am a dead boy now," he said to himself. he had not the faintest conception what his mother was driving at, and thought she suspected about the watch; but he held his ground. i do not believe he was much more of a coward than his neighbours, only he did not know that all sensible people are cowards when they are off their beat, or when they think they are going to be roughly handled. i believe, that if the truth were known, it would be found that even the valiant st michael himself tried hard to shirk his famous combat with the dragon; he pretended not to see all sorts of misconduct on the dragon's part; shut his eyes to the eating up of i do not know how many hundreds of men, women and children whom he had promised to protect; allowed himself to be publicly insulted a dozen times over without resenting it; and in the end when even an angel could stand it no longer he shilly-shallied and temporised an unconscionable time before he would fix the day and hour for the encounter. as for the actual combat it was much such another _wurra-wurra_ as mrs allaby had had with the young man who had in the end married her eldest daughter, till after a time behold, there was the dragon lying dead, while he was himself alive and not very seriously hurt after all. "i do not know what you mean, mamma," exclaimed ernest anxiously and more or less hurriedly. his mother construed his manner into indignation at being suspected, and being rather frightened herself she turned tail and scuttled off as fast as her tongue could carry her. "oh!" she said, "i see by your tone that you are innocent! oh! oh! how i thank my heavenly father for this; may he for his dear son's sake keep you always pure. your father, my dear"--(here she spoke hurriedly but gave him a searching look) "was as pure as a spotless angel when he came to me. like him, always be self-denying, truly truthful both in word and deed, never forgetful whose son and grandson you are, nor of the name we gave you, of the sacred stream in whose waters your sins were washed out of you through the blood and blessing of christ," etc. but ernest cut this--i will not say short--but a great deal shorter than it would have been if christina had had her say out, by extricating himself from his mamma's embrace and showing a clean pair of heels. as he got near the purlieus of the kitchen (where he was more at ease) he heard his father calling for his mother, and again his guilty conscience rose against him. "he has found all out now," it cried, "and he is going to tell mamma--this time i am done for." but there was nothing in it; his father only wanted the key of the cellaret. then ernest slunk off into a coppice or spinney behind the rectory paddock, and consoled himself with a pipe of tobacco. here in the wood with the summer sun streaming through the trees and a book and his pipe the boy forgot his cares and had an interval of that rest without which i verily believe his life would have been insupportable. of course, ernest was made to look for his lost property, and a reward was offered for it, but it seemed he had wandered a good deal off the path, thinking to find a lark's nest, more than once, and looking for a watch and purse on battersby piewipes was very like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay: besides it might have been found and taken by some tramp, or by a magpie of which there were many in the neighbourhood, so that after a week or ten days the search was discontinued, and the unpleasant fact had to be faced that ernest must have another watch, another knife, and a small sum of pocket money. it was only right, however, that ernest should pay half the cost of the watch; this should be made easy for him, for it should be deducted from his pocket money in half-yearly instalments extending over two, or even it might be three years. in ernest's own interests, then, as well as those of his father and mother, it would be well that the watch should cost as little as possible, so it was resolved to buy a second-hand one. nothing was to be said to ernest, but it was to be bought, and laid upon his plate as a surprise just before the holidays were over. theobald would have to go to the county town in a few days, and could then find some second-hand watch which would answer sufficiently well. in the course of time, therefore, theobald went, furnished with a long list of household commissions, among which was the purchase of a watch for ernest. those, as i have said, were always happy times, when theobald was away for a whole day certain; the boy was beginning to feel easy in his mind as though god had heard his prayers, and he was not going to be found out. altogether the day had proved an unusually tranquil one, but, alas! it was not to close as it had begun; the fickle atmosphere in which he lived was never more likely to breed a storm than after such an interval of brilliant calm, and when theobald returned ernest had only to look in his face to see that a hurricane was approaching. christina saw that something had gone very wrong, and was quite frightened lest theobald should have heard of some serious money loss; he did not, however, at once unbosom himself, but rang the bell and said to the servant, "tell master ernest i wish to speak to him in the dining- room." chapter xli long before ernest reached the dining-room his ill-divining soul had told him that his sin had found him out. what head of a family ever sends for any of its members into the dining-room if his intentions are honourable? when he reached it he found it empty--his father having been called away for a few minutes unexpectedly upon some parish business--and he was left in the same kind of suspense as people are in after they have been ushered into their dentist's ante-room. of all the rooms in the house he hated the dining-room worst. it was here that he had had to do his latin and greek lessons with his father. it had a smell of some particular kind of polish or varnish which was used in polishing the furniture, and neither i nor ernest can even now come within range of the smell of this kind of varnish without our hearts failing us. over the chimney-piece there was a veritable old master, one of the few original pictures which mr george pontifex had brought from italy. it was supposed to be a salvator rosa, and had been bought as a great bargain. the subject was elijah or elisha (whichever it was) being fed by the ravens in the desert. there were the ravens in the upper right- hand corner with bread and meat in their beaks and claws, and there was the prophet in question in the lower left-hand corner looking longingly up towards them. when ernest was a very small boy it had been a constant matter of regret to him that the food which the ravens carried never actually reached the prophet; he did not understand the limitation of the painter's art, and wanted the meat and the prophet to be brought into direct contact. one day, with the help of some steps which had been left in the room, he had clambered up to the picture and with a piece of bread and butter traced a greasy line right across it from the ravens to elisha's mouth, after which he had felt more comfortable. ernest's mind was drifting back to this youthful escapade when he heard his father's hand on the door, and in another second theobald entered. "oh, ernest," said he, in an off-hand, rather cheery manner, "there's a little matter which i should like you to explain to me, as i have no doubt you very easily can." thump, thump, thump, went ernest's heart against his ribs; but his father's manner was so much nicer than usual that he began to think it might be after all only another false alarm. "it had occurred to your mother and myself that we should like to set you up with a watch again before you went back to school" ("oh, that's all," said ernest to himself quite relieved), "and i have been to-day to look out for a second-hand one which should answer every purpose so long as you're at school." theobald spoke as if watches had half-a-dozen purposes besides time-keeping, but he could hardly open his mouth without using one or other of his tags, and "answering every purpose" was one of them. ernest was breaking out into the usual expressions of gratitude, when theobald continued, "you are interrupting me," and ernest's heart thumped again. "you are interrupting me, ernest. i have not yet done." ernest was instantly dumb. "i passed several shops with second-hand watches for sale, but i saw none of a description and price which pleased me, till at last i was shown one which had, so the shopman said, been left with him recently for sale, and which i at once recognised as the one which had been given you by your aunt alethea. even if i had failed to recognise it, as perhaps i might have done, i should have identified it directly it reached my hands, inasmuch as it had 'e. p., a present from a. p.' engraved upon the inside. i need say no more to show that this was the very watch which you told your mother and me that you had dropped out of your pocket." up to this time theobald's manner had been studiously calm, and his words had been uttered slowly, but here he suddenly quickened and flung off the mask as he added the words, "or some such cock and bull story, which your mother and i were too truthful to disbelieve. you can guess what must be our feelings now." ernest felt that this last home-thrust was just. in his less anxious moments he had thought his papa and mamma "green" for the readiness with which they believed him, but he could not deny that their credulity was a proof of their habitual truthfulness of mind. in common justice he must own that it was very dreadful for two such truthful people to have a son as untruthful as he knew himself to be. "believing that a son of your mother and myself would be incapable of falsehood i at once assumed that some tramp had picked the watch up and was now trying to dispose of it." this to the best of my belief was not accurate. theobald's first assumption had been that it was ernest who was trying to sell the watch, and it was an inspiration of the moment to say that his magnanimous mind had at once conceived the idea of a tramp. "you may imagine how shocked i was when i discovered that the watch had been brought for sale by that miserable woman ellen"--here ernest's heart hardened a little, and he felt as near an approach to an instinct to turn as one so defenceless could be expected to feel; his father quickly perceived this and continued, "who was turned out of this house in circumstances which i will not pollute your ears by more particularly describing. "i put aside the horrid conviction which was beginning to dawn upon me, and assumed that in the interval between her dismissal and her leaving this house, she had added theft to her other sin, and having found your watch in your bedroom had purloined it. it even occurred to me that you might have missed your watch after the woman was gone, and, suspecting who had taken it, had run after the carriage in order to recover it; but when i told the shopman of my suspicions he assured me that the person who left it with him had declared most solemnly that it had been given her by her master's son, whose property it was, and who had a perfect right to dispose of it. "he told me further that, thinking the circumstances in which the watch was offered for sale somewhat suspicious, he had insisted upon the woman's telling him the whole story of how she came by it, before he would consent to buy it of her. "he said that at first--as women of that stamp invariably do--she tried prevarication, but on being threatened that she should at once be given into custody if she did not tell the whole truth, she described the way in which you had run after the carriage, till as she said you were black in the face, and insisted on giving her all your pocket money, your knife and your watch. she added that my coachman john--whom i shall instantly discharge--was witness to the whole transaction. now, ernest, be pleased to tell me whether this appalling story is true or false?" it never occurred to ernest to ask his father why he did not hit a man his own size, or to stop him midway in the story with a remonstrance against being kicked when he was down. the boy was too much shocked and shaken to be inventive; he could only drift and stammer out that the tale was true. "so i feared," said theobald, "and now, ernest, be good enough to ring the bell." when the bell had been answered, theobald desired that john should be sent for, and when john came theobald calculated the wages due to him and desired him at once to leave the house. john's manner was quiet and respectful. he took his dismissal as a matter of course, for theobald had hinted enough to make him understand why he was being discharged, but when he saw ernest sitting pale and awe- struck on the edge of his chair against the dining-room wall, a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and turning to theobald he said in a broad northern accent which i will not attempt to reproduce: "look here, master, i can guess what all this is about--now before i goes i want to have a word with you." "ernest," said theobald, "leave the room." "no, master ernest, you shan't," said john, planting himself against the door. "now, master," he continued, "you may do as you please about me. i've been a good servant to you, and i don't mean to say as you've been a bad master to me, but i do say that if you bear hardly on master ernest here i have those in the village as 'll hear on't and let me know; and if i do hear on't i'll come back and break every bone in your skin, so there!" john's breath came and went quickly, as though he would have been well enough pleased to begin the bone-breaking business at once. theobald turned of an ashen colour--not, as he explained afterwards, at the idle threats of a detected and angry ruffian, but at such atrocious insolence from one of his own servants. "i shall leave master ernest, john," he rejoined proudly, "to the reproaches of his own conscience." ("thank god and thank john," thought ernest.) "as for yourself, i admit that you have been an excellent servant until this unfortunate business came on, and i shall have much pleasure in giving you a character if you want one. have you anything more to say?" "no more nor what i have said," said john sullenly, "but what i've said i means and i'll stick to--character or no character." "oh, you need not be afraid about your character, john," said theobald kindly, "and as it is getting late, there can be no occasion for you to leave the house before to-morrow morning." to this there was no reply from john, who retired, packed up his things, and left the house at once. when christina heard what had happened she said she could condone all except that theobald should have been subjected to such insolence from one of his own servants through the misconduct of his son. theobald was the bravest man in the whole world, and could easily have collared the wretch and turned him out of the room, but how far more dignified, how far nobler had been his reply! how it would tell in a novel or upon the stage, for though the stage as a whole was immoral, yet there were doubtless some plays which were improving spectacles. she could fancy the whole house hushed with excitement at hearing john's menace, and hardly breathing by reason of their interest and expectation of the coming answer. then the actor--probably the great and good mr macready--would say, "i shall leave master ernest, john, to the reproaches of his own conscience." oh, it was sublime! what a roar of applause must follow! then she should enter herself, and fling her arms about her husband's neck, and call him her lion-hearted husband. when the curtain dropped, it would be buzzed about the house that the scene just witnessed had been drawn from real life, and had actually occurred in the household of the rev. theobald pontifex, who had married a miss allaby, etc., etc. as regards ernest the suspicions which had already crossed her mind were deepened, but she thought it better to leave the matter where it was. at present she was in a very strong position. ernest's official purity was firmly established, but at the same time he had shown himself so susceptible that she was able to fuse two contradictory impressions concerning him into a single idea, and consider him as a kind of joseph and don juan in one. this was what she had wanted all along, but her vanity being gratified by the possession of such a son, there was an end of it; the son himself was naught. no doubt if john had not interfered, ernest would have had to expiate his offence with ache, penury and imprisonment. as it was the boy was "to consider himself" as undergoing these punishments, and as suffering pangs of unavailing remorse inflicted on him by his conscience into the bargain; but beyond the fact that theobald kept him more closely to his holiday task, and the continued coldness of his parents, no ostensible punishment was meted out to him. ernest, however, tells me that he looks back upon this as the time when he began to know that he had a cordial and active dislike for both his parents, which i suppose means that he was now beginning to be aware that he was reaching man's estate. chapter xlii about a week before he went back to school his father again sent for him into the dining-room, and told him that he should restore him his watch, but that he should deduct the sum he had paid for it--for he had thought it better to pay a few shillings rather than dispute the ownership of the watch, seeing that ernest had undoubtedly given it to ellen--from his pocket money, in payments which should extend over two half years. he would therefore have to go back to roughborough this half year with only five shillings' pocket money. if he wanted more he must earn more merit money. ernest was not so careful about money as a pattern boy should be. he did not say to himself, "now i have got a sovereign which must last me fifteen weeks, therefore i may spend exactly one shilling and fourpence in each week"--and spend exactly one and fourpence in each week accordingly. he ran through his money at about the same rate as other boys did, being pretty well cleaned out a few days after he had got back to school. when he had no more money, he got a little into debt, and when as far in debt as he could see his way to repaying, he went without luxuries. immediately he got any money he would pay his debts; if there was any over he would spend it; if there was not--and there seldom was--he would begin to go on tick again. his finance was always based upon the supposition that he should go back to school with pound in his pocket--of which he owed say a matter of fifteen shillings. there would be five shillings for sundry school subscriptions--but when these were paid the weekly allowance of sixpence given to each boy in hall, his merit money (which this half he was resolved should come to a good sum) and renewed credit, would carry him through the half. the sudden failure of /- was disastrous to my hero's scheme of finance. his face betrayed his emotions so clearly that theobald said he was determined "to learn the truth at once, and _this time_ without days and days of falsehood" before he reached it. the melancholy fact was not long in coming out, namely, that the wretched ernest added debt to the vices of idleness, falsehood and possibly--for it was not impossible--immorality. how had he come to get into debt? did the other boys do so? ernest reluctantly admitted that they did. with what shops did they get into debt? this was asking too much, ernest said he didn't know! "oh, ernest, ernest," exclaimed his mother, who was in the room, "do not so soon a second time presume upon the forbearance of the tenderest-hearted father in the world. give time for one stab to heal before you wound him with another." this was all very fine, but what was ernest to do? how could he get the school shop-keepers into trouble by owning that they let some of the boys go on tick with them? there was mrs cross, a good old soul, who used to sell hot rolls and butter for breakfast, or eggs and toast, or it might be the quarter of a fowl with bread sauce and mashed potatoes for which she would charge d. if she made a farthing out of the sixpence it was as much as she did. when the boys would come trooping into her shop after "the hounds" how often had not ernest heard her say to her servant girls, "now then, you wanches, git some cheers." all the boys were fond of her, and was he, ernest, to tell tales about her? it was horrible. "now look here, ernest," said his father with his blackest scowl, "i am going to put a stop to this nonsense once for all. either take me fully into your confidence, as a son should take a father, and trust me to deal with this matter as a clergyman and a man of the world--or understand distinctly that i shall take the whole story to dr skinner, who, i imagine, will take much sterner measures than i should." "oh, ernest, ernest," sobbed christina, "be wise in time, and trust those who have already shown you that they know but too well how to be forbearing." no genuine hero of romance should have hesitated for a moment. nothing should have cajoled or frightened him into telling tales out of school. ernest thought of his ideal boys: they, he well knew, would have let their tongues be cut out of them before information could have been wrung from any word of theirs. but ernest was not an ideal boy, and he was not strong enough for his surroundings; i doubt how far any boy could withstand the moral pressure which was brought to bear upon him; at any rate he could not do so, and after a little more writhing he yielded himself a passive prey to the enemy. he consoled himself with the reflection that his papa had not played the confidence trick on him quite as often as his mamma had, and that probably it was better he should tell his father, than that his father should insist on dr skinner's making an inquiry. his papa's conscience "jabbered" a good deal, but not as much as his mamma's. the little fool forgot that he had not given his father as many chances of betraying him as he had given to christina. then it all came out. he owed this at mrs cross's, and this to mrs jones, and this at the "swan and bottle" public house, to say nothing of another shilling or sixpence or two in other quarters. nevertheless, theobald and christina were not satiated, but rather the more they discovered the greater grew their appetite for discovery; it was their obvious duty to find out everything, for though they might rescue their own darling from this hotbed of iniquity without getting to know more than they knew at present, were there not other papas and mammas with darlings whom also they were bound to rescue if it were yet possible? what boys, then, owed money to these harpies as well as ernest? here, again, there was a feeble show of resistance, but the thumbscrews were instantly applied, and ernest, demoralised as he already was, recanted and submitted himself to the powers that were. he told only a little less than he knew or thought he knew. he was examined, re-examined, cross-examined, sent to the retirement of his own bedroom and cross-examined again; the smoking in mrs jones' kitchen all came out; which boys smoked and which did not; which boys owed money and, roughly, how much and where; which boys swore and used bad language. theobald was resolved that this time ernest should, as he called it, take him into his confidence without reserve, so the school list which went with dr skinner's half-yearly bills was brought out, and the most secret character of each boy was gone through _seriatim_ by mr and mrs pontifex, so far as it was in ernest's power to give information concerning it, and yet theobald had on the preceding sunday preached a less feeble sermon than he commonly preached, upon the horrors of the inquisition. no matter how awful was the depravity revealed to them, the pair never flinched, but probed and probed, till they were on the point of reaching subjects more delicate than they had yet touched upon. here ernest's unconscious self took the matter up and made a resistance to which his conscious self was unequal, by tumbling him off his chair in a fit of fainting. dr martin was sent for and pronounced the boy to be seriously unwell; at the same time he prescribed absolute rest and absence from nervous excitement. so the anxious parents were unwillingly compelled to be content with what they had got already--being frightened into leading him a quiet life for the short remainder of the holidays. they were not idle, but satan can find as much mischief for busy hands as for idle ones, so he sent a little job in the direction of battersby which theobald and christina undertook immediately. it would be a pity, they reasoned, that ernest should leave roughborough, now that he had been there three years; it would be difficult to find another school for him, and to explain why he had left roughborough. besides, dr skinner and theobald were supposed to be old friends, and it would be unpleasant to offend him; these were all valid reasons for not removing the boy. the proper thing to do, then, would be to warn dr skinner confidentially of the state of his school, and to furnish him with a school list annotated with the remarks extracted from ernest, which should be appended to the name of each boy. theobald was the perfection of neatness; while his son was ill upstairs, he copied out the school list so that he could throw his comments into a tabular form, which assumed the following shape--only that of course i have changed the names. one cross in each square was to indicate occasional offence; two stood for frequent, and three for habitual delinquency. smoking drinking beer swearing notes at the "swan and obscene and bottle." language. smith o o xx will smoke next half brown xxx o x jones x xx xxx robinson xx xx x and thus through the whole school. of course, in justice to ernest, dr skinner would be bound over to secrecy before a word was said to him, but, ernest being thus protected, he could not be furnished with the facts too completely. chapter xliii so important did theobald consider this matter that he made a special journey to roughborough before the half year began. it was a relief to have him out of the house, but though his destination was not mentioned, ernest guessed where he had gone. to this day he considers his conduct at this crisis to have been one of the most serious laches of his life--one which he can never think of without shame and indignation. he says he ought to have run away from home. but what good could he have done if he had? he would have been caught, brought back and examined two days later instead of two days earlier. a boy of barely sixteen cannot stand against the moral pressure of a father and mother who have always oppressed him any more than he can cope physically with a powerful full-grown man. true, he may allow himself to be killed rather than yield, but this is being so morbidly heroic as to come close round again to cowardice; for it is little else than suicide, which is universally condemned as cowardly. on the re-assembling of the school it became apparent that something had gone wrong. dr skinner called the boys together, and with much pomp excommunicated mrs cross and mrs jones, by declaring their shops to be out of bounds. the street in which the "swan and bottle" stood was also forbidden. the vices of drinking and smoking, therefore, were clearly aimed at, and before prayers dr skinner spoke a few impressive words about the abominable sin of using bad language. ernest's feelings can be imagined. next day at the hour when the daily punishments were read out, though there had not yet been time for him to have offended, ernest pontifex was declared to have incurred every punishment which the school provided for evil-doers. he was placed on the idle list for the whole half year, and on perpetual detentions; his bounds were curtailed; he was to attend junior callings-over; in fact he was so hemmed in with punishments upon every side that it was hardly possible for him to go outside the school gates. this unparalleled list of punishments inflicted on the first day of the half year, and intended to last till the ensuing christmas holidays, was not connected with any specified offence. it required no great penetration therefore, on the part of the boys to connect ernest with the putting mrs cross's and mrs jones's shops out of bounds. great indeed was the indignation about mrs cross who, it was known, remembered dr skinner himself as a small boy only just got into jackets, and had doubtless let him have many a sausage and mashed potatoes upon deferred payment. the head boys assembled in conclave to consider what steps should be taken, but hardly had they done so before ernest knocked timidly at the head-room door and took the bull by the horns by explaining the facts as far as he could bring himself to do so. he made a clean breast of everything except about the school list and the remarks he had made about each boy's character. this infamy was more than he could own to, and he kept his counsel concerning it. fortunately he was safe in doing so, for dr skinner, pedant and more than pedant though he was, had still just sense enough to turn on theobald in the matter of the school list. whether he resented being told that he did not know the characters of his own boys, or whether he dreaded a scandal about the school i know not, but when theobald had handed him the list, over which he had expended so much pains, dr skinner had cut him uncommonly short, and had then and there, with more suavity than was usual with him, committed it to the flames before theobald's own eyes. ernest got off with the head boys easier than he expected. it was admitted that the offence, heinous though it was, had been committed under extenuating circumstances; the frankness with which the culprit had confessed all, his evidently unfeigned remorse, and the fury with which dr skinner was pursuing him tended to bring about a reaction in his favour, as though he had been more sinned against than sinning. as the half year wore on his spirits gradually revived, and when attacked by one of his fits of self-abasement he was in some degree consoled by having found out that even his father and mother, whom he had supposed so immaculate, were no better than they should be. about the fifth of november it was a school custom to meet on a certain common not far from roughborough and burn somebody in effigy, this being the compromise arrived at in the matter of fireworks and guy fawkes festivities. this year it was decided that pontifex's governor should be the victim, and ernest though a good deal exercised in mind as to what he ought to do, in the end saw no sufficient reason for holding aloof from proceedings which, as he justly remarked, could not do his father any harm. it so happened that the bishop had held a confirmation at the school on the fifth of november. dr skinner had not quite liked the selection of this day, but the bishop was pressed by many engagements, and had been compelled to make the arrangement as it then stood. ernest was among those who had to be confirmed, and was deeply impressed with the solemn importance of the ceremony. when he felt the huge old bishop drawing down upon him as he knelt in chapel he could hardly breathe, and when the apparition paused before him and laid its hands upon his head he was frightened almost out of his wits. he felt that he had arrived at one of the great turning points of his life, and that the ernest of the future could resemble only very faintly the ernest of the past. this happened at about noon, but by the one o'clock dinner-hour the effect of the confirmation had worn off, and he saw no reason why he should forego his annual amusement with the bonfire; so he went with the others and was very valiant till the image was actually produced and was about to be burnt; then he felt a little frightened. it was a poor thing enough, made of paper, calico and straw, but they had christened it the rev. theobald pontifex, and he had a revulsion of feeling as he saw it being carried towards the bonfire. still he held his ground, and in a few minutes when all was over felt none the worse for having assisted at a ceremony which, after all, was prompted by a boyish love of mischief rather than by rancour. i should say that ernest had written to his father, and told him of the unprecedented way in which he was being treated; he even ventured to suggest that theobald should interfere for his protection and reminded him how the story had been got out of him, but theobald had had enough of dr skinner for the present; the burning of the school list had been a rebuff which did not encourage him to meddle a second time in the internal economics of roughborough. he therefore replied that he must either remove ernest from roughborough altogether, which would for many reasons be undesirable, or trust to the discretion of the head master as regards the treatment he might think best for any of his pupils. ernest said no more; he still felt that it was so discreditable to him to have allowed any confession to be wrung from him, that he could not press the promised amnesty for himself. it was during the "mother cross row," as it was long styled among the boys, that a remarkable phenomenon was witnessed at roughborough. i mean that of the head boys under certain conditions doing errands for their juniors. the head boys had no bounds and could go to mrs cross's whenever they liked; they actually, therefore, made themselves go-betweens, and would get anything from either mrs cross's or mrs jones's for any boy, no matter how low in the school, between the hours of a quarter to nine and nine in the morning, and a quarter to six and six in the afternoon. by degrees, however, the boys grew bolder, and the shops, though not openly declared in bounds again, were tacitly allowed to be so. chapter xliv i may spare the reader more details about my hero's school days. he rose, always in spite of himself, into the doctor's form, and for the last two years or so of his time was among the praepostors, though he never rose into the upper half of them. he did little, and i think the doctor rather gave him up as a boy whom he had better leave to himself, for he rarely made him construe, and he used to send in his exercises or not, pretty much as he liked. his tacit, unconscious obstinacy had in time effected more even than a few bold sallies in the first instance would have done. to the end of his career his position _inter pares_ was what it had been at the beginning, namely, among the upper part of the less reputable class--whether of seniors or juniors--rather than among the lower part of the more respectable. only once in the whole course of his school life did he get praise from dr skinner for any exercise, and this he has treasured as the best example of guarded approval which he has ever seen. he had had to write a copy of alcaics on "the dogs of the monks of st bernard," and when the exercise was returned to him he found the doctor had written on it: "in this copy of alcaics--which is still excessively bad--i fancy that i can discern some faint symptoms of improvement." ernest says that if the exercise was any better than usual it must have been by a fluke, for he is sure that he always liked dogs, especially st bernard dogs, far too much to take any pleasure in writing alcaics about them. "as i look back upon it," he said to me but the other day, with a hearty laugh, "i respect myself more for having never once got the best mark for an exercise than i should do if i had got it every time it could be got. i am glad nothing could make me do latin and greek verses; i am glad skinner could never get any moral influence over me; i am glad i was idle at school, and i am glad my father overtasked me as a boy--otherwise, likely enough i should have acquiesced in the swindle, and might have written as good a copy of alcaics about the dogs of the monks of st bernard as my neighbours, and yet i don't know, for i remember there was another boy, who sent in a latin copy of some sort, but for his own pleasure he wrote the following-- the dogs of the monks of st bernard go to pick little children out of the snow, and around their necks is the cordial gin tied with a little bit of bob-bin. i should like to have written that, and i did try, but i couldn't. i didn't quite like the last line, and tried to mend it, but i couldn't." i fancied i could see traces of bitterness against the instructors of his youth in ernest's manner, and said something to this effect. "oh, no," he replied, still laughing, "no more than st anthony felt towards the devils who had tempted him, when he met some of them casually a hundred or a couple of hundred years afterwards. of course he knew they were devils, but that was all right enough; there must be devils. st anthony probably liked these devils better than most others, and for old acquaintance sake showed them as much indulgence as was compatible with decorum. "besides, you know," he added, "st anthony tempted the devils quite as much as they tempted him; for his peculiar sanctity was a greater temptation to tempt him than they could stand. strictly speaking, it was the devils who were the more to be pitied, for they were led up by st anthony to be tempted and fell, whereas st anthony did not fall. i believe i was a disagreeable and unintelligible boy, and if ever i meet skinner there is no one whom i would shake hands with, or do a good turn to more readily." at home things went on rather better; the ellen and mother cross rows sank slowly down upon the horizon, and even at home he had quieter times now that he had become a praepostor. nevertheless the watchful eye and protecting hand were still ever over him to guard his comings in and his goings out, and to spy out all his ways. is it wonderful that the boy, though always trying to keep up appearances as though he were cheerful and contented--and at times actually being so--wore often an anxious, jaded look when he thought none were looking, which told of an almost incessant conflict within? doubtless theobald saw these looks and knew how to interpret them, but it was his profession to know how to shut his eyes to things that were inconvenient--no clergyman could keep his benefice for a month if he could not do this; besides he had allowed himself for so many years to say things he ought not to have said, and not to say the things he ought to have said, that he was little likely to see anything that he thought it more convenient not to see unless he was made to do so. it was not much that was wanted. to make no mysteries where nature has made none, to bring his conscience under something like reasonable control, to give ernest his head a little more, to ask fewer questions, and to give him pocket money with a desire that it should be spent upon _menus plaisirs_ . . . "call that not much indeed," laughed ernest, as i read him what i have just written. "why it is the whole duty of a father, but it is the mystery-making which is the worst evil. if people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence." to return, however, to roughborough. on the day of his leaving, when he was sent for into the library to be shaken hands with, he was surprised to feel that, though assuredly glad to leave, he did not do so with any especial grudge against the doctor rankling in his breast. he had come to the end of it all, and was still alive, nor, take it all round, more seriously amiss than other people. dr skinner received him graciously, and was even frolicsome after his own heavy fashion. young people are almost always placable, and ernest felt as he went away that another such interview would not only have wiped off all old scores, but have brought him round into the ranks of the doctor's admirers and supporters--among whom it is only fair to say that the greater number of the more promising boys were found. just before saying good-bye the doctor actually took down a volume from those shelves which had seemed so awful six years previously, and gave it to him after having written his name in it, and the words [greek text], which i believe means "with all kind wishes from the donor." the book was one written in latin by a german--schomann: "de comitiis atheniensibus"--not exactly light and cheerful reading, but ernest felt it was high time he got to understand the athenian constitution and manner of voting; he had got them up a great many times already, but had forgotten them as fast as he had learned them; now, however, that the doctor had given him this book, he would master the subject once for all. how strange it was! he wanted to remember these things very badly; he knew he did, but he could never retain them; in spite of himself they no sooner fell upon his mind than they fell off it again, he had such a dreadful memory; whereas, if anyone played him a piece of music and told him where it came from, he never forgot that, though he made no effort to retain it, and was not even conscious of trying to remember it at all. his mind must be badly formed and he was no good. having still a short time to spare, he got the keys of st michael's church and went to have a farewell practice upon the organ, which he could now play fairly well. he walked up and down the aisle for a while in a meditative mood, and then, settling down to the organ, played "they loathed to drink of the river" about six times over, after which he felt more composed and happier; then, tearing himself away from the instrument he loved so well, he hurried to the station. as the train drew out he looked down from a high embankment on to the little house his aunt had taken, and where it might be said she had died through her desire to do him a kindness. there were the two well-known bow windows, out of which he had often stepped to run across the lawn into the workshop. he reproached himself with the little gratitude he had shown towards this kind lady--the only one of his relations whom he had ever felt as though he could have taken into his confidence. dearly as he loved her memory, he was glad she had not known the scrapes he had got into since she died; perhaps she might not have forgiven them--and how awful that would have been! but then, if she had lived, perhaps many of his ills would have been spared him. as he mused thus he grew sad again. where, where, he asked himself, was it all to end? was it to be always sin, shame and sorrow in the future, as it had been in the past, and the ever-watchful eye and protecting hand of his father laying burdens on him greater than he could bear--or was he, too, some day or another to come to feel that he was fairly well and happy? there was a gray mist across the sun, so that the eye could bear its light, and ernest, while musing as above, was looking right into the middle of the sun himself, as into the face of one whom he knew and was fond of. at first his face was grave, but kindly, as of a tired man who feels that a long task is over; but in a few seconds the more humorous side of his misfortunes presented itself to him, and he smiled half reproachfully, half merrily, as thinking how little all that had happened to him really mattered, and how small were his hardships as compared with those of most people. still looking into the eye of the sun and smiling dreamily, he thought how he had helped to burn his father in effigy, and his look grew merrier, till at last he broke out into a laugh. exactly at this moment the light veil of cloud parted from the sun, and he was brought to _terra firma_ by the breaking forth of the sunshine. on this he became aware that he was being watched attentively by a fellow-traveller opposite to him, an elderly gentleman with a large head and iron-grey hair. "my young friend," said he, good-naturedly, "you really must not carry on conversations with people in the sun, while you are in a public railway carriage." the old gentleman said not another word, but unfolded his _times_ and began to read it. as for ernest, he blushed crimson. the pair did not speak during the rest of the time they were in the carriage, but they eyed each other from time to time, so that the face of each was impressed on the recollection of the other. chapter xlv some people say that their school days were the happiest of their lives. they may be right, but i always look with suspicion upon those whom i hear saying this. it is hard enough to know whether one is happy or unhappy now, and still harder to compare the relative happiness or unhappiness of different times of one's life; the utmost that can be said is that we are fairly happy so long as we are not distinctly aware of being miserable. as i was talking with ernest one day not so long since about this, he said he was so happy now that he was sure he had never been happier, and did not wish to be so, but that cambridge was the first place where he had ever been consciously and continuously happy. how can any boy fail to feel an ecstasy of pleasure on first finding himself in rooms which he knows for the next few years are to be his castle? here he will not be compelled to turn out of the most comfortable place as soon as he has ensconced himself in it because papa or mamma happens to come into the room, and he should give it up to them. the most cosy chair here is for himself, there is no one even to share the room with him, or to interfere with his doing as he likes in it--smoking included. why, if such a room looked out both back and front on to a blank dead wall it would still be a paradise, how much more then when the view is of some quiet grassy court or cloister or garden, as from the windows of the greater number of rooms at oxford and cambridge. theobald, as an old fellow and tutor of emmanuel--at which college he had entered ernest--was able to obtain from the present tutor a certain preference in the choice of rooms; ernest's, therefore, were very pleasant ones, looking out upon the grassy court that is bounded by the fellows' gardens. theobald accompanied him to cambridge, and was at his best while doing so. he liked the jaunt, and even he was not without a certain feeling of pride in having a full-blown son at the university. some of the reflected rays of this splendour were allowed to fall upon ernest himself. theobald said he was "willing to hope"--this was one of his tags--that his son would turn over a new leaf now that he had left school, and for his own part he was "only too ready"--this was another tag--to let bygones be bygones. ernest, not yet having his name on the books, was able to dine with his father at the fellows' table of one of the other colleges on the invitation of an old friend of theobald's; he there made acquaintance with sundry of the good things of this life, the very names of which were new to him, and felt as he ate them that he was now indeed receiving a liberal education. when at length the time came for him to go to emmanuel, where he was to sleep in his new rooms, his father came with him to the gates and saw him safe into college; a few minutes more and he found himself alone in a room for which he had a latch-key. from this time he dated many days which, if not quite unclouded, were upon the whole very happy ones. i need not however describe them, as the life of a quiet steady-going undergraduate has been told in a score of novels better than i can tell it. some of ernest's schoolfellows came up to cambridge at the same time as himself, and with these he continued on friendly terms during the whole of his college career. other schoolfellows were only a year or two his seniors; these called on him, and he thus made a sufficiently favourable _entree_ into college life. a straightforwardness of character that was stamped upon his face, a love of humour, and a temper which was more easily appeased than ruffled made up for some awkwardness and want of _savoir faire_. he soon became a not unpopular member of the best set of his year, and though neither capable of becoming, nor aspiring to become, a leader, was admitted by the leaders as among their nearer hangers-on. of ambition he had at that time not one particle; greatness, or indeed superiority of any kind, seemed so far off and incomprehensible to him that the idea of connecting it with himself never crossed his mind. if he could escape the notice of all those with whom he did not feel himself _en rapport_, he conceived that he had triumphed sufficiently. he did not care about taking a good degree, except that it must be good enough to keep his father and mother quiet. he did not dream of being able to get a fellowship; if he had, he would have tried hard to do so, for he became so fond of cambridge that he could not bear the thought of having to leave it; the briefness indeed of the season during which his present happiness was to last was almost the only thing that now seriously troubled him. having less to attend to in the matter of growing, and having got his head more free, he took to reading fairly well--not because he liked it, but because he was told he ought to do so, and his natural instinct, like that of all very young men who are good for anything, was to do as those in authority told him. the intention at battersby was (for dr skinner had said that ernest could never get a fellowship) that he should take a sufficiently good degree to be able to get a tutorship or mastership in some school preparatory to taking orders. when he was twenty-one years old his money was to come into his own hands, and the best thing he could do with it would be to buy the next presentation to a living, the rector of which was now old, and live on his mastership or tutorship till the living fell in. he could buy a very good living for the sum which his grandfather's legacy now amounted to, for theobald had never had any serious intention of making deductions for his son's maintenance and education, and the money had accumulated till it was now about five thousand pounds; he had only talked about making deductions in order to stimulate the boy to exertion as far as possible, by making him think that this was his only chance of escaping starvation--or perhaps from pure love of teasing. when ernest had a living of or pounds a year with a house, and not too many parishioners--why, he might add to his income by taking pupils, or even keeping a school, and then, say at thirty, he might marry. it was not easy for theobald to hit on any much more sensible plan. he could not get ernest into business, for he had no business connections--besides he did not know what business meant; he had no interest, again, at the bar; medicine was a profession which subjected its students to ordeals and temptations which these fond parents shrank from on behalf of their boy; he would be thrown among companions and familiarised with details which might sully him, and though he might stand, it was "only too possible" that he would fall. besides, ordination was the road which theobald knew and understood, and indeed the only road about which he knew anything at all, so not unnaturally it was the one he chose for ernest. the foregoing had been instilled into my hero from earliest boyhood, much as it had been instilled into theobald himself, and with the same result--the conviction, namely, that he was certainly to be a clergyman, but that it was a long way off yet, and he supposed it was all right. as for the duty of reading hard, and taking as good a degree as he could, this was plain enough, so he set himself to work, as i have said, steadily, and to the surprise of everyone as well as himself got a college scholarship, of no great value, but still a scholarship, in his freshman's term. it is hardly necessary to say that theobald stuck to the whole of this money, believing the pocket-money he allowed ernest to be sufficient for him, and knowing how dangerous it was for young men to have money at command. i do not suppose it even occurred to him to try and remember what he had felt when his father took a like course in regard to himself. ernest's position in this respect was much what it had been at school except that things were on a larger scale. his tutor's and cook's bills were paid for him; his father sent him his wine; over and above this he had pounds a year with which to keep himself in clothes and all other expenses; this was about the usual thing at emmanuel in ernest's day, though many had much less than this. ernest did as he had done at school--he spent what he could, soon after he received his money; he then incurred a few modest liabilities, and then lived penuriously till next term, when he would immediately pay his debts, and start new ones to much the same extent as those which he had just got rid of. when he came into his pounds and became independent of his father, or pounds served to cover the whole of his unauthorised expenditure. he joined the boat club, and was constant in his attendance at the boats. he still smoked, but never took more wine or beer than was good for him, except perhaps on the occasion of a boating supper, but even then he found the consequences unpleasant, and soon learned how to keep within safe limits. he attended chapel as often as he was compelled to do so; he communicated two or three times a year, because his tutor told him he ought to; in fact he set himself to live soberly and cleanly, as i imagine all his instincts prompted him to do, and when he fell--as who that is born of woman can help sometimes doing?--it was not till after a sharp tussle with a temptation that was more than his flesh and blood could stand; then he was very penitent and would go a fairly long while without sinning again; and this was how it had always been with him since he had arrived at years of indiscretion. even to the end of his career at cambridge he was not aware that he had it in him to do anything, but others had begun to see that he was not wanting in ability and sometimes told him so. he did not believe it; indeed he knew very well that if they thought him clever they were being taken in, but it pleased him to have been able to take them in, and he tried to do so still further; he was therefore a good deal on the look- out for cants that he could catch and apply in season, and might have done himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to throw over any cant as soon as he had come across another more nearly to his fancy; his friends used to say that when he rose he flew like a snipe, darting several times in various directions before he settled down to a steady straight flight, but when he had once got into this he would keep to it. chapter xlvi when he was in his third year a magazine was founded at cambridge, the contributions to which were exclusively by undergraduates. ernest sent in an essay upon the greek drama, which he has declined to let me reproduce here without his being allowed to re-edit it. i have therefore been unable to give it in its original form, but when pruned of its redundancies (and this is all that has been done to it) it runs as follows-- "i shall not attempt within the limits at my disposal to make a _resume_ of the rise and progress of the greek drama, but will confine myself to considering whether the reputation enjoyed by the three chief greek tragedians, aeschylus, sophocles and euripides, is one that will be permanent, or whether they will one day be held to have been overrated. "why, i ask myself, do i see much that i can easily admire in homer, thucydides, herodotus, demosthenes, aristophanes, theocritus, parts of lucretius, horace's satires and epistles, to say nothing of other ancient writers, and yet find myself at once repelled by even those works of aeschylus, sophocles and euripides which are most generally admired. "with the first-named writers i am in the hands of men who feel, if not as i do, still as i can understand their feeling, and as i am interested to see that they should have felt; with the second i have so little sympathy that i cannot understand how anyone can ever have taken any interest in them whatever. their highest flights to me are dull, pompous and artificial productions, which, if they were to appear now for the first time, would, i should think, either fall dead or be severely handled by the critics. i wish to know whether it is i who am in fault in this matter, or whether part of the blame may not rest with the tragedians themselves. "how far i wonder did the athenians genuinely like these poets, and how far was the applause which was lavished upon them due to fashion or affectation? how far, in fact, did admiration for the orthodox tragedians take that place among the athenians which going to church does among ourselves? "this is a venturesome question considering the verdict now generally given for over two thousand years, nor should i have permitted myself to ask it if it had not been suggested to me by one whose reputation stands as high, and has been sanctioned for as long time as those of the tragedians themselves, i mean by aristophanes. "numbers, weight of authority, and time, have conspired to place aristophanes on as high a literary pinnacle as any ancient writer, with the exception perhaps of homer, but he makes no secret of heartily hating euripides and sophocles, and i strongly suspect only praises aeschylus that he may run down the other two with greater impunity. for after all there is no such difference between aeschylus and his successors as will render the former very good and the latter very bad; and the thrusts at aeschylus which aristophanes puts into the mouth of euripides go home too well to have been written by an admirer. "it may be observed that while euripides accuses aeschylus of being 'pomp-bundle-worded,' which i suppose means bombastic and given to rodomontade, aeschylus retorts on euripides that he is a 'gossip gleaner, a describer of beggars, and a rag-stitcher,' from which it may be inferred that he was truer to the life of his own times than aeschylus was. it happens, however, that a faithful rendering of contemporary life is the very quality which gives its most permanent interest to any work of fiction, whether in literature or painting, and it is a not unnatural consequence that while only seven plays by aeschylus, and the same number by sophocles, have come down to us, we have no fewer than nineteen by euripides. "this, however, is a digression; the question before us is whether aristophanes really liked aeschylus or only pretended to do so. it must be remembered that the claims of aeschylus, sophocles and euripides, to the foremost place amongst tragedians were held to be as incontrovertible as those of dante, petrarch, tasso and ariosto to be the greatest of italian poets, are held among the italians of to-day. if we can fancy some witty, genial writer, we will say in florence, finding himself bored by all the poets i have named, we can yet believe he would be unwilling to admit that he disliked them without exception. he would prefer to think he could see something at any rate in dante, whom he could idealise more easily, inasmuch as he was more remote; in order to carry his countrymen the farther with him, he would endeavour to meet them more than was consistent with his own instincts. without some such palliation as admiration for one, at any rate, of the tragedians, it would be almost as dangerous for aristophanes to attack them as it would be for an englishman now to say that he did not think very much of the elizabethan dramatists. yet which of us in his heart likes any of the elizabethan dramatists except shakespeare? are they in reality anything else than literary struldbrugs? "i conclude upon the whole that aristophanes did not like any of the tragedians; yet no one will deny that this keen, witty, outspoken writer was as good a judge of literary value, and as able to see any beauties that the tragic dramas contained as nine-tenths, at any rate, of ourselves. he had, moreover, the advantage of thoroughly understanding the standpoint from which the tragedians expected their work to be judged, and what was his conclusion? briefly it was little else than this, that they were a fraud or something very like it. for my own part i cordially agree with him. i am free to confess that with the exception perhaps of some of the psalms of david i know no writings which seem so little to deserve their reputation. i do not know that i should particularly mind my sisters reading them, but i will take good care never to read them myself." this last bit about the psalms was awful, and there was a great fight with the editor as to whether or no it should be allowed to stand. ernest himself was frightened at it, but he had once heard someone say that the psalms were many of them very poor, and on looking at them more closely, after he had been told this, he found that there could hardly be two opinions on the subject. so he caught up the remark and reproduced it as his own, concluding that these psalms had probably never been written by david at all, but had got in among the others by mistake. the essay, perhaps on account of the passage about the psalms, created quite a sensation, and on the whole was well received. ernest's friends praised it more highly than it deserved, and he was himself very proud of it, but he dared not show it at battersby. he knew also that he was now at the end of his tether; this was his one idea (i feel sure he had caught more than half of it from other people), and now he had not another thing left to write about. he found himself cursed with a small reputation which seemed to him much bigger than it was, and a consciousness that he could never keep it up. before many days were over he felt his unfortunate essay to be a white elephant to him, which he must feed by hurrying into all sorts of frantic attempts to cap his triumph, and, as may be imagined, these attempts were failures. he did not understand that if he waited and listened and observed, another idea of some kind would probably occur to him some day, and that the development of this would in its turn suggest still further ones. he did not yet know that the very worst way of getting hold of ideas is to go hunting expressly after them. the way to get them is to study something of which one is fond, and to note down whatever crosses one's mind in reference to it, either during study or relaxation, in a little note-book kept always in the waistcoat pocket. ernest has come to know all about this now, but it took him a long time to find it out, for this is not the kind of thing that is taught at schools and universities. nor yet did he know that ideas, no less than the living beings in whose minds they arise, must be begotten by parents not very unlike themselves, the most original still differing but slightly from the parents that have given rise to them. life is like a fugue, everything must grow out of the subject and there must be nothing new. nor, again, did he see how hard it is to say where one idea ends and another begins, nor yet how closely this is paralleled in the difficulty of saying where a life begins or ends, or an action or indeed anything, there being an unity in spite of infinite multitude, and an infinite multitude in spite of unity. he thought that ideas came into clever people's heads by a kind of spontaneous germination, without parentage in the thoughts of others or the course of observation; for as yet he believed in genius, of which he well knew that he had none, if it was the fine frenzied thing he thought it was. not very long before this he had come of age, and theobald had handed him over his money, which amounted now to pounds; it was invested to bring in per cent and gave him therefore an income of pounds a year. he did not, however, realise the fact (he could realise nothing so foreign to his experience) that he was independent of his father till a long time afterwards; nor did theobald make any difference in his manner towards him. so strong was the hold which habit and association held over both father and son, that the one considered he had as good a right as ever to dictate, and the other that he had as little right as ever to gainsay. during his last year at cambridge he overworked himself through this very blind deference to his father's wishes, for there was no reason why he should take more than a poll degree except that his father laid such stress upon his taking honours. he became so ill, indeed, that it was doubtful how far he would be able to go in for his degree at all; but he managed to do so, and when the list came out was found to be placed higher than either he or anyone else expected, being among the first three or four senior optimes, and a few weeks later, in the lower half of the second class of the classical tripos. ill as he was when he got home, theobald made him go over all the examination papers with him, and in fact reproduce as nearly as possible the replies that he had sent in. so little kick had he in him, and so deep was the groove into which he had got, that while at home he spent several hours a day in continuing his classical and mathematical studies as though he had not yet taken his degree. chapter xlvii ernest returned to cambridge for the may term of , on the plea of reading for ordination, with which he was now face to face, and much nearer than he liked. up to this time, though not religiously inclined, he had never doubted the truth of anything that had been told him about christianity. he had never seen anyone who doubted, nor read anything that raised a suspicion in his mind as to the historical character of the miracles recorded in the old and new testaments. it must be remembered that the year was the last of a term during which the peace of the church of england was singularly unbroken. between , when "vestiges of creation" appeared, and , when "essays and reviews" marked the commencement of that storm which raged until many years afterwards, there was not a single book published in england that caused serious commotion within the bosom of the church. perhaps buckle's "history of civilisation" and mill's "liberty" were the most alarming, but they neither of them reached the substratum of the reading public, and ernest and his friends were ignorant of their very existence. the evangelical movement, with the exception to which i shall revert presently, had become almost a matter of ancient history. tractarianism had subsided into a tenth day's wonder; it was at work, but it was not noisy. the "vestiges" were forgotten before ernest went up to cambridge; the catholic aggression scare had lost its terrors; ritualism was still unknown by the general provincial public, and the gorham and hampden controversies were defunct some years since; dissent was not spreading; the crimean war was the one engrossing subject, to be followed by the indian mutiny and the franco-austrian war. these great events turned men's minds from speculative subjects, and there was no enemy to the faith which could arouse even a languid interest. at no time probably since the beginning of the century could an ordinary observer have detected less sign of coming disturbance than at that of which i am writing. i need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface. older men, who knew more than undergraduates were likely to do, must have seen that the wave of scepticism which had already broken over germany was setting towards our own shores, nor was it long, indeed, before it reached them. ernest had hardly been ordained before three works in quick succession arrested the attention even of those who paid least heed to theological controversy. i mean "essays and reviews," charles darwin's "origin of species," and bishop colenso's "criticisms on the pentateuch." this, however, is a digression; i must revert to the one phase of spiritual activity which had any life in it during the time ernest was at cambridge, that is to say, to the remains of the evangelical awakening of more than a generation earlier, which was connected with the name of simeon. there were still a good many simeonites, or as they were more briefly called "sims," in ernest's time. every college contained some of them, but their headquarters were at caius, whither they were attracted by mr clayton who was at that time senior tutor, and among the sizars of st john's. behind the then chapel of this last-named college, there was a "labyrinth" (this was the name it bore) of dingy, tumble-down rooms, tenanted exclusively by the poorest undergraduates, who were dependent upon sizarships and scholarships for the means of taking their degrees. to many, even at st john's, the existence and whereabouts of the labyrinth in which the sizars chiefly lived was unknown; some men in ernest's time, who had rooms in the first court, had never found their way through the sinuous passage which led to it. in the labyrinth there dwelt men of all ages, from mere lads to grey-haired old men who had entered late in life. they were rarely seen except in hall or chapel or at lecture, where their manners of feeding, praying and studying, were considered alike objectionable; no one knew whence they came, whither they went, nor what they did, for they never showed at cricket or the boats; they were a gloomy, seedy-looking _conferie_, who had as little to glory in in clothes and manners as in the flesh itself. ernest and his friends used to consider themselves marvels of economy for getting on with so little money, but the greater number of dwellers in the labyrinth would have considered one-half of their expenditure to be an exceeding measure of affluence, and so doubtless any domestic tyranny which had been experienced by ernest was a small thing to what the average johnian sizar had had to put up with. a few would at once emerge on its being found after their first examination that they were likely to be ornaments to the college; these would win valuable scholarships that enabled them to live in some degree of comfort, and would amalgamate with the more studious of those who were in a better social position, but even these, with few exceptions, were long in shaking off the uncouthness they brought with them to the university, nor would their origin cease to be easily recognisable till they had become dons and tutors. i have seen some of these men attain high position in the world of politics or science, and yet still retain a look of labyrinth and johnian sizarship. unprepossessing then, in feature, gait and manners, unkempt and ill-dressed beyond what can be easily described, these poor fellows formed a class apart, whose thoughts and ways were not as the thoughts and ways of ernest and his friends, and it was among them that simeonism chiefly flourished. destined most of them for the church (for in those days "holy orders" were seldom heard of), the simeonites held themselves to have received a very loud call to the ministry, and were ready to pinch themselves for years so as to prepare for it by the necessary theological courses. to most of them the fact of becoming clergymen would be the _entree_ into a social position from which they were at present kept out by barriers they well knew to be impassable; ordination, therefore, opened fields for ambition which made it the central point in their thoughts, rather than as with ernest, something which he supposed would have to be done some day, but about which, as about dying, he hoped there was no need to trouble himself as yet. by way of preparing themselves more completely they would have meetings in one another's rooms for tea and prayer and other spiritual exercises. placing themselves under the guidance of a few well-known tutors they would teach in sunday schools, and be instant, in season and out of season, in imparting spiritual instruction to all whom they could persuade to listen to them. but the soil of the more prosperous undergraduates was not suitable for the seed they tried to sow. the small pieties with which they larded their discourse, if chance threw them into the company of one whom they considered worldly, caused nothing but aversion in the minds of those for whom they were intended. when they distributed tracts, dropping them by night into good men's letter boxes while they were asleep, their tracts got burnt, or met with even worse contumely; they were themselves also treated with the ridicule which they reflected proudly had been the lot of true followers of christ in all ages. often at their prayer meetings was the passage of st paul referred to in which he bids his corinthian converts note concerning themselves that they were for the most part neither well-bred nor intellectual people. they reflected with pride that they too had nothing to be proud of in these respects, and like st paul, gloried in the fact that in the flesh they had not much to glory. ernest had several johnian friends, and came thus to hear about the simeonites and to see some of them, who were pointed out to him as they passed through the courts. they had a repellent attraction for him; he disliked them, but he could not bring himself to leave them alone. on one occasion he had gone so far as to parody one of the tracts they had sent round in the night, and to get a copy dropped into each of the leading simeonites' boxes. the subject he had taken was "personal cleanliness." cleanliness, he said, was next to godliness; he wished to know on which side it was to stand, and concluded by exhorting simeonites to a freer use of the tub. i cannot commend my hero's humour in this matter; his tract was not brilliant, but i mention the fact as showing that at this time he was something of a saul and took pleasure in persecuting the elect, not, as i have said, that he had any hankering after scepticism, but because, like the farmers in his father's village, though he would not stand seeing the christian religion made light of, he was not going to see it taken seriously. ernest's friends thought his dislike for simeonites was due to his being the son of a clergyman who, it was known, bullied him; it is more likely, however, that it rose from an unconscious sympathy with them, which, as in st paul's case, in the end drew him into the ranks of those whom he had most despised and hated. chapter xlviii once, recently, when he was down at home after taking his degree, his mother had had a short conversation with him about his becoming a clergyman, set on thereto by theobald, who shrank from the subject himself. this time it was during a turn taken in the garden, and not on the sofa--which was reserved for supreme occasions. "you know, my dearest boy," she said to him, "that papa" (she always called theobald "papa" when talking to ernest) "is so anxious you should not go into the church blindly, and without fully realising the difficulties of a clergyman's position. he has considered all of them himself, and has been shown how small they are, when they are faced boldly, but he wishes you, too, to feel them as strongly and completely as possible before committing yourself to irrevocable vows, so that you may never, never have to regret the step you will have taken." this was the first time ernest had heard that there were any difficulties, and he not unnaturally enquired in a vague way after their nature. "that, my dear boy," rejoined christina, "is a question which i am not fitted to enter upon either by nature or education. i might easily unsettle your mind without being able to settle it again. oh, no! such questions are far better avoided by women, and, i should have thought, by men, but papa wished me to speak to you upon the subject, so that there might be no mistake hereafter, and i have done so. now, therefore, you know all." the conversation ended here, so far as this subject was concerned, and ernest thought he did know all. his mother would not have told him he knew all--not about a matter of that sort--unless he actually did know it; well, it did not come to very much; he supposed there were some difficulties, but his father, who at any rate was an excellent scholar and a learned man, was probably quite right here, and he need not trouble himself more about them. so little impression did the conversation make on him, that it was not till long afterwards that, happening to remember it, he saw what a piece of sleight of hand had been practised upon him. theobald and christina, however, were satisfied that they had done their duty by opening their son's eyes to the difficulties of assenting to all a clergyman must assent to. this was enough; it was a matter for rejoicing that, though they had been put so fully and candidly before him, he did not find them serious. it was not in vain that they had prayed for so many years to be made "_truly_ honest and conscientious." "and now, my dear," resumed christina, after having disposed of all the difficulties that might stand in the way of ernest's becoming a clergyman, "there is another matter on which i should like to have a talk with you. it is about your sister charlotte. you know how clever she is, and what a dear, kind sister she has been and always will be to yourself and joey. i wish, my dearest ernest, that i saw more chance of her finding a suitable husband than i do at battersby, and i sometimes think you might do more than you do to help her." ernest began to chafe at this, for he had heard it so often, but he said nothing. "you know, my dear, a brother can do so much for his sister if he lays himself out to do it. a mother can do very little--indeed, it is hardly a mother's place to seek out young men; it is a brother's place to find a suitable partner for his sister; all that i can do is to try to make battersby as attractive as possible to any of your friends whom you may invite. and in that," she added, with a little toss of her head, "i do not think i have been deficient hitherto." ernest said he had already at different times asked several of his friends. "yes, my dear, but you must admit that they were none of them exactly the kind of young man whom charlotte could be expected to take a fancy to. indeed, i must own to having been a little disappointed that you should have yourself chosen any of these as your intimate friends." ernest winced again. "you never brought down figgins when you were at roughborough; now i should have thought figgins would have been just the kind of boy whom you might have asked to come and see us." figgins had been gone through times out of number already. ernest had hardly known him, and figgins, being nearly three years older than ernest, had left long before he did. besides he had not been a nice boy, and had made himself unpleasant to ernest in many ways. "now," continued his mother, "there's towneley. i have heard you speak of towneley as having rowed with you in a boat at cambridge. i wish, my dear, you would cultivate your acquaintance with towneley, and ask him to pay us a visit. the name has an aristocratic sound, and i think i have heard you say he is an eldest son." ernest flushed at the sound of towneley's name. what had really happened in respect of ernest's friends was briefly this. his mother liked to get hold of the names of the boys and especially of any who were at all intimate with her son; the more she heard, the more she wanted to know; there was no gorging her to satiety; she was like a ravenous young cuckoo being fed upon a grass plot by a water wag-tail, she would swallow all that ernest could bring her, and yet be as hungry as before. and she always went to ernest for her meals rather than to joey, for joey was either more stupid or more impenetrable--at any rate she could pump ernest much the better of the two. from time to time an actual live boy had been thrown to her, either by being caught and brought to battersby, or by being asked to meet her if at any time she came to roughborough. she had generally made herself agreeable, or fairly agreeable, as long as the boy was present, but as soon as she got ernest to herself again she changed her note. into whatever form she might throw her criticisms it came always in the end to this, that his friend was no good, that ernest was not much better, and that he should have brought her someone else, for this one would not do at all. the more intimate the boy had been or was supposed to be with ernest the more he was declared to be naught, till in the end he had hit upon the plan of saying, concerning any boy whom he particularly liked, that he was not one of his especial chums, and that indeed he hardly knew why he had asked him; but he found he only fell on scylla in trying to avoid charybdis, for though the boy was declared to be more successful it was ernest who was naught for not thinking more highly of him. when she had once got hold of a name she never forgot it. "and how is so- and-so?" she would exclaim, mentioning some former friend of ernest's with whom he had either now quarrelled, or who had long since proved to be a mere comet and no fixed star at all. how ernest wished he had never mentioned so-and-so's name, and vowed to himself that he would never talk about his friends in future, but in a few hours he would forget and would prattle away as imprudently as ever; then his mother would pounce noiselessly on his remarks as a barn-owl pounces upon a mouse, and would bring them up in a pellet six months afterwards when they were no longer in harmony with their surroundings. then there was theobald. if a boy or college friend had been invited to battersby, theobald would lay himself out at first to be agreeable. he could do this well enough when he liked, and as regards the outside world he generally did like. his clerical neighbours, and indeed all his neighbours, respected him yearly more and more, and would have given ernest sufficient cause to regret his imprudence if he had dared to hint that he had anything, however little, to complain of. theobald's mind worked in this way: "now, i know ernest has told this boy what a disagreeable person i am, and i will just show him that i am not disagreeable at all, but a good old fellow, a jolly old boy, in fact a regular old brick, and that it is ernest who is in fault all through." so he would behave very nicely to the boy at first, and the boy would be delighted with him, and side with him against ernest. of course if ernest had got the boy to come to battersby he wanted him to enjoy his visit, and was therefore pleased that theobald should behave so well, but at the same time he stood so much in need of moral support that it was painful to him to see one of his own familiar friends go over to the enemy's camp. for no matter how well we may know a thing--how clearly we may see a certain patch of colour, for example, as red, it shakes us and knocks us about to find another see it, or be more than half inclined to see it, as green. theobald had generally begun to get a little impatient before the end of the visit, but the impression formed during the earlier part was the one which the visitor had carried away with him. theobald never discussed any of the boys with ernest. it was christina who did this. theobald let them come, because christina in a quiet, persistent way insisted on it; when they did come he behaved, as i have said, civilly, but he did not like it, whereas christina did like it very much; she would have had half roughborough and half cambridge to come and stay at battersby if she could have managed it, and if it would not have cost so much money: she liked their coming, so that she might make a new acquaintance, and she liked tearing them to pieces and flinging the bits over ernest as soon as she had had enough of them. the worst of it was that she had so often proved to be right. boys and young men are violent in their affections, but they are seldom very constant; it is not till they get older that they really know the kind of friend they want; in their earlier essays young men are simply learning to judge character. ernest had been no exception to the general rule. his swans had one after the other proved to be more or less geese even in his own estimation, and he was beginning almost to think that his mother was a better judge of character than he was; but i think it may be assumed with some certainty that if ernest had brought her a real young swan she would have declared it to be the ugliest and worst goose of all that she had yet seen. at first he had not suspected that his friends were wanted with a view to charlotte; it was understood that charlotte and they might perhaps take a fancy for one another; and that would be so very nice, would it not? but he did not see that there was any deliberate malice in the arrangement. now, however, that he had awoke to what it all meant, he was less inclined to bring any friend of his to battersby. it seemed to his silly young mind almost dishonest to ask your friend to come and see you when all you really meant was "please, marry my sister." it was like trying to obtain money under false pretences. if he had been fond of charlotte it might have been another matter, but he thought her one of the most disagreeable young women in the whole circle of his acquaintance. she was supposed to be very clever. all young ladies are either very pretty or very clever or very sweet; they may take their choice as to which category they will go in for, but go in for one of the three they must. it was hopeless to try and pass charlotte off as either pretty or sweet. so she became clever as the only remaining alternative. ernest never knew what particular branch of study it was in which she showed her talent, for she could neither play nor sing nor draw, but so astute are women that his mother and charlotte really did persuade him into thinking that she, charlotte, had something more akin to true genius than any other member of the family. not one, however, of all the friends whom ernest had been inveigled into trying to inveigle had shown the least sign of being so far struck with charlotte's commanding powers, as to wish to make them his own, and this may have had something to do with the rapidity and completeness with which christina had dismissed them one after another and had wanted a new one. and now she wanted towneley. ernest had seen this coming and had tried to avoid it, for he knew how impossible it was for him to ask towneley, even if he had wished to do so. towneley belonged to one of the most exclusive sets in cambridge, and was perhaps the most popular man among the whole number of undergraduates. he was big and very handsome--as it seemed to ernest the handsomest man whom he ever had seen or ever could see, for it was impossible to imagine a more lively and agreeable countenance. he was good at cricket and boating, very good-natured, singularly free from conceit, not clever but very sensible, and, lastly, his father and mother had been drowned by the overturning of a boat when he was only two years old and had left him as their only child and heir to one of the finest estates in the south of england. fortune every now and then does things handsomely by a man all round; towneley was one of those to whom she had taken a fancy, and the universal verdict in this case was that she had chosen wisely. ernest had seen towneley as every one else in the university (except, of course, dons) had seen him, for he was a man of mark, and being very susceptible he had liked towneley even more than most people did, but at the same time it never so much as entered his head that he should come to know him. he liked looking at him if he got a chance, and was very much ashamed of himself for doing so, but there the matter ended. by a strange accident, however, during ernest's last year, when the names of the crews for the scratch fours were drawn he had found himself coxswain of a crew, among whom was none other than his especial hero towneley; the three others were ordinary mortals, but they could row fairly well, and the crew on the whole was rather a good one. ernest was frightened out of his wits. when, however, the two met, he found towneley no less remarkable for his entire want of anything like "side," and for his power of setting those whom he came across at their ease, than he was for outward accomplishments; the only difference he found between towneley and other people was that he was so very much easier to get on with. of course ernest worshipped him more and more. the scratch fours being ended the connection between the two came to an end, but towneley never passed ernest thenceforward without a nod and a few good-natured words. in an evil moment he had mentioned towneley's name at battersby, and now what was the result? here was his mother plaguing him to ask towneley to come down to battersby and marry charlotte. why, if he had thought there was the remotest chance of towneley's marrying charlotte he would have gone down on his knees to him and told him what an odious young woman she was, and implored him to save himself while there was yet time. but ernest had not prayed to be made "truly honest and conscientious" for as many years as christina had. he tried to conceal what he felt and thought as well as he could, and led the conversation back to the difficulties which a clergyman might feel to stand in the way of his being ordained--not because he had any misgivings, but as a diversion. his mother, however, thought she had settled all that, and he got no more out of her. soon afterwards he found the means of escaping, and was not slow to avail himself of them. chapter xlix on his return to cambridge in the may term of , ernest and a few other friends who were also intended for orders came to the conclusion that they must now take a more serious view of their position. they therefore attended chapel more regularly than hitherto, and held evening meetings of a somewhat furtive character, at which they would study the new testament. they even began to commit the epistles of st paul to memory in the original greek. they got up beveridge on the thirty-nine articles, and pearson on the creed; in their hours of recreation they read more's "mystery of godliness," which ernest thought was charming, and taylor's "holy living and dying," which also impressed him deeply, through what he thought was the splendour of its language. they handed themselves over to the guidance of dean alford's notes on the greek testament, which made ernest better understand what was meant by "difficulties," but also made him feel how shallow and impotent were the conclusions arrived at by german neologians, with whose works, being innocent of german, he was not otherwise acquainted. some of the friends who joined him in these pursuits were johnians, and the meetings were often held within the walls of st john's. i do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings had reached the simeonites, but they must have come round to them in some way, for they had not been continued many weeks before a circular was sent to each of the young men who attended them, informing them that the rev. gideon hawke, a well-known london evangelical preacher, whose sermons were then much talked of, was about to visit his young friend badcock of st john's, and would be glad to say a few words to any who might wish to hear them, in badcock's rooms on a certain evening in may. badcock was one of the most notorious of all the simeonites. not only was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, bumptious, and in every way objectionable, but he was deformed and waddled when he walked so that he had won a nick-name which i can only reproduce by calling it "here's my back, and there's my back," because the lower parts of his back emphasised themselves demonstratively as though about to fly off in different directions like the two extreme notes in the chord of the augmented sixth, with every step he took. it may be guessed, therefore, that the receipt of the circular had for a moment an almost paralysing effect on those to whom it was addressed, owing to the astonishment which it occasioned them. it certainly was a daring surprise, but like so many deformed people, badcock was forward and hard to check; he was a pushing fellow to whom the present was just the opportunity he wanted for carrying war into the enemy's quarters. ernest and his friends consulted. moved by the feeling that as they were now preparing to be clergymen they ought not to stand so stiffly on social dignity as heretofore, and also perhaps by the desire to have a good private view of a preacher who was then much upon the lips of men, they decided to accept the invitation. when the appointed time came they went with some confusion and self-abasement to the rooms of this man, on whom they had looked down hitherto as from an immeasurable height, and with whom nothing would have made them believe a few weeks earlier that they could ever come to be on speaking terms. mr hawke was a very different-looking person from badcock. he was remarkably handsome, or rather would have been but for the thinness of his lips, and a look of too great firmness and inflexibility. his features were a good deal like those of leonardo da vinci; moreover he was kempt, looked in vigorous health, and was of a ruddy countenance. he was extremely courteous in his manner, and paid a good deal of attention to badcock, of whom he seemed to think highly. altogether our young friends were taken aback, and inclined to think smaller beer of themselves and larger of badcock than was agreeable to the old adam who was still alive within them. a few well-known "sims" from st john's and other colleges were present, but not enough to swamp the ernest set, as for the sake of brevity, i will call them. after a preliminary conversation in which there was nothing to offend, the business of the evening began by mr hawke's standing up at one end of the table, and saying "let us pray." the ernest set did not like this, but they could not help themselves, so they knelt down and repeated the lord's prayer and a few others after mr hawke, who delivered them remarkably well. then, when all had sat down, mr hawke addressed them, speaking without notes and taking for his text the words, "saul, saul, why persecutest thou me?" whether owing to mr hawke's manner, which was impressive, or to his well-known reputation for ability, or whether from the fact that each one of the ernest set knew that he had been more or less a persecutor of the "sims" and yet felt instinctively that the "sims" were after all much more like the early christians than he was himself--at any rate the text, familiar though it was, went home to the consciences of ernest and his friends as it had never yet done. if mr hawke had stopped here he would have almost said enough; as he scanned the faces turned towards him, and saw the impression he had made, he was perhaps minded to bring his sermon to an end before beginning it, but if so, he reconsidered himself and proceeded as follows. i give the sermon in full, for it is a typical one, and will explain a state of mind which in another generation or two will seem to stand sadly in need of explanation. "my young friends," said mr hawke, "i am persuaded there is not one of you here who doubts the existence of a personal god. if there were, it is to him assuredly that i should first address myself. should i be mistaken in my belief that all here assembled accept the existence of a god who is present amongst us though we see him not, and whose eye is upon our most secret thoughts, let me implore the doubter to confer with me in private before we part; i will then put before him considerations through which god has been mercifully pleased to reveal himself to me, so far as man can understand him, and which i have found bring peace to the minds of others who have doubted. "i assume also that there is none who doubts but that this god, after whose likeness we have been made, did in the course of time have pity upon man's blindness, and assume our nature, taking flesh and coming down and dwelling among us as a man indistinguishable physically from ourselves. he who made the sun, moon and stars, the world and all that therein is, came down from heaven in the person of his son, with the express purpose of leading a scorned life, and dying the most cruel, shameful death which fiendish ingenuity has invented. "while on earth he worked many miracles. he gave sight to the blind, raised the dead to life, fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes, and was seen to walk upon the waves, but at the end of his appointed time he died, as was foredetermined, upon the cross, and was buried by a few faithful friends. those, however, who had put him to death set a jealous watch over his tomb. "there is no one, i feel sure, in this room who doubts any part of the foregoing, but if there is, let me again pray him to confer with me in private, and i doubt not that by the blessing of god his doubts will cease. "the next day but one after our lord was buried, the tomb being still jealously guarded by enemies, an angel was seen descending from heaven with glittering raiment and a countenance that shone like fire. this glorious being rolled away the stone from the grave, and our lord himself came forth, risen from the dead. "my young friends, this is no fanciful story like those of the ancient deities, but a matter of plain history as certain as that you and i are now here together. if there is one fact better vouched for than another in the whole range of certainties it is the resurrection of jesus christ; nor is it less well assured that a few weeks after he had risen from the dead, our lord was seen by many hundreds of men and women to rise amid a host of angels into the air upon a heavenward journey till the clouds covered him and concealed him from the sight of men. "it may be said that the truth of these statements has been denied, but what, let me ask you, has become of the questioners? where are they now? do we see them or hear of them? have they been able to hold what little ground they made during the supineness of the last century? is there one of your fathers or mothers or friends who does not see through them? is there a single teacher or preacher in this great university who has not examined what these men had to say, and found it naught? did you ever meet one of them, or do you find any of their books securing the respectful attention of those competent to judge concerning them? i think not; and i think also you know as well as i do why it is that they have sunk back into the abyss from which they for a time emerged: it is because after the most careful and patient examination by the ablest and most judicial minds of many countries, their arguments were found so untenable that they themselves renounced them. they fled from the field routed, dismayed, and suing for peace; nor have they again come to the front in any civilised country. "you know these things. why, then, do i insist upon them? my dear young friends, your own consciousness will have made the answer to each one of you already; it is because, though you know so well that these things did verily and indeed happen, you know also that you have not realised them to yourselves as it was your duty to do, nor heeded their momentous, awful import. "and now let me go further. you all know that you will one day come to die, or if not to die--for there are not wanting signs which make me hope that the lord may come again, while some of us now present are alive--yet to be changed; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, for this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality, and the saying shall be brought to pass that is written, 'death is swallowed up in victory.' "do you, or do you not believe that you will one day stand before the judgement seat of christ? do you, or do you not believe that you will have to give an account for every idle word that you have ever spoken? do you, or do you not believe that you are called to live, not according to the will of man, but according to the will of that christ who came down from heaven out of love for you, who suffered and died for you, who calls you to him, and yearns towards you that you may take heed even in this your day--but who, if you heed not, will also one day judge you, and with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning? "my dear young friends, strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth to eternal life, and few there be that find it. few, few, few, for he who will not give up all for christ's sake, has given up nothing. "if you would live in the friendship of this world, if indeed you are not prepared to give up everything you most fondly cherish, should the lord require it of you, then, i say, put the idea of christ deliberately on one side at once. spit upon him, buffet him, crucify him anew, do anything you like so long as you secure the friendship of this world while it is still in your power to do so; the pleasures of this brief life may not be worth paying for by the torments of eternity, but they are something while they last. if, on the other hand, you would live in the friendship of god, and be among the number of those for whom christ has not died in vain; if, in a word, you value your eternal welfare, then give up the friendship of this world; of a surety you must make your choice between god and mammon, for you cannot serve both. "i put these considerations before you, if so homely a term may be pardoned, as a plain matter of business. there is nothing low or unworthy in this, as some lately have pretended, for all nature shows us that there is nothing more acceptable to god than an enlightened view of our own self-interest; never let anyone delude you here; it is a simple question of fact; did certain things happen or did they not? if they did happen, is it reasonable to suppose that you will make yourselves and others more happy by one course of conduct or by another? "and now let me ask you what answer you have made to this question hitherto? whose friendship have you chosen? if, knowing what you know, you have not yet begun to act according to the immensity of the knowledge that is in you, then he who builds his house and lays up his treasure on the edge of a crater of molten lava is a sane, sensible person in comparison with yourselves. i say this as no figure of speech or bugbear with which to frighten you, but as an unvarnished unexaggerated statement which will be no more disputed by yourselves than by me." and now mr hawke, who up to this time had spoken with singular quietness, changed his manner to one of greater warmth and continued-- "oh! my young friends turn, turn, turn, now while it is called to-day--now from this hour, from this instant; stay not even to gird up your loins; look not behind you for a second, but fly into the bosom of that christ who is to be found of all who seek him, and from that fearful wrath of god which lieth in wait for those who know not the things belonging to their peace. for the son of man cometh as a thief in the night, and there is not one of us can tell but what this day his soul may be required of him. if there is even one here who has heeded me,"--and he let his eye fall for an instant upon almost all his hearers, but especially on the ernest set--"i shall know that it was not for nothing that i felt the call of the lord, and heard as i thought a voice by night that bade me come hither quickly, for there was a chosen vessel who had need of me." here mr hawke ended rather abruptly; his earnest manner, striking countenance and excellent delivery had produced an effect greater than the actual words i have given can convey to the reader; the virtue lay in the man more than in what he said; as for the last few mysterious words about his having heard a voice by night, their effect was magical; there was not one who did not look down to the ground, nor who in his heart did not half believe that he was the chosen vessel on whose especial behalf god had sent mr hawke to cambridge. even if this were not so, each one of them felt that he was now for the first time in the actual presence of one who had had a direct communication from the almighty, and they were thus suddenly brought a hundredfold nearer to the new testament miracles. they were amazed, not to say scared, and as though by tacit consent they gathered together, thanked mr hawke for his sermon, said good-night in a humble deferential manner to badcock and the other simeonites, and left the room together. they had heard nothing but what they had been hearing all their lives; how was it, then, that they were so dumbfoundered by it? i suppose partly because they had lately begun to think more seriously, and were in a fit state to be impressed, partly from the greater directness with which each felt himself addressed, through the sermon being delivered in a room, and partly to the logical consistency, freedom from exaggeration, and profound air of conviction with which mr hawke had spoken. his simplicity and obvious earnestness had impressed them even before he had alluded to his special mission, but this clenched everything, and the words "lord, is it i?" were upon the hearts of each as they walked pensively home through moonlit courts and cloisters. i do not know what passed among the simeonites after the ernest set had left them, but they would have been more than mortal if they had not been a good deal elated with the results of the evening. why, one of ernest's friends was in the university eleven, and he had actually been in badcock's rooms and had slunk off on saying good-night as meekly as any of them. it was no small thing to have scored a success like this. chapter l ernest felt now that the turning point of his life had come. he would give up all for christ--even his tobacco. so he gathered together his pipes and pouches, and locked them up in his portmanteau under his bed where they should be out of sight, and as much out of mind as possible. he did not burn them, because someone might come in who wanted to smoke, and though he might abridge his own liberty, yet, as smoking was not a sin, there was no reason why he should be hard on other people. after breakfast he left his rooms to call on a man named dawson, who had been one of mr hawke's hearers on the preceding evening, and who was reading for ordination at the forthcoming ember weeks, now only four months distant. this man had been always of a rather serious turn of mind--a little too much so for ernest's taste; but times had changed, and dawson's undoubted sincerity seemed to render him a fitting counsellor for ernest at the present time. as he was going through the first court of john's on his way to dawson's rooms, he met badcock, and greeted him with some deference. his advance was received with one of those ecstatic gleams which shone occasionally upon the face of badcock, and which, if ernest had known more, would have reminded him of robespierre. as it was, he saw it and unconsciously recognised the unrest and self-seekingness of the man, but could not yet formulate them; he disliked badcock more than ever, but as he was going to profit by the spiritual benefits which he had put in his way, he was bound to be civil to him, and civil he therefore was. badcock told him that mr hawke had returned to town immediately his discourse was over, but that before doing so he had enquired particularly who ernest and two or three others were. i believe each one of ernest's friends was given to understand that he had been more or less particularly enquired after. ernest's vanity--for he was his mother's son--was tickled at this; the idea again presented itself to him that he might be the one for whose benefit mr hawke had been sent. there was something, too, in badcock's manner which conveyed the idea that he could say more if he chose, but had been enjoined to silence. on reaching dawson's rooms, he found his friend in raptures over the discourse of the preceding evening. hardly less delighted was he with the effect it had produced on ernest. he had always known, he said, that ernest would come round; he had been sure of it, but he had hardly expected the conversion to be so sudden. ernest said no more had he, but now that he saw his duty so clearly he would get ordained as soon as possible, and take a curacy, even though the doing so would make him have to go down from cambridge earlier, which would be a great grief to him. dawson applauded this determination, and it was arranged that as ernest was still more or less of a weak brother, dawson should take him, so to speak, in spiritual tow for a while, and strengthen and confirm his faith. an offensive and defensive alliance therefore was struck up between this pair (who were in reality singularly ill assorted), and ernest set to work to master the books on which the bishop would examine him. others gradually joined them till they formed a small set or church (for these are the same things), and the effect of mr hawke's sermon instead of wearing off in a few days, as might have been expected, became more and more marked, so much so that it was necessary for ernest's friends to hold him back rather than urge him on, for he seemed likely to develop--as indeed he did for a time--into a religious enthusiast. in one matter only, did he openly backslide. he had, as i said above, locked up his pipes and tobacco, so that he might not be tempted to use them. all day long on the day after mr hawke's sermon he let them lie in his portmanteau bravely; but this was not very difficult, as he had for some time given up smoking till after hall. after hall this day he did not smoke till chapel time, and then went to chapel in self-defence. when he returned he determined to look at the matter from a common sense point of view. on this he saw that, provided tobacco did not injure his health--and he really could not see that it did--it stood much on the same footing as tea or coffee. tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the bible, but then it had not yet been discovered, and had probably only escaped proscription for this reason. we can conceive of st paul or even our lord himself as drinking a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them as smoking a cigarette or a churchwarden. ernest could not deny this, and admitted that paul would almost certainly have condemned tobacco in good round terms if he had known of its existence. was it not then taking rather a mean advantage of the apostle to stand on his not having actually forbidden it? on the other hand, it was possible that god knew paul would have forbidden smoking, and had purposely arranged the discovery of tobacco for a period at which paul should be no longer living. this might seem rather hard on paul, considering all he had done for christianity, but it would be made up to him in other ways. these reflections satisfied ernest that on the whole he had better smoke, so he sneaked to his portmanteau and brought out his pipes and tobacco again. there should be moderation he felt in all things, even in virtue; so for that night he smoked immoderately. it was a pity, however, that he had bragged to dawson about giving up smoking. the pipes had better be kept in a cupboard for a week or two, till in other and easier respects ernest should have proved his steadfastness. then they might steal out again little by little--and so they did. ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein different from his ordinary ones. his letters were usually all common form and padding, for as i have already explained, if he wrote about anything that really interested him, his mother always wanted to know more and more about it--every fresh answer being as the lopping off of a hydra's head and giving birth to half a dozen or more new questions--but in the end it came invariably to the same result, namely, that he ought to have done something else, or ought not to go on doing as he proposed. now, however, there was a new departure, and for the thousandth time he concluded that he was about to take a course of which his father and mother would approve, and in which they would be interested, so that at last he and they might get on more sympathetically than heretofore. he therefore wrote a gushing impulsive letter, which afforded much amusement to myself as i read it, but which is too long for reproduction. one passage ran: "i am now going towards christ; the greater number of my college friends are, i fear, going away from him; we must pray for them that they may find the peace that is in christ even as i have myself found it." ernest covered his face with his hands for shame as he read this extract from the bundle of letters he had put into my hands--they had been returned to him by his father on his mother's death, his mother having carefully preserved them. "shall i cut it out?" said i, "i will if you like." "certainly not," he answered, "and if good-natured friends have kept more records of my follies, pick out any plums that may amuse the reader, and let him have his laugh over them." but fancy what effect a letter like this--so unled up to--must have produced at battersby! even christina refrained from ecstasy over her son's having discovered the power of christ's word, while theobald was frightened out of his wits. it was well his son was not going to have any doubts or difficulties, and that he would be ordained without making a fuss over it, but he smelt mischief in this sudden conversion of one who had never yet shown any inclination towards religion. he hated people who did not know where to stop. ernest was always so _outre_ and strange; there was never any knowing what he would do next, except that it would be something unusual and silly. if he was to get the bit between his teeth after he had got ordained and bought his living, he would play more pranks than ever he, theobald, had done. the fact, doubtless, of his being ordained and having bought a living would go a long way to steady him, and if he married, his wife must see to the rest; this was his only chance and, to do justice to his sagacity, theobald in his heart did not think very highly of it. when ernest came down to battersby in june, he imprudently tried to open up a more unreserved communication with his father than was his wont. the first of ernest's snipe-like flights on being flushed by mr hawke's sermon was in the direction of ultra-evangelicalism. theobald himself had been much more low than high church. this was the normal development of the country clergyman during the first years of his clerical life, between, we will say, the years to ; but he was not prepared for the almost contempt with which ernest now regarded the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and priestly absolution (hoity toity, indeed, what business had he with such questions?), nor for his desire to find some means of reconciling methodism and the church. theobald hated the church of rome, but he hated dissenters too, for he found them as a general rule troublesome people to deal with; he always found people who did not agree with him troublesome to deal with: besides, they set up for knowing as much as he did; nevertheless if he had been let alone he would have leaned towards them rather than towards the high church party. the neighbouring clergy, however, would not let him alone. one by one they had come under the influence, directly or indirectly, of the oxford movement which had begun twenty years earlier. it was surprising how many practices he now tolerated which in his youth he would have considered popish; he knew very well therefore which way things were going in church matters, and saw that as usual ernest was setting himself the other way. the opportunity for telling his son that he was a fool was too favourable not to be embraced, and theobald was not slow to embrace it. ernest was annoyed and surprised, for had not his father and mother been wanting him to be more religious all his life? now that he had become so they were still not satisfied. he said to himself that a prophet was not without honour save in his own country, but he had been lately--or rather until lately--getting into an odious habit of turning proverbs upside down, and it occurred to him that a country is sometimes not without honour save for its own prophet. then he laughed, and for the rest of the day felt more as he used to feel before he had heard mr hawke's sermon. he returned to cambridge for the long vacation of --none too soon, for he had to go in for the voluntary theological examination, which bishops were now beginning to insist upon. he imagined all the time he was reading that he was storing himself with the knowledge that would best fit him for the work he had taken in hand. in truth, he was cramming for a pass. in due time he did pass--creditably, and was ordained deacon with half-a-dozen others of his friends in the autumn of . he was then just twenty-three years old. chapter li ernest had been ordained to a curacy in one of the central parts of london. he hardly knew anything of london yet, but his instincts drew him thither. the day after he was ordained he entered upon his duties--feeling much as his father had done when he found himself boxed up in the carriage with christina on the morning of his marriage. before the first three days were over, he became aware that the light of the happiness which he had known during his four years at cambridge had been extinguished, and he was appalled by the irrevocable nature of the step which he now felt that he had taken much too hurriedly. the most charitable excuse that i can make for the vagaries which it will now be my duty to chronicle is that the shock of change consequent upon his becoming suddenly religious, being ordained and leaving cambridge, had been too much for my hero, and had for the time thrown him off an equilibrium which was yet little supported by experience, and therefore as a matter of course unstable. everyone has a mass of bad work in him which he will have to work off and get rid of before he can do better--and indeed, the more lasting a man's ultimate good work is, the more sure he is to pass through a time, and perhaps a very long one, in which there seems very little hope for him at all. we must all sow our spiritual wild oats. the fault i feel personally disposed to find with my godson is not that he had wild oats to sow, but that they were such an exceedingly tame and uninteresting crop. the sense of humour and tendency to think for himself, of which till a few months previously he had been showing fair promise, were nipped as though by a late frost, while his earlier habit of taking on trust everything that was told him by those in authority, and following everything out to the bitter end, no matter how preposterous, returned with redoubled strength. i suppose this was what might have been expected from anyone placed as ernest now was, especially when his antecedents are remembered, but it surprised and disappointed some of his cooler-headed cambridge friends who had begun to think well of his ability. to himself it seemed that religion was incompatible with half measures, or even with compromise. circumstances had led to his being ordained; for the moment he was sorry they had, but he had done it and must go through with it. he therefore set himself to find out what was expected of him, and to act accordingly. his rector was a moderate high churchman of no very pronounced views--an elderly man who had had too many curates not to have long since found out that the connection between rector and curate, like that between employer and employed in every other walk of life, was a mere matter of business. he had now two curates, of whom ernest was the junior; the senior curate was named pryer, and when this gentleman made advances, as he presently did, ernest in his forlorn state was delighted to meet them. pryer was about twenty-eight years old. he had been at eton and at oxford. he was tall, and passed generally for good-looking; i only saw him once for about five minutes, and then thought him odious both in manners and appearance. perhaps it was because he caught me up in a way i did not like. i had quoted shakespeare for lack of something better to fill up a sentence--and had said that one touch of nature made the whole world kin. "ah," said pryer, in a bold, brazen way which displeased me, "but one touch of the unnatural makes it more kindred still," and he gave me a look as though he thought me an old bore and did not care two straws whether i was shocked or not. naturally enough, after this i did not like him. this, however, is anticipating, for it was not till ernest had been three or four months in london that i happened to meet his fellow-curate, and i must deal here rather with the effect he produced upon my godson than upon myself. besides being what was generally considered good-looking, he was faultless in his get-up, and altogether the kind of man whom ernest was sure to be afraid of and yet be taken in by. the style of his dress was very high church, and his acquaintances were exclusively of the extreme high church party, but he kept his views a good deal in the background in his rector's presence, and that gentleman, though he looked askance on some of pryer's friends, had no such ground of complaint against him as to make him sever the connection. pryer, too, was popular in the pulpit, and, take him all round, it was probable that many worse curates would be found for one better. when pryer called on my hero, as soon as the two were alone together, he eyed him all over with a quick penetrating glance and seemed not dissatisfied with the result--for i must say here that ernest had improved in personal appearance under the more genial treatment he had received at cambridge. pryer, in fact, approved of him sufficiently to treat him civilly, and ernest was immediately won by anyone who did this. it was not long before he discovered that the high church party, and even rome itself, had more to say for themselves than he had thought. this was his first snipe-like change of flight. pryer introduced him to several of his friends. they were all of them young clergymen, belonging as i have said to the highest of the high church school, but ernest was surprised to find how much they resembled other people when among themselves. this was a shock to him; it was ere long a still greater one to find that certain thoughts which he had warred against as fatal to his soul, and which he had imagined he should lose once for all on ordination, were still as troublesome to him as they had been; he also saw plainly enough that the young gentlemen who formed the circle of pryer's friends were in much the same unhappy predicament as himself. this was deplorable. the only way out of it that ernest could see was that he should get married at once. but then he did not know any one whom he wanted to marry. he did not know any woman, in fact, whom he would not rather die than marry. it had been one of theobald's and christina's main objects to keep him out of the way of women, and they had so far succeeded that women had become to him mysterious, inscrutable objects to be tolerated when it was impossible to avoid them, but never to be sought out or encouraged. as for any man loving, or even being at all fond of any woman, he supposed it was so, but he believed the greater number of those who professed such sentiments were liars. now, however, it was clear that he had hoped against hope too long, and that the only thing to do was to go and ask the first woman who would listen to him to come and be married to him as soon as possible. he broached this to pryer, and was surprised to find that this gentleman, though attentive to such members of his flock as were young and good-looking, was strongly in favour of the celibacy of the clergy, as indeed were the other demure young clerics to whom pryer had introduced ernest. chapter lii "you know, my dear pontifex," said pryer to him, some few weeks after ernest had become acquainted with him, when the two were taking a constitutional one day in kensington gardens, "you know, my dear pontifex, it is all very well to quarrel with rome, but rome has reduced the treatment of the human soul to a science, while our own church, though so much purer in many respects, has no organised system either of diagnosis or pathology--i mean, of course, spiritual diagnosis and spiritual pathology. our church does not prescribe remedies upon any settled system, and, what is still worse, even when her physicians have according to their lights ascertained the disease and pointed out the remedy, she has no discipline which will ensure its being actually applied. if our patients do not choose to do as we tell them, we cannot make them. perhaps really under all the circumstances this is as well, for we are spiritually mere horse doctors as compared with the roman priesthood, nor can we hope to make much headway against the sin and misery that surround us, till we return in some respects to the practice of our forefathers and of the greater part of christendom." ernest asked in what respects it was that his friend desired a return to the practice of our forefathers. "why, my dear fellow, can you really be ignorant? it is just this, either the priest is indeed a spiritual guide, as being able to show people how they ought to live better than they can find out for themselves, or he is nothing at all--he has no _raison d'etre_. if the priest is not as much a healer and director of men's souls as a physician is of their bodies, what is he? the history of all ages has shown--and surely you must know this as well as i do--that as men cannot cure the bodies of their patients if they have not been properly trained in hospitals under skilled teachers, so neither can souls be cured of their more hidden ailments without the help of men who are skilled in soul-craft--or in other words, of priests. what do one half of our formularies and rubrics mean if not this? how in the name of all that is reasonable can we find out the exact nature of a spiritual malady, unless we have had experience of other similar cases? how can we get this without express training? at present we have to begin all experiments for ourselves, without profiting by the organised experience of our predecessors, inasmuch as that experience is never organised and co-ordinated at all. at the outset, therefore, each one of us must ruin many souls which could be saved by knowledge of a few elementary principles." ernest was very much impressed. "as for men curing themselves," continued pryer, "they can no more cure their own souls than they can cure their own bodies, or manage their own law affairs. in these two last cases they see the folly of meddling with their own cases clearly enough, and go to a professional adviser as a matter of course; surely a man's soul is at once a more difficult and intricate matter to treat, and at the same time it is more important to him that it should be treated rightly than that either his body or his money should be so. what are we to think of the practice of a church which encourages people to rely on unprofessional advice in matters affecting their eternal welfare, when they would not think of jeopardising their worldly affairs by such insane conduct?" ernest could see no weak place in this. these ideas had crossed his own mind vaguely before now, but he had never laid hold of them or set them in an orderly manner before himself. nor was he quick at detecting false analogies and the misuse of metaphors; in fact he was a mere child in the hands of his fellow curate. "and what," resumed pryer, "does all this point to? firstly, to the duty of confession--the outcry against which is absurd as an outcry would be against dissection as part of the training of medical students. granted these young men must see and do a great deal we do not ourselves like even to think of, but they should adopt some other profession unless they are prepared for this; they may even get inoculated with poison from a dead body and lose their lives, but they must stand their chance. so if we aspire to be priests in deed as well as name, we must familiarise ourselves with the minutest and most repulsive details of all kinds of sin, so that we may recognise it in all its stages. some of us must doubtlessly perish spiritually in such investigations. we cannot help it; all science must have its martyrs, and none of these will deserve better of humanity than those who have fallen in the pursuit of spiritual pathology." ernest grew more and more interested, but in the meekness of his soul said nothing. "i do not desire this martyrdom for myself," continued the other, "on the contrary i will avoid it to the very utmost of my power, but if it be god's will that i should fall while studying what i believe most calculated to advance his glory--then, i say, not my will, oh lord, but thine be done." this was too much even for ernest. "i heard of an irish-woman once," he said, with a smile, "who said she was a martyr to the drink." "and so she was," rejoined pryer with warmth; and he went on to show that this good woman was an experimentalist whose experiment, though disastrous in its effects upon herself, was pregnant with instruction to other people. she was thus a true martyr or witness to the frightful consequences of intemperance, to the saving, doubtless, of many who but for her martyrdom would have taken to drinking. she was one of a forlorn hope whose failure to take a certain position went to the proving it to be impregnable and therefore to the abandonment of all attempt to take it. this was almost as great a gain to mankind as the actual taking of the position would have been. "besides," he added more hurriedly, "the limits of vice and virtue are wretchedly ill-defined. half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence." ernest asked timidly for an instance. "no, no," said pryer, "i will give you no instance, but i will give you a formula that shall embrace all instances. it is this, that no practice is entirely vicious which has not been extinguished among the comeliest, most vigorous, and most cultivated races of mankind in spite of centuries of endeavour to extirpate it. if a vice in spite of such efforts can still hold its own among the most polished nations, it must be founded on some immutable truth or fact in human nature, and must have some compensatory advantage which we cannot afford altogether to dispense with." "but," said ernest timidly, "is not this virtually doing away with all distinction between right and wrong, and leaving people without any moral guide whatever?" "not the people," was the answer: "it must be our care to be guides to these, for they are and always will be incapable of guiding themselves sufficiently. we should tell them what they must do, and in an ideal state of things should be able to enforce their doing it: perhaps when we are better instructed the ideal state may come about; nothing will so advance it as greater knowledge of spiritual pathology on our own part. for this, three things are necessary; firstly, absolute freedom in experiment for us the clergy; secondly, absolute knowledge of what the laity think and do, and of what thoughts and actions result in what spiritual conditions; and thirdly, a compacter organisation among ourselves. "if we are to do any good we must be a closely united body, and must be sharply divided from the laity. also we must be free from those ties which a wife and children involve. i can hardly express the horror with which i am filled by seeing english priests living in what i can only designate as 'open matrimony.' it is deplorable. the priest must be absolutely sexless--if not in practice, yet at any rate in theory, absolutely--and that too, by a theory so universally accepted that none shall venture to dispute it." "but," said ernest, "has not the bible already told people what they ought and ought not to do, and is it not enough for us to insist on what can be found here, and let the rest alone?" "if you begin with the bible," was the rejoinder, "you are three parts gone on the road to infidelity, and will go the other part before you know where you are. the bible is not without its value to us the clergy, but for the laity it is a stumbling-block which cannot be taken out of their way too soon or too completely. of course, i mean on the supposition that they read it, which, happily, they seldom do. if people read the bible as the ordinary british churchman or churchwoman reads it, it is harmless enough; but if they read it with any care--which we should assume they will if we give it them at all--it is fatal to them." "what do you mean?" said ernest, more and more astonished, but more and more feeling that he was at least in the hands of a man who had definite ideas. "your question shows me that you have never read your bible. a more unreliable book was never put upon paper. take my advice and don't read it, not till you are a few years older, and may do so safely." "but surely you believe the bible when it tells you of such things as that christ died and rose from the dead? surely you believe this?" said ernest, quite prepared to be told that pryer believed nothing of the kind. "i do not believe it, i know it." "but how--if the testimony of the bible fails?" "on that of the living voice of the church, which i know to be infallible and to be informed of christ himself." chapter liii the foregoing conversation and others like it made a deep impression upon my hero. if next day he had taken a walk with mr hawke, and heard what he had to say on the other side, he would have been just as much struck, and as ready to fling off what pryer had told him, as he now was to throw aside all he had ever heard from anyone except pryer; but there was no mr hawke at hand, so pryer had everything his own way. embryo minds, like embryo bodies, pass through a number of strange metamorphoses before they adopt their final shape. it is no more to be wondered at that one who is going to turn out a roman catholic, should have passed through the stages of being first a methodist, and then a free thinker, than that a man should at some former time have been a mere cell, and later on an invertebrate animal. ernest, however, could not be expected to know this; embryos never do. embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition which really suits them. this, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. every change is a shock; every shock is a _pro tanto_ death. what we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognise a past and a present as resembling one another. it is the making us consider the points of difference between our present and our past greater than the points of resemblance, so that we can no longer call the former of these two in any proper sense a continuation of the second, but find it less trouble to think of it as something that we choose to call new. but, to let this pass, it was clear that spiritual pathology (i confess that i do not know myself what spiritual pathology means--but pryer and ernest doubtless did) was the great desideratum of the age. it seemed to ernest that he had made this discovery himself and been familiar with it all his life, that he had never known, in fact, of anything else. he wrote long letters to his college friends expounding his views as though he had been one of the apostolic fathers. as for the old testament writers, he had no patience with them. "do oblige me," i find him writing to one friend, "by reading the prophet zechariah, and giving me your candid opinion upon him. he is poor stuff, full of yankee bounce; it is sickening to live in an age when such balderdash can be gravely admired whether as poetry or prophecy." this was because pryer had set him against zechariah. i do not know what zechariah had done; i should think myself that zechariah was a very good prophet; perhaps it was because he was a bible writer, and not a very prominent one, that pryer selected him as one through whom to disparage the bible in comparison with the church. to his friend dawson i find him saying a little later on: "pryer and i continue our walks, working out each other's thoughts. at first he used to do all the thinking, but i think i am pretty well abreast of him now, and rather chuckle at seeing that he is already beginning to modify some of the views he held most strongly when i first knew him. "then i think he was on the high road to rome; now, however, he seems to be a good deal struck with a suggestion of mine in which you, too, perhaps may be interested. you see we must infuse new life into the church somehow; we are not holding our own against either rome or infidelity." (i may say in passing that i do not believe ernest had as yet ever seen an infidel--not to speak to.) "i proposed, therefore, a few days back to pryer--and he fell in eagerly with the proposal as soon as he saw that i had the means of carrying it out--that we should set on foot a spiritual movement somewhat analogous to the young england movement of twenty years ago, the aim of which shall be at once to outbid rome on the one hand, and scepticism on the other. for this purpose i see nothing better than the foundation of an institution or college for placing the nature and treatment of sin on a more scientific basis than it rests at present. we want--to borrow a useful term of pryer's--a college of spiritual pathology where young men" (i suppose ernest thought he was no longer young by this time) "may study the nature and treatment of the sins of the soul as medical students study those of the bodies of their patients. such a college, as you will probably admit, will approach both rome on the one hand, and science on the other--rome, as giving the priesthood more skill, and therefore as paving the way for their obtaining greater power, and science, by recognising that even free thought has a certain kind of value in spiritual enquiries. to this purpose pryer and i have resolved to devote ourselves henceforth heart and soul. "of course, my ideas are still unshaped, and all will depend upon the men by whom the college is first worked. i am not yet a priest, but pryer is, and if i were to start the college, pryer might take charge of it for a time and i work under him nominally as his subordinate. pryer himself suggested this. is it not generous of him? "the worst of it is that we have not enough money; i have, it is true, pounds, but we want at least , pounds, so pryer says, before we can start; when we are fairly under weigh i might live at the college and draw a salary from the foundation, so that it is all one, or nearly so, whether i invest my money in this way or in buying a living; besides i want very little; it is certain that i shall never marry; no clergyman should think of this, and an unmarried man can live on next to nothing. still i do not see my way to as much money as i want, and pryer suggests that as we can hardly earn more now we must get it by a judicious series of investments. pryer knows several people who make quite a handsome income out of very little or, indeed, i may say, nothing at all, by buying things at a place they call the stock exchange; i don't know much about it yet, but pryer says i should soon learn; he thinks, indeed, that i have shown rather a talent in this direction, and under proper auspices should make a very good man of business. others, of course, and not i, must decide this; but a man can do anything if he gives his mind to it, and though i should not care about having more money for my own sake, i care about it very much when i think of the good i could do with it by saving souls from such horrible torture hereafter. why, if the thing succeeds, and i really cannot see what is to hinder it, it is hardly possible to exaggerate its importance, nor the proportions which it may ultimately assume," etc., etc. again i asked ernest whether he minded my printing this. he winced, but said "no, not if it helps you to tell your story: but don't you think it is too long?" i said it would let the reader see for himself how things were going in half the time that it would take me to explain them to him. "very well then, keep it by all means." i continue turning over my file of ernest's letters and find as follows-- "thanks for your last, in answer to which i send you a rough copy of a letter i sent to the _times_ a day or two back. they did not insert it, but it embodies pretty fully my ideas on the parochial visitation question, and pryer fully approves of the letter. think it carefully over and send it back to me when read, for it is so exactly my present creed that i cannot afford to lose it. "i should very much like to have a _viva voce_ discussion on these matters: i can only see for certain that we have suffered a dreadful loss in being no longer able to excommunicate. we should excommunicate rich and poor alike, and pretty freely too. if this power were restored to us we could, i think, soon put a stop to by far the greater part of the sin and misery with which we are surrounded." these letters were written only a few weeks after ernest had been ordained, but they are nothing to others that he wrote a little later on. in his eagerness to regenerate the church of england (and through this the universe) by the means which pryer had suggested to him, it occurred to him to try to familiarise himself with the habits and thoughts of the poor by going and living among them. i think he got this notion from kingsley's "alton locke," which, high churchman though he for the nonce was, he had devoured as he had devoured stanley's life of arnold, dickens's novels, and whatever other literary garbage of the day was most likely to do him harm; at any rate he actually put his scheme into practice, and took lodgings in ashpit place, a small street in the neighbourhood of drury lane theatre, in a house of which the landlady was the widow of a cabman. this lady occupied the whole ground floor. in the front kitchen there was a tinker. the back kitchen was let to a bellows-mender. on the first floor came ernest, with his two rooms which he furnished comfortably, for one must draw the line somewhere. the two upper floors were parcelled out among four different sets of lodgers: there was a tailor named holt, a drunken fellow who used to beat his wife at night till her screams woke the house; above him there was another tailor with a wife but no children; these people were wesleyans, given to drink but not noisy. the two back rooms were held by single ladies, who it seemed to ernest must be respectably connected, for well-dressed gentlemanly- looking young men used to go up and down stairs past ernest's rooms to call at any rate on miss snow--ernest had heard her door slam after they had passed. he thought, too, that some of them went up to miss maitland's. mrs jupp, the landlady, told ernest that these were brothers and cousins of miss snow's, and that she was herself looking out for a situation as a governess, but at present had an engagement as an actress at the drury lane theatre. ernest asked whether miss maitland in the top back was also looking out for a situation, and was told she was wanting an engagement as a milliner. he believed whatever mrs jupp told him. chapter liv this move on ernest's part was variously commented upon by his friends, the general opinion being that it was just like pontifex, who was sure to do something unusual wherever he went, but that on the whole the idea was commendable. christina could not restrain herself when on sounding her clerical neighbours she found them inclined to applaud her son for conduct which they idealised into something much more self-denying than it really was. she did not quite like his living in such an unaristocratic neighbourhood; but what he was doing would probably get into the newspapers, and then great people would take notice of him. besides, it would be very cheap; down among these poor people he could live for next to nothing, and might put by a great deal of his income. as for temptations, there could be few or none in such a place as that. this argument about cheapness was the one with which she most successfully met theobald, who grumbled more _suo_ that he had no sympathy with his son's extravagance and conceit. when christina pointed out to him that it would be cheap he replied that there was something in that. on ernest himself the effect was to confirm the good opinion of himself which had been growing upon him ever since he had begun to read for orders, and to make him flatter himself that he was among the few who were ready to give up _all_ for christ. ere long he began to conceive of himself as a man with a mission and a great future. his lightest and most hastily formed opinions began to be of momentous importance to him, and he inflicted them, as i have already shown, on his old friends, week by week becoming more and more _entete_ with himself and his own crotchets. i should like well enough to draw a veil over this part of my hero's career, but cannot do so without marring my story. in the spring of i find him writing-- "i cannot call the visible church christian till its fruits are christian, that is until the fruits of the members of the church of england are in conformity, or something like conformity, with her teaching. i cordially agree with the teaching of the church of england in most respects, but she says one thing and does another, and until excommunication--yes, and wholesale excommunication--be resorted to, i cannot call her a christian institution. i should begin with our rector, and if i found it necessary to follow him up by excommunicating the bishop, i should not flinch even from this. "the present london rectors are hopeless people to deal with. my own is one of the best of them, but the moment pryer and i show signs of wanting to attack an evil in a way not recognised by routine, or of remedying anything about which no outcry has been made, we are met with, 'i cannot think what you mean by all this disturbance; nobody else among the clergy sees these things, and i have no wish to be the first to begin turning everything topsy-turvy.' and then people call him a sensible man. i have no patience with them. however, we know what we want, and, as i wrote to dawson the other day, have a scheme on foot which will, i think, fairly meet the requirements of the case. but we want more money, and my first move towards getting this has not turned out quite so satisfactorily as pryer and i had hoped; we shall, however, i doubt not, retrieve it shortly." when ernest came to london he intended doing a good deal of house-to-house visiting, but pryer had talked him out of this even before he settled down in his new and strangely-chosen apartments. the line he now took was that if people wanted christ, they must prove their want by taking some little trouble, and the trouble required of them was that they should come and seek him, ernest, out; there he was in the midst of them ready to teach; if people did not choose to come to him it was no fault of his. "my great business here," he writes again to dawson, "is to observe. i am not doing much in parish work beyond my share of the daily services. i have a man's bible class, and a boy's bible class, and a good many young men and boys to whom i give instruction one way or another; then there are the sunday school children, with whom i fill my room on a sunday evening as full as it will hold, and let them sing hymns and chants. they like this. i do a great deal of reading--chiefly of books which pryer and i think most likely to help; we find nothing comparable to the jesuits. pryer is a thorough gentleman, and an admirable man of business--no less observant of the things of this world, in fact, than of the things above; by a brilliant coup he has retrieved, or nearly so, a rather serious loss which threatened to delay indefinitely the execution of our great scheme. he and i daily gather fresh principles. i believe great things are before me, and am strong in the hope of being able by and by to effect much. "as for you i bid you god speed. be bold but logical, speculative but cautious, daringly courageous, but properly circumspect withal," etc., etc. i think this may do for the present. chapter lv i had called on ernest as a matter of course when he first came to london, but had not seen him. i had been out when he returned my call, so that he had been in town for some weeks before i actually saw him, which i did not very long after he had taken possession of his new rooms. i liked his face, but except for the common bond of music, in respect of which our tastes were singularly alike, i should hardly have known how to get on with him. to do him justice he did not air any of his schemes to me until i had drawn him out concerning them. i, to borrow the words of ernest's landlady, mrs jupp, "am not a very regular church-goer"--i discovered upon cross-examination that mrs jupp had been to church once when she was churched for her son tom some five and twenty years since, but never either before or afterwards; not even, i fear, to be married, for though she called herself "mrs" she wore no wedding ring, and spoke of the person who should have been mr jupp as "my poor dear boy's father," not as "my husband." but to return. i was vexed at ernest's having been ordained. i was not ordained myself and i did not like my friends to be ordained, nor did i like having to be on my best behaviour and to look as if butter would not melt in my mouth, and all for a boy whom i remembered when he knew yesterday and to-morrow and tuesday, but not a day of the week more--not even sunday itself--and when he said he did not like the kitten because it had pins in its toes. i looked at him and thought of his aunt alethea, and how fast the money she had left him was accumulating; and it was all to go to this young man, who would use it probably in the very last ways with which miss pontifex would have sympathised. i was annoyed. "she always said," i thought to myself, "that she should make a mess of it, but i did not think she would have made as great a mess of it as this." then i thought that perhaps if his aunt had lived he would not have been like this. ernest behaved quite nicely to me and i own that the fault was mine if the conversation drew towards dangerous subjects. i was the aggressor, presuming i suppose upon my age and long acquaintance with him, as giving me a right to make myself unpleasant in a quiet way. then he came out, and the exasperating part of it was that up to a certain point he was so very right. grant him his premises and his conclusions were sound enough, nor could i, seeing that he was already ordained, join issue with him about his premises as i should certainly have done if i had had a chance of doing so before he had taken orders. the result was that i had to beat a retreat and went away not in the best of humours. i believe the truth was that i liked ernest, and was vexed at his being a clergyman, and at a clergyman having so much money coming to him. i talked a little with mrs jupp on my way out. she and i had reckoned one another up at first sight as being neither of us "very regular church- goers," and the strings of her tongue had been loosened. she said ernest would die. he was much too good for the world and he looked so sad "just like young watkins of the 'crown' over the way who died a month ago, and his poor dear skin was white as alablaster; least-ways they say he shot hisself. they took him from the mortimer, i met them just as i was going with my rose to get a pint o' four ale, and she had her arm in splints. she told her sister she wanted to go to perry's to get some wool, instead o' which it was only a stall to get me a pint o' ale, bless her heart; there's nobody else would do that much for poor old jupp, and it's a horrid lie to say she is gay; not but what i like a gay woman, i do: i'd rather give a gay woman half-a-crown than stand a modest woman a pot o' beer, but i don't want to go associating with bad girls for all that. so they took him from the mortimer; they wouldn't let him go home no more; and he done it that artful you know. his wife was in the country living with her mother, and she always spoke respectful o' my rose. poor dear, i hope his soul is in heaven. well sir, would you believe it, there's that in mr pontifex's face which is just like young watkins; he looks that worrited and scrunched up at times, but it's never for the same reason, for he don't know nothing at all, no more than a unborn babe, no he don't; why there's not a monkey going about london with an italian organ grinder but knows more than mr pontifex do. he don't know--well i suppose--" here a child came in on an errand from some neighbour and interrupted her, or i can form no idea where or when she would have ended her discourse. i seized the opportunity to run away, but not before i had given her five shillings and made her write down my address, for i was a little frightened by what she said. i told her if she thought her lodger grew worse, she was to come and let me know. weeks went by and i did not see her again. having done as much as i had, i felt absolved from doing more, and let ernest alone as thinking that he and i should only bore one another. he had now been ordained a little over four months, but these months had not brought happiness or satisfaction with them. he had lived in a clergyman's house all his life, and might have been expected perhaps to have known pretty much what being a clergyman was like, and so he did--a country clergyman; he had formed an ideal, however, as regards what a town clergyman could do, and was trying in a feeble tentative way to realise it, but somehow or other it always managed to escape him. he lived among the poor, but he did not find that he got to know them. the idea that they would come to him proved to be a mistaken one. he did indeed visit a few tame pets whom his rector desired him to look after. there was an old man and his wife who lived next door but one to ernest himself; then there was a plumber of the name of chesterfield; an aged lady of the name of gover, blind and bed-ridden, who munched and munched her feeble old toothless jaws as ernest spoke or read to her, but who could do little more; a mr brookes, a rag and bottle merchant in birdsey's rents in the last stage of dropsy, and perhaps half a dozen or so others. what did it all come to, when he did go to see them? the plumber wanted to be flattered, and liked fooling a gentleman into wasting his time by scratching his ears for him. mrs gover, poor old woman, wanted money; she was very good and meek, and when ernest got her a shilling from lady anne jones's bequest, she said it was "small but seasonable," and munched and munched in gratitude. ernest sometimes gave her a little money himself, but not, as he says now, half what he ought to have given. what could he do else that would have been of the smallest use to her? nothing indeed; but giving occasional half-crowns to mrs gover was not regenerating the universe, and ernest wanted nothing short of this. the world was all out of joint, and instead of feeling it to be a cursed spite that he was born to set it right, he thought he was just the kind of person that was wanted for the job, and was eager to set to work, only he did not exactly know how to begin, for the beginning he had made with mr chesterfield and mrs gover did not promise great developments. then poor mr brookes--he suffered very much, terribly indeed; he was not in want of money; he wanted to die and couldn't, just as we sometimes want to go to sleep and cannot. he had been a serious-minded man, and death frightened him as it must frighten anyone who believes that all his most secret thoughts will be shortly exposed in public. when i read ernest the description of how his father used to visit mrs thompson at battersby, he coloured and said--"that's just what i used to say to mr brookes." ernest felt that his visits, so far from comforting mr brookes, made him fear death more and more, but how could he help it? even pryer, who had been curate a couple of years, did not know personally more than a couple of hundred people in the parish at the outside, and it was only at the houses of very few of these that he ever visited, but then pryer had such a strong objection on principle to house visitations. what a drop in the sea were those with whom he and pryer were brought into direct communication in comparison with those whom he must reach and move if he were to produce much effect of any kind, one way or the other. why there were between fifteen and twenty thousand poor in the parish, of whom but the merest fraction ever attended a place of worship. some few went to dissenting chapels, a few were roman catholics; by far the greater number, however, were practically infidels, if not actively hostile, at any rate indifferent to religion, while many were avowed atheists--admirers of tom paine, of whom he now heard for the first time; but he never met and conversed with any of these. was he really doing everything that could be expected of him? it was all very well to say that he was doing as much as other young clergymen did; that was not the kind of answer which jesus christ was likely to accept; why, the pharisees themselves in all probability did as much as the other pharisees did. what he should do was to go into the highways and byways, and compel people to come in. was he doing this? or were not they rather compelling him to keep out--outside their doors at any rate? he began to have an uneasy feeling as though ere long, unless he kept a sharp look out, he should drift into being a sham. true, all would be changed as soon as he could endow the college for spiritual pathology; matters, however, had not gone too well with "the things that people bought in the place that was called the stock exchange." in order to get on faster, it had been arranged that ernest should buy more of these things than he could pay for, with the idea that in a few weeks, or even days, they would be much higher in value, and he could sell them at a tremendous profit; but, unfortunately, instead of getting higher, they had fallen immediately after ernest had bought, and obstinately refused to get up again; so, after a few settlements, he had got frightened, for he read an article in some newspaper, which said they would go ever so much lower, and, contrary to pryer's advice, he insisted on selling--at a loss of something like pounds. he had hardly sold when up went the shares again, and he saw how foolish he had been, and how wise pryer was, for if pryer's advice had been followed, he would have made pounds, instead of losing it. however, he told himself he must live and learn. then pryer made a mistake. they had bought some shares, and the shares went up delightfully for about a fortnight. this was a happy time indeed, for by the end of a fortnight, the lost pounds had been recovered, and three or four hundred pounds had been cleared into the bargain. all the feverish anxiety of that miserable six weeks, when the pounds was being lost, was now being repaid with interest. ernest wanted to sell and make sure of the profit, but pryer would not hear of it; they would go ever so much higher yet, and he showed ernest an article in some newspaper which proved that what he said was reasonable, and they did go up a little--but only a very little, for then they went down, down, and ernest saw first his clear profit of three or four hundred pounds go, and then the pounds loss, which he thought he had recovered, slipped away by falls of a half and one at a time, and then he lost pounds more. then a newspaper said that these shares were the greatest rubbish that had ever been imposed upon the english public, and ernest could stand it no longer, so he sold out, again this time against pryer's advice, so that when they went up, as they shortly did, pryer scored off ernest a second time. ernest was not used to vicissitudes of this kind, and they made him so anxious that his health was affected. it was arranged therefore that he had better know nothing of what was being done. pryer was a much better man of business than he was, and would see to it all. this relieved ernest of a good deal of trouble, and was better after all for the investments themselves; for, as pryer justly said, a man must not have a faint heart if he hopes to succeed in buying and selling upon the stock exchange, and seeing ernest nervous made pryer nervous too--at least, he said it did. so the money drifted more and more into pryer's hands. as for pryer himself, he had nothing but his curacy and a small allowance from his father. some of ernest's old friends got an inkling from his letters of what he was doing, and did their utmost to dissuade him, but he was as infatuated as a young lover of two and twenty. finding that these friends disapproved, he dropped away from them, and they, being bored with his egotism and high-flown ideas, were not sorry to let him do so. of course, he said nothing about his speculations--indeed, he hardly knew that anything done in so good a cause could be called speculation. at battersby, when his father urged him to look out for a next presentation, and even brought one or two promising ones under his notice, he made objections and excuses, though always promising to do as his father desired very shortly. chapter lvi by and by a subtle, indefinable _malaise_ began to take possession of him. i once saw a very young foal trying to eat some most objectionable refuse, and unable to make up its mind whether it was good or no. clearly it wanted to be told. if its mother had seen what it was doing she would have set it right in a moment, and as soon as ever it had been told that what it was eating was filth, the foal would have recognised it and never have wanted to be told again; but the foal could not settle the matter for itself, or make up its mind whether it liked what it was trying to eat or no, without assistance from without. i suppose it would have come to do so by and by, but it was wasting time and trouble, which a single look from its mother would have saved, just as wort will in time ferment of itself, but will ferment much more quickly if a little yeast be added to it. in the matter of knowing what gives us pleasure we are all like wort, and if unaided from without can only ferment slowly and toilsomely. my unhappy hero about this time was very much like the foal, or rather he felt much what the foal would have felt if its mother and all the other grown-up horses in the field had vowed that what it was eating was the most excellent and nutritious food to be found anywhere. he was so anxious to do what was right, and so ready to believe that every one knew better than himself, that he never ventured to admit to himself that he might be all the while on a hopelessly wrong tack. it did not occur to him that there might be a blunder anywhere, much less did it occur to him to try and find out where the blunder was. nevertheless he became daily more full of _malaise_, and daily, only he knew it not, more ripe for an explosion should a spark fall upon him. one thing, however, did begin to loom out of the general vagueness, and to this he instinctively turned as trying to seize it--i mean, the fact that he was saving very few souls, whereas there were thousands and thousands being lost hourly all around him which a little energy such as mr hawke's might save. day after day went by, and what was he doing? standing on professional _etiquette_, and praying that his shares might go up and down as he wanted them, so that they might give him money enough to enable him to regenerate the universe. but in the meantime the people were dying. how many souls would not be doomed to endless ages of the most frightful torments that the mind could think of, before he could bring his spiritual pathology engine to bear upon them? why might he not stand and preach as he saw the dissenters doing sometimes in lincoln's inn fields and other thoroughfares? he could say all that mr hawke had said. mr hawke was a very poor creature in ernest's eyes now, for he was a low churchman, but we should not be above learning from any one, and surely he could affect his hearers as powerfully as mr hawke had affected him if he only had the courage to set to work. the people whom he saw preaching in the squares sometimes drew large audiences. he could at any rate preach better than they. ernest broached this to pryer, who treated it as something too outrageous to be even thought of. nothing, he said, could more tend to lower the dignity of the clergy and bring the church into contempt. his manner was brusque, and even rude. ernest ventured a little mild dissent; he admitted it was not usual, but something at any rate must be done, and that quickly. this was how wesley and whitfield had begun that great movement which had kindled religious life in the minds of hundreds of thousands. this was no time to be standing on dignity. it was just because wesley and whitfield had done what the church would not that they had won men to follow them whom the church had now lost. pryer eyed ernest searchingly, and after a pause said, "i don't know what to make of you, pontifex; you are at once so very right and so very wrong. i agree with you heartily that something should be done, but it must not be done in a way which experience has shown leads to nothing but fanaticism and dissent. do you approve of these wesleyans? do you hold your ordination vows so cheaply as to think that it does not matter whether the services of the church are performed in her churches and with all due ceremony or not? if you do--then, frankly, you had no business to be ordained; if you do not, then remember that one of the first duties of a young deacon is obedience to authority. neither the catholic church, nor yet the church of england allows her clergy to preach in the streets of cities where there is no lack of churches." ernest felt the force of this, and pryer saw that he wavered. "we are living," he continued more genially, "in an age of transition, and in a country which, though it has gained much by the reformation, does not perceive how much it has also lost. you cannot and must not hawk christ about in the streets as though you were in a heathen country whose inhabitants had never heard of him. the people here in london have had ample warning. every church they pass is a protest to them against their lives, and a call to them to repent. every church-bell they hear is a witness against them, everyone of those whom they meet on sundays going to or coming from church is a warning voice from god. if these countless influences produce no effect upon them, neither will the few transient words which they would hear from you. you are like dives, and think that if one rose from the dead they would hear him. perhaps they might; but then you cannot pretend that you have risen from the dead." though the last few words were spoken laughingly, there was a sub-sneer about them which made ernest wince; but he was quite subdued, and so the conversation ended. it left ernest, however, not for the first time, consciously dissatisfied with pryer, and inclined to set his friend's opinion on one side--not openly, but quietly, and without telling pryer anything about it. chapter lvii he had hardly parted from pryer before there occurred another incident which strengthened his discontent. he had fallen, as i have shown, among a gang of spiritual thieves or coiners, who passed the basest metal upon him without his finding it out, so childish and inexperienced was he in the ways of anything but those back eddies of the world, schools and universities. among the bad threepenny pieces which had been passed off upon him, and which he kept for small hourly disbursement, was a remark that poor people were much nicer than the richer and better educated. ernest now said that he always travelled third class not because it was cheaper, but because the people whom he met in third class carriages were so much pleasanter and better behaved. as for the young men who attended ernest's evening classes, they were pronounced to be more intelligent and better ordered generally than the average run of oxford and cambridge men. our foolish young friend having heard pryer talk to this effect, caught up all he said and reproduced it _more suo_. one evening, however, about this time, whom should he see coming along a small street not far from his own but, of all persons in the world, towneley, looking as full of life and good spirits as ever, and if possible even handsomer than he had been at cambridge. much as ernest liked him he found himself shrinking from speaking to him, and was endeavouring to pass him without doing so when towneley saw him and stopped him at once, being pleased to see an old cambridge face. he seemed for the moment a little confused at being seen in such a neighbourhood, but recovered himself so soon that ernest hardly noticed it, and then plunged into a few kindly remarks about old times. ernest felt that he quailed as he saw towneley's eye wander to his white necktie and saw that he was being reckoned up, and rather disapprovingly reckoned up, as a parson. it was the merest passing shade upon towneley's face, but ernest had felt it. towneley said a few words of common form to ernest about his profession as being what he thought would be most likely to interest him, and ernest, still confused and shy, gave him for lack of something better to say his little threepenny-bit about poor people being so very nice. towneley took this for what it was worth and nodded assent, whereon ernest imprudently went further and said "don't you like poor people very much yourself?" towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured screw, and said quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "no, no, no," and escaped. it was all over with ernest from that moment. as usual he did not know it, but he had entered none the less upon another reaction. towneley had just taken ernest's threepenny-bit into his hands, looked at it and returned it to him as a bad one. why did he see in a moment that it was a bad one now, though he had been unable to see it when he had taken it from pryer? of course some poor people were very nice, and always would be so, but as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one was nicer for being poor, and that between the upper and lower classes there was a gulf which amounted practically to an impassable barrier. that evening he reflected a good deal. if towneley was right, and ernest felt that the "no" had applied not to the remark about poor people only, but to the whole scheme and scope of his own recently adopted ideas, he and pryer must surely be on a wrong track. towneley had not argued with him; he had said one word only, and that one of the shortest in the language, but ernest was in a fit state for inoculation, and the minute particle of virus set about working immediately. which did he now think was most likely to have taken the juster view of life and things, and whom would it be best to imitate, towneley or pryer? his heart returned answer to itself without a moment's hesitation. the faces of men like towneley were open and kindly; they looked as if at ease themselves, and as though they would set all who had to do with them at ease as far as might be. the faces of pryer and his friends were not like this. why had he felt tacitly rebuked as soon as he had met towneley? was he not a christian? certainly; he believed in the church of england as a matter of course. then how could he be himself wrong in trying to act up to the faith that he and towneley held in common? he was trying to lead a quiet, unobtrusive life of self-devotion, whereas towneley was not, so far as he could see, trying to do anything of the kind; he was only trying to get on comfortably in the world, and to look and be as nice as possible. and he was nice, and ernest knew that such men as himself and pryer were not nice, and his old dejection came over him. then came an even worse reflection; how if he had fallen among material thieves as well as spiritual ones? he knew very little of how his money was going on; he had put it all now into pryer's hands, and though pryer gave him cash to spend whenever he wanted it, he seemed impatient of being questioned as to what was being done with the principal. it was part of the understanding, he said, that that was to be left to him, and ernest had better stick to this, or he, pryer, would throw up the college of spiritual pathology altogether; and so ernest was cowed into acquiescence, or cajoled, according to the humour in which pryer saw him to be. ernest thought that further questions would look as if he doubted pryer's word, and also that he had gone too far to be able to recede in decency or honour. this, however, he felt was riding out to meet trouble unnecessarily. pryer had been a little impatient, but he was a gentleman and an admirable man of business, so his money would doubtless come back to him all right some day. ernest comforted himself as regards this last source of anxiety, but as regards the other, he began to feel as though, if he was to be saved, a good samaritan must hurry up from somewhere--he knew not whence. chapter lviii next day he felt stronger again. he had been listening to the voice of the evil one on the night before, and would parley no more with such thoughts. he had chosen his profession, and his duty was to persevere with it. if he was unhappy it was probably because he was not giving up all for christ. let him see whether he could not do more than he was doing now, and then perhaps a light would be shed upon his path. it was all very well to have made the discovery that he didn't very much like poor people, but he had got to put up with them, for it was among them that his work must lie. such men as towneley were very kind and considerate, but he knew well enough it was only on condition that he did not preach to them. he could manage the poor better, and, let pryer sneer as he liked, he was resolved to go more among them, and try the effect of bringing christ to them if they would not come and seek christ of themselves. he would begin with his own house. who then should he take first? surely he could not do better than begin with the tailor who lived immediately over his head. this would be desirable, not only because he was the one who seemed to stand most in need of conversion, but also because, if he were once converted, he would no longer beat his wife at two o'clock in the morning, and the house would be much pleasanter in consequence. he would therefore go upstairs at once, and have a quiet talk with this man. before doing so, he thought it would be well if he were to draw up something like a plan of a campaign; he therefore reflected over some pretty conversations which would do very nicely if mr holt would be kind enough to make the answers proposed for him in their proper places. but the man was a great hulking fellow, of a savage temper, and ernest was forced to admit that unforeseen developments might arise to disconcert him. they say it takes nine tailors to make a man, but ernest felt that it would take at least nine ernests to make a mr holt. how if, as soon as ernest came in, the tailor were to become violent and abusive? what could he do? mr holt was in his own lodgings, and had a right to be undisturbed. a legal right, yes, but had he a moral right? ernest thought not, considering his mode of life. but put this on one side; if the man were to be violent, what should he do? paul had fought with wild beasts at ephesus--that must indeed have been awful--but perhaps they were not very wild wild beasts; a rabbit and a canary are wild beasts; but, formidable or not as wild beasts go, they would, nevertheless stand no chance against st paul, for he was inspired; the miracle would have been if the wild beasts escaped, not that st paul should have done so; but, however all this might be, ernest felt that he dared not begin to convert mr holt by fighting him. why, when he had heard mrs holt screaming "murder," he had cowered under the bed clothes and waited, expecting to hear the blood dripping through the ceiling on to his own floor. his imagination translated every sound into a pat, pat, pat, and once or twice he thought he had felt it dropping on to his counterpane, but he had never gone upstairs to try and rescue poor mrs holt. happily it had proved next morning that mrs holt was in her usual health. ernest was in despair about hitting on any good way of opening up spiritual communication with his neighbour, when it occurred to him that he had better perhaps begin by going upstairs, and knocking very gently at mr holt's door. he would then resign himself to the guidance of the holy spirit, and act as the occasion, which, i suppose, was another name for the holy spirit, suggested. triply armed with this reflection, he mounted the stairs quite jauntily, and was about to knock when he heard holt's voice inside swearing savagely at his wife. this made him pause to think whether after all the moment was an auspicious one, and while he was thus pausing, mr holt, who had heard that someone was on the stairs, opened the door and put his head out. when he saw ernest, he made an unpleasant, not to say offensive movement, which might or might not have been directed at ernest and looked altogether so ugly that my hero had an instantaneous and unequivocal revelation from the holy spirit to the effect that he should continue his journey upstairs at once, as though he had never intended arresting it at mr holt's room, and begin by converting mr and mrs baxter, the methodists in the top floor front. so this was what he did. these good people received him with open arms, and were quite ready to talk. he was beginning to convert them from methodism to the church of england, when all at once he found himself embarrassed by discovering that he did not know what he was to convert them from. he knew the church of england, or thought he did, but he knew nothing of methodism beyond its name. when he found that, according to mr baxter, the wesleyans had a vigorous system of church discipline (which worked admirably in practice) it appeared to him that john wesley had anticipated the spiritual engine which he and pryer were preparing, and when he left the room he was aware that he had caught more of a spiritual tartar than he had expected. but he must certainly explain to pryer that the wesleyans had a system of church discipline. this was very important. mr baxter advised ernest on no account to meddle with mr holt, and ernest was much relieved at the advice. if an opportunity arose of touching the man's heart, he would take it; he would pat the children on the head when he saw them on the stairs, and ingratiate himself with them as far as he dared; they were sturdy youngsters, and ernest was afraid even of them, for they were ready with their tongues, and knew much for their ages. ernest felt that it would indeed be almost better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of the little holts. however, he would try not to offend them; perhaps an occasional penny or two might square them. this was as much as he could do, for he saw that the attempt to be instant out of season, as well as in season, would, st paul's injunction notwithstanding, end in failure. mrs baxter gave a very bad account of miss emily snow, who lodged in the second floor back next to mr holt. her story was quite different from that of mrs jupp the landlady. she would doubtless be only too glad to receive ernest's ministrations or those of any other gentleman, but she was no governess, she was in the ballet at drury lane, and besides this, she was a very bad young woman, and if mrs baxter was landlady would not be allowed to stay in the house a single hour, not she indeed. miss maitland in the next room to mrs baxter's own was a quiet and respectable young woman to all appearance; mrs baxter had never known of any goings on in that quarter, but, bless you, still waters run deep, and these girls were all alike, one as bad as the other. she was out at all kinds of hours, and when you knew that you knew all. ernest did not pay much heed to these aspersions of mrs baxter's. mrs jupp had got round the greater number of his many blind sides, and had warned him not to believe mrs baxter, whose lip she said was something awful. ernest had heard that women were always jealous of one another, and certainly these young women were more attractive than mrs baxter was, so jealousy was probably at the bottom of it. if they were maligned there could be no objection to his making their acquaintance; if not maligned they had all the more need of his ministrations. he would reclaim them at once. he told mrs jupp of his intention. mrs jupp at first tried to dissuade him, but seeing him resolute, suggested that she should herself see miss snow first, so as to prepare her and prevent her from being alarmed by his visit. she was not at home now, but in the course of the next day, it should be arranged. in the meantime he had better try mr shaw, the tinker, in the front kitchen. mrs baxter had told ernest that mr shaw was from the north country, and an avowed freethinker; he would probably, she said, rather like a visit, but she did not think ernest would stand much chance of making a convert of him. chapter lix before going down into the kitchen to convert the tinker ernest ran hurriedly over his analysis of paley's evidences, and put into his pocket a copy of archbishop whateley's "historic doubts." then he descended the dark rotten old stairs and knocked at the tinker's door. mr shaw was very civil; he said he was rather throng just now, but if ernest did not mind the sound of hammering he should be very glad of a talk with him. our hero, assenting to this, ere long led the conversation to whateley's "historic doubts"--a work which, as the reader may know, pretends to show that there never was any such person as napoleon buonaparte, and thus satirises the arguments of those who have attacked the christian miracles. mr shaw said he knew "historic doubts" very well. "and what you think of it?" said ernest, who regarded the pamphlet as a masterpiece of wit and cogency. "if you really want to know," said mr shaw, with a sly twinkle, "i think that he who was so willing and able to prove that what was was not, would be equally able and willing to make a case for thinking that what was not was, if it suited his purpose." ernest was very much taken aback. how was it that all the clever people of cambridge had never put him up to this simple rejoinder? the answer is easy: they did not develop it for the same reason that a hen had never developed webbed feet--that is to say, because they did not want to do so; but this was before the days of evolution, and ernest could not as yet know anything of the great principle that underlies it. "you see," continued mr shaw, "these writers all get their living by writing in a certain way, and the more they write in that way, the more they are likely to get on. you should not call them dishonest for this any more than a judge should call a barrister dishonest for earning his living by defending one in whose innocence he does not seriously believe; but you should hear the barrister on the other side before you decide upon the case." this was another facer. ernest could only stammer that he had endeavoured to examine these questions as carefully as he could. "you think you have," said mr shaw; "you oxford and cambridge gentlemen think you have examined everything. i have examined very little myself except the bottoms of old kettles and saucepans, but if you will answer me a few questions, i will tell you whether or no you have examined much more than i have." ernest expressed his readiness to be questioned. "then," said the tinker, "give me the story of the resurrection of jesus christ as told in st john's gospel." i am sorry to say that ernest mixed up the four accounts in a deplorable manner; he even made the angel come down and roll away the stone and sit upon it. he was covered with confusion when the tinker first told him without the book of some of his many inaccuracies, and then verified his criticisms by referring to the new testament itself. "now," said mr shaw good naturedly, "i am an old man and you are a young one, so perhaps you'll not mind my giving you a piece of advice. i like you, for i believe you mean well, but you've been real bad brought up, and i don't think you have ever had so much as a chance yet. you know nothing of our side of the question, and i have just shown you that you do not know much more of your own, but i think you will make a kind of carlyle sort of a man some day. now go upstairs and read the accounts of the resurrection correctly without mixing them up, and have a clear idea of what it is that each writer tells us, then if you feel inclined to pay me another visit i shall be glad to see you, for i shall know you have made a good beginning and mean business. till then, sir, i must wish you a very good morning." ernest retreated abashed. an hour sufficed him to perform the task enjoined upon him by mr shaw; and at the end of that hour the "no, no, no," which still sounded in his ears as he heard it from towneley, came ringing up more loudly still from the very pages of the bible itself, and in respect of the most important of all the events which are recorded in it. surely ernest's first day's attempt at more promiscuous visiting, and at carrying out his principles more thoroughly, had not been unfruitful. but he must go and have a talk with pryer. he therefore got his lunch and went to pryer's lodgings. pryer not being at home, he lounged to the british museum reading room, then recently opened, sent for the "vestiges of creation," which he had never yet seen, and spent the rest of the afternoon in reading it. ernest did not see pryer on the day of his conversation with mr shaw, but he did so next morning and found him in a good temper, which of late he had rarely been. sometimes, indeed, he had behaved to ernest in a way which did not bode well for the harmony with which the college of spiritual pathology would work when it had once been founded. it almost seemed as though he were trying to get a complete moral ascendency over him, so as to make him a creature of his own. he did not think it possible that he could go too far, and indeed, when i reflect upon my hero's folly and inexperience, there is much to be said in excuse for the conclusion which pryer came to. as a matter of fact, however, it was not so. ernest's faith in pryer had been too great to be shaken down all in a moment, but it had been weakened lately more than once. ernest had fought hard against allowing himself to see this, nevertheless any third person who knew the pair would have been able to see that the connection between the two might end at any moment, for when the time for one of ernest's snipe-like changes of flight came, he was quick in making it; the time, however, was not yet come, and the intimacy between the two was apparently all that it had ever been. it was only that horrid money business (so said ernest to himself) that caused any unpleasantness between them, and no doubt pryer was right, and he, ernest, much too nervous. however, that might stand over for the present. in like manner, though he had received a shock by reason of his conversation with mr shaw, and by looking at the "vestiges," he was as yet too much stunned to realise the change which was coming over him. in each case the momentum of old habits carried him forward in the old direction. he therefore called on pryer, and spent an hour and more with him. he did not say that he had been visiting among his neighbours; this to pryer would have been like a red rag to a bull. he only talked in much his usual vein about the proposed college, the lamentable want of interest in spiritual things which was characteristic of modern society, and other kindred matters; he concluded by saying that for the present he feared pryer was indeed right, and that nothing could be done. "as regards the laity," said pryer, "nothing; not until we have a discipline which we can enforce with pains and penalties. how can a sheep dog work a flock of sheep unless he can bite occasionally as well as bark? but as regards ourselves we can do much." pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation, as though he were thinking all the time of something else. his eyes wandered curiously over ernest, as ernest had often noticed them wander before: the words were about church discipline, but somehow or other the discipline part of the story had a knack of dropping out after having been again and again emphatically declared to apply to the laity and not to the clergy: once indeed pryer had pettishly exclaimed: "oh, bother the college of spiritual pathology." as regards the clergy, glimpses of a pretty large cloven hoof kept peeping out from under the saintly robe of pryer's conversation, to the effect, that so long as they were theoretically perfect, practical peccadilloes--or even peccadaccios, if there is such a word, were of less importance. he was restless, as though wanting to approach a subject which he did not quite venture to touch upon, and kept harping (he did this about every third day) on the wretched lack of definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the way in which half the vices wanted regulating rather than prohibiting. he dwelt also on the advantages of complete unreserve, and hinted that there were mysteries into which ernest had not yet been initiated, but which would enlighten him when he got to know them, as he would be allowed to do when his friends saw that he was strong enough. pryer had often been like this before, but never so nearly, as it seemed to ernest, coming to a point--though what the point was he could not fully understand. his inquietude was communicating itself to ernest, who would probably ere long have come to know as much as pryer could tell him, but the conversation was abruptly interrupted by the appearance of a visitor. we shall never know how it would have ended, for this was the very last time that ernest ever saw pryer. perhaps pryer was going to break to him some bad news about his speculations. chapter lx ernest now went home and occupied himself till luncheon with studying dean alford's notes upon the various evangelistic records of the resurrection, doing as mr shaw had told him, and trying to find out not that they were all accurate, but whether they were all accurate or no. he did not care which result he should arrive at, but he was resolved that he would reach one or the other. when he had finished dean alford's notes he found them come to this, namely, that no one yet had succeeded in bringing the four accounts into tolerable harmony with each other, and that the dean, seeing no chance of succeeding better than his predecessors had done, recommended that the whole story should be taken on trust--and this ernest was not prepared to do. he got his luncheon, went out for a long walk, and returned to dinner at half past six. while mrs jupp was getting him his dinner--a steak and a pint of stout--she told him that miss snow would be very happy to see him in about an hour's time. this disconcerted him, for his mind was too unsettled for him to wish to convert anyone just then. he reflected a little, and found that, in spite of the sudden shock to his opinions, he was being irresistibly drawn to pay the visit as though nothing had happened. it would not look well for him not to go, for he was known to be in the house. he ought not to be in too great a hurry to change his opinions on such a matter as the evidence for christ's resurrection all of a sudden--besides he need not talk to miss snow about this subject to- day--there were other things he might talk about. what other things? ernest felt his heart beat fast and fiercely, and an inward monitor warned him that he was thinking of anything rather than of miss snow's soul. what should he do? fly, fly, fly--it was the only safety. but would christ have fled? even though christ had not died and risen from the dead there could be no question that he was the model whose example we were bound to follow. christ would not have fled from miss snow; he was sure of that, for he went about more especially with prostitutes and disreputable people. now, as then, it was the business of the true christian to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. it would be inconvenient to him to change his lodgings, and he could not ask mrs jupp to turn miss snow and miss maitland out of the house. where was he to draw the line? who would be just good enough to live in the same house with him, and who just not good enough? besides, where were these poor girls to go? was he to drive them from house to house till they had no place to lie in? it was absurd; his duty was clear: he would go and see miss snow at once, and try if he could not induce her to change her present mode of life; if he found temptation becoming too strong for him he would fly then--so he went upstairs with his bible under his arm, and a consuming fire in his heart. he found miss snow looking very pretty in a neatly, not to say demurely, furnished room. i think she had bought an illuminated text or two, and pinned it up over her fireplace that morning. ernest was very much pleased with her, and mechanically placed his bible upon the table. he had just opened a timid conversation and was deep in blushes, when a hurried step came bounding up the stairs as though of one over whom the force of gravity had little power, and a man burst into the room saying, "i'm come before my time." it was towneley. his face dropped as he caught sight of ernest. "what, you here, pontifex! well, upon my word!" i cannot describe the hurried explanations that passed quickly between the three--enough that in less than a minute ernest, blushing more scarlet than ever, slunk off, bible and all, deeply humiliated as he contrasted himself and towneley. before he had reached the bottom of the staircase leading to his own room he heard towneley's hearty laugh through miss snow's door, and cursed the hour that he was born. then it flashed upon him that if he could not see miss snow he could at any rate see miss maitland. he knew well enough what he wanted now, and as for the bible, he pushed it from him to the other end of his table. it fell over on to the floor, and he kicked it into a corner. it was the bible given him at his christening by his affectionate aunt, elizabeth allaby. true, he knew very little of miss maitland, but ignorant young fools in ernest's state do not reflect or reason closely. mrs baxter had said that miss maitland and miss snow were birds of a feather, and mrs baxter probably knew better than that old liar, mrs jupp. shakespeare says: o opportunity, thy guilt is great 'tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason: thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get; whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season; 'tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason; and in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, sits sin, to seize the souls that wander by him. if the guilt of opportunity is great, how much greater is the guilt of that which is believed to be opportunity, but in reality is no opportunity at all. if the better part of valour is discretion, how much more is not discretion the better part of vice about ten minutes after we last saw ernest, a scared, insulted girl, flushed and trembling, was seen hurrying from mrs jupp's house as fast as her agitated state would let her, and in another ten minutes two policemen were seen also coming out of mrs jupp's, between whom there shambled rather than walked our unhappy friend ernest, with staring eyes, ghastly pale, and with despair branded upon every line of his face. chapter lxi pryer had done well to warn ernest against promiscuous house to house visitation. he had not gone outside mrs jupp's street door, and yet what had been the result? mr holt had put him in bodily fear; mr and mrs baxter had nearly made a methodist of him; mr shaw had undermined his faith in the resurrection; miss snow's charms had ruined--or would have done so but for an accident--his moral character. as for miss maitland, he had done his best to ruin hers, and had damaged himself gravely and irretrievably in consequence. the only lodger who had done him no harm was the bellows' mender, whom he had not visited. other young clergymen, much greater fools in many respects than he, would not have got into these scrapes. he seemed to have developed an aptitude for mischief almost from the day of his having been ordained. he could hardly preach without making some horrid _faux pas_. he preached one sunday morning when the bishop was at his rector's church, and made his sermon turn upon the question what kind of little cake it was that the widow of zarephath had intended making when elijah found her gathering a few sticks. he demonstrated that it was a seed cake. the sermon was really very amusing, and more than once he saw a smile pass over the sea of faces underneath him. the bishop was very angry, and gave my hero a severe reprimand in the vestry after service was over; the only excuse he could make was that he was preaching _ex tempore_, had not thought of this particular point till he was actually in the pulpit, and had then been carried away by it. another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and described the hopes of the owner as he watched the delicate blossom unfold, and give promise of such beautiful fruit in autumn. next day he received a letter from a botanical member of his congregation who explained to him that this could hardly have been, inasmuch as the fig produces its fruit first and blossoms inside the fruit, or so nearly so that no flower is perceptible to an ordinary observer. this last, however, was an accident which might have happened to any one but a scientist or an inspired writer. the only excuse i can make for him is that he was very young--not yet four and twenty--and that in mind as in body, like most of those who in the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower. by far the greater part, moreover, of his education had been an attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes out altogether. but to return to my story. it transpired afterwards that miss maitland had had no intention of giving ernest in charge when she ran out of mrs jupp's house. she was running away because she was frightened, but almost the first person whom she ran against had happened to be a policeman of a serious turn of mind, who wished to gain a reputation for activity. he stopped her, questioned her, frightened her still more, and it was he rather than miss maitland, who insisted on giving my hero in charge to himself and another constable. towneley was still in mrs jupp's house when the policeman came. he had heard a disturbance, and going down to ernest's room while miss maitland was out of doors, had found him lying, as it were, stunned at the foot of the moral precipice over which he had that moment fallen. he saw the whole thing at a glance, but before he could take action, the policemen came in and action became impossible. he asked ernest who were his friends in london. ernest at first wanted not to say, but towneley soon gave him to understand that he must do as he was bid, and selected myself from the few whom he had named. "writes for the stage, does he?" said towneley. "does he write comedy?" ernest thought towneley meant that i ought to write tragedy, and said he was afraid i wrote burlesque. "oh, come, come," said towneley, "that will do famously. i will go and see him at once." but on second thoughts he determined to stay with ernest and go with him to the police court. so he sent mrs jupp for me. mrs jupp hurried so fast to fetch me, that in spite of the weather's being still cold she was "giving out," as she expressed it, in streams. the poor old wretch would have taken a cab, but she had no money and did not like to ask towneley to give her some. i saw that something very serious had happened, but was not prepared for anything so deplorable as what mrs jupp actually told me. as for mrs jupp, she said her heart had been jumping out of its socket and back again ever since. i got her into a cab with me, and we went off to the police station. she talked without ceasing. "and if the neighbours do say cruel things about me, i'm sure it ain't no thanks to _him_ if they're true. mr pontifex never took a bit o' notice of me no more than if i had been his sister. oh, it's enough to make anyone's back bone curdle. then i thought perhaps my rose might get on better with him, so i set her to dust him and clean him as though i were busy, and gave her such a beautiful clean new pinny, but he never took no notice of her no more than he did of me, and she didn't want no compliment neither, she wouldn't have taken not a shilling from him, though he had offered it, but he didn't seem to know anything at all. i can't make out what the young men are a-coming to; i wish the horn may blow for me and the worms take me this very night, if it's not enough to make a woman stand before god and strike the one half on 'em silly to see the way they goes on, and many an honest girl has to go home night after night without so much as a fourpenny bit and paying three and sixpence a week rent, and not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and a dead wall in front of the window. "it's not mr pontifex," she continued, "that's so bad, he's good at heart. he never says nothing unkind. and then there's his dear eyes--but when i speak about that to my rose she calls me an old fool and says i ought to be poleaxed. it's that pryer as i can't abide. oh he! he likes to wound a woman's feelings he do, and to chuck anything in her face, he do--he likes to wind a woman up and to wound her down." (mrs jupp pronounced "wound" as though it rhymed to "sound.") "it's a gentleman's place to soothe a woman, but he, he'd like to tear her hair out by handfuls. why, he told me to my face that i was a-getting old; old indeed! there's not a woman in london knows my age except mrs davis down in the old kent road, and beyond a haricot vein in one of my legs i'm as young as ever i was. old indeed! there's many a good tune played on an old fiddle. i hate his nasty insinuendos." even if i had wanted to stop her, i could not have done so. she said a great deal more than i have given above. i have left out much because i could not remember it, but still more because it was really impossible for me to print it. when we got to the police station i found towneley and ernest already there. the charge was one of assault, but not aggravated by serious violence. even so, however, it was lamentable enough, and we both saw that our young friend would have to pay dearly for his inexperience. we tried to bail him out for the night, but the inspector would not accept bail, so we were forced to leave him. towneley then went back to mrs jupp's to see if he could find miss maitland and arrange matters with her. she was not there, but he traced her to the house of her father, who lived at camberwell. the father was furious and would not hear of any intercession on towneley's part. he was a dissenter, and glad to make the most of any scandal against a clergyman; towneley, therefore, was obliged to return unsuccessful. next morning, towneley--who regarded ernest as a drowning man, who must be picked out of the water somehow or other if possible, irrespective of the way in which he got into it--called on me, and we put the matter into the hands of one of the best known attorneys of the day. i was greatly pleased with towneley, and thought it due to him to tell him what i had told no one else. i mean that ernest would come into his aunt's money in a few years' time, and would therefore then be rich. towneley was doing all he could before this, but i knew that the knowledge i had imparted to him would make him feel as though ernest was more one of his own class, and had therefore a greater claim upon his good offices. as for ernest himself, his gratitude was greater than could be expressed in words. i have heard him say that he can call to mind many moments, each one of which might well pass for the happiest of his life, but that this night stands clearly out as the most painful that he ever passed, yet so kind and considerate was towneley that it was quite bearable. but with all the best wishes in the world neither towneley nor i could do much to help beyond giving our moral support. our attorney told us that the magistrate before whom ernest would appear was very severe on cases of this description, and that the fact of his being a clergyman would tell against him. "ask for no remand," he said, "and make no defence. we will call mr pontifex's rector and you two gentlemen as witnesses for previous good character. these will be enough. let us then make a profound apology and beg the magistrate to deal with the case summarily instead of sending it for trial. if you can get this, believe me, your young friend will be better out of it than he has any right to expect." chapter lxii this advice, besides being obviously sensible, would end in saving ernest both time and suspense of mind, so we had no hesitation in adopting it. the case was called on about eleven o'clock, but we got it adjourned till three, so as to give time for ernest to set his affairs as straight as he could, and to execute a power of attorney enabling me to act for him as i should think fit while he was in prison. then all came out about pryer and the college of spiritual pathology. ernest had even greater difficulty in making a clean breast of this than he had had in telling us about miss maitland, but he told us all, and the upshot was that he had actually handed over to pryer every halfpenny that he then possessed with no other security than pryer's i.o.u.'s for the amount. ernest, though still declining to believe that pryer could be guilty of dishonourable conduct, was becoming alive to the folly of what he had been doing; he still made sure, however, of recovering, at any rate, the greater part of his property as soon as pryer should have had time to sell. towneley and i were of a different opinion, but we did not say what we thought. it was dreary work waiting all the morning amid such unfamiliar and depressing surroundings. i thought how the psalmist had exclaimed with quiet irony, "one day in thy courts is better than a thousand," and i thought that i could utter a very similar sentiment in respect of the courts in which towneley and i were compelled to loiter. at last, about three o'clock the case was called on, and we went round to the part of the court which is reserved for the general public, while ernest was taken into the prisoner's dock. as soon as he had collected himself sufficiently he recognised the magistrate as the old gentleman who had spoken to him in the train on the day he was leaving school, and saw, or thought he saw, to his great grief, that he too was recognised. mr ottery, for this was our attorney's name, took the line he had proposed. he called no other witnesses than the rector, towneley and myself, and threw himself on the mercy of the magistrate. when he had concluded, the magistrate spoke as follows: "ernest pontifex, yours is one of the most painful cases that i have ever had to deal with. you have been singularly favoured in your parentage and education. you have had before you the example of blameless parents, who doubtless instilled into you from childhood the enormity of the offence which by your own confession you have committed. you were sent to one of the best public schools in england. it is not likely that in the healthy atmosphere of such a school as roughborough you can have come across contaminating influences; you were probably, i may say certainly, impressed at school with the heinousness of any attempt to depart from the strictest chastity until such time as you had entered into a state of matrimony. at cambridge you were shielded from impurity by every obstacle which virtuous and vigilant authorities could devise, and even had the obstacles been fewer, your parents probably took care that your means should not admit of your throwing money away upon abandoned characters. at night proctors patrolled the street and dogged your steps if you tried to go into any haunt where the presence of vice was suspected. by day the females who were admitted within the college walls were selected mainly on the score of age and ugliness. it is hard to see what more can be done for any young man than this. for the last four or five months you have been a clergyman, and if a single impure thought had still remained within your mind, ordination should have removed it: nevertheless, not only does it appear that your mind is as impure as though none of the influences to which i have referred had been brought to bear upon it, but it seems as though their only result had been this--that you have not even the common sense to be able to distinguish between a respectable girl and a prostitute. "if i were to take a strict view of my duty i should commit you for trial, but in consideration of this being your first offence, i shall deal leniently with you and sentence you to imprisonment with hard labour for six calendar months." towneley and i both thought there was a touch of irony in the magistrate's speech, and that he could have given a lighter sentence if he would, but that was neither here nor there. we obtained leave to see ernest for a few minutes before he was removed to coldbath fields, where he was to serve his term, and found him so thankful to have been summarily dealt with that he hardly seemed to care about the miserable plight in which he was to pass the next six months. when he came out, he said, he would take what remained of his money, go off to america or australia and never be heard of more. we left him full of this resolve, i, to write to theobald, and also to instruct my solicitor to get ernest's money out of pryer's hands, and towneley to see the reporters and keep the case out of the newspapers. he was successful as regards all the higher-class papers. there was only one journal, and that of the lowest class, which was incorruptible. chapter lxiii i saw my solicitor at once, but when i tried to write to theobald, i found it better to say i would run down and see him. i therefore proposed this, asking him to meet me at the station, and hinting that i must bring bad news about his son. i knew he would not get my letter more than a couple of hours before i should see him, and thought the short interval of suspense might break the shock of what i had to say. never do i remember to have halted more between two opinions than on my journey to battersby upon this unhappy errand. when i thought of the little sallow-faced lad whom i had remembered years before, of the long and savage cruelty with which he had been treated in childhood--cruelty none the less real for having been due to ignorance and stupidity rather than to deliberate malice; of the atmosphere of lying and self-laudatory hallucination in which he had been brought up; of the readiness the boy had shown to love anything that would be good enough to let him, and of how affection for his parents, unless i am much mistaken, had only died in him because it had been killed anew, again and again and again, each time that it had tried to spring. when i thought of all this i felt as though, if the matter had rested with me, i would have sentenced theobald and christina to mental suffering even more severe than that which was about to fall upon them. but on the other hand, when i thought of theobald's own childhood, of that dreadful old george pontifex his father, of john and mrs john, and of his two sisters, when again i thought of christina's long years of hope deferred that maketh the heart sick, before she was married, of the life she must have led at crampsford, and of the surroundings in the midst of which she and her husband both lived at battersby, i felt as though the wonder was that misfortunes so persistent had not been followed by even graver retribution. poor people! they had tried to keep their ignorance of the world from themselves by calling it the pursuit of heavenly things, and then shutting their eyes to anything that might give them trouble. a son having been born to them they had shut his eyes also as far as was practicable. who could blame them? they had chapter and verse for everything they had either done or left undone; there is no better thumbed precedent than that for being a clergyman and a clergyman's wife. in what respect had they differed from their neighbours? how did their household differ from that of any other clergyman of the better sort from one end of england to the other? why then should it have been upon them, of all people in the world, that this tower of siloam had fallen? surely it was the tower of siloam that was naught rather than those who stood under it; it was the system rather than the people that was at fault. if theobald and his wife had but known more of the world and of the things that are therein, they would have done little harm to anyone. selfish they would have always been, but not more so than may very well be pardoned, and not more than other people would be. as it was, the case was hopeless; it would be no use their even entering into their mothers' wombs and being born again. they must not only be born again but they must be born again each one of them of a new father and of a new mother and of a different line of ancestry for many generations before their minds could become supple enough to learn anew. the only thing to do with them was to humour them and make the best of them till they died--and be thankful when they did so. theobald got my letter as i had expected, and met me at the station nearest to battersby. as i walked back with him towards his own house i broke the news to him as gently as i could. i pretended that the whole thing was in great measure a mistake, and that though ernest no doubt had had intentions which he ought to have resisted, he had not meant going anything like the length which miss maitland supposed. i said we had felt how much appearances were against him, and had not dared to set up this defence before the magistrate, though we had no doubt about its being the true one. theobald acted with a readier and acuter moral sense than i had given him credit for. "i will have nothing more to do with him," he exclaimed promptly, "i will never see his face again; do not let him write either to me or to his mother; we know of no such person. tell him you have seen me, and that from this day forward i shall put him out of my mind as though he had never been born. i have been a good father to him, and his mother idolised him; selfishness and ingratitude have been the only return we have ever had from him; my hope henceforth must be in my remaining children." i told him how ernest's fellow curate had got hold of his money, and hinted that he might very likely be penniless, or nearly so, on leaving prison. theobald did not seem displeased at this, but added soon afterwards: "if this proves to be the case, tell him from me that i will give him a hundred pounds if he will tell me through you when he will have it paid, but tell him not to write and thank me, and say that if he attempts to open up direct communication either with his mother or myself, he shall not have a penny of the money." knowing what i knew, and having determined on violating miss pontifex's instructions should the occasion arise, i did not think ernest would be any the worse for a complete estrangement from his family, so i acquiesced more readily in what theobald had proposed than that gentleman may have expected. thinking it better that i should not see christina, i left theobald near battersby and walked back to the station. on my way i was pleased to reflect that ernest's father was less of a fool than i had taken him to be, and had the greater hopes, therefore, that his son's blunders might be due to postnatal, rather than congenital misfortunes. accidents which happen to a man before he is born, in the persons of his ancestors, will, if he remembers them at all, leave an indelible impression on him; they will have moulded his character so that, do what he will, it is hardly possible for him to escape their consequences. if a man is to enter into the kingdom of heaven, he must do so, not only as a little child, but as a little embryo, or rather as a little zoosperm--and not only this, but as one that has come of zoosperms which have entered into the kingdom of heaven before him for many generations. accidents which occur for the first time, and belong to the period since a man's last birth, are not, as a general rule, so permanent in their effects, though of course they may sometimes be so. at any rate, i was not displeased at the view which ernest's father took of the situation. chapter lxiv after ernest had been sentenced, he was taken back to the cells to wait for the van which should take him to coldbath fields, where he was to serve his term. he was still too stunned and dazed by the suddenness with which events had happened during the last twenty-four hours to be able to realise his position. a great chasm had opened between his past and future; nevertheless he breathed, his pulse beat, he could think and speak. it seemed to him that he ought to be prostrated by the blow that had fallen on him, but he was not prostrated; he had suffered from many smaller laches far more acutely. it was not until he thought of the pain his disgrace would inflict on his father and mother that he felt how readily he would have given up all he had, rather than have fallen into his present plight. it would break his mother's heart. it must, he knew it would--and it was he who had done this. he had had a headache coming on all the forenoon, but as he thought of his father and mother, his pulse quickened, and the pain in his head suddenly became intense. he could hardly walk to the van, and he found its motion insupportable. on reaching the prison he was too ill to walk without assistance across the hall to the corridor or gallery where prisoners are marshalled on their arrival. the prison warder, seeing at once that he was a clergyman, did not suppose he was shamming, as he might have done in the case of an old gaol-bird; he therefore sent for the doctor. when this gentleman arrived, ernest was declared to be suffering from an incipient attack of brain fever, and was taken away to the infirmary. here he hovered for the next two months between life and death, never in full possession of his reason and often delirious, but at last, contrary to the expectation of both doctor and nurse, he began slowly to recover. it is said that those who have been nearly drowned, find the return to consciousness much more painful than the loss of it had been, and so it was with my hero. as he lay helpless and feeble, it seemed to him a refinement of cruelty that he had not died once for all during his delirium. he thought he should still most likely recover only to sink a little later on from shame and sorrow; nevertheless from day to day he mended, though so slowly that he could hardly realise it to himself. one afternoon, however, about three weeks after he had regained consciousness, the nurse who tended him, and who had been very kind to him, made some little rallying sally which amused him; he laughed, and as he did so, she clapped her hands and told him he would be a man again. the spark of hope was kindled, and again he wished to live. almost from that moment his thoughts began to turn less to the horrors of the past, and more to the best way of meeting the future. his worst pain was on behalf of his father and mother, and how he should again face them. it still seemed to him that the best thing both for him and them would be that he should sever himself from them completely, take whatever money he could recover from pryer, and go to some place in the uttermost parts of the earth, where he should never meet anyone who had known him at school or college, and start afresh. or perhaps he might go to the gold fields in california or australia, of which such wonderful accounts were then heard; there he might even make his fortune, and return as an old man many years hence, unknown to everyone, and if so, he would live at cambridge. as he built these castles in the air, the spark of life became a flame, and he longed for health, and for the freedom which, now that so much of his sentence had expired, was not after all very far distant. then things began to shape themselves more definitely. whatever happened he would be a clergyman no longer. it would have been practically impossible for him to have found another curacy, even if he had been so minded, but he was not so minded. he hated the life he had been leading ever since he had begun to read for orders; he could not argue about it, but simply he loathed it and would have no more of it. as he dwelt on the prospect of becoming a layman again, however disgraced, he rejoiced at what had befallen him, and found a blessing in this very imprisonment which had at first seemed such an unspeakable misfortune. perhaps the shock of so great a change in his surroundings had accelerated changes in his opinions, just as the cocoons of silkworms, when sent in baskets by rail, hatch before their time through the novelty of heat and jolting. but however this may be, his belief in the stories concerning the death, resurrection and ascension of jesus christ, and hence his faith in all the other christian miracles, had dropped off him once and for ever. the investigation he had made in consequence of mr shaw's rebuke, hurried though it was, had left a deep impression upon him, and now he was well enough to read he made the new testament his chief study, going through it in the spirit which mr shaw had desired of him, that is to say as one who wished neither to believe nor disbelieve, but cared only about finding out whether he ought to believe or no. the more he read in this spirit the more the balance seemed to lie in favour of unbelief, till, in the end, all further doubt became impossible, and he saw plainly enough that, whatever else might be true, the story that christ had died, come to life again, and been carried from earth through clouds into the heavens could not now be accepted by unbiassed people. it was well he had found it out so soon. in one way or another it was sure to meet him sooner or later. he would probably have seen it years ago if he had not been hoodwinked by people who were paid for hoodwinking him. what should he have done, he asked himself, if he had not made his present discovery till years later when he was more deeply committed to the life of a clergyman? should he have had the courage to face it, or would he not more probably have evolved some excellent reason for continuing to think as he had thought hitherto? should he have had the courage to break away even from his present curacy? he thought not, and knew not whether to be more thankful for having been shown his error or for having been caught up and twisted round so that he could hardly err farther, almost at the very moment of his having discovered it. the price he had had to pay for this boon was light as compared with the boon itself. what is too heavy a price to pay for having duty made at once clear and easy of fulfilment instead of very difficult? he was sorry for his father and mother, and he was sorry for miss maitland, but he was no longer sorry for himself. it puzzled him, however, that he should not have known how much he had hated being a clergyman till now. he knew that he did not particularly like it, but if anyone had asked him whether he actually hated it, he would have answered no. i suppose people almost always want something external to themselves, to reveal to them their own likes and dislikes. our most assured likings have for the most part been arrived at neither by introspection nor by any process of conscious reasoning, but by the bounding forth of the heart to welcome the gospel proclaimed to it by another. we hear some say that such and such a thing is thus or thus, and in a moment the train that has been laid within us, but whose presence we knew not, flashes into consciousness and perception. only a year ago he had bounded forth to welcome mr hawke's sermon; since then he had bounded after a college of spiritual pathology; now he was in full cry after rationalism pure and simple; how could he be sure that his present state of mind would be more lasting than his previous ones? he could not be certain, but he felt as though he were now on firmer ground than he had ever been before, and no matter how fleeting his present opinions might prove to be, he could not but act according to them till he saw reason to change them. how impossible, he reflected, it would have been for him to do this, if he had remained surrounded by people like his father and mother, or pryer and pryer's friends, and his rector. he had been observing, reflecting, and assimilating all these months with no more consciousness of mental growth than a school-boy has of growth of body, but should he have been able to admit his growth to himself, and to act up to his increased strength if he had remained in constant close connection with people who assured him solemnly that he was under a hallucination? the combination against him was greater than his unaided strength could have broken through, and he felt doubtful how far any shock less severe than the one from which he was suffering would have sufficed to free him. chapter lxv as he lay on his bed day after day slowly recovering he woke up to the fact which most men arrive at sooner or later, i mean that very few care two straws about truth, or have any confidence that it is righter and better to believe what is true than what is untrue, even though belief in the untruth may seem at first sight most expedient. yet it is only these few who can be said to believe anything at all; the rest are simply unbelievers in disguise. perhaps, after all, these last are right. they have numbers and prosperity on their side. they have all which the rationalist appeals to as his tests of right and wrong. right, according to him, is what seems right to the majority of sensible, well-to-do people; we know of no safer criterion than this, but what does the decision thus arrived at involve? simply this, that a conspiracy of silence about things whose truth would be immediately apparent to disinterested enquirers is not only tolerable but righteous on the part of those who profess to be and take money for being _par excellence_ guardians and teachers of truth. ernest saw no logical escape from this conclusion. he saw that belief on the part of the early christians in the miraculous nature of christ's resurrection was explicable, without any supposition of miracle. the explanation lay under the eyes of anyone who chose to take a moderate degree of trouble; it had been put before the world again and again, and there had been no serious attempt to refute it. how was it that dean alford for example who had made the new testament his speciality, could not or would not see what was so obvious to ernest himself? could it be for any other reason than that he did not want to see it, and if so was he not a traitor to the cause of truth? yes, but was he not also a respectable and successful man, and were not the vast majority of respectable and successful men, such for example, as all the bishops and archbishops, doing exactly as dean alford did, and did not this make their action right, no matter though it had been cannibalism or infanticide, or even habitual untruthfulness of mind? monstrous, odious falsehood! ernest's feeble pulse quickened and his pale face flushed as this hateful view of life presented itself to him in all its logical consistency. it was not the fact of most men being liars that shocked him--that was all right enough; but even the momentary doubt whether the few who were not liars ought not to become liars too. there was no hope left if this were so; if this were so, let him die, the sooner the better. "lord," he exclaimed inwardly, "i don't believe one word of it. strengthen thou and confirm my disbelief." it seemed to him that he could never henceforth see a bishop going to consecration without saying to himself: "there, but for the grace of god, went ernest pontifex." it was no doing of his. he could not boast; if he had lived in the time of christ he might himself have been an early christian, or even an apostle for aught he knew. on the whole he felt that he had much to be thankful for. the conclusion, then, that it might be better to believe error than truth should be ordered out of court at once, no matter by how clear a logic it had been arrived at; but what was the alternative? it was this, that our criterion of truth--i.e. that truth is what commends itself to the great majority of sensible and successful people--is not infallible. the rule is sound, and covers by far the greater number of cases, but it has its exceptions. he asked himself, what were they? ah! that was a difficult matter; there were so many, and the rules which governed them were sometimes so subtle, that mistakes always had and always would be made; it was just this that made it impossible to reduce life to an exact science. there was a rough and ready rule-of-thumb test of truth, and a number of rules as regards exceptions which could be mastered without much trouble, yet there was a residue of cases in which decision was difficult--so difficult that a man had better follow his instinct than attempt to decide them by any process of reasoning. instinct then is the ultimate court of appeal. and what is instinct? it is a mode of faith in the evidence of things not actually seen. and so my hero returned almost to the point from which he had started originally, namely that the just shall live by faith. and this is what the just--that is to say reasonable people--do as regards those daily affairs of life which most concern them. they settle smaller matters by the exercise of their own deliberation. more important ones, such as the cure of their own bodies and the bodies of those whom they love, the investment of their money, the extrication of their affairs from any serious mess--these things they generally entrust to others of whose capacity they know little save from general report; they act therefore on the strength of faith, not of knowledge. so the english nation entrusts the welfare of its fleet and naval defences to a first lord of the admiralty, who, not being a sailor can know nothing about these matters except by acts of faith. there can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the _ultima ratio_. even euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this. he has no demonstrable first premise. he requires postulates and axioms which transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. his superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground is faith. nor again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he persists in differing from him. he says "which is absurd," and declines to discuss the matter further. faith and authority, therefore, prove to be as necessary for him as for anyone else. "by faith in what, then," asked ernest of himself, "shall a just man endeavour to live at this present time?" he answered to himself, "at any rate not by faith in the supernatural element of the christian religion." and how should he best persuade his fellow-countrymen to leave off believing in this supernatural element? looking at the matter from a practical point of view he thought the archbishop of canterbury afforded the most promising key to the situation. it lay between him and the pope. the pope was perhaps best in theory, but in practice the archbishop of canterbury would do sufficiently well. if he could only manage to sprinkle a pinch of salt, as it were, on the archbishop's tail, he might convert the whole church of england to free thought by a _coup de main_. there must be an amount of cogency which even an archbishop--an archbishop whose perceptions had never been quickened by imprisonment for assault--would not be able to withstand. when brought face to face with the facts, as he, ernest, could arrange them; his grace would have no resource but to admit them; being an honourable man he would at once resign his archbishopric, and christianity would become extinct in england within a few months' time. this, at any rate, was how things ought to be. but all the time ernest had no confidence in the archbishop's not hopping off just as the pinch was about to fall on him, and this seemed so unfair that his blood boiled at the thought of it. if this was to be so, he must try if he could not fix him by the judicious use of bird-lime or a snare, or throw the salt on his tail from an ambuscade. to do him justice it was not himself that he greatly cared about. he knew he had been humbugged, and he knew also that the greater part of the ills which had afflicted him were due, indirectly, in chief measure to the influence of christian teaching; still, if the mischief had ended with himself, he should have thought little about it, but there was his sister, and his brother joey, and the hundreds and thousands of young people throughout england whose lives were being blighted through the lies told them by people whose business it was to know better, but who scamped their work and shirked difficulties instead of facing them. it was this which made him think it worth while to be angry, and to consider whether he could not at least do something towards saving others from such years of waste and misery as he had had to pass himself. if there was no truth in the miraculous accounts of christ's death and resurrection, the whole of the religion founded upon the historic truth of those events tumbled to the ground. "my," he exclaimed, with all the arrogance of youth, "they put a gipsy or fortune-teller into prison for getting money out of silly people who think they have supernatural power; why should they not put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can absolve sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of one who died two thousand years ago? what," he asked himself, "could be more pure 'hanky-panky' than that a bishop should lay his hands upon a young man and pretend to convey to him the spiritual power to work this miracle? it was all very well to talk about toleration; toleration, like everything else, had its limits; besides, if it was to include the bishop let it include the fortune-teller too." he would explain all this to the archbishop of canterbury by and by, but as he could not get hold of him just now, it occurred to him that he might experimentalise advantageously upon the viler soul of the prison chaplain. it was only those who took the first and most obvious step in their power who ever did great things in the end, so one day, when mr hughes--for this was the chaplain's name--was talking with him, ernest introduced the question of christian evidences, and tried to raise a discussion upon them. mr hughes had been very kind to him, but he was more than twice my hero's age, and had long taken the measure of such objections as ernest tried to put before him. i do not suppose he believed in the actual objective truth of the stories about christ's resurrection and ascension any more than ernest did, but he knew that this was a small matter, and that the real issue lay much deeper than this. mr hughes was a man who had been in authority for many years, and he brushed ernest on one side as if he had been a fly. he did it so well that my hero never ventured to tackle him again, and confined his conversation with him for the future to such matters as what he had better do when he got out of prison; and here mr hughes was ever ready to listen to him with sympathy and kindness. chapter lxvi ernest was now so far convalescent as to be able to sit up for the greater part of the day. he had been three months in prison, and, though not strong enough to leave the infirmary, was beyond all fear of a relapse. he was talking one day with mr hughes about his future, and again expressed his intention of emigrating to australia or new zealand with the money he should recover from pryer. whenever he spoke of this he noticed that mr hughes looked grave and was silent: he had thought that perhaps the chaplain wanted him to return to his profession, and disapproved of his evident anxiety to turn to something else; now, however, he asked mr hughes point blank why it was that he disapproved of his idea of emigrating. mr hughes endeavoured to evade him, but ernest was not to be put off. there was something in the chaplain's manner which suggested that he knew more than ernest did, but did not like to say it. this alarmed him so much that he begged him not to keep him in suspense; after a little hesitation mr hughes, thinking him now strong enough to stand it, broke the news as gently as he could that the whole of ernest's money had disappeared. the day after my return from battersby i called on my solicitor, and was told that he had written to pryer, requiring him to refund the monies for which he had given his i.o.u.'s. pryer replied that he had given orders to his broker to close his operations, which unfortunately had resulted so far in heavy loss, and that the balance should be paid to my solicitor on the following settling day, then about a week distant. when the time came, we heard nothing from pryer, and going to his lodgings found that he had left with his few effects on the very day after he had heard from us, and had not been seen since. i had heard from ernest the name of the broker who had been employed, and went at once to see him. he told me pryer had closed all his accounts for cash on the day that ernest had been sentenced, and had received pounds, which was all that remained of ernest's original pounds. with this he had decamped, nor had we enough clue as to his whereabouts to be able to take any steps to recover the money. there was in fact nothing to be done but to consider the whole as lost. i may say here that neither i nor ernest ever heard of pryer again, nor have any idea what became of him. this placed me in a difficult position. i knew, of course, that in a few years ernest would have many times over as much money as he had lost, but i knew also that he did not know this, and feared that the supposed loss of all he had in the world might be more than he could stand when coupled with his other misfortunes. the prison authorities had found theobald's address from a letter in ernest's pocket, and had communicated with him more than once concerning his son's illness, but theobald had not written to me, and i supposed my godson to be in good health. he would be just twenty-four years old when he left prison, and if i followed out his aunt's instructions, would have to battle with fortune for another four years as well as he could. the question before me was whether it was right to let him run so much risk, or whether i should not to some extent transgress my instructions--which there was nothing to prevent my doing if i thought miss pontifex would have wished it--and let him have the same sum that he would have recovered from pryer. if my godson had been an older man, and more fixed in any definite groove, this is what i should have done, but he was still very young, and more than commonly unformed for his age. if, again, i had known of his illness i should not have dared to lay any heavier burden on his back than he had to bear already; but not being uneasy about his health, i thought a few years of roughing it and of experience concerning the importance of not playing tricks with money would do him no harm. so i decided to keep a sharp eye upon him as soon as he came out of prison, and to let him splash about in deep water as best he could till i saw whether he was able to swim, or was about to sink. in the first case i would let him go on swimming till he was nearly eight-and-twenty, when i would prepare him gradually for the good fortune that awaited him; in the second i would hurry up to the rescue. so i wrote to say that pryer had absconded, and that he could have pounds from his father when he came out of prison. i then waited to see what effect these tidings would have, not expecting to receive an answer for three months, for i had been told on enquiry that no letter could be received by a prisoner till after he had been three months in gaol. i also wrote to theobald and told him of pryer's disappearance. as a matter of fact, when my letter arrived the governor of the gaol read it, and in a case of such importance would have relaxed the rules if ernest's state had allowed it; his illness prevented this, and the governor left it to the chaplain and the doctor to break the news to him when they thought him strong enough to bear it, which was now the case. in the meantime i received a formal official document saying that my letter had been received and would be communicated to the prisoner in due course; i believe it was simply through a mistake on the part of a clerk that i was not informed of ernest's illness, but i heard nothing of it till i saw him by his own desire a few days after the chaplin had broken to him the substance of what i had written. ernest was terribly shocked when he heard of the loss of his money, but his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing the full extent of the mischief. he had never been in serious want of money yet, and did not know what it meant. in reality, money losses are the hardest to bear of any by those who are old enough to comprehend them. a man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greater number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration. suicide is a common consequence of money losses; it is rarely sought as a means of escape from bodily suffering. if we feel that we have a competence at our backs, so that we can die warm and quietly in our beds, with no need to worry about expense, we live our lives out to the dregs, no matter how excruciating our torments. job probably felt the loss of his flocks and herds more than that of his wife and family, for he could enjoy his flocks and herds without his family, but not his family--not for long--if he had lost all his money. loss of money indeed is not only the worst pain in itself, but it is the parent of all others. let a man have been brought up to a moderate competence, and have no specially; then let his money be suddenly taken from him, and how long is his health likely to survive the change in all his little ways which loss of money will entail? how long again is the esteem and sympathy of friends likely to survive ruin? people may be very sorry for us, but their attitude towards us hitherto has been based upon the supposition that we were situated thus or thus in money matters; when this breaks down there must be a restatement of the social problem so far as we are concerned; we have been obtaining esteem under false pretences. granted, then, that the three most serious losses which a man can suffer are those affecting money, health and reputation. loss of money is far the worst, then comes ill-health, and then loss of reputation; loss of reputation is a bad third, for, if a man keeps health and money unimpaired, it will be generally found that his loss of reputation is due to breaches of parvenu conventions only, and not to violations of those older, better established canons whose authority is unquestionable. in this case a man may grow a new reputation as easily as a lobster grows a new claw, or, if he have health and money, may thrive in great peace of mind without any reputation at all. the only chance for a man who has lost his money is that he shall still be young enough to stand uprooting and transplanting without more than temporary derangement, and this i believed my godson still to be. by the prison rules he might receive and send a letter after he had been in gaol three months, and might also receive one visit from a friend. when he received my letter, he at once asked me to come and see him, which of course i did. i found him very much changed, and still so feeble, that the exertion of coming from the infirmary to the cell in which i was allowed to see him, and the agitation of seeing me were too much for him. at first he quite broke down, and i was so pained at the state in which i found him, that i was on the point of breaking my instructions then and there. i contented myself, however, for the time, with assuring him that i would help him as soon as he came out of prison, and that, when he had made up his mind what he would do, he was to come to me for what money might be necessary, if he could not get it from his father. to make it easier for him i told him that his aunt, on her death- bed, had desired me to do something of this sort should an emergency arise, so that he would only be taking what his aunt had left him. "then," said he, "i will not take the pounds from my father, and i will never see him or my mother again." i said: "take the pounds, ernest, and as much more as you can get, and then do not see them again if you do not like." this ernest would not do. if he took money from them, he could not cut them, and he wanted to cut them. i thought my godson would get on a great deal better if he would only have the firmness to do as he proposed, as regards breaking completely with his father and mother, and said so. "then don't you like them?" said he, with a look of surprise. "like them!" said i, "i think they're horrid." "oh, that's the kindest thing of all you have done for me," he exclaimed, "i thought all--all middle-aged people liked my father and mother." he had been about to call me old, but i was only fifty-seven, and was not going to have this, so i made a face when i saw him hesitating, which drove him into "middle-aged." "if you like it," said i, "i will say all your family are horrid except yourself and your aunt alethea. the greater part of every family is always odious; if there are one or two good ones in a very large family, it is as much as can be expected." "thank you," he replied, gratefully, "i think i can now stand almost anything. i will come and see you as soon as i come out of gaol. good- bye." for the warder had told us that the time allowed for our interview was at an end. chapter lxvii as soon as ernest found that he had no money to look to upon leaving prison he saw that his dreams about emigrating and farming must come to an end, for he knew that he was incapable of working at the plough or with the axe for long together himself. and now it seemed he should have no money to pay any one else for doing so. it was this that resolved him to part once and for all with his parents. if he had been going abroad he could have kept up relations with them, for they would have been too far off to interfere with him. he knew his father and mother would object to being cut; they would wish to appear kind and forgiving; they would also dislike having no further power to plague him; but he knew also very well that so long as he and they ran in harness together they would be always pulling one way and he another. he wanted to drop the gentleman and go down into the ranks, beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, where no one would know of his disgrace or mind it if he did know; his father and mother on the other hand would wish him to clutch on to the fag-end of gentility at a starvation salary and with no prospect of advancement. ernest had seen enough in ashpit place to know that a tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk or a curate, while much less expense by way of show was required of him. the tailor also had more liberty, and a better chance of rising. ernest resolved at once, as he had fallen so far, to fall still lower--promptly, gracefully and with the idea of rising again, rather than cling to the skirts of a respectability which would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and make him pay an utterly extortionate price for an article which he could do better without. he arrived at this result more quickly than he might otherwise have done through remembering something he had once heard his aunt say about "kissing the soil." this had impressed him and stuck by him perhaps by reason of its brevity; when later on he came to know the story of hercules and antaeus, he found it one of the very few ancient fables which had a hold over him--his chiefest debt to classical literature. his aunt had wanted him to learn carpentering, as a means of kissing the soil should his hercules ever throw him. it was too late for this now--or he thought it was--but the mode of carrying out his aunt's idea was a detail; there were a hundred ways of kissing the soil besides becoming a carpenter. he had told me this during our interview, and i had encouraged him to the utmost of my power. he showed so much more good sense than i had given him credit for that i became comparatively easy about him, and determined to let him play his own game, being always, however, ready to hand in case things went too far wrong. it was not simply because he disliked his father and mother that he wanted to have no more to do with them; if it had been only this he would have put up with them; but a warning voice within told him distinctly enough that if he was clean cut away from them he might still have a chance of success, whereas if they had anything whatever to do with him, or even knew where he was, they would hamper him and in the end ruin him. absolute independence he believed to be his only chance of very life itself. over and above this--if this were not enough--ernest had a faith in his own destiny such as most young men, i suppose, feel, but the grounds of which were not apparent to any one but himself. rightly or wrongly, in a quiet way he believed he possessed a strength which, if he were only free to use it in his own way, might do great things some day. he did not know when, nor where, nor how his opportunity was to come, but he never doubted that it would come in spite of all that had happened, and above all else he cherished the hope that he might know how to seize it if it came, for whatever it was it would be something that no one else could do so well as he could. people said there were no dragons and giants for adventurous men to fight with nowadays; it was beginning to dawn upon him that there were just as many now as at any past time. monstrous as such a faith may seem in one who was qualifying himself for a high mission by a term of imprisonment, he could no more help it than he could help breathing; it was innate in him, and it was even more with a view to this than for other reasons that he wished to sever the connection between himself and his parents; for he knew that if ever the day came in which it should appear that before him too there was a race set in which it might be an honour to have run among the foremost, his father and mother would be the first to let him and hinder him in running it. they had been the first to say that he ought to run such a race; they would also be the first to trip him up if he took them at their word, and then afterwards upbraid him for not having won. achievement of any kind would be impossible for him unless he was free from those who would be for ever dragging him back into the conventional. the conventional had been tried already and had been found wanting. he had an opportunity now, if he chose to take it, of escaping once for all from those who at once tormented him and would hold him earthward should a chance of soaring open before him. he should never have had it but for his imprisonment; but for this the force of habit and routine would have been too strong for him; he should hardly have had it if he had not lost all his money; the gap would not have been so wide but that he might have been inclined to throw a plank across it. he rejoiced now, therefore, over his loss of money as well as over his imprisonment, which had made it more easy for him to follow his truest and most lasting interests. at times he wavered, when he thought of how his mother, who in her way, as he thought, had loved him, would weep and think sadly over him, or how perhaps she might even fall ill and die, and how the blame would rest with him. at these times his resolution was near breaking, but when he found i applauded his design, the voice within, which bade him see his father's and mother's faces no more, grew louder and more persistent. if he could not cut himself adrift from those who he knew would hamper him, when so small an effort was wanted, his dream of a destiny was idle; what was the prospect of a hundred pounds from his father in comparison with jeopardy to this? he still felt deeply the pain his disgrace had inflicted upon his father and mother, but he was getting stronger, and reflected that as he had run his chance with them for parents, so they must run theirs with him for a son. he had nearly settled down to this conclusion when he received a letter from his father which made his decision final. if the prison rules had been interpreted strictly, he would not have been allowed to have this letter for another three months, as he had already heard from me, but the governor took a lenient view, and considered the letter from me to be a business communication hardly coming under the category of a letter from friends. theobald's letter therefore was given to his son. it ran as follows:-- "my dear ernest, my object in writing is not to upbraid you with the disgrace and shame you have inflicted upon your mother and myself, to say nothing of your brother joey, and your sister. suffer of course we must, but we know to whom to look in our affliction, and are filled with anxiety rather on your behalf than our own. your mother is wonderful. she is pretty well in health, and desires me to send you her love. "have you considered your prospects on leaving prison? i understand from mr overton that you have lost the legacy which your grandfather left you, together with all the interest that accrued during your minority, in the course of speculation upon the stock exchange! if you have indeed been guilty of such appalling folly it is difficult to see what you can turn your hand to, and i suppose you will try to find a clerkship in an office. your salary will doubtless be low at first, but you have made your bed and must not complain if you have to lie upon it. if you take pains to please your employers they will not be backward in promoting you. "when i first heard from mr overton of the unspeakable calamity which had befallen your mother and myself, i had resolved not to see you again. i am unwilling, however, to have recourse to a measure which would deprive you of your last connecting link with respectable people. your mother and i will see you as soon as you come out of prison; not at battersby--we do not wish you to come down here at present--but somewhere else, probably in london. you need not shrink from seeing us; we shall not reproach you. we will then decide about your future. "at present our impression is that you will find a fairer start probably in australia or new zealand than here, and i am prepared to find you or even if necessary so far as pounds to pay your passage money. once in the colony you must be dependent upon your own exertions. "may heaven prosper them and you, and restore you to us years hence a respected member of society.--your affectionate father, t. pontifex." then there was a postscript in christina's writing. "my darling, darling boy, pray with me daily and hourly that we may yet again become a happy, united, god-fearing family as we were before this horrible pain fell upon us.--your sorrowing but ever loving mother, c. p." this letter did not produce the effect on ernest that it would have done before his imprisonment began. his father and mother thought they could take him up as they had left him off. they forgot the rapidity with which development follows misfortune, if the sufferer is young and of a sound temperament. ernest made no reply to his father's letter, but his desire for a total break developed into something like a passion. "there are orphanages," he exclaimed to himself, "for children who have lost their parents--oh! why, why, why, are there no harbours of refuge for grown men who have not yet lost them?" and he brooded over the bliss of melchisedek who had been born an orphan, without father, without mother, and without descent. chapter lxviii when i think over all that ernest told me about his prison meditations, and the conclusions he was drawn to, it occurs to me that in reality he was wanting to do the very last thing which it would have entered into his head to think of wanting. i mean that he was trying to give up father and mother for christ's sake. he would have said he was giving them up because he thought they hindered him in the pursuit of his truest and most lasting happiness. granted, but what is this if it is not christ? what is christ if he is not this? he who takes the highest and most self-respecting view of his own welfare which it is in his power to conceive, and adheres to it in spite of conventionality, is a christian whether he knows it and calls himself one, or whether he does not. a rose is not the less a rose because it does not know its own name. what if circumstances had made his duty more easy for him than it would be to most men? that was his luck, as much as it is other people's luck to have other duties made easy for them by accident of birth. surely if people are born rich or handsome they have a right to their good fortune. some i know, will say that one man has no right to be born with a better constitution than another; others again will say that luck is the only righteous object of human veneration. both, i daresay, can make out a very good case, but whichever may be right surely ernest had as much right to the good luck of finding a duty made easier as he had had to the bad fortune of falling into the scrape which had got him into prison. a man is not to be sneered at for having a trump card in his hand; he is only to be sneered at if he plays his trump card badly. indeed, i question whether it is ever much harder for anyone to give up father and mother for christ's sake than it was for ernest. the relations between the parties will have almost always been severely strained before it comes to this. i doubt whether anyone was ever yet required to give up those to whom he was tenderly attached for a mere matter of conscience: he will have ceased to be tenderly attached to them long before he is called upon to break with them; for differences of opinion concerning any matter of vital importance spring from differences of constitution, and these will already have led to so much other disagreement that the "giving up" when it comes, is like giving up an aching but very loose and hollow tooth. it is the loss of those whom we are not required to give up for christ's sake which is really painful to us. then there is a wrench in earnest. happily, no matter how light the task that is demanded from us, it is enough if we do it; we reap our reward, much as though it were a herculean labour. but to return, the conclusion ernest came to was that he would be a tailor. he talked the matter over with the chaplain, who told him there was no reason why he should not be able to earn his six or seven shillings a day by the time he came out of prison, if he chose to learn the trade during the remainder of his term--not quite three months; the doctor said he was strong enough for this, and that it was about the only thing he was as yet fit for; so he left the infirmary sooner than he would otherwise have done and entered the tailor's shop, overjoyed at the thoughts of seeing his way again, and confident of rising some day if he could only get a firm foothold to start from. everyone whom he had to do with saw that he did not belong to what are called the criminal classes, and finding him eager to learn and to save trouble always treated him kindly and almost respectfully. he did not find the work irksome: it was far more pleasant than making latin and greek verses at roughborough; he felt that he would rather be here in prison than at roughborough again--yes, or even at cambridge itself. the only trouble he was ever in danger of getting into was through exchanging words or looks with the more decent-looking of his fellow-prisoners. this was forbidden, but he never missed a chance of breaking the rules in this respect. any man of his ability who was at the same time anxious to learn would of course make rapid progress, and before he left prison the warder said he was as good a tailor with his three months' apprenticeship as many a man was with twelve. ernest had never before been so much praised by any of his teachers. each day as he grew stronger in health and more accustomed to his surroundings he saw some fresh advantage in his position, an advantage which he had not aimed at, but which had come almost in spite of himself, and he marvelled at his own good fortune, which had ordered things so greatly better for him than he could have ordered them for himself. his having lived six months in ashpit place was a case in point. things were possible to him which to others like him would be impossible. if such a man as towneley were told he must live henceforth in a house like those in ashpit place it would be more than he could stand. ernest could not have stood it himself if he had gone to live there of compulsion through want of money. it was only because he had felt himself able to run away at any minute that he had not wanted to do so; now, however, that he had become familiar with life in ashpit place he no longer minded it, and could live gladly in lower parts of london than that so long as he could pay his way. it was from no prudence or forethought that he had served this apprenticeship to life among the poor. he had been trying in a feeble way to be thorough in his work: he had not been thorough, the whole thing had been a _fiasco_; but he had made a little puny effort in the direction of being genuine, and behold, in his hour of need it had been returned to him with a reward far richer than he had deserved. he could not have faced becoming one of the very poor unless he had had such a bridge to conduct him over to them as he had found unwittingly in ashpit place. true, there had been drawbacks in the particular house he had chosen, but he need not live in a house where there was a mr holt and he should no longer be tied to the profession which he so much hated; if there were neither screams nor scripture readings he could be happy in a garret at three shillings a week, such as miss maitland lived in. as he thought further he remembered that all things work together for good to them that love god; was it possible, he asked himself, that he too, however imperfectly, had been trying to love him? he dared not answer yes, but he would try hard that it should be so. then there came into his mind that noble air of handel's: "great god, who yet but darkly known," and he felt it as he had never felt it before. he had lost his faith in christianity, but his faith in something--he knew not what, but that there was a something as yet but darkly known which made right right and wrong wrong--his faith in this grew stronger and stronger daily. again there crossed his mind thoughts of the power which he felt to be in him, and of how and where it was to find its vent. the same instinct which had led him to live among the poor because it was the nearest thing to him which he could lay hold of with any clearness came to his assistance here too. he thought of the australian gold and how those who lived among it had never seen it though it abounded all around them: "there is gold everywhere," he exclaimed inwardly, "to those who look for it." might not his opportunity be close upon him if he looked carefully enough at his immediate surroundings? what was his position? he had lost all. could he not turn his having lost all into an opportunity? might he not, if he too sought the strength of the lord, find, like st paul, that it was perfected in weakness? he had nothing more to lose; money, friends, character, all were gone for a very long time if not for ever; but there was something else also that had taken its flight along with these. i mean the fear of that which man could do unto him. _cantabil vacuus_. who could hurt him more than he had been hurt already? let him but be able to earn his bread, and he knew of nothing which he dared not venture if it would make the world a happier place for those who were young and loveable. herein he found so much comfort that he almost wished he had lost his reputation even more completely--for he saw that it was like a man's life which may be found of them that lose it and lost of them that would find it. he should not have had the courage to give up all for christ's sake, but now christ had mercifully taken all, and lo! it seemed as though all were found. as the days went slowly by he came to see that christianity and the denial of christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names--not about things; practically the church of rome, the church of england, and the freethinker have the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. it is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies. this was the crowning point of the edifice; when he had got here he no longer wished to molest even the pope. the archbishop of canterbury might have hopped about all round him and even picked crumbs out of his hand without running risk of getting a sly sprinkle of salt. that wary prelate himself might perhaps have been of a different opinion, but the robins and thrushes that hop about our lawns are not more needlessly distrustful of the hand that throws them out crumbs of bread in winter, than the archbishop would have been of my hero. perhaps he was helped to arrive at the foregoing conclusion by an event which almost thrust inconsistency upon him. a few days after he had left the infirmary the chaplain came to his cell and told him that the prisoner who played the organ in chapel had just finished his sentence and was leaving the prison; he therefore offered the post to ernest, who he already knew played the organ. ernest was at first in doubt whether it would be right for him to assist at religious services more than he was actually compelled to do, but the pleasure of playing the organ, and the privileges which the post involved, made him see excellent reasons for not riding consistency to death. having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism from which mr hawke had aroused him. by becoming organist he was saved from the treadmill, for which the doctor had said he was unfit as yet, but which he would probably have been put to in due course as soon as he was stronger. he might have escaped the tailor's shop altogether and done only the comparatively light work of attending to the chaplain's rooms if he had liked, but he wanted to learn as much tailoring as he could, and did not therefore take advantage of this offer; he was allowed, however, two hours a day in the afternoon for practice. from that moment his prison life ceased to be monotonous, and the remaining two months of his sentence slipped by almost as rapidly as they would have done if he had been free. what with music, books, learning his trade, and conversation with the chaplain, who was just the kindly, sensible person that ernest wanted in order to steady him a little, the days went by so pleasantly that when the time came for him to leave prison, he did so, or thought he did so, not without regret. chapter lxix in coming to the conclusion that he would sever the connection between himself and his family once for all ernest had reckoned without his family. theobald wanted to be rid of his son, it is true, in so far as he wished him to be no nearer at any rate than the antipodes; but he had no idea of entirely breaking with him. he knew his son well enough to have a pretty shrewd idea that this was what ernest would wish himself, and perhaps as much for this reason as for any other he was determined to keep up the connection, provided it did not involve ernest's coming to battersby nor any recurring outlay. when the time approached for him to leave prison, his father and mother consulted as to what course they should adopt. "we must never leave him to himself," said theobald impressively; "we can neither of us wish that." "oh, no! no! dearest theobald," exclaimed christina. "whoever else deserts him, and however distant he may be from us, he must still feel that he has parents whose hearts beat with affection for him no matter how cruelly he has pained them." "he has been his own worst enemy," said theobald. "he has never loved us as we deserved, and now he will be withheld by false shame from wishing to see us. he will avoid us if he can." "then we must go to him ourselves," said christina, "whether he likes it or not we must be at his side to support him as he enters again upon the world." "if we do not want him to give us the slip we must catch him as he leaves prison." "we will, we will; our faces shall be the first to gladden his eyes as he comes out, and our voices the first to exhort him to return to the paths of virtue." "i think," said theobald, "if he sees us in the street he will turn round and run away from us. he is intensely selfish." "then we must get leave to go inside the prison, and see him before he gets outside." after a good deal of discussion this was the plan they decided on adopting, and having so decided, theobald wrote to the governor of the gaol asking whether he could be admitted inside the gaol to receive ernest when his sentence had expired. he received answer in the affirmative, and the pair left battersby the day before ernest was to come out of prison. ernest had not reckoned on this, and was rather surprised on being told a few minutes before nine that he was to go into the receiving room before he left the prison as there were visitors waiting to see him. his heart fell, for he guessed who they were, but he screwed up his courage and hastened to the receiving room. there, sure enough, standing at the end of the table nearest the door were the two people whom he regarded as the most dangerous enemies he had in all the world--his father and mother. he could not fly, but he knew that if he wavered he was lost. his mother was crying, but she sprang forward to meet him and clasped him in her arms. "oh, my boy, my boy," she sobbed, and she could say no more. ernest was as white as a sheet. his heart beat so that he could hardly breathe. he let his mother embrace him, and then withdrawing himself stood silently before her with the tears falling from his eyes. at first he could not speak. for a minute or so the silence on all sides was complete. then, gathering strength, he said in a low voice: "mother," (it was the first time he had called her anything but "mamma"?) "we must part." on this, turning to the warder, he said: "i believe i am free to leave the prison if i wish to do so. you cannot compel me to remain here longer. please take me to the gates." theobald stepped forward. "ernest, you must not, shall not, leave us in this way." "do not speak to me," said ernest, his eyes flashing with a fire that was unwonted in them. another warder then came up and took theobald aside, while the first conducted ernest to the gates. "tell them," said ernest, "from me that they must think of me as one dead, for i am dead to them. say that my greatest pain is the thought of the disgrace i have inflicted upon them, and that above all things else i will study to avoid paining them hereafter; but say also that if they write to me i will return their letters unopened, and that if they come and see me i will protect myself in whatever way i can." by this time he was at the prison gate, and in another moment was at liberty. after he had got a few steps out he turned his face to the prison wall, leant against it for support, and wept as though his heart would break. giving up father and mother for christ's sake was not such an easy matter after all. if a man has been possessed by devils for long enough they will rend him as they leave him, however imperatively they may have been cast out. ernest did not stay long where he was, for he feared each moment that his father and mother would come out. he pulled himself together and turned into the labyrinth of small streets which opened out in front of him. he had crossed his rubicon--not perhaps very heroically or dramatically, but then it is only in dramas that people act dramatically. at any rate, by hook or by crook, he had scrambled over, and was out upon the other side. already he thought of much which he would gladly have said, and blamed his want of presence of mind; but, after all, it mattered very little. inclined though he was to make very great allowances for his father and mother, he was indignant at their having thrust themselves upon him without warning at a moment when the excitement of leaving prison was already as much as he was fit for. it was a mean advantage to have taken over him, but he was glad they had taken it, for it made him realise more fully than ever that his one chance lay in separating himself completely from them. the morning was grey, and the first signs of winter fog were beginning to show themselves, for it was now the th of september. ernest wore the clothes in which he had entered prison, and was therefore dressed as a clergyman. no one who looked at him would have seen any difference between his present appearance and his appearance six months previously; indeed, as he walked slowly through the dingy crowded lane called eyre street hill (which he well knew, for he had clerical friends in that neighbourhood), the months he had passed in prison seemed to drop out of his life, and so powerfully did association carry him away that, finding himself in his old dress and in his old surroundings, he felt dragged back into his old self--as though his six months of prison life had been a dream from which he was now waking to take things up as he had left them. this was the effect of unchanged surroundings upon the unchanged part of him. but there was a changed part, and the effect of unchanged surroundings upon this was to make everything seem almost as strange as though he had never had any life but his prison one, and was now born into a new world. all our lives long, every day and every hour, we are engaged in the process of accommodating our changed and unchanged selves to changed and unchanged surroundings; living, in fact, in nothing else than this process of accommodation; when we fail in it a little we are stupid, when we fail flagrantly we are mad, when we suspend it temporarily we sleep, when we give up the attempt altogether we die. in quiet, uneventful lives the changes internal and external are so small that there is little or no strain in the process of fusion and accommodation; in other lives there is great strain, but there is also great fusing and accommodating power; in others great strain with little accommodating power. a life will be successful or not according as the power of accommodation is equal to or unequal to the strain of fusing and adjusting internal and external changes. the trouble is that in the end we shall be driven to admit the unity of the universe so completely as to be compelled to deny that there is either an external or an internal, but must see everything both as external and internal at one and the same time, subject and object--external and internal--being unified as much as everything else. this will knock our whole system over, but then every system has got to be knocked over by something. much the best way out of this difficulty is to go in for separation between internal and external--subject and object--when we find this convenient, and unity between the same when we find unity convenient. this is illogical, but extremes are alone logical, and they are always absurd, the mean is alone practicable and it is always illogical. it is faith and not logic which is the supreme arbiter. they say all roads lead to rome, and all philosophies that i have ever seen lead ultimately either to some gross absurdity, or else to the conclusion already more than once insisted on in these pages, that the just shall live by faith, that is to say that sensible people will get through life by rule of thumb as they may interpret it most conveniently without asking too many questions for conscience sake. take any fact, and reason upon it to the bitter end, and it will ere long lead to this as the only refuge from some palpable folly. but to return to my story. when ernest got to the top of the street and looked back, he saw the grimy, sullen walls of his prison filling up the end of it. he paused for a minute or two. "there," he said to himself, "i was hemmed in by bolts which i could see and touch; here i am barred by others which are none the less real--poverty and ignorance of the world. it was no part of my business to try to break the material bolts of iron and escape from prison, but now that i am free i must surely seek to break these others." he had read somewhere of a prisoner who had made his escape by cutting up his bedstead with an iron spoon. he admired and marvelled at the man's mind, but could not even try to imitate him; in the presence of immaterial barriers, however, he was not so easily daunted, and felt as though, even if the bed were iron and the spoon a wooden one, he could find some means of making the wood cut the iron sooner or later. he turned his back upon eyre street hill and walked down leather lane into holborn. each step he took, each face or object that he knew, helped at once to link him on to the life he had led before his imprisonment, and at the same time to make him feel how completely that imprisonment had cut his life into two parts, the one of which could bear no resemblance to the other. he passed down fetter lane into fleet street and so to the temple, to which i had just returned from my summer holiday. it was about half past nine, and i was having my breakfast, when i heard a timid knock at the door and opened it to find ernest. chapter lxx i had begun to like him on the night towneley had sent for me, and on the following day i thought he had shaped well. i had liked him also during our interview in prison, and wanted to see more of him, so that i might make up my mind about him. i had lived long enough to know that some men who do great things in the end are not very wise when they are young; knowing that he would leave prison on the th, i had expected him, and, as i had a spare bedroom, pressed him to stay with me, till he could make up his mind what he would do. being so much older than he was, i anticipated no trouble in getting my own way, but he would not hear of it. the utmost he would assent to was that he should be my guest till he could find a room for himself, which he would set about doing at once. he was still much agitated, but grew better as he ate a breakfast, not of prison fare and in a comfortable room. it pleased me to see the delight he took in all about him; the fireplace with a fire in it; the easy chairs, the _times_, my cat, the red geraniums in the window, to say nothing of coffee, bread and butter, sausages, marmalade, etc. everything was pregnant with the most exquisite pleasure to him. the plane trees were full of leaf still; he kept rising from the breakfast table to admire them; never till now, he said, had he known what the enjoyment of these things really was. he ate, looked, laughed and cried by turns, with an emotion which i can neither forget nor describe. he told me how his father and mother had lain in wait for him, as he was about to leave prison. i was furious, and applauded him heartily for what he had done. he was very grateful to me for this. other people, he said, would tell him he ought to think of his father and mother rather than of himself, and it was such a comfort to find someone who saw things as he saw them himself. even if i had differed from him i should not have said so, but i was of his opinion, and was almost as much obliged to him for seeing things as i saw them, as he to me for doing the same kind office by himself. cordially as i disliked theobald and christina, i was in such a hopeless minority in the opinion i had formed concerning them that it was pleasant to find someone who agreed with me. then there came an awful moment for both of us. a knock, as of a visitor and not a postman, was heard at my door. "goodness gracious," i exclaimed, "why didn't we sport the oak? perhaps it is your father. but surely he would hardly come at this time of day! go at once into my bedroom." i went to the door, and, sure enough, there were both theobald and christina. i could not refuse to let them in and was obliged to listen to their version of the story, which agreed substantially with ernest's. christina cried bitterly--theobald stormed. after about ten minutes, during which i assured them that i had not the faintest conception where their son was, i dismissed them both. i saw they looked suspiciously upon the manifest signs that someone was breakfasting with me, and parted from me more or less defiantly, but i got rid of them, and poor ernest came out again, looking white, frightened and upset. he had heard voices, but no more, and did not feel sure that the enemy might not be gaining over me. we sported the oak now, and before long he began to recover. after breakfast, we discussed the situation. i had taken away his wardrobe and books from mrs jupp's, but had left his furniture, pictures and piano, giving mrs jupp the use of these, so that she might let her room furnished, in lieu of charge for taking care of the furniture. as soon as ernest heard that his wardrobe was at hand, he got out a suit of clothes he had had before he had been ordained, and put it on at once, much, as i thought, to the improvement of his personal appearance. then we went into the subject of his finances. he had had ten pounds from pryer only a day or two before he was apprehended, of which between seven and eight were in his purse when he entered the prison. this money was restored to him on leaving. he had always paid cash for whatever he bought, so that there was nothing to be deducted for debts. besides this, he had his clothes, books and furniture. he could, as i have said, have had pounds from his father if he had chosen to emigrate, but this both ernest and i (for he brought me round to his opinion) agreed it would be better to decline. this was all he knew of as belonging to him. he said he proposed at once taking an unfurnished top back attic in as quiet a house as he could find, say at three or four shillings a week, and looking out for work as a tailor. i did not think it much mattered what he began with, for i felt pretty sure he would ere long find his way to something that suited him, if he could get a start with anything at all. the difficulty was how to get him started. it was not enough that he should be able to cut out and make clothes--that he should have the organs, so to speak, of a tailor; he must be put into a tailor's shop and guided for a little while by someone who knew how and where to help him. the rest of the day he spent in looking for a room, which he soon found, and in familiarising himself with liberty. in the evening i took him to the olympic, where robson was then acting in a burlesque on macbeth, mrs keeley, if i remember rightly, taking the part of lady macbeth. in the scene before the murder, macbeth had said he could not kill duncan when he saw his boots upon the landing. lady macbeth put a stop to her husband's hesitation by whipping him up under her arm, and carrying him off the stage, kicking and screaming. ernest laughed till he cried. "what rot shakespeare is after this," he exclaimed, involuntarily. i remembered his essay on the greek tragedians, and was more i _epris_ with him than ever. next day he set about looking for employment, and i did not see him till about five o'clock, when he came and said that he had had no success. the same thing happened the next day and the day after that. wherever he went he was invariably refused and often ordered point blank out of the shop; i could see by the expression of his face, though he said nothing, that he was getting frightened, and began to think i should have to come to the rescue. he said he had made a great many enquiries and had always been told the same story. he found that it was easy to keep on in an old line, but very hard to strike out into a new one. he talked to the fishmonger in leather lane, where he went to buy a bloater for his tea, casually as though from curiosity and without any interested motive. "sell," said the master of the shop, "why nobody wouldn't believe what can be sold by penn'orths and twopenn'orths if you go the right way to work. look at whelks, for instance. last saturday night me and my little emma here, we sold pounds worth of whelks between eight and half past eleven o'clock--and almost all in penn'orths and twopenn'orths--a few, hap'orths, but not many. it was the steam that did it. we kept a-boiling of 'em hot and hot, and whenever the steam came strong up from the cellar on to the pavement, the people bought, but whenever the steam went down they left off buying; so we boiled them over and over again till they was all sold. that's just where it is; if you know your business you can sell, if you don't you'll soon make a mess of it. why, but for the steam, i should not have sold s. worth of whelks all the night through." this, and many another yarn of kindred substance which he heard from other people determined ernest more than ever to stake on tailoring as the one trade about which he knew anything at all, nevertheless, here were three or four days gone by and employment seemed as far off as ever. i now did what i ought to have done before, that is to say, i called on my own tailor whom i had dealt with for over a quarter of a century and asked his advice. he declared ernest's plan to be hopeless. "if," said mr larkins, for this was my tailor's name, "he had begun at fourteen, it might have done, but no man of twenty-four could stand being turned to work into a workshop full of tailors; he would not get on with the men, nor the men with him; you could not expect him to be 'hail fellow, well met' with them, and you could not expect his fellow-workmen to like him if he was not. a man must have sunk low through drink or natural taste for low company, before he could get on with those who have had such a different training from his own." mr larkins said a great deal more and wound up by taking me to see the place where his own men worked. "this is a paradise," he said, "compared to most workshops. what gentleman could stand this air, think you, for a fortnight?" i was glad enough to get out of the hot, fetid atmosphere in five minutes, and saw that there was no brick of ernest's prison to be loosened by going and working among tailors in a workshop. mr larkins wound up by saying that even if my _protege_ were a much better workman than he probably was, no master would give him employment, for fear of creating a bother among the men. i left, feeling that i ought to have thought of all this myself, and was more than ever perplexed as to whether i had not better let my young friend have a few thousand pounds and send him out to the colonies, when, on my return home at about five o'clock, i found him waiting for me, radiant, and declaring that he had found all he wanted. chapter lxxi it seems he had been patrolling the streets for the last three or four nights--i suppose in search of something to do--at any rate knowing better what he wanted to get than how to get it. nevertheless, what he wanted was in reality so easily to be found that it took a highly educated scholar like himself to be unable to find it. but, however this may be, he had been scared, and now saw lions where there were none, and was shocked and frightened, and night after night his courage had failed him and he had returned to his lodgings in laystall street without accomplishing his errand. he had not taken me into his confidence upon this matter, and i had not enquired what he did with himself in the evenings. at last he had concluded that, however painful it might be to him, he would call on mrs jupp, who he thought would be able to help him if anyone could. he had been walking moodily from seven till about nine, and now resolved to go straight to ashpit place and make a mother confessor of mrs jupp without more delay. of all tasks that could be performed by mortal woman there was none which mrs jupp would have liked better than the one ernest was thinking of imposing upon her; nor do i know that in his scared and broken-down state he could have done much better than he now proposed. miss jupp would have made it very easy for him to open his grief to her; indeed, she would have coaxed it all out of him before he knew where he was; but the fates were against mrs jupp, and the meeting between my hero and his former landlady was postponed _sine die_, for his determination had hardly been formed and he had not gone more than a hundred yards in the direction of mrs jupp's house, when a woman accosted him. he was turning from her, as he had turned from so many others, when she started back with a movement that aroused his curiosity. he had hardly seen her face, but being determined to catch sight of it, followed her as she hurried away, and passed her; then turning round he saw that she was none other than ellen, the housemaid who had been dismissed by his mother eight years previously. he ought to have assigned ellen's unwillingness to see him to its true cause, but a guilty conscience made him think she had heard of his disgrace and was turning away from him in contempt. brave as had been his resolutions about facing the world, this was more than he was prepared for; "what! you too shun me, ellen?" he exclaimed. the girl was crying bitterly and did not understand him. "oh, master ernest," she sobbed, "let me go; you are too good for the likes of me to speak to now." "why, ellen," said he, "what nonsense you talk; you haven't been in prison, have you?" "oh, no, no, no, not so bad as that," she exclaimed passionately. "well, i have," said ernest, with a forced laugh, "i came out three or four days ago after six months with hard labour." ellen did not believe him, but she looked at him with a "lor'! master ernest," and dried her eyes at once. the ice was broken between them, for as a matter of fact ellen had been in prison several times, and though she did not believe ernest, his merely saying he had been in prison made her feel more at ease with him. for her there were two classes of people, those who had been in prison and those who had not. the first she looked upon as fellow-creatures and more or less christians, the second, with few exceptions, she regarded with suspicion, not wholly unmingled with contempt. then ernest told her what had happened to him during the last six months, and by-and-by she believed him. "master ernest," said she, after they had talked for a quarter of an hour or so, "there's a place over the way where they sell tripe and onions. i know you was always very fond of tripe and onions, let's go over and have some, and we can talk better there." so the pair crossed the street and entered the tripe shop; ernest ordered supper. "and how is your pore dear mamma, and your dear papa, master ernest," said ellen, who had now recovered herself and was quite at home with my hero. "oh, dear, dear me," she said, "i did love your pa; he was a good gentleman, he was, and your ma too; it would do anyone good to live with her, i'm sure." ernest was surprised and hardly knew what to say. he had expected to find ellen indignant at the way she had been treated, and inclined to lay the blame of her having fallen to her present state at his father's and mother's door. it was not so. her only recollection of battersby was as of a place where she had had plenty to eat and drink, not too much hard work, and where she had not been scolded. when she heard that ernest had quarrelled with his father and mother she assumed as a matter of course that the fault must lie entirely with ernest. "oh, your pore, pore ma!" said ellen. "she was always so very fond of you, master ernest: you was always her favourite; i can't abear to think of anything between you and her. to think now of the way she used to have me into the dining-room and teach me my catechism, that she did! oh, master ernest, you really must go and make it all up with her; indeed you must." ernest felt rueful, but he had resisted so valiantly already that the devil might have saved himself the trouble of trying to get at him through ellen in the matter of his father and mother. he changed the subject, and the pair warmed to one another as they had their tripe and pots of beer. of all people in the world ellen was perhaps the one to whom ernest could have spoken most freely at this juncture. he told her what he thought he could have told to no one else. "you know, ellen," he concluded, "i had learnt as a boy things that i ought not to have learnt, and had never had a chance of that which would have set me straight." "gentlefolks is always like that," said ellen musingly. "i believe you are right, but i am no longer a gentleman, ellen, and i don't see why i should be 'like that' any longer, my dear. i want you to help me to be like something else as soon as possible." "lor'! master ernest, whatever can you be meaning?" the pair soon afterwards left the eating-house and walked up fetter lane together. ellen had had hard times since she had left battersby, but they had left little trace upon her. ernest saw only the fresh-looking smiling face, the dimpled cheek, the clear blue eyes and lovely sphinx-like lips which he had remembered as a boy. at nineteen she had looked older than she was, now she looked much younger; indeed she looked hardly older than when ernest had last seen her, and it would have taken a man of much greater experience than he possessed to suspect how completely she had fallen from her first estate. it never occurred to him that the poor condition of her wardrobe was due to her passion for ardent spirits, and that first and last she had served five or six times as much time in gaol as he had. he ascribed the poverty of her attire to the attempts to keep herself respectable, which ellen during supper had more than once alluded to. he had been charmed with the way in which she had declared that a pint of beer would make her tipsy, and had only allowed herself to be forced into drinking the whole after a good deal of remonstrance. to him she appeared a very angel dropped from the sky, and all the more easy to get on with for being a fallen one. as he walked up fetter lane with her towards laystall street, he thought of the wonderful goodness of god towards him in throwing in his way the very person of all others whom he was most glad to see, and whom, of all others, in spite of her living so near him, he might have never fallen in with but for a happy accident. when people get it into their heads that they are being specially favoured by the almighty, they had better as a general rule mind their p's and q's, and when they think they see the devil's drift with more special clearness, let them remember that he has had much more experience than they have, and is probably meditating mischief. already during supper the thought that in ellen at last he had found a woman whom he could love well enough to wish to live with and marry had flitted across his mind, and the more they had chatted the more reasons kept suggesting themselves for thinking that what might be folly in ordinary cases would not be folly in his. he must marry someone; that was already settled. he could not marry a lady; that was absurd. he must marry a poor woman. yes, but a fallen one? was he not fallen himself? ellen would fall no more. he had only to look at her to be sure of this. he could not live with her in sin, not for more than the shortest time that could elapse before their marriage; he no longer believed in the supernatural element of christianity, but the christian morality at any rate was indisputable. besides, they might have children, and a stigma would rest upon them. whom had he to consult but himself now? his father and mother never need know, and even if they did, they should be thankful to see him married to any woman who would make him happy as ellen would. as for not being able to afford marriage, how did poor people do? did not a good wife rather help matters than not? where one could live two could do so, and if ellen was three or four years older than he was--well, what was that? have you, gentle reader, ever loved at first sight? when you fell in love at first sight, how long, let me ask, did it take you to become ready to fling every other consideration to the winds except that of obtaining possession of the loved one? or rather, how long would it have taken you if you had had no father or mother, nothing to lose in the way of money, position, friends, professional advancement, or what not, and if the object of your affections was as free from all these _impedimenta_ as you were yourself? if you were a young john stuart mill, perhaps it would have taken you some time, but suppose your nature was quixotic, impulsive, altruistic, guileless; suppose you were a hungry man starving for something to love and lean upon, for one whose burdens you might bear, and who might help you to bear yours. suppose you were down on your luck, still stunned by a horrible shock, and this bright vista of a happy future floated suddenly before you, how long under these circumstances do you think you would reflect before you would decide on embracing what chance had thrown in your way? it did not take my hero long, for before he got past the ham and beef shop near the top of fetter lane, he had told ellen that she must come home with him and live with him till they could get married, which they would do upon the first day that the law allowed. i think the devil must have chuckled and made tolerably sure of his game this time. chapter lxxii ernest told ellen of his difficulty about finding employment. "but what do you think of going into a shop for, my dear," said ellen. "why not take a little shop yourself?" ernest asked how much this would cost. ellen told him that he might take a house in some small street, say near the "elephant and castle," for s. or s. a week, and let off the two top floors for s., keeping the back parlour and shop for themselves. if he could raise five or six pounds to buy some second-hand clothes to stock the shop with, they could mend them and clean them, and she could look after the women's clothes while he did the men's. then he could mend and make, if he could get the orders. they could soon make a business of pounds a week in this way; she had a friend who began like that and had now moved to a better shop, where she made or pounds a week at least--and she, ellen, had done the greater part of the buying and selling herself. here was a new light indeed. it was as though he had got his pounds back again all of a sudden, and perhaps ever so much more later on into the bargain. ellen seemed more than ever to be his good genius. she went out and got a few rashers of bacon for his and her breakfast. she cooked them much more nicely than he had been able to do, and laid breakfast for him and made coffee, and some nice brown toast. ernest had been his own cook and housemaid for the last few days and had not given himself satisfaction. here he suddenly found himself with someone to wait on him again. not only had ellen pointed out to him how he could earn a living when no one except himself had known how to advise him, but here she was so pretty and smiling, looking after even his comforts, and restoring him practically in all respects that he much cared about to the position which he had lost--or rather putting him in one that he already liked much better. no wonder he was radiant when he came to explain his plans to me. he had some difficulty in telling all that had happened. he hesitated, blushed, hummed and hawed. misgivings began to cross his mind when he found himself obliged to tell his story to someone else. he felt inclined to slur things over, but i wanted to get at the facts, so i helped him over the bad places, and questioned him till i had got out pretty nearly the whole story as i have given it above. i hope i did not show it, but i was very angry. i had begun to like ernest. i don't know why, but i never have heard that any young man to whom i had become attached was going to get married without hating his intended instinctively, though i had never seen her; i have observed that most bachelors feel the same thing, though we are generally at some pains to hide the fact. perhaps it is because we know we ought to have got married ourselves. ordinarily we say we are delighted--in the present case i did not feel obliged to do this, though i made an effort to conceal my vexation. that a young man of much promise who was heir also to what was now a handsome fortune, should fling himself away upon such a person as ellen was quite too provoking, and the more so because of the unexpectedness of the whole affair. i begged him not to marry ellen yet--not at least until he had known her for a longer time. he would not hear of it; he had given his word, and if he had not given it he should go and give it at once. i had hitherto found him upon most matters singularly docile and easy to manage, but on this point i could do nothing with him. his recent victory over his father and mother had increased his strength, and i was nowhere. i would have told him of his true position, but i knew very well that this would only make him more bent on having his own way--for with so much money why should he not please himself? i said nothing, therefore, on this head, and yet all that i could urge went for very little with one who believed himself to be an artisan or nothing. really from his own standpoint there was nothing very outrageous in what he was doing. he had known and been very fond of ellen years before. he knew her to come of respectable people, and to have borne a good character, and to have been universally liked at battersby. she was then a quick, smart, hard-working girl--and a very pretty one. when at last they met again she was on her best behaviour, in fact, she was modesty and demureness itself. what wonder, then, that his imagination should fail to realise the changes that eight years must have worked? he knew too much against himself, and was too bankrupt in love to be squeamish; if ellen had been only what he thought her, and if his prospects had been in reality no better than he believed they were, i do not know that there is anything much more imprudent in what ernest proposed than there is in half the marriages that take place every day. there was nothing for it, however, but to make the best of the inevitable, so i wished my young friend good fortune, and told him he could have whatever money he wanted to start his shop with, if what he had in hand was not sufficient. he thanked me, asked me to be kind enough to let him do all my mending and repairing, and to get him any other like orders that i could, and left me to my own reflections. i was even more angry when he was gone than i had been while he was with me. his frank, boyish face had beamed with a happiness that had rarely visited it. except at cambridge he had hardly known what happiness meant, and even there his life had been clouded as of a man for whom wisdom at the greatest of its entrances was quite shut out. i had seen enough of the world and of him to have observed this, but it was impossible, or i thought it had been impossible, for me to have helped him. whether i ought to have tried to help him or not i do not know, but i am sure that the young of all animals often do want help upon matters about which anyone would say _a priori_ that there should be no difficulty. one would think that a young seal would want no teaching how to swim, nor yet a bird to fly, but in practice a young seal drowns if put out of its depth before its parents have taught it to swim; and so again, even the young hawk must be taught to fly before it can do so. i grant that the tendency of the times is to exaggerate the good which teaching can do, but in trying to teach too much, in most matters, we have neglected others in respect of which a little sensible teaching would do no harm. i know it is the fashion to say that young people must find out things for themselves, and so they probably would if they had fair play to the extent of not having obstacles put in their way. but they seldom have fair play; as a general rule they meet with foul play, and foul play from those who live by selling them stones made into a great variety of shapes and sizes so as to form a tolerable imitation of bread. some are lucky enough to meet with few obstacles, some are plucky enough to over-ride them, but in the greater number of cases, if people are saved at all they are saved so as by fire. while ernest was with me ellen was looking out for a shop on the south side of the thames near the "elephant and castle," which was then almost a new and a very rising neighbourhood. by one o'clock she had found several from which a selection was to be made, and before night the pair had made their choice. ernest brought ellen to me. i did not want to see her, but could not well refuse. he had laid out a few of his shillings upon her wardrobe, so that she was neatly dressed, and, indeed, she looked very pretty and so good that i could hardly be surprised at ernest's infatuation when the other circumstances of the case were taken into consideration. of course we hated one another instinctively from the first moment we set eyes on one another, but we each told ernest that we had been most favourably impressed. then i was taken to see the shop. an empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed. decay sets in at once in every part of it, and what mould and wind and weather would spare, street boys commonly destroy. ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a dirty unsavoury place enough. the house was not old, but it had been run up by a jerry-builder and its constitution had no stamina whatever. it was only by being kept warm and quiet that it would remain in health for many months together. now it had been empty for some weeks and the cats had got in by night, while the boys had broken the windows by day. the parlour floor was covered with stones and dirt, and in the area was a dead dog which had been killed in the street and been thrown down into the first unprotected place that could be found. there was a strong smell throughout the house, but whether it was bugs, or rats, or cats, or drains, or a compound of all four, i could not determine. the sashes did not fit, the flimsy doors hung badly; the skirting was gone in several places, and there were not a few holes in the floor; the locks were loose, and paper was torn and dirty; the stairs were weak and one felt the treads give as one went up them. over and above these drawbacks the house had an ill name, by reason of the fact that the wife of the last occupant had hanged herself in it not very many weeks previously. she had set down a bloater before the fire for her husband's tea, and had made him a round of toast. she then left the room as though about to return to it shortly, but instead of doing so she went into the back kitchen and hanged herself without a word. it was this which had kept the house empty so long in spite of its excellent position as a corner shop. the last tenant had left immediately after the inquest, and if the owner had had it done up then people would have got over the tragedy that had been enacted in it, but the combination of bad condition and bad fame had hindered many from taking it, who like ellen, could see that it had great business capabilities. almost anything would have sold there, but it happened also that there was no second-hand clothes shop in close proximity so that everything combined in its favour, except its filthy state and its reputation. when i saw it, i thought i would rather die than live in such an awful place--but then i had been living in the temple for the last five and twenty years. ernest was lodging in laystall street and had just come out of prison; before this he had lived in ashpit place so that this house had no terrors for him provided he could get it done up. the difficulty was that the landlord was hard to move in this respect. it ended in my finding the money to do everything that was wanted, and taking a lease of the house for five years at the same rental as that paid by the last occupant. i then sublet it to ernest, of course taking care that it was put more efficiently into repair than his landlord was at all likely to have put it. a week later i called and found everything so completely transformed that i should hardly have recognised the house. all the ceilings had been whitewashed, all the rooms papered, the broken glass hacked out and reinstated, the defective wood-work renewed, all the sashes, cupboards and doors had been painted. the drains had been thoroughly overhauled, everything in fact, that could be done had been done, and the rooms now looked as cheerful as they had been forbidding when i had last seen them. the people who had done the repairs were supposed to have cleaned the house down before leaving, but ellen had given it another scrub from top to bottom herself after they were gone, and it was as clean as a new pin. i almost felt as though i could have lived in it myself, and as for ernest, he was in the seventh heaven. he said it was all my doing and ellen's. there was already a counter in the shop and a few fittings, so that nothing now remained but to get some stock and set them out for sale. ernest said he could not begin better than by selling his clerical wardrobe and his books, for though the shop was intended especially for the sale of second-hand clothes, yet ellen said there was no reason why they should not sell a few books too; so a beginning was to be made by selling the books he had had at school and college at about one shilling a volume, taking them all round, and i have heard him say that he learned more that proved of practical use to him through stocking his books on a bench in front of his shop and selling them, than he had done from all the years of study which he had bestowed upon their contents. for the enquiries that were made of him whether he had such and such a book taught him what he could sell and what he could not; how much he could get for this, and how much for that. having made ever such a little beginning with books, he took to attending book sales as well as clothes sales, and ere long this branch of his business became no less important than the tailoring, and would, i have no doubt, have been the one which he would have settled down to exclusively, if he had been called upon to remain a tradesman; but this is anticipating. i made a contribution and a stipulation. ernest wanted to sink the gentleman completely, until such time as he could work his way up again. if he had been left to himself he would have lived with ellen in the shop back parlour and kitchen, and have let out both the upper floors according to his original programme. i did not want him, however, to cut himself adrift from music, letters and polite life, and feared that unless he had some kind of den into which he could retire he would ere long become the tradesman and nothing else. i therefore insisted on taking the first floor front and back myself, and furnishing them with the things which had been left at mrs jupp's. i bought these things of him for a small sum and had them moved into his present abode. i went to mrs jupp's to arrange all this, as ernest did not like going to ashpit place. i had half expected to find the furniture sold and mrs jupp gone, but it was not so; with all her faults the poor old woman was perfectly honest. i told her that pryer had taken all ernest's money and run away with it. she hated pryer. "i never knew anyone," she exclaimed, "as white-livered in the face as that pryer; he hasn't got an upright vein in his whole body. why, all that time when he used to come breakfasting with mr pontifex morning after morning, it took me to a perfect shadow the way he carried on. there was no doing anything to please him right. first i used to get them eggs and bacon, and he didn't like that; and then i got him a bit of fish, and he didn't like that, or else it was too dear, and you know fish is dearer than ever; and then i got him a bit of german, and he said it rose on him; then i tried sausages, and he said they hit him in the eye worse even than german; oh! how i used to wander my room and fret about it inwardly and cry for hours, and all about them paltry breakfasts--and it wasn't mr pontifex; he'd like anything that anyone chose to give him. "and so the piano's to go," she continued. "what beautiful tunes mr pontifex did play upon it, to be sure; and there was one i liked better than any i ever heard. i was in the room when he played it once and when i said, 'oh, mr pontifex, that's the kind of woman i am,' he said, 'no, mrs jupp, it isn't, for this tune is old, but no one can say you are old.' but, bless you, he meant nothing by it, it was only his mucky flattery." like myself, she was vexed at his getting married. she didn't like his being married, and she didn't like his not being married--but, anyhow, it was ellen's fault, not his, and she hoped he would be happy. "but after all," she concluded, "it ain't you and it ain't me, and it ain't him and it ain't her. it's what you must call the fortunes of matterimony, for there ain't no other word for it." in the course of the afternoon the furniture arrived at ernest's new abode. in the first floor we placed the piano, table, pictures, bookshelves, a couple of arm-chairs, and all the little household gods which he had brought from cambridge. the back room was furnished exactly as his bedroom at ashpit place had been--new things being got for the bridal apartment downstairs. these two first-floor rooms i insisted on retaining as my own, but ernest was to use them whenever he pleased; he was never to sublet even the bedroom, but was to keep it for himself in case his wife should be ill at any time, or in case he might be ill himself. in less than a fortnight from the time of his leaving prison all these arrangements had been completed, and ernest felt that he had again linked himself on to the life which he had led before his imprisonment--with a few important differences, however, which were greatly to his advantage. he was no longer a clergyman; he was about to marry a woman to whom he was much attached, and he had parted company for ever with his father and mother. true, he had lost all his money, his reputation, and his position as a gentleman; he had, in fact, had to burn his house down in order to get his roast sucking pig; but if asked whether he would rather be as he was now or as he was on the day before his arrest, he would not have had a moment's hesitation in preferring his present to his past. if his present could only have been purchased at the expense of all that he had gone through, it was still worth purchasing at the price, and he would go through it all again if necessary. the loss of the money was the worst, but ellen said she was sure they would get on, and she knew all about it. as for the loss of reputation--considering that he had ellen and me left, it did not come to much. i saw the house on the afternoon of the day on which all was finished, and there remained nothing but to buy some stock and begin selling. when i was gone, after he had had his tea, he stole up to his castle--the first floor front. he lit his pipe and sat down to the piano. he played handel for an hour or so, and then set himself to the table to read and write. he took all his sermons and all the theological works he had begun to compose during the time he had been a clergyman and put them in the fire; as he saw them consume he felt as though he had got rid of another incubus. then he took up some of the little pieces he had begun to write during the latter part of his undergraduate life at cambridge, and began to cut them about and re-write them. as he worked quietly at these till he heard the clock strike ten and it was time to go to bed, he felt that he was now not only happy but supremely happy. next day ellen took him to debenham's auction rooms, and they surveyed the lots of clothes which were hung up all round the auction room to be viewed. ellen had had sufficient experience to know about how much each lot ought to fetch; she overhauled lot after lot, and valued it; in a very short time ernest himself began to have a pretty fair idea what each lot should go for, and before the morning was over valued a dozen lots running at prices about which ellen said he would not hurt if he could get them for that. so far from disliking this work or finding it tedious, he liked it very much, indeed he would have liked anything which did not overtax his physical strength, and which held out a prospect of bringing him in money. ellen would not let him buy anything on the occasion of this sale; she said he had better see one sale first and watch how prices actually went. so at twelve o'clock when the sale began, he saw the lots sold which he and ellen had marked, and by the time the sale was over he knew enough to be able to bid with safety whenever he should actually want to buy. knowledge of this sort is very easily acquired by anyone who is in _bona fide_ want of it. but ellen did not want him to buy at auctions--not much at least at present. private dealing, she said, was best. if i, for example, had any cast-off clothes, he was to buy them from my laundress, and get a connection with other laundresses, to whom he might give a trifle more than they got at present for whatever clothes their masters might give them, and yet make a good profit. if gentlemen sold their things, he was to try and get them to sell to him. he flinched at nothing; perhaps he would have flinched if he had had any idea how _outre_ his proceedings were, but the very ignorance of the world which had ruined him up till now, by a happy irony began to work its own cure. if some malignant fairy had meant to curse him in this respect, she had overdone her malice. he did not know he was doing anything strange. he only knew that he had no money, and must provide for himself, a wife, and a possible family. more than this, he wanted to have some leisure in an evening, so that he might read and write and keep up his music. if anyone would show him how he could do better than he was doing, he should be much obliged to them, but to himself it seemed that he was doing sufficiently well; for at the end of the first week the pair found they had made a clear profit of pounds. in a few weeks this had increased to pounds, and by the new year they had made a profit of pounds in one week. ernest had by this time been married some two months, for he had stuck to his original plan of marrying ellen on the first day he could legally do so. this date was a little delayed by the change of abode from laystall street to blackfriars, but on the first day that it could be done it was done. he had never had more than pounds a year, even in the times of his affluence, so that a profit of pounds a week, if it could be maintained steadily, would place him where he had been as far as income went, and, though he should have to feed two mouths instead of one, yet his expenses in other ways were so much curtailed by his changed social position, that, take it all round, his income was practically what it had been a twelvemonth before. the next thing to do was to increase it, and put by money. prosperity depends, as we all know, in great measure upon energy and good sense, but it also depends not a little upon pure luck--that is to say, upon connections which are in such a tangle that it is more easy to say that they do not exist, than to try to trace them. a neighbourhood may have an excellent reputation as being likely to be a rising one, and yet may become suddenly eclipsed by another, which no one would have thought so promising. a fever hospital may divert the stream of business, or a new station attract it; so little, indeed, can be certainly known, that it is better not to try to know more than is in everybody's mouth, and to leave the rest to chance. luck, which certainly had not been too kind to my hero hitherto, now seemed to have taken him under her protection. the neighbourhood prospered, and he with it. it seemed as though he no sooner bought a thing and put it into his shop, than it sold with a profit of from thirty to fifty per cent. he learned book-keeping, and watched his accounts carefully, following up any success immediately; he began to buy other things besides clothes--such as books, music, odds and ends of furniture, etc. whether it was luck or business aptitude, or energy, or the politeness with which he treated all his customers, i cannot say--but to the surprise of no one more than himself, he went ahead faster than he had anticipated, even in his wildest dreams, and by easter was established in a strong position as the owner of a business which was bringing him in between four and five hundred a year, and which he understood how to extend. chapter lxxiii ellen and he got on capitally, all the better, perhaps, because the disparity between them was so great, that neither did ellen want to be elevated, nor did ernest want to elevate her. he was very fond of her, and very kind to her; they had interests which they could serve in common; they had antecedents with a good part of which each was familiar; they had each of them excellent tempers, and this was enough. ellen did not seem jealous at ernest's preferring to sit the greater part of his time after the day's work was done in the first floor front where i occasionally visited him. she might have come and sat with him if she had liked, but, somehow or other, she generally found enough to occupy her down below. she had the tact also to encourage him to go out of an evening whenever he had a mind, without in the least caring that he should take her too--and this suited ernest very well. he was, i should say, much happier in his married life than people generally are. at first it had been very painful to him to meet any of his old friends, as he sometimes accidentally did, but this soon passed; either they cut him, or he cut them; it was not nice being cut for the first time or two, but after that, it became rather pleasant than not, and when he began to see that he was going ahead, he cared very little what people might say about his antecedents. the ordeal is a painful one, but if a man's moral and intellectual constitution are naturally sound, there is nothing which will give him so much strength of character as having been well cut. it was easy for him to keep his expenditure down, for his tastes were not luxurious. he liked theatres, outings into the country on a sunday, and tobacco, but he did not care for much else, except writing and music. as for the usual run of concerts, he hated them. he worshipped handel; he liked offenbach, and the airs that went about the streets, but he cared for nothing between these two extremes. music, therefore, cost him little. as for theatres, i got him and ellen as many orders as they liked, so these cost them nothing. the sunday outings were a small item; for a shilling or two he could get a return ticket to some place far enough out of town to give him a good walk and a thorough change for the day. ellen went with him the first few times, but she said she found it too much for her, there were a few of her old friends whom she should sometimes like to see, and they and he, she said, would not hit it off perhaps too well, so it would be better for him to go alone. this seemed so sensible, and suited ernest so exactly that he readily fell into it, nor did he suspect dangers which were apparent enough to me when i heard how she had treated the matter. i kept silence, however, and for a time all continued to go well. as i have said, one of his chief pleasures was in writing. if a man carries with him a little sketch book and is continually jotting down sketches, he has the artistic instinct; a hundred things may hinder his due development, but the instinct is there. the literary instinct may be known by a man's keeping a small note-book in his waistcoat pocket, into which he jots down anything that strikes him, or any good thing that he hears said, or a reference to any passage which he thinks will come in useful to him. ernest had such a note-book always with him. even when he was at cambridge he had begun the practice without anyone's having suggested it to him. these notes he copied out from time to time into a book, which as they accumulated, he was driven into indexing approximately, as he went along. when i found out this, i knew that he had the literary instinct, and when i saw his notes i began to hope great things of him. for a long time i was disappointed. he was kept back by the nature of the subjects he chose--which were generally metaphysical. in vain i tried to get him away from these to matters which had a greater interest for the general public. when i begged him to try his hand at some pretty, graceful, little story which should be full of whatever people knew and liked best, he would immediately set to work upon a treatise to show the grounds on which all belief rested. "you are stirring mud," said i, "or poking at a sleeping dog. you are trying to make people resume consciousness about things, which, with sensible men, have already passed into the unconscious stage. the men whom you would disturb are in front of you, and not, as you fancy, behind you; it is you who are the lagger, not they." he could not see it. he said he was engaged on an essay upon the famous _quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_ of st vincent de lerins. this was the more provoking because he showed himself able to do better things if he had liked. i was then at work upon my burlesque "the impatient griselda," and was sometimes at my wits' end for a piece of business or a situation; he gave me many suggestions, all of which were marked by excellent good sense. nevertheless i could not prevail with him to put philosophy on one side, and was obliged to leave him to himself. for a long time, as i have said, his choice of subjects continued to be such as i could not approve. he was continually studying scientific and metaphysical writers, in the hope of either finding or making for himself a philosopher's stone in the shape of a system which should go on all fours under all circumstances, instead of being liable to be upset at every touch and turn, as every system yet promulgated has turned out to be. he kept to the pursuit of this will-o'-the-wisp so long that i gave up hope, and set him down as another fly that had been caught, as it were, by a piece of paper daubed over with some sticky stuff that had not even the merit of being sweet, but to my surprise he at last declared that he was satisfied, and had found what he wanted. i supposed that he had only hit upon some new "lo, here!" when to my relief, he told me that he had concluded that no system which should go perfectly upon all fours was possible, inasmuch as no one could get behind bishop berkeley, and therefore no absolutely incontrovertible first premise could ever be laid. having found this he was just as well pleased as if he had found the most perfect system imaginable. all he wanted he said, was to know which way it was to be--that is to say whether a system was possible or not, and if possible then what the system was to be. having found out that no system based on absolute certainty was possible he was contented. i had only a very vague idea who bishop berkeley was, but was thankful to him for having defended us from an incontrovertible first premise. i am afraid i said a few words implying that after a great deal of trouble he had arrived at the conclusion which sensible people reach without bothering their brains so much. he said: "yes, but i was not born sensible. a child of ordinary powers learns to walk at a year or two old without knowing much about it; failing ordinary powers he had better learn laboriously than never learn at all. i am sorry i was not stronger, but to do as i did was my only chance." he looked so meek that i was vexed with myself for having said what i had, more especially when i remembered his bringing-up, which had doubtless done much to impair his power of taking a common-sense view of things. he continued-- "i see it all now. the people like towneley are the only ones who know anything that is worth knowing, and like that of course i can never be. but to make towneleys possible there must be hewers of wood and drawers of water--men in fact through whom conscious knowledge must pass before it can reach those who can apply it gracefully and instinctively as the towneleys can. i am a hewer of wood, but if i accept the position frankly and do not set up to be a towneley, it does not matter." he still, therefore, stuck to science instead of turning to literature proper as i hoped he would have done, but he confined himself henceforth to enquiries on specific subjects concerning which an increase of our knowledge--as he said--was possible. having in fact, after infinite vexation of spirit, arrived at a conclusion which cut at the roots of all knowledge, he settled contentedly down to the pursuit of knowledge, and has pursued it ever since in spite of occasional excursions into the regions of literature proper. but this is anticipating, and may perhaps also convey a wrong impression, for from the outset he did occasionally turn his attention to work which must be more properly called literary than either scientific or metaphysical. chapter lxxiv about six months after he had set up his shop his prosperity had reached its climax. it seemed even then as though he were likely to go ahead no less fast than heretofore, and i doubt not that he would have done so, if success or non-success had depended upon himself alone. unfortunately he was not the only person to be reckoned with. one morning he had gone out to attend some sales, leaving his wife perfectly well, as usual in good spirits, and looking very pretty. when he came back he found her sitting on a chair in the back parlour, with her hair over her face, sobbing and crying as though her heart would break. she said she had been frightened in the morning by a man who had pretended to be a customer, and had threatened her unless she gave him some things, and she had had to give them to him in order to save herself from violence; she had been in hysterics ever since the man had gone. this was her story, but her speech was so incoherent that it was not easy to make out what she said. ernest knew she was with child, and thinking this might have something to do with the matter, would have sent for a doctor if ellen had not begged him not to do so. anyone who had had experience of drunken people would have seen at a glance what the matter was, but my hero knew nothing about them--nothing, that is to say, about the drunkenness of the habitual drunkard, which shows itself very differently from that of one who gets drunk only once in a way. the idea that his wife could drink had never even crossed his mind, indeed she always made a fuss about taking more than a very little beer, and never touched spirits. he did not know much more about hysterics than he did about drunkenness, but he had always heard that women who were about to become mothers were liable to be easily upset and were often rather flighty, so he was not greatly surprised, and thought he had settled the matter by registering the discovery that being about to become a father has its troublesome as well as its pleasant side. the great change in ellen's life consequent upon her meeting ernest and getting married had for a time actually sobered her by shaking her out of her old ways. drunkenness is so much a matter of habit, and habit so much a matter of surroundings, that if you completely change the surroundings you will sometimes get rid of the drunkenness altogether. ellen had intended remaining always sober henceforward, and never having had so long a steady fit before, believed she was now cured. so she perhaps would have been if she had seen none of her old acquaintances. when, however, her new life was beginning to lose its newness, and when her old acquaintances came to see her, her present surroundings became more like her past, and on this she herself began to get like her past too. at first she only got a little tipsy and struggled against a relapse; but it was no use, she soon lost the heart to fight, and now her object was not to try and keep sober, but to get gin without her husband's finding it out. so the hysterics continued, and she managed to make her husband still think that they were due to her being about to become a mother. the worse her attacks were, the more devoted he became in his attention to her. at last he insisted that a doctor should see her. the doctor of course took in the situation at a glance, but said nothing to ernest except in such a guarded way that he did not understand the hints that were thrown out to him. he was much too downright and matter of fact to be quick at taking hints of this sort. he hoped that as soon as his wife's confinement was over she would regain her health and had no thought save how to spare her as far as possible till that happy time should come. in the mornings she was generally better, as long that is to say as ernest remained at home; but he had to go out buying, and on his return would generally find that she had had another attack as soon as he had left the house. at times she would laugh and cry for half an hour together, at others she would lie in a semi-comatose state upon the bed, and when he came back he would find that the shop had been neglected and all the work of the household left undone. still he took it for granted that this was all part of the usual course when women were going to become mothers, and when ellen's share of the work settled down more and more upon his own shoulders he did it all and drudged away without a murmur. nevertheless, he began to feel in a vague way more as he had felt in ashpit place, at roughborough, or at battersby, and to lose the buoyancy of spirits which had made another man of him during the first six months of his married life. it was not only that he had to do so much household work, for even the cooking, cleaning up slops, bed-making and fire-lighting ere long devolved upon him, but his business no longer prospered. he could buy as hitherto, but ellen seemed unable to sell as she had sold at first. the fact was that she sold as well as ever, but kept back part of the proceeds in order to buy gin, and she did this more and more till even the unsuspecting ernest ought to have seen that she was not telling the truth. when she sold better--that is to say when she did not think it safe to keep back more than a certain amount, she got money out of him on the plea that she had a longing for this or that, and that it would perhaps irreparably damage the baby if her longing was denied her. all seemed right, reasonable, and unavoidable, nevertheless ernest saw that until the confinement was over he was likely to have a hard time of it. all however would then come right again. chapter lxxv in the month of september a girl was born, and ernest was proud and happy. the birth of the child, and a rather alarming talk which the doctor had given to ellen sobered her for a few weeks, and it really seemed as though his hopes were about to be fulfilled. the expenses of his wife's confinement were heavy, and he was obliged to trench upon his savings, but he had no doubt about soon recouping this now that ellen was herself again; for a time indeed his business did revive a little, nevertheless it seemed as though the interruption to his prosperity had in some way broken the spell of good luck which had attended him in the outset; he was still sanguine, however, and worked night and day with a will, but there was no more music, or reading, or writing now. his sunday outings were put a stop to, and but for the first floor being let to myself, he would have lost his citadel there too, but he seldom used it, for ellen had to wait more and more upon the baby, and, as a consequence, ernest had to wait more and more upon ellen. one afternoon, about a couple of months after the baby had been born, and just as my unhappy hero was beginning to feel more hopeful and therefore better able to bear his burdens, he returned from a sale, and found ellen in the same hysterical condition that he had found her in in the spring. she said she was again with child, and ernest still believed her. all the troubles of the preceding six months began again then and there, and grew worse and worse continually. money did not come in quickly, for ellen cheated him by keeping it back, and dealing improperly with the goods he bought. when it did come in she got it out of him as before on pretexts which it seemed inhuman to inquire into. it was always the same story. by and by a new feature began to show itself. ernest had inherited his father's punctuality and exactness as regards money; he liked to know the worst of what he had to pay at once; he hated having expenses sprung upon him which if not foreseen might and ought to have been so, but now bills began to be brought to him for things ordered by ellen without his knowledge, or for which he had already given her the money. this was awful, and even ernest turned. when he remonstrated with her--not for having bought the things, but for having said nothing to him about the moneys being owing--ellen met him with hysteria and there was a scene. she had now pretty well forgotten the hard times she had known when she had been on her own resources and reproached him downright with having married her--on that moment the scales fell from ernest's eyes as they had fallen when towneley had said, "no, no, no." he said nothing, but he woke up once for all to the fact that he had made a mistake in marrying. a touch had again come which had revealed him to himself. he went upstairs to the disused citadel, flung himself into the arm-chair, and covered his face with his hands. he still did not know that his wife drank, but he could no longer trust her, and his dream of happiness was over. he had been saved from the church--so as by fire, but still saved--but what could now save him from his marriage? he had made the same mistake that he had made in wedding himself to the church, but with a hundred times worse results. he had learnt nothing by experience: he was an esau--one of those wretches whose hearts the lord had hardened, who, having ears, heard not, having eyes saw not, and who should find no place for repentance though they sought it even with tears. yet had he not on the whole tried to find out what the ways of god were, and to follow them in singleness of heart? to a certain extent, yes; but he had not been thorough; he had not given up all for god. he knew that very well he had done little as compared with what he might and ought to have done, but still if he was being punished for this, god was a hard taskmaster, and one, too, who was continually pouncing out upon his unhappy creatures from ambuscades. in marrying ellen he had meant to avoid a life of sin, and to take the course he believed to be moral and right. with his antecedents and surroundings it was the most natural thing in the world for him to have done, yet in what a frightful position had not his morality landed him. could any amount of immorality have placed him in a much worse one? what was morality worth if it was not that which on the whole brought a man peace at the last, and could anyone have reasonable certainty that marriage would do this? it seemed to him that in his attempt to be moral he had been following a devil which had disguised itself as an angel of light. but if so, what ground was there on which a man might rest the sole of his foot and tread in reasonable safety? he was still too young to reach the answer, "on common sense"--an answer which he would have felt to be unworthy of anyone who had an ideal standard. however this might be, it was plain that he had now done for himself. it had been thus with him all his life. if there had come at any time a gleam of sunshine and hope, it was to be obscured immediately--why, prison was happier than this! there, at any rate, he had had no money anxieties, and these were beginning to weigh upon him now with all their horrors. he was happier even now than he had been at battersby or at roughborough, and he would not now go back, even if he could, to his cambridge life, but for all that the outlook was so gloomy, in fact so hopeless, that he felt as if he could have only too gladly gone to sleep and died in his arm-chair once for all. as he was musing thus and looking upon the wreck of his hopes--for he saw well enough that as long as he was linked to ellen he should never rise as he had dreamed of doing--he heard a noise below, and presently a neighbour ran upstairs and entered his room hurriedly-- "good gracious, mr pontifex," she exclaimed, "for goodness' sake come down quickly and help. o mrs pontifex is took with the horrors--and she's orkard." the unhappy man came down as he was bid and found his wife mad with _delirium tremens_. he knew all now. the neighbours thought he must have known that his wife drank all along, but ellen had been so artful, and he so simple, that, as i have said, he had had no suspicion. "why," said the woman who had summoned him, "she'll drink anything she can stand up and pay her money for." ernest could hardly believe his ears, but when the doctor had seen his wife and she had become more quiet, he went over to the public house hard by and made enquiries, the result of which rendered further doubt impossible. the publican took the opportunity to present my hero with a bill of several pounds for bottles of spirits supplied to his wife, and what with his wife's confinement and the way business had fallen off, he had not the money to pay with, for the sum exceeded the remnant of his savings. he came to me--not for money, but to tell me his miserable story. i had seen for some time that there was something wrong, and had suspected pretty shrewdly what the matter was, but of course i said nothing. ernest and i had been growing apart for some time. i was vexed at his having married, and he knew i was vexed, though i did my best to hide it. a man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage--but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends. the rift in friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the marriage of either of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no less invariably does, into the great gulf which is fixed between the married and the unmarried, and i was beginning to leave my _protege_ to a fate with which i had neither right nor power to meddle. in fact i had begun to feel him rather a burden; i did not so much mind this when i could be of use, but i grudged it when i could be of none. he had made his bed and he must lie upon it. ernest had felt all this and had seldom come near me till now, one evening late in , he called on me, and with a very woebegone face told me his troubles. as soon as i found that he no longer liked his wife i forgave him at once, and was as much interested in him as ever. there is nothing an old bachelor likes better than to find a young married man who wishes he had not got married--especially when the case is such an extreme one that he need not pretend to hope that matters will come all right again, or encourage his young friend to make the best of it. i was myself in favour of a separation, and said i would make ellen an allowance myself--of course intending that it should come out of ernest's money; but he would not hear of this. he had married ellen, he said, and he must try to reform her. he hated it, but he must try; and finding him as usual very obstinate i was obliged to acquiesce, though with little confidence as to the result. i was vexed at seeing him waste himself upon such a barren task, and again began to feel him burdensome. i am afraid i showed this, for he again avoided me for some time, and, indeed, for many months i hardly saw him at all. ellen remained very ill for some days, and then gradually recovered. ernest hardly left her till she was out of danger. when she had recovered he got the doctor to tell her that if she had such another attack she would certainly die; this so frightened her that she took the pledge. then he became more hopeful again. when she was sober she was just what she was during the first days of her married life, and so quick was he to forget pain, that after a few days he was as fond of her as ever. but ellen could not forgive him for knowing what he did. she knew that he was on the watch to shield her from temptation, and though he did his best to make her think that he had no further uneasiness about her, she found the burden of her union with respectability grow more and more heavy upon her, and looked back more and more longingly upon the lawless freedom of the life she had led before she met her husband. i will dwell no longer on this part of my story. during the spring months of she kept straight--she had had her fling of dissipation, and this, together with the impression made upon her by her having taken the pledge, tamed her for a while. the shop went fairly well, and enabled ernest to make the two ends meet. in the spring and summer of he even put by a little money again. in the autumn his wife was confined of a boy--a very fine one, so everyone said. she soon recovered, and ernest was beginning to breathe freely and be almost sanguine when, without a word of warning, the storm broke again. he returned one afternoon about two years after his marriage, and found his wife lying upon the floor insensible. from this time he became hopeless, and began to go visibly down hill. he had been knocked about too much, and the luck had gone too long against him. the wear and tear of the last three years had told on him, and though not actually ill he was overworked, below par, and unfit for any further burden. he struggled for a while to prevent himself from finding this out, but facts were too strong for him. again he called on me and told me what had happened. i was glad the crisis had come; i was sorry for ellen, but a complete separation from her was the only chance for her husband. even after this last outbreak he was unwilling to consent to this, and talked nonsense about dying at his post, till i got tired of him. each time i saw him the old gloom had settled more and more deeply upon his face, and i had about made up my mind to put an end to the situation by a _coup de main_, such as bribing ellen to run away with somebody else, or something of that kind, when matters settled themselves as usual in a way which i had not anticipated. chapter lxxvi the winter had been a trying one. ernest had only paid his way by selling his piano. with this he seemed to cut away the last link that connected him with his earlier life, and to sink once for all into the small shop-keeper. it seemed to him that however low he might sink his pain could not last much longer, for he should simply die if it did. he hated ellen now, and the pair lived in open want of harmony with each other. if it had not been for his children, he would have left her and gone to america, but he could not leave the children with ellen, and as for taking them with him he did not know how to do it, nor what to do with them when he had got them to america. if he had not lost energy he would probably in the end have taken the children and gone off, but his nerve was shaken, so day after day went by and nothing was done. he had only got a few shillings in the world now, except the value of his stock, which was very little; he could get perhaps or pounds by selling his music and what few pictures and pieces of furniture still belonged to him. he thought of trying to live by his pen, but his writing had dropped off long ago; he no longer had an idea in his head. look which way he would he saw no hope; the end, if it had not actually come, was within easy distance and he was almost face to face with actual want. when he saw people going about poorly clad, or even without shoes and stockings, he wondered whether within a few months' time he too should not have to go about in this way. the remorseless, resistless hand of fate had caught him in its grip and was dragging him down, down, down. still he staggered on, going his daily rounds, buying second-hand clothes, and spending his evenings in cleaning and mending them. one morning, as he was returning from a house at the west end where he had bought some clothes from one of the servants, he was struck by a small crowd which had gathered round a space that had been railed off on the grass near one of the paths in the green park. it was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of march, and unusually balmy for the time of year; even ernest's melancholy was relieved for a while by the look of spring that pervaded earth and sky; but it soon returned, and smiling sadly he said to himself: "it may bring hope to others, but for me there can be no hope henceforth." as these words were in his mind he joined the small crowd who were gathered round the railings, and saw that they were looking at three sheep with very small lambs only a day or two old, which had been penned off for shelter and protection from the others that ranged the park. they were very pretty, and londoners so seldom get a chance of seeing lambs that it was no wonder every one stopped to look at them. ernest observed that no one seemed fonder of them than a great lubberly butcher boy, who leaned up against the railings with a tray of meat upon his shoulder. he was looking at this boy and smiling at the grotesqueness of his admiration, when he became aware that he was being watched intently by a man in coachman's livery, who had also stopped to admire the lambs, and was leaning against the opposite side of the enclosure. ernest knew him in a moment as john, his father's old coachman at battersby, and went up to him at once. "why, master ernest," said he, with his strong northern accent, "i was thinking of you only this very morning," and the pair shook hands heartily. john was in an excellent place at the west end. he had done very well, he said, ever since he had left battersby, except for the first year or two, and that, he said, with a screw of the face, had well nigh broke him. ernest asked how this was. "why, you see," said john, "i was always main fond of that lass ellen, whom you remember running after, master ernest, and giving your watch to. i expect you haven't forgotten that day, have you?" and here he laughed. "i don't know as i be the father of the child she carried away with her from battersby, but i very easily may have been. anyhow, after i had left your papa's place a few days i wrote to ellen to an address we had agreed upon, and told her i would do what i ought to do, and so i did, for i married her within a month afterwards. why, lord love the man, whatever is the matter with him?"--for as he had spoken the last few words of his story ernest had turned white as a sheet, and was leaning against the railings. "john," said my hero, gasping for breath, "are you sure of what you say--are you quite sure you really married her?" "of course i am," said john, "i married her before the registrar at letchbury on the th of august . "give me your arm," said ernest, "and take me into piccadilly, and put me into a cab, and come with me at once, if you can spare time, to mr overton's at the temple." chapter lxxvii i do not think ernest himself was much more pleased at finding that he had never been married than i was. to him, however, the shock of pleasure was positively numbing in its intensity. as he felt his burden removed, he reeled for the unaccustomed lightness of his movements; his position was so shattered that his identity seemed to have been shattered also; he was as one waking up from a horrible nightmare to find himself safe and sound in bed, but who can hardly even yet believe that the room is not full of armed men who are about to spring upon him. "and it is i," he said, "who not an hour ago complained that i was without hope. it is i, who for weeks have been railing at fortune, and saying that though she smiled on others she never smiled at me. why, never was anyone half so fortunate as i am." "yes," said i, "you have been inoculated for marriage, and have recovered." "and yet," he said, "i was very fond of her till she took to drinking." "perhaps; but is it not tennyson who has said: ''tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all'?" "you are an inveterate bachelor," was the rejoinder. then we had a long talk with john, to whom i gave a pound note upon the spot. he said, "ellen had used to drink at battersby; the cook had taught her; he had known it, but was so fond of her, that he had chanced it and married her to save her from the streets and in the hope of being able to keep her straight. she had done with him just as she had done with ernest--made him an excellent wife as long as she kept sober, but a very bad one afterwards." "there isn't," said john, "a sweeter-tempered, handier, prettier girl than she was in all england, nor one as knows better what a man likes, and how to make him happy, if you can keep her from drink; but you can't keep her; she's that artful she'll get it under your very eyes, without you knowing it. if she can't get any more of your things to pawn or sell, she'll steal her neighbours'. that's how she got into trouble first when i was with her. during the six months she was in prison i should have felt happy if i had not known she would come out again. and then she did come out, and before she had been free a fortnight, she began shop-lifting and going on the loose again--and all to get money to drink with. so seeing i could do nothing with her and that she was just a-killing of me, i left her, and came up to london, and went into service again, and i did not know what had become of her till you and mr ernest here told me. i hope you'll neither of you say you've seen me." we assured him we would keep his counsel, and then he left us, with many protestations of affection towards ernest, to whom he had been always much attached. we talked the situation over, and decided first to get the children away, and then to come to terms with ellen concerning their future custody; as for herself, i proposed that we should make her an allowance of, say, a pound a week to be paid so long as she gave no trouble. ernest did not see where the pound a week was to come from, so i eased his mind by saying i would pay it myself. before the day was two hours older we had got the children, about whom ellen had always appeared to be indifferent, and had confided them to the care of my laundress, a good motherly sort of woman, who took to them and to whom they took at once. then came the odious task of getting rid of their unhappy mother. ernest's heart smote him at the notion of the shock the break-up would be to her. he was always thinking that people had a claim upon him for some inestimable service they had rendered him, or for some irreparable mischief done to them by himself; the case however was so clear, that ernest's scruples did not offer serious resistance. i did not see why he should have the pain of another interview with his wife, so i got mr ottery to manage the whole business. it turned out that we need not have harrowed ourselves so much about the agony of mind which ellen would suffer on becoming an outcast again. ernest saw mrs richards, the neighbour who had called him down on the night when he had first discovered his wife's drunkenness, and got from her some details of ellen's opinions upon the matter. she did not seem in the least conscience-stricken; she said: "thank goodness, at last!" and although aware that her marriage was not a valid one, evidently regarded this as a mere detail which it would not be worth anybody's while to go into more particularly. as regards his breaking with her, she said it was a good job both for him and for her. "this life," she continued, "don't suit me. ernest is too good for me; he wants a woman as shall be a bit better than me, and i want a man that shall be a bit worse than him. we should have got on all very well if we had not lived together as married folks, but i've been used to have a little place of my own, however small, for a many years, and i don't want ernest, or any other man, always hanging about it. besides he is too steady: his being in prison hasn't done him a bit of good--he's just as grave as those as have never been in prison at all, and he never swears nor curses, come what may; it makes me afeared of him, and therefore i drink the worse. what us poor girls wants is not to be jumped up all of a sudden and made honest women of; this is too much for us and throws us off our perch; what we wants is a regular friend or two, who'll just keep us from starving, and force us to be good for a bit together now and again. that's about as much as we can stand. he may have the children; he can do better for them than i can; and as for his money, he may give it or keep it as he likes, he's never done me any harm, and i shall let him alone; but if he means me to have it, i suppose i'd better have it."--and have it she did. "and i," thought ernest to himself again when the arrangement was concluded, "am the man who thought himself unlucky!" i may as well say here all that need be said further about ellen. for the next three years she used to call regularly at mr ottery's every monday morning for her pound. she was always neatly dressed, and looked so quiet and pretty that no one would have suspected her antecedents. at first she wanted sometimes to anticipate, but after three or four ineffectual attempts--on each of which occasions she told a most pitiful story--she gave it up and took her money regularly without a word. once she came with a bad black eye, "which a boy had throwed a stone and hit her by mistake"; but on the whole she looked pretty much the same at the end of the three years as she had done at the beginning. then she explained that she was going to be married again. mr ottery saw her on this, and pointed out to her that she would very likely be again committing bigamy by doing so. "you may call it what you like," she replied, "but i am going off to america with bill the butcher's man, and we hope mr pontifex won't be too hard on us and stop the allowance." ernest was little likely to do this, so the pair went in peace. i believe it was bill who had blacked her eye, and she liked him all the better for it. from one or two little things i have been able to gather that the couple got on very well together, and that in bill she has found a partner better suited to her than either john or ernest. on his birthday ernest generally receives an envelope with an american post-mark containing a book-marker with a flaunting text upon it, or a moral kettle-holder, or some other similar small token of recognition, but no letter. of the children she has taken no notice. chapter lxxviii ernest was now well turned twenty-six years old, and in little more than another year and a half would come into possession of his money. i saw no reason for letting him have it earlier than the date fixed by miss pontifex herself; at the same time i did not like his continuing the shop at blackfriars after the present crisis. it was not till now that i fully understood how much he had suffered, nor how nearly his supposed wife's habits had brought him to actual want. i had indeed noted the old wan worn look settling upon his face, but was either too indolent or too hopeless of being able to sustain a protracted and successful warfare with ellen to extend the sympathy and make the inquiries which i suppose i ought to have made. and yet i hardly know what i could have done, for nothing short of his finding out what he had found out would have detached him from his wife, and nothing could do him much good as long as he continued to live with her. after all i suppose i was right; i suppose things did turn out all the better in the end for having been left to settle themselves--at any rate whether they did or did not, the whole thing was in too great a muddle for me to venture to tackle it so long as ellen was upon the scene; now, however, that she was removed, all my interest in my godson revived, and i turned over many times in my mind, what i had better do with him. it was now three and a half years since he had come up to london and begun to live, so to speak, upon his own account. of these years, six months had been spent as a clergyman, six months in gaol, and for two and a half years he had been acquiring twofold experience in the ways of business and of marriage. he had failed, i may say, in everything that he had undertaken, even as a prisoner; yet his defeats had been always, as it seemed to me, something so like victories, that i was satisfied of his being worth all the pains i could bestow upon him; my only fear was lest i should meddle with him when it might be better for him to be let alone. on the whole i concluded that a three and a half years' apprenticeship to a rough life was enough; the shop had done much for him; it had kept him going after a fashion, when he was in great need; it had thrown him upon his own resources, and taught him to see profitable openings all around him, where a few months before he would have seen nothing but insuperable difficulties; it had enlarged his sympathies by making him understand the lower classes, and not confining his view of life to that taken by gentlemen only. when he went about the streets and saw the books outside the second-hand book-stalls, the bric-a-brac in the curiosity shops, and the infinite commercial activity which is omnipresent around us, he understood it and sympathised with it as he could never have done if he had not kept a shop himself. he has often told me that when he used to travel on a railway that overlooked populous suburbs, and looked down upon street after street of dingy houses, he used to wonder what kind of people lived in them, what they did and felt, and how far it was like what he did and felt himself. now, he said he knew all about it. i am not very familiar with the writer of the odyssey (who, by the way, i suspect strongly of having been a clergyman), but he assuredly hit the right nail on the head when he epitomised his typical wise man as knowing "the ways and farings of many men." what culture is comparable to this? what a lie, what a sickly debilitating debauch did not ernest's school and university career now seem to him, in comparison with his life in prison and as a tailor in blackfriars. i have heard him say he would have gone through all he had suffered if it were only for the deeper insight it gave him into the spirit of the grecian and the surrey pantomimes. what confidence again in his own power to swim if thrown into deep waters had not he won through his experiences during the last three years! but, as i have said, i thought my godson had now seen as much of the under currents of life as was likely to be of use to him, and that it was time he began to live in a style more suitable to his prospects. his aunt had wished him to kiss the soil, and he had kissed it with a vengeance; but i did not like the notion of his coming suddenly from the position of a small shop-keeper to that of a man with an income of between three and four thousand a year. too sudden a jump from bad fortune to good is just as dangerous as one from good to bad; besides, poverty is very wearing; it is a quasi-embryonic condition, through which a man had better pass if he is to hold his later developments securely, but like measles or scarlet fever he had better have it mildly and get it over early. no man is safe from losing every penny he has in the world, unless he has had his facer. how often do i not hear middle-aged women and quiet family men say that they have no speculative tendency; _they_ never had touched, and never would touch, any but the very soundest, best reputed investments, and as for unlimited liability, oh dear! dear! and they throw up their hands and eyes. whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognised as the easy prey of the first adventurer who comes across him; he will commonly, indeed, wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of all his natural caution, and his well knowing how foolish speculation is, yet there are some investments which are called speculative but in reality are not so, and he will pull out of his pocket the prospectus of a cornish gold mine. it is only on having actually lost money that one realises what an awful thing the loss of it is, and finds out how easily it is lost by those who venture out of the middle of the most beaten path. ernest had had his facer, as he had had his attack of poverty, young, and sufficiently badly for a sensible man to be little likely to forget it. i can fancy few pieces of good fortune greater than this as happening to any man, provided, of course, that he is not damaged irretrievably. so strongly do i feel on this subject that if i had my way i would have a speculation master attached to every school. the boys would be encouraged to read the _money market review_, the _railway news_, and all the best financial papers, and should establish a stock exchange amongst themselves in which pence should stand as pounds. then let them see how this making haste to get rich moneys out in actual practice. there might be a prize awarded by the head-master to the most prudent dealer, and the boys who lost their money time after time should be dismissed. of course if any boy proved to have a genius for speculation and made money--well and good, let him speculate by all means. if universities were not the worst teachers in the world i should like to see professorships of speculation established at oxford and cambridge. when i reflect, however, that the only things worth doing which oxford and cambridge can do well are cooking, cricket, rowing and games, of which there is no professorship, i fear that the establishment of a professorial chair would end in teaching young men neither how to speculate, nor how not to speculate, but would simply turn them out as bad speculators. i heard of one case in which a father actually carried my idea into practice. he wanted his son to learn how little confidence was to be placed in glowing prospectuses and flaming articles, and found him five hundred pounds which he was to invest according to his lights. the father expected he would lose the money; but it did not turn out so in practice, for the boy took so much pains and played so cautiously that the money kept growing and growing till the father took it away again, increment and all--as he was pleased to say, in self defence. i had made my own mistakes with money about the year , when everyone else was making them. for a few years i had been so scared and had suffered so severely, that when (owing to the good advice of the broker who had advised my father and grandfather before me) i came out in the end a winner and not a loser, i played no more pranks, but kept henceforward as nearly in the middle of the middle rut as i could. i tried in fact to keep my money rather than to make more of it. i had done with ernest's money as with my own--that is to say i had let it alone after investing it in midland ordinary stock according to miss pontifex's instructions. no amount of trouble would have been likely to have increased my godson's estate one half so much as it had increased without my taking any trouble at all. midland stock at the end of august , when i sold out miss pontifex's debentures, stood at pounds per pounds. i invested the whole of ernest's , pounds at this price, and did not change the investment till a few months before the time of which i have been writing lately--that is to say until september . i then sold at pounds per share and invested in london and north-western ordinary stock, which i was advised was more likely to rise than midlands now were. i bought the london and north-western stock at pounds per pounds, and my godson now in still holds it. the original , pounds had increased in eleven years to over , pounds; the accumulated interest, which, of course, i had re-invested, had come to about , pounds more, so that ernest was then worth over , pounds. at present he is worth nearly double that sum, and all as the result of leaving well alone. large as his property now was, it ought to be increased still further during the year and a half that remained of his minority, so that on coming of age he ought to have an income of at least pounds a year. i wished him to understand book-keeping by double entry. i had myself as a young man been compelled to master this not very difficult art; having acquired it, i have become enamoured of it, and consider it the most necessary branch of any young man's education after reading and writing. i was determined, therefore, that ernest should master it, and proposed that he should become my steward, book-keeper, and the manager of my hoardings, for so i called the sum which my ledger showed to have accumulated from , to , pounds. i told him i was going to begin to spend the income as soon as it had amounted up to , pounds. a few days after ernest's discovery that he was still a bachelor, while he was still at the very beginning of the honeymoon, as it were, of his renewed unmarried life, i broached my scheme, desired him to give up his shop, and offered him pounds a year for managing (so far indeed as it required any managing) his own property. this pounds a year, i need hardly say, i made him charge to the estate. if anything had been wanting to complete his happiness it was this. here, within three or four days he found himself freed from one of the most hideous, hopeless _liaisons_ imaginable, and at the same time raised from a life of almost squalor to the enjoyment of what would to him be a handsome income. "a pound a week," he thought, "for ellen, and the rest for myself." "no," said i, "we will charge ellen's pound a week to the estate also. you must have a clear pounds for yourself." i fixed upon this sum, because it was the one which mr disraeli gave coningsby when coningsby was at the lowest ebb of his fortunes. mr disraeli evidently thought pounds a year the smallest sum on which coningsby could be expected to live, and make the two ends meet; with this, however, he thought his hero could manage to get along for a year or two. in , of which i am now writing, prices had risen, though not so much as they have since done; on the other hand ernest had had less expensive antecedents than coningsby, so on the whole i thought pounds a year would be about the right thing for him. chapter lxxix the question now arose what was to be done with the children. i explained to ernest that their expenses must be charged to the estate, and showed him how small a hole all the various items i proposed to charge would make in the income at my disposal. he was beginning to make difficulties, when i quieted him by pointing out that the money had all come to me from his aunt, over his own head, and reminded him there had been an understanding between her and me that i should do much as i was doing, if occasion should arise. he wanted his children to be brought up in the fresh pure air, and among other children who were happy and contented; but being still ignorant of the fortune that awaited him, he insisted that they should pass their earlier years among the poor rather than the rich. i remonstrated, but he was very decided about it; and when i reflected that they were illegitimate, i was not sure but that what ernest proposed might be as well for everyone in the end. they were still so young that it did not much matter where they were, so long as they were with kindly decent people, and in a healthy neighbourhood. "i shall be just as unkind to my children," he said, "as my grandfather was to my father, or my father to me. if they did not succeed in making their children love them, neither shall i. i say to myself that i should like to do so, but so did they. i can make sure that they shall not know how much they would have hated me if they had had much to do with me, but this is all i can do. if i must ruin their prospects, let me do so at a reasonable time before they are old enough to feel it." he mused a little and added with a laugh:-- "a man first quarrels with his father about three-quarters of a year before he is born. it is then he insists on setting up a separate establishment; when this has been once agreed to, the more complete the separation for ever after the better for both." then he said more seriously: "i want to put the children where they will be well and happy, and where they will not be betrayed into the misery of false expectations." in the end he remembered that on his sunday walks he had more than once seen a couple who lived on the waterside a few miles below gravesend, just where the sea was beginning, and who he thought would do. they had a family of their own fast coming on and the children seemed to thrive; both father and mother indeed were comfortable well grown folks, in whose hands young people would be likely to have as fair a chance of coming to a good development as in those of any whom he knew. we went down to see this couple, and as i thought no less well of them than ernest did, we offered them a pound a week to take the children and bring them up as though they were their own. they jumped at the offer, and in another day or two we brought the children down and left them, feeling that we had done as well as we could by them, at any rate for the present. then ernest sent his small stock of goods to debenham's, gave up the house he had taken two and a half years previously, and returned to civilisation. i had expected that he would now rapidly recover, and was disappointed to see him get as i thought decidedly worse. indeed, before long i thought him looking so ill that i insisted on his going with me to consult one of the most eminent doctors in london. this gentleman said there was no acute disease but that my young friend was suffering from nervous prostration, the result of long and severe mental suffering, from which there was no remedy except time, prosperity and rest. he said that ernest must have broken down later on, but that he might have gone on for some months yet. it was the suddenness of the relief from tension which had knocked him over now. "cross him," said the doctor, "at once. crossing is the great medical discovery of the age. shake him out of himself by shaking something else into him." i had not told him that money was no object to us and i think he had reckoned me up as not over rich. he continued:-- "seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode of feeding, feeding is a mode of assimilation, assimilation is a mode of recreation and reproduction, and this is crossing--shaking yourself into something else and something else into you." he spoke laughingly, but it was plain he was serious. he continued:-- "people are always coming to me who want crossing, or change, if you prefer it, and who i know have not money enough to let them get away from london. this has set me thinking how i can best cross them even if they cannot leave home, and i have made a list of cheap london amusements which i recommend to my patients; none of them cost more than a few shillings or take more than half a day or a day." i explained that there was no occasion to consider money in this case. "i am glad of it," he said, still laughing. "the homoeopathists use _aurum_ as a medicine, but they do not give it in large doses enough; if you can dose your young friend with this pretty freely you will soon bring him round. however, mr pontifex is not well enough to stand so great a change as going abroad yet; from what you tell me i should think he had had as much change lately as is good for him. if he were to go abroad now he would probably be taken seriously ill within a week. we must wait till he has recovered tone a little more. i will begin by ringing my london changes on him." he thought a little and then said:-- "i have found the zoological gardens of service to many of my patients. i should prescribe for mr pontifex a course of the larger mammals. don't let him think he is taking them medicinally, but let him go to their house twice a week for a fortnight, and stay with the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and the elephants, till they begin to bore him. i find these beasts do my patients more good than any others. the monkeys are not a wide enough cross; they do not stimulate sufficiently. the larger carnivora are unsympathetic. the reptiles are worse than useless, and the marsupials are not much better. birds again, except parrots, are not very beneficial; he may look at them now and again, but with the elephants and the pig tribe generally he should mix just now as freely as possible. "then, you know, to prevent monotony i should send him, say, to morning service at the abbey before he goes. he need not stay longer than the _te deum_. i don't know why, but _jubilates_ are seldom satisfactory. just let him look in at the abbey, and sit quietly in poets' corner till the main part of the music is over. let him do this two or three times, not more, before he goes to the zoo. "then next day send him down to gravesend by boat. by all means let him go to the theatres in the evenings--and then let him come to me again in a fortnight." had the doctor been less eminent in his profession i should have doubted whether he was in earnest, but i knew him to be a man of business who would neither waste his own time nor that of his patients. as soon as we were out of the house we took a cab to regent's park, and spent a couple of hours in sauntering round the different houses. perhaps it was on account of what the doctor had told me, but i certainly became aware of a feeling i had never experienced before. i mean that i was receiving an influx of new life, or deriving new ways of looking at life--which is the same thing--by the process. i found the doctor quite right in his estimate of the larger mammals as the ones which on the whole were most beneficial, and observed that ernest, who had heard nothing of what the doctor had said to me, lingered instinctively in front of them. as for the elephants, especially the baby elephant, he seemed to be drinking in large draughts of their lives to the re-creation and regeneration of his own. we dined in the gardens, and i noticed with pleasure that ernest's appetite was already improved. since this time, whenever i have been a little out of sorts myself i have at once gone up to regent's park, and have invariably been benefited. i mention this here in the hope that some one or other of my readers may find the hint a useful one. at the end of his fortnight my hero was much better, more so even than our friend the doctor had expected. "now," he said, "mr pontifex may go abroad, and the sooner the better. let him stay a couple of months." this was the first ernest had heard about his going abroad, and he talked about my not being able to spare him for so long. i soon made this all right. "it is now the beginning of april," said i, "go down to marseilles at once, and take steamer to nice. then saunter down the riviera to genoa--from genoa go to florence, rome and naples, and come home by way of venice and the italian lakes." "and won't you come too?" said he, eagerly. i said i did not mind if i did, so we began to make our arrangements next morning, and completed them within a very few days. chapter lxxx we left by the night mail, crossing from dover. the night was soft, and there was a bright moon upon the sea. "don't you love the smell of grease about the engine of a channel steamer? isn't there a lot of hope in it?" said ernest to me, for he had been to normandy one summer as a boy with his father and mother, and the smell carried him back to days before those in which he had begun to bruise himself against the great outside world. "i always think one of the best parts of going abroad is the first thud of the piston, and the first gurgling of the water when the paddle begins to strike it." it was very dreamy getting out at calais, and trudging about with luggage in a foreign town at an hour when we were generally both of us in bed and fast asleep, but we settled down to sleep as soon as we got into the railway carriage, and dozed till we had passed amiens. then waking when the first signs of morning crispness were beginning to show themselves, i saw that ernest was already devouring every object we passed with quick sympathetic curiousness. there was not a peasant in a blouse driving his cart betimes along the road to market, not a signalman's wife in her husband's hat and coat waving a green flag, not a shepherd taking out his sheep to the dewy pastures, not a bank of opening cowslips as we passed through the railway cuttings, but he was drinking it all in with an enjoyment too deep for words. the name of the engine that drew us was mozart, and ernest liked this too. we reached paris by six, and had just time to get across the town and take a morning express train to marseilles, but before noon my young friend was tired out and had resigned himself to a series of sleeps which were seldom intermitted for more than an hour or so together. he fought against this for a time, but in the end consoled himself by saying it was so nice to have so much pleasure that he could afford to throw a lot of it away. having found a theory on which to justify himself, he slept in peace. at marseilles we rested, and there the excitement of the change proved, as i had half feared it would, too much for my godson's still enfeebled state. for a few days he was really ill, but after this he righted. for my own part i reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. i remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how much i enjoyed it. to lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, and with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion rinsed them and put them by; to watch the soft shadows come and go upon the ceiling as the sun came out or went behind a cloud; to listen to the pleasant murmuring of the fountain in the court below, and the shaking of the bells on the horses' collars and the clink of their hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus- eater. "oh," i thought to myself, "if i could only now, having so forgotten care, drop off to sleep for ever, would not this be a better piece of fortune than any i can ever hope for?" of course it would, but we would not take it though it were offered us. no matter what evil may befall us, we will mostly abide by it and see it out. i could see that ernest felt much as i had felt myself. he said little, but noted everything. once only did he frighten me. he called me to his bedside just as it was getting dusk and said in a grave, quiet manner that he should like to speak to me. "i have been thinking," he said, "that i may perhaps never recover from this illness, and in case i do not i should like you to know that there is only one thing which weighs upon me. i refer," he continued after a slight pause, "to my conduct towards my father and mother. i have been much too good to them. i treated them much too considerately," on which he broke into a smile which assured me that there was nothing seriously amiss with him. on the walls of his bedroom were a series of french revolution prints representing events in the life of lycurgus. there was "grandeur d'ame de lycurgue," and "lycurgue consulte l'oracle," and then there was "calciope a la cour." under this was written in french and spanish: "modele de grace et de beaute, la jeune calciope non moins sage que belle avait merite l'estime et l'attachement du vertueux lycurgue. vivement epris de tant de charmes, l'illustre philosophe la conduisait dans le temple de junon, ou ils s'unirent par un serment sacre. apres cette auguste ceremonie, lycurgue s'empressa de conduire sa jeune epouse au palais de son frere polydecte, roi de lacedemon. seigneur, lui dit-il, la vertueuse calciope vient de recevoir mes voeux aux pieds des autels, j'ose vous prier d'approuver cette union. le roi temoigna d'abord quelque surprise, mais l'estime qu'il avait pour son frere lui inspira une reponse pleine de beinveillance. il s'approcha aussitot de calciope qu'il embrassa tendrement, combla ensuite lycurgue de prevenances et parut tres satisfait." he called my attention to this and then said somewhat timidly that he would rather have married ellen than calciope. i saw he was hardening and made no hesitation about proposing that in another day or two we should proceed upon our journey. i will not weary the reader by taking him with us over beaten ground. we stopped at siena, cortona, orvieto, perugia and many other cities, and then after a fortnight passed between rome and naples went to the venetian provinces and visited all those wondrous towns that lie between the southern slopes of the alps and the northern ones of the apennines, coming back at last by the s. gothard. i doubt whether he had enjoyed the trip more than i did myself, but it was not till we were on the point of returning that ernest had recovered strength enough to be called fairly well, and it was not for many months that he so completely lost all sense of the wounds which the last four years had inflicted on him as to feel as though there were a scar and a scar only remaining. they say that when people have lost an arm or a foot they feel pains in it now and again for a long while after they have lost it. one pain which he had almost forgotten came upon him on his return to england, i mean the sting of his having been imprisoned. as long as he was only a small shop-keeper his imprisonment mattered nothing; nobody knew of it, and if they had known they would not have cared; now, however, though he was returning to his old position he was returning to it disgraced, and the pain from which he had been saved in the first instance by surroundings so new that he had hardly recognised his own identity in the middle of them, came on him as from a wound inflicted yesterday. he thought of the high resolves which he had made in prison about using his disgrace as a vantage ground of strength rather than trying to make people forget it. "that was all very well then," he thought to himself, "when the grapes were beyond my reach, but now it is different." besides, who but a prig would set himself high aims, or make high resolves at all? some of his old friends, on learning that he had got rid of his supposed wife and was now comfortably off again, wanted to renew their acquaintance; he was grateful to them and sometimes tried to meet their advances half way, but it did not do, and ere long he shrank back into himself, pretending not to know them. an infernal demon of honesty haunted him which made him say to himself: "these men know a great deal, but do not know all--if they did they would cut me--and therefore i have no right to their acquaintance." he thought that everyone except himself was _sans peur et sans reproche_. of course they must be, for if they had not been, would they not have been bound to warn all who had anything to do with them of their deficiencies? well, he could not do this, and he would not have people's acquaintance under false pretences, so he gave up even hankering after rehabilitation and fell back upon his old tastes for music and literature. of course he has long since found out how silly all this was, how silly i mean in theory, for in practice it worked better than it ought to have done, by keeping him free from _liaisons_ which would have tied his tongue and made him see success elsewhere than where he came in time to see it. he did what he did instinctively and for no other reason than because it was most natural to him. so far as he thought at all, he thought wrong, but what he did was right. i said something of this kind to him once not so very long ago, and told him he had always aimed high. "i never aimed at all," he replied a little indignantly, "and you may be sure i should have aimed low enough if i had thought i had got the chance." i suppose after all that no one whose mind was not, to put it mildly, abnormal, ever yet aimed very high out of pure malice aforethought. i once saw a fly alight on a cup of hot coffee on which the milk had formed a thin skin; he perceived his extreme danger, and i noted with what ample strides and almost supermuscan effort he struck across the treacherous surface and made for the edge of the cup--for the ground was not solid enough to let him raise himself from it by his wings. as i watched him i fancied that so supreme a moment of difficulty and danger might leave him with an increase of moral and physical power which might even descend in some measure to his offspring. but surely he would not have got the increased moral power if he could have helped it, and he will not knowingly alight upon another cup of hot coffee. the more i see the more sure i am that it does not matter why people do the right thing so long only as they do it, nor why they may have done the wrong if they have done it. the result depends upon the thing done and the motive goes for nothing. i have read somewhere, but cannot remember where, that in some country district there was once a great scarcity of food, during which the poor suffered acutely; many indeed actually died of starvation, and all were hard put to it. in one village, however, there was a poor widow with a family of young children, who, though she had small visible means of subsistence, still looked well-fed and comfortable, as also did all her little ones. "how," everyone asked, "did they manage to live?" it was plain they had a secret, and it was equally plain that it could be no good one; for there came a hurried, hunted look over the poor woman's face if anyone alluded to the way in which she and hers throve when others starved; the family, moreover, were sometimes seen out at unusual hours of the night, and evidently brought things home, which could hardly have been honestly come by. they knew they were under suspicion, and, being hitherto of excellent name, it made them very unhappy, for it must be confessed that they believed what they did to be uncanny if not absolutely wicked; nevertheless, in spite of this they throve, and kept their strength when all their neighbours were pinched. at length matters came to a head and the clergyman of the parish cross- questioned the poor woman so closely that with many tears and a bitter sense of degradation she confessed the truth; she and her children went into the hedges and gathered snails, which they made into broth and ate--could she ever be forgiven? was there any hope of salvation for her either in this world or the next after such unnatural conduct? so again i have heard of an old dowager countess whose money was all in consols; she had had many sons, and in her anxiety to give the younger ones a good start, wanted a larger income than consols would give her. she consulted her solicitor and was advised to sell her consols and invest in the london and north-western railway, then at about . this was to her what eating snails was to the poor widow whose story i have told above. with shame and grief, as of one doing an unclean thing--but her boys must have their start--she did as she was advised. then for a long while she could not sleep at night and was haunted by a presage of disaster. yet what happened? she started her boys, and in a few years found her capital doubled into the bargain, on which she sold out and went back again to consols and died in the full blessedness of fund-holding. she thought, indeed, that she was doing a wrong and dangerous thing, but this had absolutely nothing to do with it. suppose she had invested in the full confidence of a recommendation by some eminent london banker whose advice was bad, and so had lost all her money, and suppose she had done this with a light heart and with no conviction of sin--would her innocence of evil purpose and the excellence of her motive have stood her in any stead? not they. but to return to my story. towneley gave my hero most trouble. towneley, as i have said, knew that ernest would have money soon, but ernest did not of course know that he knew it. towneley was rich himself, and was married now; ernest would be rich soon, had _bona fide_ intended to be married already, and would doubtless marry a lawful wife later on. such a man was worth taking pains with, and when towneley one day met ernest in the street, and ernest tried to avoid him, towneley would not have it, but with his usual quick good nature read his thoughts, caught him, morally speaking, by the scruff of his neck, and turned him laughingly inside out, telling him he would have no such nonsense. towneley was just as much ernest's idol now as he had ever been, and ernest, who was very easily touched, felt more gratefully and warmly than ever towards him, but there was an unconscious something which was stronger than towneley, and made my hero determine to break with him more determinedly perhaps than with any other living person; he thanked him in a low hurried voice and pressed his hand, while tears came into his eyes in spite of all his efforts to repress them. "if we meet again," he said, "do not look at me, but if hereafter you hear of me writing things you do not like, think of me as charitably as you can," and so they parted. "towneley is a good fellow," said i, gravely, "and you should not have cut him." "towneley," he answered, "is not only a good fellow, but he is without exception the very best man i ever saw in my life--except," he paid me the compliment of saying, "yourself; towneley is my notion of everything which i should most like to be--but there is no real solidarity between us. i should be in perpetual fear of losing his good opinion if i said things he did not like, and i mean to say a great many things," he continued more merrily, "which towneley will not like." a man, as i have said already, can give up father and mother for christ's sake tolerably easily for the most part, but it is not so easy to give up people like towneley. chapter lxxxi so he fell away from all old friends except myself and three or four old intimates of my own, who were as sure to take to him as he to them, and who like myself enjoyed getting hold of a young fresh mind. ernest attended to the keeping of my account books whenever there was anything which could possibly be attended to, which there seldom was, and spent the greater part of the rest of his time in adding to the many notes and tentative essays which had already accumulated in his portfolios. anyone who was used to writing could see at a glance that literature was his natural development, and i was pleased at seeing him settle down to it so spontaneously. i was less pleased, however, to observe that he would still occupy himself with none but the most serious, i had almost said solemn, subjects, just as he never cared about any but the most serious kind of music. i said to him one day that the very slender reward which god had attached to the pursuit of serious inquiry was a sufficient proof that he disapproved of it, or at any rate that he did not set much store by it nor wish to encourage it. he said: "oh, don't talk about rewards. look at milton, who only got pounds for 'paradise lost.'" "and a great deal too much," i rejoined promptly. "i would have given him twice as much myself not to have written it at all." ernest was a little shocked. "at any rate," he said laughingly, "i don't write poetry." this was a cut at me, for my burlesques were, of course, written in rhyme. so i dropped the matter. after a time he took it into his head to reopen the question of his getting pounds a year for doing, as he said, absolutely nothing, and said he would try to find some employment which should bring him in enough to live upon. i laughed at this but let him alone. he tried and tried very hard for a long while, but i need hardly say was unsuccessful. the older i grow, the more convinced i become of the folly and credulity of the public; but at the same time the harder do i see it is to impose oneself upon that folly and credulity. he tried editor after editor with article after article. sometimes an editor listened to him and told him to leave his articles; he almost invariably, however, had them returned to him in the end with a polite note saying that they were not suited for the particular paper to which he had sent them. and yet many of these very articles appeared in his later works, and no one complained of them, not at least on the score of bad literary workmanship. "i see," he said to me one day, "that demand is very imperious, and supply must be very suppliant." once, indeed, the editor of an important monthly magazine accepted an article from him, and he thought he had now got a footing in the literary world. the article was to appear in the next issue but one, and he was to receive proof from the printers in about ten days or a fortnight; but week after week passed and there was no proof; month after month went by and there was still no room for ernest's article; at length after about six months the editor one morning told him that he had filled every number of his review for the next ten months, but that his article should definitely appear. on this he insisted on having his ms. returned to him. sometimes his articles were actually published, and he found the editor had edited them according to his own fancy, putting in jokes which he thought were funny, or cutting out the very passage which ernest had considered the point of the whole thing, and then, though the articles appeared, when it came to paying for them it was another matter, and he never saw his money. "editors," he said to me one day about this time, "are like the people who bought and sold in the book of revelation; there is not one but has the mark of the beast upon him." at last after months of disappointment and many a tedious hour wasted in dingy anterooms (and of all anterooms those of editors appear to me to be the dreariest), he got a _bona fide_ offer of employment from one of the first class weekly papers through an introduction i was able to get for him from one who had powerful influence with the paper in question. the editor sent him a dozen long books upon varied and difficult subjects, and told him to review them in a single article within a week. in one book there was an editorial note to the effect that the writer was to be condemned. ernest particularly admired the book he was desired to condemn, and feeling how hopeless it was for him to do anything like justice to the books submitted to him, returned them to the editor. at last one paper did actually take a dozen or so of articles from him, and gave him cash down a couple of guineas apiece for them, but having done this it expired within a fortnight after the last of ernest's articles had appeared. it certainly looked very much as if the other editors knew their business in declining to have anything to do with my unlucky godson. i was not sorry that he failed with periodical literature, for writing for reviews or newspapers is bad training for one who may aspire to write works of more permanent interest. a young writer should have more time for reflection than he can get as a contributor to the daily or even weekly press. ernest himself, however, was chagrined at finding how unmarketable he was. "why," he said to me, "if i was a well-bred horse, or sheep, or a pure-bred pigeon or lop-eared rabbit i should be more saleable. if i was even a cathedral in a colonial town people would give me something, but as it is they do not want me"; and now that he was well and rested he wanted to set up a shop again, but this, of course, i would not hear of. "what care i," said he to me one day, "about being what they call a gentleman?" and his manner was almost fierce. "what has being a gentleman ever done for me except make me less able to prey and more easy to be preyed upon? it has changed the manner of my being swindled, that is all. but for your kindness to me i should be penniless. thank heaven i have placed my children where i have." i begged him to keep quiet a little longer and not talk about taking a shop. "will being a gentleman," he said, "bring me money at the last, and will anything bring me as much peace at the last as money will? they say that those who have riches enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven. by jove, they do; they are like struldbrugs; they live and live and live and are happy for many a long year after they would have entered into the kingdom of heaven if they had been poor. i want to live long and to raise my children, if i see they would be happier for the raising; that is what i want, and it is not what i am doing now that will help me. being a gentleman is a luxury which i cannot afford, therefore i do not want it. let me go back to my shop again, and do things for people which they want done and will pay me for doing for them. they know what they want and what is good for them better than i can tell them." it was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he had been dependent only on the pounds a year which he was getting from me i should have advised him to open his shop again next morning. as it was, i temporised and raised obstacles, and quieted him from time to time as best i could. of course he read mr darwin's books as fast as they came out and adopted evolution as an article of faith. "it seems to me," he said once, "that i am like one of those caterpillars which, if they have been interrupted in making their hammock, must begin again from the beginning. so long as i went back a long way down in the social scale i got on all right, and should have made money but for ellen; when i try to take up the work at a higher stage i fail completely." i do not know whether the analogy holds good or not, but i am sure ernest's instinct was right in telling him that after a heavy fall he had better begin life again at a very low stage, and as i have just said, i would have let him go back to his shop if i had not known what i did. as the time fixed upon by his aunt drew nearer i prepared him more and more for what was coming, and at last, on his twenty-eighth birthday, i was able to tell him all and to show him the letter signed by his aunt upon her death-bed to the effect that i was to hold the money in trust for him. his birthday happened that year ( ) to be on a sunday, but on the following day i transferred his shares into his own name, and presented him with the account books which he had been keeping for the last year and a half. in spite of all that i had done to prepare him, it was a long while before i could get him actually to believe that the money was his own. he did not say much--no more did i, for i am not sure that i did not feel as much moved at having brought my long trusteeship to a satisfactory conclusion as ernest did at finding himself owner of more than , pounds. when he did speak it was to jerk out a sentence or two of reflection at a time. "if i were rendering this moment in music," he said, "i should allow myself free use of the augmented sixth." a little later i remember his saying with a laugh that had something of a family likeness to his aunt's: "it is not the pleasure it causes me which i enjoy so, it is the pain it will cause to all my friends except yourself and towneley." i said: "you cannot tell your father and mother--it would drive them mad." "no, no, no," said he, "it would be too cruel; it would be like isaac offering up abraham and no thicket with a ram in it near at hand. besides why should i? we have cut each other these four years." chapter lxxxii it almost seemed as though our casual mention of theobald and christina had in some way excited them from a dormant to an active state. during the years that had elapsed since they last appeared upon the scene they had remained at battersby, and had concentrated their affection upon their other children. it had been a bitter pill to theobald to lose his power of plaguing his first-born; if the truth were known i believe he had felt this more acutely than any disgrace which might have been shed upon him by ernest's imprisonment. he had made one or two attempts to reopen negotiations through me, but i never said anything about them to ernest, for i knew it would upset him. i wrote, however, to theobald that i had found his son inexorable, and recommended him for the present, at any rate, to desist from returning to the subject. this i thought would be at once what ernest would like best and theobald least. a few days, however, after ernest had come into his property, i received a letter from theobald enclosing one for ernest which i could not withhold. the letter ran thus:-- "to my son ernest,--although you have more than once rejected my overtures i appeal yet again to your better nature. your mother, who has long been ailing, is, i believe, near her end; she is unable to keep anything on her stomach, and dr martin holds out but little hopes of her recovery. she has expressed a wish to see you, and says she knows you will not refuse to come to her, which, considering her condition, i am unwilling to suppose you will. "i remit you a post office order for your fare, and will pay your return journey. "if you want clothes to come in, order what you consider suitable, and desire that the bill be sent to me; i will pay it immediately, to an amount not exceeding eight or nine pounds, and if you will let me know what train you will come by, i will send the carriage to meet you. believe me, your affectionate father, t. pontifex." of course there could be no hesitation on ernest's part. he could afford to smile now at his father's offering to pay for his clothes, and his sending him a post office order for the exact price of a second-class ticket, and he was of course shocked at learning the state his mother was said to be in, and touched at her desire to see him. he telegraphed that he would come down at once. i saw him a little before he started, and was pleased to see how well his tailor had done by him. towneley himself could not have been appointed more becomingly. his portmanteau, his railway wrapper, everything he had about him, was in keeping. i thought he had grown much better-looking than he had been at two or three and twenty. his year and a half of peace had effaced all the ill effects of his previous suffering, and now that he had become actually rich there was an air of _insouciance_ and good humour upon his face, as of a man with whom everything was going perfectly right, which would have made a much plainer man good-looking. i was proud of him and delighted with him. "i am sure," i said to myself, "that whatever else he may do, he will never marry again." the journey was a painful one. as he drew near to the station and caught sight of each familiar feature, so strong was the force of association that he felt as though his coming into his aunt's money had been a dream, and he were again returning to his father's house as he had returned to it from cambridge for the vacations. do what he would, the old dull weight of _home-sickness_ began to oppress him, his heart beat fast as he thought of his approaching meeting with his father and mother, "and i shall have," he said to himself, "to kiss charlotte." would his father meet him at the station? would he greet him as though nothing had happened, or would he be cold and distant? how, again, would he take the news of his son's good fortune? as the train drew up to the platform, ernest's eye ran hurriedly over the few people who were in the station. his father's well-known form was not among them, but on the other side of the palings which divided the station yard from the platform, he saw the pony carriage, looking, as he thought, rather shabby, and recognised his father's coachman. in a few minutes more he was in the carriage driving towards battersby. he could not help smiling as he saw the coachman give a look of surprise at finding him so much changed in personal appearance. the coachman was the more surprised because when ernest had last been at home he had been dressed as a clergyman, and now he was not only a layman, but a layman who was got up regardless of expense. the change was so great that it was not till ernest actually spoke to him that the coachman knew him. "how are my father and mother?" he asked hurriedly, as he got into the carriage. "the master's well, sir," was the answer, "but the missis is very sadly." the horse knew that he was going home and pulled hard at the reins. the weather was cold and raw--the very ideal of a november day; in one part of the road the floods were out, and near here they had to pass through a number of horsemen and dogs, for the hounds had met that morning at a place near battersby. ernest saw several people whom he knew, but they either, as is most likely, did not recognise him, or did not know of his good luck. when battersby church tower drew near, and he saw the rectory on the top of the hill, its chimneys just showing above the leafless trees with which it was surrounded, he threw himself back in the carriage and covered his face with his hands. it came to an end, as even the worst quarters of an hour do, and in a few minutes more he was on the steps in front of his father's house. his father, hearing the carriage arrive, came a little way down the steps to meet him. like the coachman he saw at a glance that ernest was appointed as though money were abundant with him, and that he was looking robust and full of health and vigour. this was not what he had bargained for. he wanted ernest to return, but he was to return as any respectable, well-regulated prodigal ought to return--abject, broken-hearted, asking forgiveness from the tenderest and most long-suffering father in the whole world. if he should have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all, it should be only because absolute rags and tatters had been graciously dispensed with, whereas here he was swaggering in a grey ulster and a blue and white necktie, and looking better than theobald had ever seen him in his life. it was unprincipled. was it for this that he had been generous enough to offer to provide ernest with decent clothes in which to come and visit his mother's death-bed? could any advantage be meaner than the one which ernest had taken? well, he would not go a penny beyond the eight or nine pounds which he had promised. it was fortunate he had given a limit. why he, theobald, had never been able to afford such a portmanteau in his life. he was still using an old one which his father had turned over to him when he went up to cambridge. besides, he had said clothes, not a portmanteau. ernest saw what was passing through his father's mind, and felt that he ought to have prepared him in some way for what he now saw; but he had sent his telegram so immediately on receiving his father's letter, and had followed it so promptly that it would not have been easy to do so even if he had thought of it. he put out his hand and said laughingly, "oh, it's all paid for--i am afraid you do not know that mr overton has handed over to me aunt alethea's money." theobald flushed scarlet. "but why," he said, and these were the first words that actually crossed his lips--"if the money was not his to keep, did he not hand it over to my brother john and me?" he stammered a good deal and looked sheepish, but he got the words out. "because, my dear father," said ernest still laughing, "my aunt left it to him in trust for me, not in trust either for you or for my uncle john--and it has accumulated till it is now over , pounds. but tell me how is my mother?" "no, ernest," said theobald excitedly, "the matter cannot rest here, i must know that this is all open and above board." this had the true theobald ring and instantly brought the whole train of ideas which in ernest's mind were connected with his father. the surroundings were the old familiar ones, but the surrounded were changed almost beyond power of recognition. he turned sharply on theobald in a moment. i will not repeat the words he used, for they came out before he had time to consider them, and they might strike some of my readers as disrespectful; there were not many of them, but they were effectual. theobald said nothing, but turned almost of an ashen colour; he never again spoke to his son in such a way as to make it necessary for him to repeat what he had said on this occasion. ernest quickly recovered his temper and again asked after his mother. theobald was glad enough to take this opening now, and replied at once in the tone he would have assumed towards one he most particularly desired to conciliate, that she was getting rapidly worse in spite of all he had been able to do for her, and concluded by saying she had been the comfort and mainstay of his life for more than thirty years, but that he could not wish it prolonged. the pair then went upstairs to christina's room, the one in which ernest had been born. his father went before him and prepared her for her son's approach. the poor woman raised herself in bed as he came towards her, and weeping as she flung her arms around him, cried: "oh, i knew he would come, i knew, i knew he could come." ernest broke down and wept as he had not done for years. "oh, my boy, my boy," she said as soon as she could recover her voice. "have you never really been near us for all these years? ah, you do not know how we have loved you and mourned over you, papa just as much as i have. you know he shows his feelings less, but i can never tell you how very, very deeply he has felt for you. sometimes at night i have thought i have heard footsteps in the garden, and have got quietly out of bed lest i should wake him, and gone to the window to look out, but there has been only dark or the greyness of the morning, and i have gone crying back to bed again. still i think you have been near us though you were too proud to let us know--and now at last i have you in my arms once more, my dearest, dearest boy." how cruel, how infamously unfeeling ernest thought he had been. "mother," he said, "forgive me--the fault was mine, i ought not to have been so hard; i was wrong, very wrong"; the poor blubbering fellow meant what he said, and his heart yearned to his mother as he had never thought that it could yearn again. "but have you never," she continued, "come although it was in the dark and we did not know it--oh, let me think that you have not been so cruel as we have thought you. tell me that you came if only to comfort me and make me happier." ernest was ready. "i had no money to come with, mother, till just lately." this was an excuse christina could understand and make allowance for; "oh, then you would have come, and i will take the will for the deed--and now that i have you safe again, say that you will never, never leave me--not till--not till--oh, my boy, have they told you i am dying?" she wept bitterly, and buried her head in her pillow. chapter lxxxiii joey and charlotte were in the room. joey was now ordained, and was curate to theobald. he and ernest had never been sympathetic, and ernest saw at a glance that there was no chance of a _rapprochement_ between them. he was a little startled at seeing joey dressed as a clergyman, and looking so like what he had looked himself a few years earlier, for there was a good deal of family likeness between the pair; but joey's face was cold and was illumined with no spark of bohemianism; he was a clergyman and was going to do as other clergymen did, neither better nor worse. he greeted ernest rather _de haut en bas_, that is to say he began by trying to do so, but the affair tailed off unsatisfactorily. his sister presented her cheek to him to be kissed. how he hated it; he had been dreading it for the last three hours. she, too, was distant and reproachful in her manner, as such a superior person was sure to be. she had a grievance against him inasmuch as she was still unmarried. she laid the blame of this at ernest's door; it was his misconduct she maintained in secret, which had prevented young men from making offers to her, and she ran him up a heavy bill for consequential damages. she and joey had from the first developed an instinct for hunting with the hounds, and now these two had fairly identified themselves with the older generation--that is to say as against ernest. on this head there was an offensive and defensive alliance between them, but between themselves there was subdued but internecine warfare. this at least was what ernest gathered, partly from his recollections of the parties concerned, and partly from his observation of their little ways during the first half-hour after his arrival, while they were all together in his mother's bedroom--for as yet of course they did not know that he had money. he could see that they eyed him from time to time with a surprise not unmixed with indignation, and knew very well what they were thinking. christina saw the change which had come over him--how much firmer and more vigorous both in mind and body he seemed than when she had last seen him. she saw too how well he was dressed, and, like the others, in spite of the return of all her affection for her first-born, was a little alarmed about theobald's pocket, which she supposed would have to be mulcted for all this magnificence. perceiving this, ernest relieved her mind and told her all about his aunt's bequest, and how i had husbanded it, in the presence of his brother and sister--who, however, pretended not to notice, or at any rate to notice as a matter in which they could hardly be expected to take an interest. his mother kicked a little at first against the money's having gone to him as she said "over his papa's head." "why, my dear," she said in a deprecating tone, "this is more than ever your papa has had"; but ernest calmed her by suggesting that if miss pontifex had known how large the sum would become she would have left the greater part of it to theobald. this compromise was accepted by christina who forthwith, ill as she was, entered with ardour into the new position, and taking it as a fresh point of departure, began spending ernest's money for him. i may say in passing that christina was right in saying that theobald had never had so much money as his son was now possessed of. in the first place he had not had a fourteen years' minority with no outgoings to prevent the accumulation of the money, and in the second he, like myself and almost everyone else, had suffered somewhat in the times--not enough to cripple him or even seriously to hurt him, but enough to give him a scare and make him stick to debentures for the rest of his life. it was the fact of his son's being the richer man of the two, and of his being rich so young, which rankled with theobald even more than the fact of his having money at all. if he had had to wait till he was sixty or sixty-five, and become broken down from long failure in the meantime, why then perhaps he might have been allowed to have whatever sum should suffice to keep him out of the workhouse and pay his death-bed expenses; but that he should come in to , pounds at eight and twenty, and have no wife and only two children--it was intolerable. christina was too ill and in too great a hurry to spend the money to care much about such details as the foregoing, and she was naturally much more good-natured than theobald. "this piece of good fortune"--she saw it at a glance--"quite wiped out the disgrace of his having been imprisoned. there should be no more nonsense about that. the whole thing was a mistake, an unfortunate mistake, true, but the less said about it now the better. of course ernest would come back and live at battersby until he was married, and he would pay his father handsomely for board and lodging. in fact it would be only right that theobald should make a profit, nor would ernest himself wish it to be other than a handsome one; this was far the best and simplest arrangement; and he could take his sister out more than theobald or joey cared to do, and would also doubtless entertain very handsomely at battersby. "of course he would buy joey a living, and make large presents yearly to his sister--was there anything else? oh! yes--he would become a county magnate now; a man with nearly pounds a year should certainly become a county magnate. he might even go into parliament. he had very fair abilities, nothing indeed approaching such genius as dr skinner's, nor even as theobald's, still he was not deficient and if he got into parliament--so young too--there was nothing to hinder his being prime minister before he died, and if so, of course, he would become a peer. oh! why did he not set about it all at once, so that she might live to hear people call her son 'my lord'--lord battersby she thought would do very nicely, and if she was well enough to sit he must certainly have her portrait painted at full length for one end of his large dining-hall. it should be exhibited at the royal academy: 'portrait of lord battersby's mother,' she said to herself, and her heart fluttered with all its wonted vivacity. if she could not sit, happily, she had been photographed not so very long ago, and the portrait had been as successful as any photograph could be of a face which depended so entirely upon its expression as her own. perhaps the painter could take the portrait sufficiently from this. it was better after all that ernest had given up the church--how far more wisely god arranges matters for us than ever we can do for ourselves! she saw it all now--it was joey who would become archbishop of canterbury and ernest would remain a layman and become prime minister" . . . and so on till her daughter told her it was time to take her medicine. i suppose this reverie, which is a mere fragment of what actually ran through christina's brain, occupied about a minute and a half, but it, or the presence of her son, seemed to revive her spirits wonderfully. ill, dying indeed, and suffering as she was, she brightened up so as to laugh once or twice quite merrily during the course of the afternoon. next day dr martin said she was so much better that he almost began to have hopes of her recovery again. theobald, whenever this was touched upon as possible, would shake his head and say: "we can't wish it prolonged," and then charlotte caught ernest unawares and said: "you know, dear ernest, that these ups and downs of talk are terribly agitating to papa; he could stand whatever comes, but it is quite too wearing to him to think half-a- dozen different things backwards and forwards, up and down in the same twenty-four hours, and it would be kinder of you not to do it--i mean not to say anything to him even though dr martin does hold out hopes." charlotte had meant to imply that it was ernest who was at the bottom of all the inconvenience felt by theobald, herself, joey and everyone else, and she had actually got words out which should convey this; true, she had not dared to stick to them and had turned them off, but she had made them hers at any rate for one brief moment, and this was better than nothing. ernest noticed throughout his mother's illness, that charlotte found immediate occasion to make herself disagreeable to him whenever either doctor or nurse pronounced her mother to be a little better. when she wrote to crampsford to desire the prayers of the congregation (she was sure her mother would wish it, and that the crampsford people would be pleased at her remembrance of them), she was sending another letter on some quite different subject at the same time, and put the two letters into the wrong envelopes. ernest was asked to take these letters to the village post-office, and imprudently did so; when the error came to be discovered christina happened to have rallied a little. charlotte flew at ernest immediately, and laid all the blame of the blunder upon his shoulders. except that joey and charlotte were more fully developed, the house and its inmates, organic and inorganic, were little changed since ernest had last seen them. the furniture and the ornaments on the chimney-piece were just as they had been ever since he could remember anything at all. in the drawing-room, on either side of the fireplace there hung the carlo dolci and the sassoferrato as in old times; there was the water colour of a scene on the lago maggiore, copied by charlotte from an original lent her by her drawing master, and finished under his direction. this was the picture of which one of the servants had said that it must be good, for mr pontifex had given ten shillings for the frame. the paper on the walls was unchanged; the roses were still waiting for the bees; and the whole family still prayed night and morning to be made "truly honest and conscientious." one picture only was removed--a photograph of himself which had hung under one of his father and between those of his brother and sister. ernest noticed this at prayer time, while his father was reading about noah's ark and how they daubed it with slime, which, as it happened, had been ernest's favourite text when he was a boy. next morning, however, the photograph had found its way back again, a little dusty and with a bit of the gilding chipped off from one corner of the frame, but there sure enough it was. i suppose they put it back when they found how rich he had become. in the dining-room the ravens were still trying to feed elijah over the fireplace; what a crowd of reminiscences did not this picture bring back! looking out of the window, there were the flower beds in the front garden exactly as they had been, and ernest found himself looking hard against the blue door at the bottom of the garden to see if there was rain falling, as he had been used to look when he was a child doing lessons with his father. after their early dinner, when joey and ernest and their father were left alone, theobald rose and stood in the middle of the hearthrug under the elijah picture, and began to whistle in his old absent way. he had two tunes only, one was "in my cottage near a wood," and the other was the easter hymn; he had been trying to whistle them all his life, but had never succeeded; he whistled them as a clever bullfinch might whistle them--he had got them, but he had not got them right; he would be a semitone out in every third note as though reverting to some remote musical progenitor, who had known none but the lydian or the phrygian mode, or whatever would enable him to go most wrong while still keeping the tune near enough to be recognised. theobald stood before the middle of the fire and whistled his two tunes softly in his own old way till ernest left the room; the unchangedness of the external and changedness of the internal he felt were likely to throw him completely off his balance. he strolled out of doors into the sodden spinney behind the house, and solaced himself with a pipe. ere long he found himself at the door of the cottage of his father's coachman, who had married an old lady's maid of his mother's, to whom ernest had been always much attached as she also to him, for she had known him ever since he had been five or six years old. her name was susan. he sat down in the rocking-chair before her fire, and susan went on ironing at the table in front of the window, and a smell of hot flannel pervaded the kitchen. susan had been retained too securely by christina to be likely to side with ernest all in a moment. he knew this very well, and did not call on her for the sake of support, moral or otherwise. he had called because he liked her, and also because he knew that he should gather much in a chat with her that he should not be able to arrive at in any other way. "oh, master ernest," said susan, "why did you not come back when your poor papa and mamma wanted you? i'm sure your ma has said to me a hundred times over if she has said it once that all should be exactly as it had been before." ernest smiled to himself. it was no use explaining to susan why he smiled, so he said nothing. "for the first day or two i thought she never would get over it; she said it was a judgement upon her, and went on about things as she had said and done many years ago, before your pa knew her, and i don't know what she didn't say or wouldn't have said only i stopped her; she seemed out of her mind like, and said that none of the neighbours would ever speak to her again, but the next day mrs bushby (her that was miss cowey, you know) called, and your ma always was so fond of her, and it seemed to do her a power o' good, for the next day she went through all her dresses, and we settled how she should have them altered; and then all the neighbours called for miles and miles round, and your ma came in here, and said she had been going through the waters of misery, and the lord had turned them to a well. "'oh yes, susan,' said she, 'be sure it is so. whom the lord loveth he chasteneth, susan,' and here she began to cry again. 'as for him,' she went on, 'he has made his bed, and he must lie on it; when he comes out of prison his pa will know what is best to be done, and master ernest may be thankful that he has a pa so good and so long-suffering.' "then when you would not see them, that was a cruel blow to your ma. your pa did not say anything; you know your pa never does say very much unless he's downright waxy for the time; but your ma took on dreadful for a few days, and i never saw the master look so black; but, bless you, it all went off in a few days, and i don't know that there's been much difference in either of them since then, not till your ma was took ill." on the night of his arrival he had behaved well at family prayers, as also on the following morning; his father read about david's dying injunctions to solomon in the matter of shimei, but he did not mind it. in the course of the day, however, his corns had been trodden on so many times that he was in a misbehaving humour, on this the second night after his arrival. he knelt next charlotte and said the responses perfunctorily, not so perfunctorily that she should know for certain that he was doing it maliciously, but so perfunctorily as to make her uncertain whether he might be malicious or not, and when he had to pray to be made truly honest and conscientious he emphasised the "truly." i do not know whether charlotte noticed anything, but she knelt at some distance from him during the rest of his stay. he assures me that this was the only spiteful thing he did during the whole time he was at battersby. when he went up to his bedroom, in which, to do them justice, they had given him a fire, he noticed what indeed he had noticed as soon as he was shown into it on his arrival, that there was an illuminated card framed and glazed over his bed with the words, "be the day weary or be the day long, at last it ringeth to evensong." he wondered to himself how such people could leave such a card in a room in which their visitors would have to spend the last hours of their evening, but he let it alone. "there's not enough difference between 'weary' and 'long' to warrant an 'or,'" he said, "but i suppose it is all right." i believe christina had bought the card at a bazaar in aid of the restoration of a neighbouring church, and having been bought it had got to be used--besides, the sentiment was so touching and the illumination was really lovely. anyhow, no irony could be more complete than leaving it in my hero's bedroom, though assuredly no irony had been intended. on the third day after ernest's arrival christina relapsed again. for the last two days she had been in no pain and had slept a good deal; her son's presence still seemed to cheer her, and she often said how thankful she was to be surrounded on her death-bed by a family so happy, so god- fearing, so united, but now she began to wander, and, being more sensible of the approach of death, seemed also more alarmed at the thoughts of the day of judgment. she ventured more than once or twice to return to the subject of her sins, and implored theobald to make quite sure that they were forgiven her. she hinted that she considered his professional reputation was at stake; it would never do for his own wife to fail in securing at any rate a pass. this was touching theobald on a tender spot; he winced and rejoined with an impatient toss of the head, "but, christina, they _are_ forgiven you"; and then he entrenched himself in a firm but dignified manner behind the lord's prayer. when he rose he left the room, but called ernest out to say that he could not wish it prolonged. joey was no more use in quieting his mother's anxiety than theobald had been--indeed he was only theobald and water; at last ernest, who had not liked interfering, took the matter in hand, and, sitting beside her, let her pour out her grief to him without let or hindrance. she said she knew she had not given up all for christ's sake; it was this that weighed upon her. she had given up much, and had always tried to give up more year by year, still she knew very well that she had not been so spiritually minded as she ought to have been. if she had, she should probably have been favoured with some direct vision or communication; whereas, though god had vouchsafed such direct and visible angelic visits to one of her dear children, yet she had had none such herself--nor even had theobald. she was talking rather to herself than to ernest as she said these words, but they made him open his ears. he wanted to know whether the angel had appeared to joey or to charlotte. he asked his mother, but she seemed surprised, as though she expected him to know all about it, then, as if she remembered, she checked herself and said, "ah! yes--you know nothing of all this, and perhaps it is as well." ernest could not of course press the subject, so he never found out which of his near relations it was who had had direct communication with an immortal. the others never said anything to him about it, though whether this was because they were ashamed, or because they feared he would not believe the story and thus increase his own damnation, he could not determine. ernest has often thought about this since. he tried to get the facts out of susan, who he was sure would know, but charlotte had been beforehand with him. "no, master ernest," said susan, when he began to question her, "your ma has sent a message to me by miss charlotte as i am not to say nothing at all about it, and i never will." of course no further questioning was possible. it had more than once occurred to ernest that charlotte did not in reality believe more than he did himself, and this incident went far to strengthen his surmises, but he wavered when he remembered how she had misdirected the letter asking for the prayers of the congregation. "i suppose," he said to himself gloomily, "she does believe in it after all." then christina returned to the subject of her own want of spiritual-mindedness, she even harped upon the old grievance of her having eaten black puddings--true, she had given them up years ago, but for how many years had she not persevered in eating them after she had had misgivings about their having been forbidden! then there was something that weighed on her mind that had taken place before her marriage, and she should like-- ernest interrupted: "my dear mother," he said, "you are ill and your mind is unstrung; others can now judge better about you than you can; i assure you that to me you seem to have been the most devotedly unselfish wife and mother that ever lived. even if you have not literally given up all for christ's sake, you have done so practically as far as it was in your power, and more than this is not required of anyone. i believe you will not only be a saint, but a very distinguished one." at these words christina brightened. "you give me hope, you give me hope," she cried, and dried her eyes. she made him assure her over and over again that this was his solemn conviction; she did not care about being a distinguished saint now; she would be quite content to be among the meanest who actually got into heaven, provided she could make sure of escaping that awful hell. the fear of this evidently was omnipresent with her, and in spite of all ernest could say he did not quite dispel it. she was rather ungrateful, i must confess, for after more than an hour's consolation from ernest she prayed for him that he might have every blessing in this world, inasmuch as she always feared that he was the only one of her children whom she should never meet in heaven; but she was then wandering, and was hardly aware of his presence; her mind in fact was reverting to states in which it had been before her illness. on sunday ernest went to church as a matter of course, and noted that the ever receding tide of evangelicalism had ebbed many a stage lower, even during the few years of his absence. his father used to walk to the church through the rectory garden, and across a small intervening field. he had been used to walk in a tall hat, his master's gown, and wearing a pair of geneva bands. ernest noticed that the bands were worn no longer, and lo! greater marvel still, theobald did not preach in his master's gown, but in a surplice. the whole character of the service was changed; you could not say it was high even now, for high-church theobald could never under any circumstances become, but the old easy-going slovenliness, if i may say so, was gone for ever. the orchestral accompaniments to the hymns had disappeared while my hero was yet a boy, but there had been no chanting for some years after the harmonium had been introduced. while ernest was at cambridge, charlotte and christina had prevailed on theobald to allow the canticles to be sung; and sung they were to old-fashioned double chants by lord mornington and dr dupuis and others. theobald did not like it, but he did it, or allowed it to be done. then christina said: "my dear, do you know, i really think" (christina always "really" thought) "that the people like the chanting very much, and that it will be a means of bringing many to church who have stayed away hitherto. i was talking about it to mrs goodhew and to old miss wright only yesterday, and they _quite_ agreed with me, but they all said that we ought to chant the 'glory be to the father' at the end of each of the psalms instead of saying it." theobald looked black--he felt the waters of chanting rising higher and higher upon him inch by inch; but he felt also, he knew not why, that he had better yield than fight. so he ordered the "glory be to the father" to be chanted in future, but he did not like it. "really, mamma dear," said charlotte, when the battle was won, "you should not call it the 'glory be to the father' you should say 'gloria.'" "of course, my dear," said christina, and she said "gloria" for ever after. then she thought what a wonderfully clever girl charlotte was, and how she ought to marry no one lower than a bishop. by-and-by when theobald went away for an unusually long holiday one summer, he could find no one but a rather high-church clergyman to take his duty. this gentleman was a man of weight in the neighbourhood, having considerable private means, but without preferment. in the summer he would often help his brother clergymen, and it was through his being willing to take the duty at battersby for a few sundays that theobald had been able to get away for so long. on his return, however, he found that the whole psalms were being chanted as well as the glorias. the influential clergyman, christina, and charlotte took the bull by the horns as soon as theobald returned, and laughed it all off; and the clergyman laughed and bounced, and christina laughed and coaxed, and charlotte uttered unexceptionable sentiments, and the thing was done now, and could not be undone, and it was no use grieving over spilt milk; so henceforth the psalms were to be chanted, but theobald grisled over it in his heart, and he did not like it. during this same absence what had mrs goodhew and old miss wright taken to doing but turning towards the east while repeating the belief? theobald disliked this even worse than chanting. when he said something about it in a timid way at dinner after service, charlotte said, "really, papa dear, you _must_ take to calling it the 'creed' and not the 'belief'"; and theobald winced impatiently and snorted meek defiance, but the spirit of her aunts jane and eliza was strong in charlotte, and the thing was too small to fight about, and he turned it off with a laugh. "as for charlotte," thought christina, "i believe she knows _everything_." so mrs goodhew and old miss wright continued to turn to the east during the time the creed was said, and by-and-by others followed their example, and ere long the few who had stood out yielded and turned eastward too; and then theobald made as though he had thought it all very right and proper from the first, but like it he did not. by- and-by charlotte tried to make him say "alleluia" instead of "hallelujah," but this was going too far, and theobald turned, and she got frightened and ran away. and they changed the double chants for single ones, and altered them psalm by psalm, and in the middle of psalms, just where a cursory reader would see no reason why they should do so, they changed from major to minor and from minor back to major; and then they got "hymns ancient and modern," and, as i have said, they robbed him of his beloved bands, and they made him preach in a surplice, and he must have celebration of the holy communion once a month instead of only five times in the year as heretofore, and he struggled in vain against the unseen influence which he felt to be working in season and out of season against all that he had been accustomed to consider most distinctive of his party. where it was, or what it was, he knew not, nor exactly what it would do next, but he knew exceedingly well that go where he would it was undermining him; that it was too persistent for him; that christina and charlotte liked it a great deal better than he did, and that it could end in nothing but rome. easter decorations indeed! christmas decorations--in reason--were proper enough, but easter decorations! well, it might last his time. this was the course things had taken in the church of england during the last forty years. the set has been steadily in one direction. a few men who knew what they wanted made cats' paws of the christmas and the charlottes, and the christmas and the charlottes made cats' paws of the mrs goodhews and the old miss wrights, and mrs goodhews and old miss wrights told the mr goodhews and young miss wrights what they should do, and when the mr goodhews and the young miss wrights did it the little goodhews and the rest of the spiritual flock did as they did, and the theobalds went for nothing; step by step, day by day, year by year, parish by parish, diocese by diocese this was how it was done. and yet the church of england looks with no friendly eyes upon the theory of evolution or descent with modification. my hero thought over these things, and remembered many a _ruse_ on the part of christina and charlotte, and many a detail of the struggle which i cannot further interrupt my story to refer to, and he remembered his father's favourite retort that it could only end in rome. when he was a boy he had firmly believed this, but he smiled now as he thought of another alternative clear enough to himself, but so horrible that it had not even occurred to theobald--i mean the toppling over of the whole system. at that time he welcomed the hope that the absurdities and unrealities of the church would end in her downfall. since then he has come to think very differently, not as believing in the cow jumping over the moon more than he used to, or more, probably, than nine-tenths of the clergy themselves--who know as well as he does that their outward and visible symbols are out of date--but because he knows the baffling complexity of the problem when it comes to deciding what is actually to be done. also, now that he has seen them more closely, he knows better the nature of those wolves in sheep's clothing, who are thirsting for the blood of their victim, and exulting so clamorously over its anticipated early fall into their clutches. the spirit behind the church is true, though her letter--true once--is now true no longer. the spirit behind the high priests of science is as lying as its letter. the theobalds, who do what they do because it seems to be the correct thing, but who in their hearts neither like it nor believe in it, are in reality the least dangerous of all classes to the peace and liberties of mankind. the man to fear is he who goes at things with the cocksureness of pushing vulgarity and self-conceit. these are not vices which can be justly laid to the charge of the english clergy. many of the farmers came up to ernest when service was over, and shook hands with him. he found every one knew of his having come into a fortune. the fact was that theobald had immediately told two or three of the greatest gossips in the village, and the story was not long in spreading. "it simplified matters," he had said to himself, "a good deal." ernest was civil to mrs goodhew for her husband's sake, but he gave miss wright the cut direct, for he knew that she was only charlotte in disguise. a week passed slowly away. two or three times the family took the sacrament together round christina's death-bed. theobald's impatience became more and more transparent daily, but fortunately christina (who even if she had been well would have been ready to shut her eyes to it) became weaker and less coherent in mind also, so that she hardly, if at all, perceived it. after ernest had been in the house about a week his mother fell into a comatose state which lasted a couple of days, and in the end went away so peacefully that it was like the blending of sea and sky in mid-ocean upon a soft hazy day when none can say where the earth ends and the heavens begin. indeed she died to the realities of life with less pain than she had waked from many of its illusions. "she has been the comfort and mainstay of my life for more than thirty years," said theobald as soon as all was over, "but one could not wish it prolonged," and he buried his face in his handkerchief to conceal his want of emotion. ernest came back to town the day after his mother's death, and returned to the funeral accompanied by myself. he wanted me to see his father in order to prevent any possible misapprehension about miss pontifex's intentions, and i was such an old friend of the family that my presence at christina's funeral would surprise no one. with all her faults i had always rather liked christina. she would have chopped ernest or any one else into little pieces of mincemeat to gratify the slightest wish of her husband, but she would not have chopped him up for any one else, and so long as he did not cross her she was very fond of him. by nature she was of an even temper, more willing to be pleased than ruffled, very ready to do a good-natured action, provided it did not cost her much exertion, nor involve expense to theobald. her own little purse did not matter; any one might have as much of that as he or she could get after she had reserved what was absolutely necessary for her dress. i could not hear of her end as ernest described it to me without feeling very compassionate towards her, indeed her own son could hardly have felt more so; i at once, therefore, consented to go down to the funeral; perhaps i was also influenced by a desire to see charlotte and joey, in whom i felt interested on hearing what my godson had told me. i found theobald looking remarkably well. every one said he was bearing it so beautifully. he did indeed once or twice shake his head and say that his wife had been the comfort and mainstay of his life for over thirty years, but there the matter ended. i stayed over the next day which was sunday, and took my departure on the following morning after having told theobald all that his son wished me to tell him. theobald asked me to help him with christina's epitaph. "i would say," said he, "as little as possible; eulogies of the departed are in most cases both unnecessary and untrue. christina's epitaph shall contain nothing which shall be either the one or the other. i should give her name, the dates of her birth and death, and of course say she was my wife, and then i think i should wind up with a simple text--her favourite one for example, none indeed could be more appropriate, 'blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god.'" i said i thought this would be very nice, and it was settled. so ernest was sent to give the order to mr prosser, the stonemason in the nearest town, who said it came from "the beetitudes." chapter lxxxiv on our way to town ernest broached his plans for spending the next year or two. i wanted him to try and get more into society again, but he brushed this aside at once as the very last thing he had a fancy for. for society indeed of all sorts, except of course that of a few intimate friends, he had an unconquerable aversion. "i always did hate those people," he said, "and they always have hated and always will hate me. i am an ishmael by instinct as much as by accident of circumstances, but if i keep out of society i shall be less vulnerable than ishmaels generally are. the moment a man goes into society, he becomes vulnerable all round." i was very sorry to hear him talk in this way; for whatever strength a man may have he should surely be able to make more of it if he act in concert than alone. i said this. "i don't care," he answered, "whether i make the most of my strength or not; i don't know whether i have any strength, but if i have i dare say it will find some way of exerting itself. i will live as i like living, not as other people would like me to live; thanks to my aunt and you i can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and i mean to have it. you know i like writing," he added after a pause of some minutes, "i have been a scribbler for years. if i am to come to the fore at all it must be by writing." i had already long since come to that conclusion myself. "well," he continued, "there are a lot of things that want saying which no one dares to say, a lot of shams which want attacking, and yet no one attacks them. it seems to me that i can say things which not another man in england except myself will venture to say, and yet which are crying to be said." i said: "but who will listen? if you say things which nobody else would dare to say is not this much the same as saying what everyone except yourself knows to be better left unsaid just now?" "perhaps," said he, "but i don't know it; i am bursting with these things, and it is my fate to say them." i knew there would be no stopping him, so i gave in and asked what question he felt a special desire to burn his fingers with in the first instance. "marriage," he rejoined promptly, "and the power of disposing of his property after a man is dead. the question of christianity is virtually settled, or if not settled there is no lack of those engaged in settling it. the question of the day now is marriage and the family system." "that," said i drily, "is a hornet's nest indeed." "yes," said he no less drily, "but hornet's nests are exactly what i happen to like. before, however, i begin to stir up this particular one i propose to travel for a few years, with the especial object of finding out what nations now existing are the best, comeliest and most lovable, and also what nations have been so in times past. i want to find out how these people live, and have lived, and what their customs are. "i have very vague notions upon the subject as yet, but the general impression i have formed is that, putting ourselves on one side, the most vigorous and amiable of known nations are the modern italians, the old greeks and romans, and the south sea islanders. i believe that these nice peoples have not as a general rule been purists, but i want to see those of them who can yet be seen; they are the practical authorities on the question--what is best for man? and i should like to see them and find out what they do. let us settle the fact first and fight about the moral tendencies afterwards." "in fact," said i laughingly, "you mean to have high old times." "neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than those people whom i can find to have been the best in all ages. but let us change the subject." he put his hand into his pocket and brought out a letter. "my father," he said, "gave me this letter this morning with the seal already broken." he passed it over to me, and i found it to be the one which christina had written before the birth of her last child, and which i have given in an earlier chapter. "and you do not find this letter," said i, "affect the conclusion which you have just told me you have come to concerning your present plans?" he smiled, and answered: "no. but if you do what you have sometimes talked about and turn the adventures of my unworthy self into a novel, mind you print this letter." "why so?" said i, feeling as though such a letter as this should have been held sacred from the public gaze. "because my mother would have wished it published; if she had known you were writing about me and had this letter in your possession, she would above all things have desired that you should publish it. therefore publish it if you write at all." this is why i have done so. within a month ernest carried his intention into effect, and having made all the arrangements necessary for his children's welfare left england before christmas. i heard from him now and again and learnt that he was visiting almost all parts of the world, but only staying in those places where he found the inhabitants unusually good-looking and agreeable. he said he had filled an immense quantity of note-books, and i have no doubt he had. at last in the spring of he returned, his luggage stained with the variation of each hotel advertisement 'twixt here and japan. he looked very brown and strong, and so well favoured that it almost seemed as if he must have caught some good looks from the people among whom he had been living. he came back to his old rooms in the temple, and settled down as easily as if he had never been away a day. one of the first things we did was to go and see the children; we took the train to gravesend, and walked thence for a few miles along the riverside till we came to the solitary house where the good people lived with whom ernest had placed them. it was a lovely april morning, but with a fresh air blowing from off the sea; the tide was high, and the river was alive with shipping coming up with wind and tide. sea-gulls wheeled around us overhead, sea-weed clung everywhere to the banks which the advancing tide had not yet covered, everything was of the sea sea-ey, and the fine bracing air which blew over the water made me feel more hungry than i had done for many a day; i did not see how children could live in a better physical atmosphere than this, and applauded the selection which ernest had made on behalf of his youngsters. while we were still a quarter of a mile off we heard shouts and children's laughter, and could see a lot of boys and girls romping together and running after one another. we could not distinguish our own two, but when we got near they were soon made out, for the other children were blue-eyed, flaxen-pated little folks, whereas ours were dark and straight-haired. we had written to say that we were coming, but had desired that nothing should be said to the children, so these paid no more attention to us than they would have done to any other stranger, who happened to visit a spot so unfrequented except by sea-faring folk, which we plainly were not. the interest, however, in us was much quickened when it was discovered that we had got our pockets full of oranges and sweeties, to an extent greater than it had entered into their small imaginations to conceive as possible. at first we had great difficulty in making them come near us. they were like a lot of wild young colts, very inquisitive, but very coy and not to be cajoled easily. the children were nine in all--five boys and two girls belonging to mr and mrs rollings, and two to ernest. i never saw a finer lot of children than the young rollings, the boys were hardy, robust, fearless little fellows with eyes as clear as hawks; the elder girl was exquisitely pretty, but the younger one was a mere baby. i felt as i looked at them, that if i had had children of my own i could have wished no better home for them, nor better companions. georgie and alice, ernest's two children, were evidently quite as one family with the others, and called mr and mrs rollings uncle and aunt. they had been so young when they were first brought to the house that they had been looked upon in the light of new babies who had been born into the family. they knew nothing about mr and mrs rollings being paid so much a week to look after them. ernest asked them all what they wanted to be. they had only one idea; one and all, georgie among the rest, wanted to be bargemen. young ducks could hardly have a more evident hankering after the water. "and what do you want, alice?" said ernest. "oh," she said, "i'm going to marry jack here, and be a bargeman's wife." jack was the eldest boy, now nearly twelve, a sturdy little fellow, the image of what mr rollings must have been at his age. as we looked at him, so straight and well grown and well done all round, i could see it was in ernest's mind as much as in mine that she could hardly do much better. "come here, jack, my boy," said ernest, "here's a shilling for you." the boy blushed and could hardly be got to come in spite of our previous blandishments; he had had pennies given him before, but shillings never. his father caught him good-naturedly by the ear and lugged him to us. "he's a good boy, jack is," said ernest to mr rollings, "i'm sure of that." "yes," said mr rollings, "he's a werry good boy, only that i can't get him to learn his reading and writing. he don't like going to school, that's the only complaint i have against him. i don't know what's the matter with all my children, and yours, mr pontifex, is just as bad, but they none of 'em likes book learning, though they learn anything else fast enough. why, as for jack here, he's almost as good a bargeman as i am." and he looked fondly and patronisingly towards his offspring. "i think," said ernest to mr rollings, "if he wants to marry alice when he gets older he had better do so, and he shall have as many barges as he likes. in the meantime, mr rollings, say in what way money can be of use to you, and whatever you can make useful is at your disposal." i need hardly say that ernest made matters easy for this good couple; one stipulation, however, he insisted on, namely, there was to be no more smuggling, and that the young people were to be kept out of this; for a little bird had told ernest that smuggling in a quiet way was one of the resources of the rollings family. mr rollings was not sorry to assent to this, and i believe it is now many years since the coastguard people have suspected any of the rollings family as offenders against the revenue law. "why should i take them from where they are," said ernest to me in the train as we went home, "to send them to schools where they will not be one half so happy, and where their illegitimacy will very likely be a worry to them? georgie wants to be a bargeman, let him begin as one, the sooner the better; he may as well begin with this as with anything else; then if he shows developments i can be on the look-out to encourage them and make things easy for him; while if he shows no desire to go ahead, what on earth is the good of trying to shove him forward?" ernest, i believe, went on with a homily upon education generally, and upon the way in which young people should go through the embryonic stages with their money as much as with their limbs, beginning life in a much lower social position than that in which their parents were, and a lot more, which he has since published; but i was getting on in years, and the walk and the bracing air had made me sleepy, so ere we had got past greenhithe station on our return journey i had sunk into a refreshing sleep. chapter lxxxv ernest being about two and thirty years old and having had his fling for the last three or four years, now settled down in london, and began to write steadily. up to this time he had given abundant promise, but had produced nothing, nor indeed did he come before the public for another three or four years yet. he lived as i have said very quietly, seeing hardly anyone but myself, and the three or four old friends with whom i had been intimate for years. ernest and we formed our little set, and outside of this my godson was hardly known at all. his main expense was travelling, which he indulged in at frequent intervals, but for short times only. do what he would he could not get through more than about fifteen hundred a year; the rest of his income he gave away if he happened to find a case where he thought money would be well bestowed, or put by until some opportunity arose of getting rid of it with advantage. i knew he was writing, but we had had so many little differences of opinion upon this head that by a tacit understanding the subject was seldom referred to between us, and i did not know that he was actually publishing till one day he brought me a book and told me flat it was his own. i opened it and found it to be a series of semi-theological, semi- social essays, purporting to have been written by six or seven different people, and viewing the same class of subjects from different standpoints. people had not yet forgotten the famous "essays and reviews," and ernest had wickedly given a few touches to at least two of the essays which suggested vaguely that they had been written by a bishop. the essays were all of them in support of the church of england, and appeared both by internal suggestion, and their prima facie purport to be the work of some half-dozen men of experience and high position who had determined to face the difficult questions of the day no less boldly from within the bosom of the church than the church's enemies had faced them from without her pale. there was an essay on the external evidences of the resurrection; another on the marriage laws of the most eminent nations of the world in times past and present; another was devoted to a consideration of the many questions which must be reopened and reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the church of england were to cease to carry moral authority with it; another dealt with the more purely social subject of middle class destitution; another with the authenticity or rather the unauthenticity of the fourth gospel--another was headed "irrational rationalism," and there were two or three more. they were all written vigorously and fearlessly as though by people used to authority; all granted that the church professed to enjoin belief in much which no one could accept who had been accustomed to weigh evidence; but it was contended that so much valuable truth had got so closely mixed up with these mistakes, that the mistakes had better not be meddled with. to lay great stress on these was like cavilling at the queen's right to reign, on the ground that william the conqueror was illegitimate. one article maintained that though it would be inconvenient to change the words of our prayer book and articles, it would not be inconvenient to change in a quiet way the meanings which we put upon those words. this, it was argued, was what was actually done in the case of law; this had been the law's mode of growth and adaptation, and had in all ages been found a righteous and convenient method of effecting change. it was suggested that the church should adopt it. in another essay it was boldly denied that the church rested upon reason. it was proved incontestably that its ultimate foundation was and ought to be faith, there being indeed no other ultimate foundation than this for any of man's beliefs. if so, the writer claimed that the church could not be upset by reason. it was founded, like everything else, on initial assumptions, that is to say on faith, and if it was to be upset it was to be upset by faith, by the faith of those who in their lives appeared more graceful, more lovable, better bred, in fact, and better able to overcome difficulties. any sect which showed its superiority in these respects might carry all before it, but none other would make much headway for long together. christianity was true in so far as it had fostered beauty, and it had fostered much beauty. it was false in so far as it fostered ugliness, and it had fostered much ugliness. it was therefore not a little true and not a little false; on the whole one might go farther and fare worse; the wisest course would be to live with it, and make the best and not the worst of it. the writer urged that we become persecutors as a matter of course as soon as we begin to feel very strongly upon any subject; we ought not therefore to do this; we ought not to feel very strongly--even upon that institution which was dearer to the writer than any other--the church of england. we should be churchmen, but somewhat lukewarm churchmen, inasmuch as those who care very much about either religion or irreligion are seldom observed to be very well bred or agreeable people. the church herself should approach as nearly to that of laodicea as was compatible with her continuing to be a church at all, and each individual member should only be hot in striving to be as lukewarm as possible. the book rang with the courage alike of conviction and of an entire absence of conviction; it appeared to be the work of men who had a rule- of-thumb way of steering between iconoclasm on the one hand and credulity on the other; who cut gordian knots as a matter of course when it suited their convenience; who shrank from no conclusion in theory, nor from any want of logic in practice so long as they were illogical of malice prepense, and for what they held to be sufficient reason. the conclusions were conservative, quietistic, comforting. the arguments by which they were reached were taken from the most advanced writers of the day. all that these people contended for was granted them, but the fruits of victory were for the most part handed over to those already in possession. perhaps the passage which attracted most attention in the book was one from the essay on the various marriage systems of the world. it ran:-- "if people require us to construct," exclaimed the writer, "we set good breeding as the corner-stone of our edifice. we would have it ever present consciously or unconsciously in the minds of all as the central faith in which they should live and move and have their being, as the touchstone of all things whereby they may be known as good or evil according as they make for good breeding or against it." "that a man should have been bred well and breed others well; that his figure, head, hands, feet, voice, manner and clothes should carry conviction upon this point, so that no one can look at him without seeing that he has come of good stock and is likely to throw good stock himself, this is the _desiderandum_. and the same with a woman. the greatest number of these well-bred men and women, and the greatest happiness of these well-bred men and women, this is the highest good; towards this all government, all social conventions, all art, literature and science should directly or indirectly tend. holy men and holy women are those who keep this unconsciously in view at all times whether of work or pastime." if ernest had published this work in his own name i should think it would have fallen stillborn from the press, but the form he had chosen was calculated at that time to arouse curiosity, and as i have said he had wickedly dropped a few hints which the reviewers did not think anyone would have been impudent enough to do if he were not a bishop, or at any rate some one in authority. a well-known judge was spoken of as being another of the writers, and the idea spread ere long that six or seven of the leading bishops and judges had laid their heads together to produce a volume, which should at once outbid "essays and reviews" and counteract the influence of that then still famous work. reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves, and with them as with everyone else _omne ignotum pro magnifico_. the book was really an able one and abounded with humour, just satire, and good sense. it struck a new note and the speculation which for some time was rife concerning its authorship made many turn to it who would never have looked at it otherwise. one of the most gushing weeklies had a fit over it, and declared it to be the finest thing that had been done since the "provincial letters" of pascal. once a month or so that weekly always found some picture which was the finest that had been done since the old masters, or some satire that was the finest that had appeared since swift or some something which was incomparably the finest that had appeared since something else. if ernest had put his name to the book, and the writer had known that it was by a nobody, he would doubtless have written in a very different strain. reviewers like to think that for aught they know they are patting a duke or even a prince of the blood upon the back, and lay it on thick till they find they have been only praising brown, jones or robinson. then they are disappointed, and as a general rule will pay brown, jones or robinson out. ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary world as i was, and i am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up one morning to find himself famous. he was christina's son, and perhaps would not have been able to do what he had done if he was not capable of occasional undue elation. ere long, however, he found out all about it, and settled quietly down to write a series of books, in which he insisted on saying things which no one else would say even if they could, or could even if they would. he has got himself a bad literary character. i said to him laughingly one day that he was like the man in the last century of whom it was said that nothing but such a character could keep down such parts. he laughed and said he would rather be like that than like a modern writer or two whom he could name, whose parts were so poor that they could be kept up by nothing but by such a character. i remember soon after one of these books was published i happened to meet mrs jupp to whom, by the way, ernest made a small weekly allowance. it was at ernest's chambers, and for some reason we were left alone for a few minutes. i said to her: "mr pontifex has written another book, mrs jupp." "lor' now," said she, "has he really? dear gentleman! is it about love?" and the old sinner threw up a wicked sheep's eye glance at me from under her aged eyelids. i forget what there was in my reply which provoked it--probably nothing--but she went rattling on at full speed to the effect that bell had given her a ticket for the opera, "so, of course," she said, "i went. i didn't understand one word of it, for it was all french, but i saw their legs. oh dear, oh dear! i'm afraid i shan't be here much longer, and when dear mr pontifex sees me in my coffin he'll say, 'poor old jupp, she'll never talk broad any more'; but bless you i'm not so old as all that, and i'm taking lessons in dancing." at this moment ernest came in and the conversation was changed. mrs jupp asked if he was still going on writing more books now that this one was done. "of course i am," he answered, "i'm always writing books; here is the manuscript of my next;" and he showed her a heap of paper. "well now," she exclaimed, "dear, dear me, and is that manuscript? i've often heard talk about manuscripts, but i never thought i should live to see some myself. well! well! so that is really manuscript?" there were a few geraniums in the window and they did not look well. ernest asked mrs jupp if she understood flowers. "i understand the language of flowers," she said, with one of her most bewitching leers, and on this we sent her off till she should choose to honour us with another visit, which she knows she is privileged from time to time to do, for ernest likes her. chapter lxxxvi and now i must bring my story to a close. the preceding chapter was written soon after the events it records--that is to say in the spring of . by that time my story had been written up to this point; but it has been altered here and there from time to time occasionally. it is now the autumn of , and if i am to say more i should do so quickly, for i am eighty years old and though well in health cannot conceal from myself that i am no longer young. ernest himself is forty-seven, though he hardly looks it. he is richer than ever, for he has never married and his london and north- western shares have nearly doubled themselves. through sheer inability to spend his income he has been obliged to hoard in self-defence. he still lives in the temple in the same rooms i took for him when he gave up his shop, for no one has been able to induce him to take a house. his house, he says, is wherever there is a good hotel. when he is in town he likes to work and to be quiet. when out of town he feels that he has left little behind him that can go wrong, and he would not like to be tied to a single locality. "i know no exception," he says, "to the rule that it is cheaper to buy milk than to keep a cow." as i have mentioned mrs jupp, i may as well say here the little that remains to be said about her. she is a very old woman now, but no one now living, as she says triumphantly, can say how old, for the woman in the old kent road is dead, and presumably has carried her secret to the grave. old, however, though she is, she lives in the same house, and finds it hard work to make the two ends meet, but i do not know that she minds this very much, and it has prevented her from getting more to drink than would be good for her. it is no use trying to do anything for her beyond paying her allowance weekly, and absolutely refusing to let her anticipate it. she pawns her flat iron every saturday for d., and takes it out every monday morning for . d. when she gets her allowance, and has done this for the last ten years as regularly as the week comes round. as long as she does not let the flat iron actually go we know that she can still worry out her financial problems in her own hugger- mugger way and had better be left to do so. if the flat iron were to go beyond redemption, we should know that it was time to interfere. i do not know why, but there is something about her which always reminds me of a woman who was as unlike her as one person can be to another--i mean ernest's mother. the last time i had a long gossip with her was about two years ago when she came to me instead of to ernest. she said she had seen a cab drive up just as she was going to enter the staircase, and had seen mr pontifex's pa put his beelzebub old head out of the window, so she had come on to me, for she hadn't greased her sides for no curtsey, not for the likes of him. she professed to be very much down on her luck. her lodgers did use her so dreadful, going away without paying and leaving not so much as a stick behind, but to-day she was as pleased as a penny carrot. she had had such a lovely dinner--a cushion of ham and green peas. she had had a good cry over it, but then she was so silly, she was. "and there's that bell," she continued, though i could not detect any appearance of connection, "it's enough to give anyone the hump to see him now that he's taken to chapel-going, and his mother's prepared to meet jesus and all that to me, and now she ain't a-going to die, and drinks half a bottle of champagne a day, and then grigg, him as preaches, you know, asked bell if i really was too gay, not but what when i was young i'd snap my fingers at any 'fly by night' in holborn, and if i was togged out and had my teeth i'd do it now. i lost my poor dear watkins, but of course that couldn't be helped, and then i lost my dear rose. silly faggot to go and ride on a cart and catch the bronchitics. i never thought when i kissed my dear rose in pullen's passage and she gave me the chop, that i should never see her again, and her gentleman friend was fond of her too, though he was a married man. i daresay she's gone to bits by now. if she could rise and see me with my bad finger, she would cry, and i should say, 'never mind, ducky, i'm all right.' oh! dear, it's coming on to rain. i do hate a wet saturday night--poor women with their nice white stockings and their living to get," etc., etc. and yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, as people would say it ought to do. whatever life she has led, it has agreed with her very sufficiently. at times she gives us to understand that she is still much solicited; at others she takes quite a different tone. she has not allowed even joe king so much as to put his lips to hers this ten years. she would rather have a mutton chop any day. "but ah! you should have seen me when i was sweet seventeen. i was the very moral of my poor dear mother, and she was a pretty woman, though i say it that shouldn't. she had such a splendid mouth of teeth. it was a sin to bury her in her teeth." i only knew of one thing at which she professes to be shocked. it is that her son tom and his wife topsy are teaching the baby to swear. "oh! it's too dreadful awful," she exclaimed, "i don't know the meaning of the words, but i tell him he's a drunken sot." i believe the old woman in reality rather likes it. "but surely, mrs jupp," said i, "tom's wife used not to be topsy. you used to speak of her as pheeb." "ah! yes," she answered, "but pheeb behaved bad, and it's topsy now." ernest's daughter alice married the boy who had been her playmate more than a year ago. ernest gave them all they said they wanted and a good deal more. they have already presented him with a grandson, and i doubt not, will do so with many more. georgie though only twenty-one is owner of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him. he began when about thirteen going with old rollings and jack in the barge from rochester to the upper thames with bricks; then his father bought him and jack barges of their own, and then he bought them both ships, and then steamers. i do not exactly know how people make money by having a steamer, but he does whatever is usual, and from all i can gather makes it pay extremely well. he is a good deal like his father in the face, but without a spark--so far as i have been able to observe--any literary ability; he has a fair sense of humour and abundance of common sense, but his instinct is clearly a practical one. i am not sure that he does not put me in mind almost more of what theobald would have been if he had been a sailor, than of ernest. ernest used to go down to battersby and stay with his father for a few days twice a year until theobald's death, and the pair continued on excellent terms, in spite of what the neighbouring clergy call "the atrocious books which mr ernest pontifex" has written. perhaps the harmony, or rather absence of discord which subsisted between the pair was due to the fact that theobald had never looked into the inside of one of his son's works, and ernest, of course, never alluded to them in his father's presence. the pair, as i have said, got on excellently, but it was doubtless as well that ernest's visits were short and not too frequent. once theobald wanted ernest to bring his children, but ernest knew they would not like it, so this was not done. sometimes theobald came up to town on small business matters and paid a visit to ernest's chambers; he generally brought with him a couple of lettuces, or a cabbage, or half-a-dozen turnips done up in a piece of brown paper, and told ernest that he knew fresh vegetables were rather hard to get in london, and he had brought him some. ernest had often explained to him that the vegetables were of no use to him, and that he had rather he would not bring them; but theobald persisted, i believe through sheer love of doing something which his son did not like, but which was too small to take notice of. he lived until about twelve months ago, when he was found dead in his bed on the morning after having written the following letter to his son:-- "dear ernest,--i've nothing particular to write about, but your letter has been lying for some days in the limbo of unanswered letters, to wit my pocket, and it's time it was answered. "i keep wonderfully well and am able to walk my five or six miles with comfort, but at my age there's no knowing how long it will last, and time flies quickly. i have been busy potting plants all the morning, but this afternoon is wet. "what is this horrid government going to do with ireland? i don't exactly wish they'd blow up mr gladstone, but if a mad bull would chivy him there, and he would never come back any more, i should not be sorry. lord hartington is not exactly the man i should like to set in his place, but he would be immeasurably better than gladstone. "i miss your sister charlotte more than i can express. she kept my household accounts, and i could pour out to her all little worries, and now that joey is married too, i don't know what i should do if one or other of them did not come sometimes and take care of me. my only comfort is that charlotte will make her husband happy, and that he is as nearly worthy of her as a husband can well be.--believe me, your affectionate father, "theobald pontifex." i may say in passing that though theobald speaks of charlotte's marriage as though it were recent, it had really taken place some six years previously, she being then about thirty-eight years old, and her husband about seven years younger. there was no doubt that theobald passed peacefully away during his sleep. can a man who died thus be said to have died at all? he has presented the phenomena of death to other people, but in respect of himself he has not only not died, but has not even thought that he was going to die. this is not more than half dying, but then neither was his life more than half living. he presented so many of the phenomena of living that i suppose on the whole it would be less trouble to think of him as having been alive than as never having been born at all, but this is only possible because association does not stick to the strict letter of its bond. this, however, was not the general verdict concerning him, and the general verdict is often the truest. ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect for his father's memory. "he never," said dr martin, the old doctor who brought ernest into the world, "spoke an ill word against anyone. he was not only liked, he was beloved by all who had anything to do with him." "a more perfectly just and righteously dealing man," said the family solicitor, "i have never had anything to do with--nor one more punctual in the discharge of every business obligation." "we shall miss him sadly," the bishop wrote to joey in the very warmest terms. the poor were in consternation. "the well's never missed," said one old woman, "till it's dry," and she only said what everyone else felt. ernest knew that the general regret was unaffected as for a loss which could not be easily repaired. he felt that there were only three people in the world who joined insincerely in the tribute of applause, and these were the very three who could least show their want of sympathy. i mean joey, charlotte, and himself. he felt bitter against himself for being of a mind with either joey or charlotte upon any subject, and thankful that he must conceal his being so as far as possible, not because of anything his father had done to him--these grievances were too old to be remembered now--but because he would never allow him to feel towards him as he was always trying to feel. as long as communication was confined to the merest commonplace all went well, but if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably felt that his father's instincts showed themselves in immediate opposition to his own. when he was attacked his father laid whatever stress was possible on everything which his opponents said. if he met with any check his father was clearly pleased. what the old doctor had said about theobald's speaking ill of no man was perfectly true as regards others than himself, but he knew very well that no one had injured his reputation in a quiet way, so far as he dared to do, more than his own father. this is a very common case and a very natural one. it often happens that if the son is right, the father is wrong, and the father is not going to have this if he can help it. it was very hard, however, to say what was the true root of the mischief in the present case. it was not ernest's having been imprisoned. theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine fathers out of ten would have done. partly, no doubt, it was due to incompatibility of temperament, but i believe the main ground of complaint lay in the fact that he had been so independent and so rich while still very young, and that thus the old gentleman had been robbed of his power to tease and scratch in the way which he felt he was entitled to do. the love of teasing in a small way when he felt safe in doing so had remained part of his nature from the days when he told his nurse that he would keep her on purpose to torment her. i suppose it is so with all of us. at any rate i am sure that most fathers, especially if they are clergymen, are like theobald. he did not in reality, i am convinced, like joey or charlotte one whit better than he liked ernest. he did not like anyone or anything, or if he liked anyone at all it was his butler, who looked after him when he was not well, and took great care of him and believed him to be the best and ablest man in the whole world. whether this faithful and attached servant continued to think this after theobald's will was opened and it was found what kind of legacy had been left him i know not. of his children, the baby who had died at a day old was the only one whom he held to have treated him quite filially. as for christina he hardly ever pretended to miss her and never mentioned her name; but this was taken as a proof that he felt her loss too keenly to be able ever to speak of her. it may have been so, but i do not think it. theobald's effects were sold by auction, and among them the harmony of the old and new testaments which he had compiled during many years with such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of ms. sermons--being all in fact that he had ever written. these and the harmony fetched ninepence a barrow load. i was surprised to hear that joey had not given the three or four shillings which would have bought the whole lot, but ernest tells me that joey was far fiercer in his dislike of his father than ever he had been himself, and wished to get rid of everything that reminded him of him. it has already appeared that both joey and charlotte are married. joey has a family, but he and ernest very rarely have any intercourse. of course, ernest took nothing under his father's will; this had long been understood, so that the other two are both well provided for. charlotte is as clever as ever, and sometimes asks ernest to come and stay with her and her husband near dover, i suppose because she knows that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. there is a _de haut en bas_ tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay one's finger upon it but ernest never gets a letter from her without feeling that he is being written to by one who has had direct communication with an angel. "what an awful creature," he once said to me, "that angel must have been if it had anything to do with making charlotte what she is." "could you like," she wrote to him not long ago, "the thoughts of a little sea change here? the top of the cliffs will soon be bright with heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather i should think begun, to judge by the state of the hill at ewell, and heather or no heather--the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come your room shall be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. nineteen and sixpence is the price of a return-ticket which covers a month. would you decide just as you would yourself like, only if you come we would hope to try and make it bright for you; but you must not feel it a burden on your mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction." "when i have a bad nightmare," said ernest to me, laughing as he showed me this letter, "i dream that i have got to stay with charlotte." her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and i believe it is said among the family that charlotte has far more real literary power than ernest has. sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much as to say, "there now--don't you think you are the only one of us who can write; read this! and if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing for your next book, you can make what use of it you like." i daresay she writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words "hope," "think," "feel," "try," "bright," and "little," and can hardly write a page without introducing all these words and some of them more than once. all this has the effect of making her style monotonous. ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late years has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. he finds it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble through getting into the key of c sharp after beginning in the key of c and being unable to get back again. "getting into the key of c sharp," he said, "is like an unprotected female travelling on the metropolitan railway, and finding herself at shepherd's bush, without quite knowing where she wants to go to. how is she ever to get safe back to clapham junction? and clapham junction won't quite do either, for clapham junction is like the diminished seventh--susceptible of such enharmonic change, that you can resolve it into all the possible termini of music." talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place between ernest and miss skinner, dr skinner's eldest daughter, not so very long ago. dr skinner had long left roughborough, and had become dean of a cathedral in one of our midland counties--a position which exactly suited him. finding himself once in the neighbourhood ernest called, for old acquaintance sake, and was hospitably entertained at lunch. thirty years had whitened the doctor's bushy eyebrows--his hair they could not whiten. i believe that but for that wig he would have been made a bishop. his voice and manner were unchanged, and when ernest remarking upon a plan of rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the quirinal, he replied with all his wonted pomp: "yes, the quirinal--or as i myself prefer to call it, the quirinal." after this triumph he inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it back again into the face of heaven, as in his finest form during his head-mastership. at lunch he did indeed once say, "next to impossible to think of anything else," but he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words, "next to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas," after which he seemed to feel a good deal more comfortable. ernest saw the familiar volumes of dr skinner's works upon the bookshelves in the deanery dining-room, but he saw no copy of "rome or the bible--which?" "and are you still as fond of music as ever, mr pontifex?" said miss skinner to ernest during the course of lunch. "of some kinds of music, yes, miss skinner, but you know i never did like modern music." "isn't that rather dreadful?--don't you think you rather"--she was going to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning. "i would like modern music, if i could; i have been trying all my life to like it, but i succeed less and less the older i grow." "and pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?" "with sebastian bach." "and don't you like beethoven?" "no, i used to think i did, when i was younger, but i know now that i never really liked him." "ah! how can you say so? you cannot understand him, you never could say this if you understood him. for me a simple chord of beethoven is enough. this is happiness." ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father--a likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. he remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess i had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear miss skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph:-- "stay: i may presently take a simple chord of beethoven, or a small semiquaver from one of mendelssohn's songs without words." after luncheon when ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his wont. he rose and bowed. "these expressions," he said, _voce sua_, "are very valuable to me." "they are but a small part, sir," rejoined ernest, "of what anyone of your old pupils must feel towards you," and the pair danced as it were a minuet at the end of the dining-room table in front of the old bay window that looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. on this ernest departed; but a few days afterwards, the doctor wrote him a letter and told him that his critics were a [greek text], and at the same time [greek text]. ernest remembered [greek text], and knew that the other words were something of like nature, so it was all right. a month or two afterwards, dr skinner was gathered to his fathers. "he was an old fool, ernest," said i, "and you should not relent towards him." "i could not help it," he replied, "he was so old that it was almost like playing with a child." sometimes, like all whose minds are active, ernest overworks himself, and then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful encounters with dr skinner or theobald in his sleep--but beyond this neither of these two worthies can now molest him further. to myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times i am half afraid--as for example when i talk to him about his books--that i may have been to him more like a father than i ought; if i have, i trust he has forgiven me. his books are the only bone of contention between us. i want him to write like other people, and not to offend so many of his readers; he says he can no more change his manner of writing than the colour of his hair, and that he must write as he does or not at all. with the public generally he is not a favourite. he is admitted to have talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer unpractical kind, and no matter how serious he is, he is always accused of being in jest. his first book was a success for reasons which i have already explained, but none of his others have been more than creditable failures. he is one of those unfortunate men, each one of whose books is sneered at by literary critics as soon as it comes out, but becomes "excellent reading" as soon as it has been followed by a later work which may in its turn be condemned. he never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. i have told him over and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the only thing i can say to him which makes him angry with me. "what can it matter to me," he says, "whether people read my books or not? it may matter to them--but i have too much money to want more, and if the books have any stuff in them it will work by-and-by. i do not know nor greatly care whether they are good or not. what opinion can any sane man form about his own work? some people must write stupid books just as there must be junior ops and third class poll men. why should i complain of being among the mediocrities? if a man is not absolutely below mediocrity let him be thankful--besides, the books will have to stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they begin the better." i spoke to his publisher about him not long since. "mr pontifex," he said, "is a _homo unius libri_, but it doesn't do to tell him so." i could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith in ernest's literary position, and looked upon him as a man whose failure was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once made a _coup_. "he is in a very solitary position, mr overton," continued the publisher. "he has formed no alliances, and has made enemies not only of the religious world but of the literary and scientific brotherhood as well. this will not do nowadays. if a man wishes to get on he must belong to a set, and mr pontifex belongs to no set--not even to a club." i replied, "mr pontifex is the exact likeness of othello, but with a difference--he hates not wisely but too well. he would dislike the literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and they him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were brought into contact with them his last state would be worse than his first. his instinct tells him this, so he keeps clear of them, and attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it--in the hope, perhaps, that a younger generation will listen to him more willingly than the present." "can anything,"' said the publisher, "be conceived more impracticable and imprudent?" to all this ernest replies with one word only--"wait." such is my friend's latest development. he would not, it is true, run much chance at present of trying to found a college of spiritual pathology, but i must leave the reader to determine whether there is not a strong family likeness between the ernest of the college of spiritual pathology and the ernest who will insist on addressing the next generation rather than his own. he says he trusts that there is not, and takes the sacrament duly once a year as a sop to nemesis lest he should again feel strongly upon any subject. it rather fatigues him, but "no man's opinions," he sometimes says, "can be worth holding unless he knows how to deny them easily and gracefully upon occasion in the cause of charity." in politics he is a conservative so far as his vote and interest are concerned. in all other respects he is an advanced radical. his father and grandfather could probably no more understand his state of mind than they could understand chinese, but those who know him intimately do not know that they wish him greatly different from what he actually is. available by the internet archive and the university of toronto libraries. chains a play, in four acts by elizabeth baker london: sidgwick & jackson, ltd. adam street, adelphi. mcmxi. chains act i _scene: sitting-room at acacia avenue. the principal articles of furniture are the centre table, set for dinner for three, and a sideboard on the right. there are folding doors at the back, leading to the front room, partly hidden by curtains; on the left a low french window leading into the garden. on the right is a fire burning; and above it a door into the kitchen._ _the furniture of the room is a little mixed in style. a wicker armchair is on one side of the fireplace, a folding carpet-chair on the other. the other chairs, three at the table and two against the walls, are of bent wood. the sideboard is mahogany. the carpet-square over oilcloth is of an indeterminate pattern in subdued colours, dull crimson predominating. lace curtains at window. family photographs, a wedding group and a cricket group, and a big lithograph copy of a marcus stone picture, are on the walls. there is a brass alarm clock on the mantelpiece and one or two ornaments. a sewing-machine stands on a small table near the window; and on the edge of this table and on the small table on the other side of the window are pots of cuttings. a couple of bookshelves hang over the machine. a small vase of flowers stands in the centre of the dinner table._ _lily wilson, much worried, is laying the centre table. she is a pretty, slight woman, obviously young, wearing a light cotton blouse, dark skirt and big pinafore. the front door is heard to close. charley wilson enters. he is an ordinary specimen of the city clerk, dressed in correct frock-coat, dark trousers, carefully creased, much cuff and a high collar._ lily. here you are, then. [_she puts up her face and they kiss hurriedly._] did i hear mr. tennant with you? char. met on the step. lily. _how_ funny! well, that's nice. we can have dinner almost directly. char. [_putting down his hat carefully on sideboard, and stretching himself slowly, with evident enjoyment._] saturday, thank the lord! lily. [_laughing prettily._] poor thing! char. [_looking at his silk hat._] i should like to pitch the beastly thing into the river. [_he shakes his fist at it. then he stretches his neck as if to lift it out of the collar and shaking down his cuffs till he can get a fine view of them, regards them meditatively._] pah! lily. [_anxiously._] what's the matter with them? are they scorched? char. scorched! no, they're white enough. beastly uniform! lily. but you must wear cuffs, dear. char. a chap came to the office to-day in a red tie. old raffles had him up, and pitched into him. asked him if he was a socialist. chap said he wasn't, but liked red. "so do i," says the boss, "but i don't wear a golf coat in the city!" thought he was awfully smart, and it did make poppy swear. lily. who's poppy, dear? char. popperwell. he almost left there and then. said he should wear whatever tie he liked. lily. it would have been rather silly of him, wouldn't it? he's so sure there. char. that's what _he_ said. he thought better of it and swallowed it. well--dinner ready? lily. waiting. char. [_going out._] i'll be down in a jiffy. _lily goes to the fire. tennant heard outside whistling a bar of the song "off to philadelphia." he comes in. he is a broad-shouldered young fellow, a little shy in his manner with women._ tennant. nice day, mrs. wilson. lily. beautiful. tennant. i've brought you home the paper, if you'd like it. it's the "daily mirror." lily. oh, thank you. i do like the pictures. charley is getting so dreadfully serious now in his reading, and won't buy it. he takes the "daily telegraph." he thinks the gardening notes are so good. tennant. he's luxurious. it's a penny. lily. oh, he shares it with somebody. [_pause._] tennant. how goes the garden? lily. it's rather trying--i should like to give up those peas and things, and have chickens. they would be so useful. _lily goes out. tennant takes a map out of his pocket and stands studying it. charley and lily enter together. charley has made a wonderful change into a loose, rather creased suit of bright brown, flannel shirt with soft collar, flowing tie and old slippers. a pipe is sticking out of one pocket, and a newspaper out of the other. they sit down, and lily tries not to look worried as charley laboriously cuts the small joint which she has brought in with her and put before him. he splashes the gravy a little and has to use the sharpener. lily serves vegetables._ char. i think i shall get one of robertson's pups. lily. it would be lovely. char. he's got one he'll let me have cheap. tennant. i saw them last night. they're a good breed. make fine house-dogs. char. that's what you want round here. a quiet neighbourhood like this is a for burglars. lily. you don't think we shall have any, do you? char. no. had 'em the other night. tennant. what were they after? lily. ? that's the new people. what a shame! char. wanted the wedding presents. lily. and mrs. thompson told me they had real silver at . char. trust the burglars for knowing that. they won't risk their skins for electro. so _we_ shan't have 'em. lily. charley! you forget the biscuit barrel and the tray. tennant. where's the bobby? lily. there's only one about here. char. they don't have bobbies for burgles in these sort of places, only for rows. and we don't have rows. we're too respectable. lily. i think it's so mean of burglars to come to people like us. char. [_with a burst of laughter._] let 'em go to portman square, you say? lily. well, of course, it's wrong to steal at all; but it doesn't seem quite so bad. [_she stops, a little confused._] tennant. of course it isn't. char. [_lying back comfortably in his chair._] going away sunday? tennant. no--the fact is-- lily. maggie is coming round this afternoon. shall we ask the leslies for whist to-night? char. all right. don't make it too early, though. [_looking out of the french windows into the garden._] i've got to get in my peas. tennant. green peas? char. green peas in that patch? my dear chap, don't i wish i could! lily. [_to tennant._] have some more? tennant. no, thanks. char. for one thing, there's the soil! it's rotten. then there're the sparrows. . . . lily. some of them are so tame, dear, and they don't seem to care a bit for the cat next door. char. [_bitterly._] they don't care for anything. i wish they'd take a fancy to a few snails. lily. they don't eat snails. char. you spoil 'em. she gives 'em soaked bread all through the winter, and then expects me to grow things. lord! _lily collects plates. tennant goes out. charley lights pipe. charley goes to window, where he stands leaning against the post and smoking._ lily. the baby across the road is such a darling, charley. char. is it? lily. the girl was out with it this morning, and i called her over. char. what is it? lily. it's a boy. _charley's replies are without interest and he continues to gaze out into garden._ they're going to call him theodore clement freeman. it's rather a lot, isn't it? char. what's he got it all for? lily. after her father and his father and freeman is a family name. char. what did they want to give 'em all to _him_ for? they should keep some for the next. lily. charley! char. it's silly. still, it's their business. lily. it might be a girl. char. well--there's the others. lily. charley! char. my dear girl, why not? lily. i don't like you to speak like that. char. i-- [_stops suddenly, looks at her, and comes over. he takes her face between his hands._] you silly! [_kisses her._] _lily goes out with a tray of things singing. charley rolls up his sleeves and goes into the garden._ _tennant comes in and looks round. charley comes to the window with a spade._ tennant. you--er--busy? char. [_lighting his pipe._] um! want a job? there's a nice little lot of squirming devils under that flower-pot that want killing. take your time over it. tennant. thanks. my fancy doesn't lie in gardening. char. filthy soil, this. tennant. mrs. wilson would like to keep chickens. char. not if i know it! i'd rather go into a flat. [_leaning against the door and smoking thoughtfully._] i could chuck the lot sometimes. these two-penny-halfpenny back yards make me sick. _pause._ i'd give something for a piece of good land. something to pay you for your labour. [_rousing._] well--going out? tennant. [_uneasily._] yes--presently. char. [_turning to look at him._] what's up? tennant. i've--er--got some news for you. char. anything wrong? tennant. no--no! the fact is--i'm going to hook it. char. [_astonished._] hook it? where to? tennant. i'm sick of the whole show. i can't stand it any longer. char. [_trying to realise the situation._] do you mean you've left molesey's? tennant. yes. i'm going to leave england--and so, you see, i've got to leave here--your place. char. leave england? got a crib? tennant. no, nothing. char. what are you going for then? tennant. because i'm sick of it. char. so am i, and so are others. do you mean you are just going out because you want a change? tennant. that's about it. i've had enough of grind. char. well, perhaps you'll get grind somewhere else. tennant. it'll be a change of grind then. that's something. char. canada? tennant. no, australia. char. phew! that's a long shot. got any friends there? tennant. no. char. it's a bit risky, isn't it? tennant. of course it's risky. but who wouldn't have a little risk instead of that beastly hole every day for years? scratch, scratch, scratch, and nothing in the end, mind you? char. [_ironically._] you might become a junior partner. tennant. [_ignoring the remark._] suppose i stay there. they'll raise the screw every year till i get what they think is enough for me. then you just stick. i suppose i should marry and have a little house somewhere, and grind on. char. [_looking round._] like me. _lily heard singing off r._ tennant. no offence, old chap. it's all right for some. it suits you. you're used to it. i want to see things a bit before i settle. _charley is silent. his pipe has gone out and he is staring at the floor._ so i thought i'd go the whole plunge. i've got a little cash, of course, so i shan't starve at first, anyhow. _charley makes no remark. tennant becomes apologetic._ i'm--i feel a bit of a beast--but the fact is--i--it was decided in a hurry--i--er-- _charley looks up._ i'm going on monday. char. on monday! why, that's the day after tomorrow. tennant. yes, i know. it was like this. i heard of a man who's going monday--a man i know--and it came over me all at once, why shouldn't i go too? i went to see him friday--kept it dark here till i'd seen the guv'nor, and now it's all fixed. i'm awfully sorry to have played you like this-- char. oh, rot! that's nothing. but i say, it's the rummest go i ever heard of. what did molesey say? tennant. slapped me on the back! what d'ye think of that? i thought he'd call me a fool. he pointed out that i could stay there for ever, if i liked--which was jolly decent of him--but when i said i'd rather not, thanks muchly, he banged me on the back, and said he wished he could do the same and cut the office. he didn't even stop the money for notice. char. did he give you a £ note? tennant. [_laughing._] you don't want much. the old chap was quite excited, asked me to write--how's that? _pause._ [_rising._] the thing is--i can't see why i didn't go before. why did i ever go into the beastly office? there was nobody to stop me going to timbuctoo, if i liked. i say, will you tell mrs. wilson? char. she's only in the kitchen. lil!--lil! [_shouting._] lily. [_from outside._] yes, dear. char. come here! here's news. _lily enters, wiping her hands on her pinafore and smiling._ lily. yes? char. [_waving his pipe towards tennant._] what d'ye think _he's_ going to do? lily. [_studying tennant seriously._] do? how-- tennant. [_nervously._] i--i'm going to leave you, mrs. wilson. lily. to leave us? [_with enlightenment._] you're going to be married! tennant. good heavens, no! not that! char. whatever made you think of that? lily. what else could he do? tennant. i'm going abroad. _going over to garden door._ char. he's going to seek his fortune. lucky dog! lily. have you got a good appointment, mr. tennant? tennant. no, nothing. i'm going on the chance. lily. whatever for? didn't you like molesey's? tennant. oh, they were good enough and all that, but i got sick of the desk. i'm going farming. lily. and throwing up a good situation? tennant. i suppose you'd call it good. lily. it was so sure. you'd have been head clerk in time. i'm sure you would. it does seem such a pity. tennant. sounds a bit foolish, i expect. lily. of course you must get tired of it sometimes. but to throw it up altogether! i do hope you won't be sorry for it. charley gets tired of it sometimes--don't you, dear? char. [_from the garden door._] just a bit--now and then. lily. everybody does i expect. it would be very nice, of course, to see other places and all that--but you can always travel in your holidays. char. how far on the continong can you go in a fortnight, lil? tennant. i don't think you quite understand. it isn't so much that i want to see things--though that'd be jolly--but i want a change of work. lily. [_sympathetically._] it _is_ trying to do the same thing over and over again. but then the hours are not so very long, are they? char. nine to six, with an hour for lunch and tea thrown in. count your many blessings, freddy. lily. [_reproachfully, and crossing to him._] you know, charley, we've often talked it over, and you've said how regular the hours were. char. so they are. _charley disappears for a moment into garden, but is now and again to be seen outside the door with a flower-pot or some other thing for the garden._ lily. and you have the evenings, and they give you saturday morning at molesey's as you get on, don't they? tennant. yes, it's all true, mrs. wilson--but i can't stand it. anybody can have the job. char. it's the spring, freddy. that's the matter with you. lily. i do hope you won't be sorry for it. it would be so dreadful if you failed, after giving up such a good situation. of course we are very sorry to lose you, mr. tennant--you have been so kind. tennant. [_hastily and with much embarrassment._] oh, please don't. lily. and we have always got on so very well together. i'm sure it will be very difficult to get anyone to suit us so well again. but you won't forget us and if we have your address, we can write sometimes-- char. and if anything striking occurs, i'll send a cable. the novelty will be worth it. [_coming just inside the door with the spade in his hand._] for the rest, i'll describe one day and you can tick it off for the whole lot of the others. rise at , breakfast; catch the . , city-- _the door-bell is heard._ who on earth--! _he goes into the garden._ lily. maggie, i expect. _she goes out._ _tennant, after making a step towards the garden, turns to the door, only to meet maggie massey and lily. maggie is of medium height, well-proportioned, good-looking without being pretty._ maggie. [_shaking hands with tennant._] how do you do? lily. what _do_ you think, maggie? mr. tennant is going to leave us. guess what for! maggie. he's going to be married? char. good lord! there's another. maggie. hullo, charles, you there! lily. he's going to leave england. maggie. how nice for him! lily. [_emphatically._] nice! but he's got nothing to do there! maggie. [_to tennant._] are you going to emigrate? tennant. yes; i'm going to australia to try my luck. char. isn't he an idiot? maggie. do you think so? char. throwing up a nice snug little place at molesey's and rushing himself on to the already overstocked labour market of the colonies. maggie. you are really going on your luck? tennant. yes. maggie. how fine! lily. maggie! think of the risk! maggie. he's a man. it doesn't matter. lily. if he'd been out of work, it would have been so very different. maggie. that would have spoilt the whole thing. i admire his pluck. lily. well, he's got no one depending on him, so he will suffer alone. maggie. you're not very encouraging, lil. i have heard of a married man doing the same. char. [_quickly._] who was that? lily. how very foolish! maggie. oh, he was already out of work. lily. that is different--although even then-- maggie. his wife went to live with her people again and he went out to the colonies and made a home for her. lily. [_sceptically._] how did he do that? maggie. i don't know. _you_ are quite free to do as you like, aren't you, mr. tennant? how does that feel? tennant. i have only just started to think about it. directly the idea came into my head, off i had to go. _charley, who has stood listening, turns slowly and walks away._ maggie. you are lucky to have found it out in time. tennant. in time? maggie. before you got too old to do anything. _pause._ char. [_near the garden window but outside._] climb on to the dustbin, only mind the lid's on tight. tennant. that's leslie coming over. i'll go. [_goes._] _enter from the garden morton leslie, a big fair man, clean-shaven, lazy and good-natured. charley follows._ leslie. i nearly smashed your husband, mrs. wilson . . . good day, miss maggie--and i'm sure i've absolutely killed mr. wilson's beans. char. if you don't the birds will--and if they don't the worms will--and--how can you expect anything to grow in that garden? leslie. i thought it was such an excellent small holding! what about the carrots? char. pah! carrots! why not peaches? come on, leslie! i've got the papers in the other room. _charley lifts the curtain and they go into front room._ lily. i'm afraid charley must be tired. he seems quite irritable. maggie. so am i when i get home from business. [_throwing out her arms and smiling at lily._] no more shop for me in a month or two, lil. lily. [_excitedly._] you're going to marry mr. foster? _maggie nods._ oh, how lovely! how nice for you, dear! i am so glad. what did mother say? maggie. [_with a little laugh._] mother is charmed. lily. everybody is, of course. he is such a nice man. he will spoil you, maggie. you lucky girl! maggie. yes, i suppose i am. lily. you don't like to show it, of course, dear. maggie. don't i? you should have seen me last night! i took off my shop collar and apron and put them on the floor and danced on them--till mother came to see what was the matter. lily. you _must_ be fond of him, dear. maggie. no, i'm _not,_ particularly. lily. maggie! maggie. [_walking up and down._] that's funny now. i didn't mean to say that. it just came. [_a pause._] how queer! [_a pause._] well, it's the truth, anyway. at least, it's not quite true. when i came here to-day i was awfully happy about it--i am fond of him at least--i--well--he's very nice--you know. [_irritably._] what did you want to start this for, lil? lily. [_aggrieved._] _i_ start it? i did nothing. maggie. i was so satisfied when i came. lily. [_soothingly and taking her sister's hat and coat from her._] you're a little tired, dear. we'll have an early cup of tea. have you got your ring, dear? _maggie holds out her left hand._ how sweet! sapphires! he must be rich, maggie. _pause._ maggie. i wish i was a good housekeeper, lil. lily. [_reassuring._] oh, you'll soon learn, dear; and his other housekeeper wasn't very good. maggie. i wasn't thinking of that. lily. but you talked of housekeeping, dear. maggie. yes, but that's quite different from being married. if i could cook decently, i would have left the shop before. lily. but you _are_ going to leave the shop! maggie. [_unheeding._] or if i understood anything about the house properly, but i couldn't be even a mother's help unless i could wash. lily. i don't know what you mean, maggie. you haven't got to wash. you know mr. foster can afford to send it all out. [_sighing enviously._] that must be nice. maggie. i heard of a girl the other day, fanny white--you know her--she's gone to canada. lily. canada! who's talking about canada? what's that to do--? maggie. i was envious. she used to be with us at the shop. lily. [_impatiently._] yes, i know. well, you've done better than she, anyway, maggie, if she _is_ going to canada. she'll only be a servant, after all. what else can she do? and then in the end she'll marry some farmer man and have to work fearfully hard--i've heard about the women over there--and wish she had _never_ left england. while here are you, going to marry a rich man who's _devoted_ to you, with plenty of money and long holidays, and your own servant to begin with! really, maggie--! maggie. [_stretching a little and smiling._] isn't it gorgeous? [_shaking herself._] well--it must be mr. tennant's fault. he shouldn't get mad ideas into his head-- lily. and he really is mad. throwing up a most _excellent_ situation. my dear, i call him just stupid! charley. [_lifting the curtain and coming forward with leslie._] there's no hurry. leslie. oh, i'll start on it to-night. my wife's gone away and left me for the day, and i'm a forsaken grass widower. lily. [_laughing._] poor mr. leslie! won't you come in here to-night? don't you think it would be very nice, charley, as mr. tennant is going so soon-- leslie. tennant? where's he going? maggie. _you'll_ never guess. leslie. he's leaving you? he's going to get married? char. [_impatiently._] you're as bad as a woman! maggie. i thought you more brilliant, mr. leslie. leslie. i thought of the happiest thing that could happen to a man, miss maggie. lily. no, it's not marrying. he's going abroad. leslie. got a fortune? maggie. he's just going to try his luck. he's emigrating. leslie. what a fool! he's got the sack, i suppose? maggie. no. he's thrown it up. leslie. thrown up a safe job? oh, he's an ass, a stupid ass! you surely don't ask me to come and wish good luck to an ass? maggie. you can help with a dirge then. leslie. much more like it. but, i say, is it really true? he must have got something to go to? char. he hasn't. he's got a little cash, of course. he's always been a careful beast. leslie. and he's going to throw it away! and then i suppose he'll be out of work over there, and we shall be hearing of the unemployment in the colonies! it's just this sort of thing that makes a man a conservative. it's what i call getting off the ladder and deliberately kicking it down. char. well, i don't then. i think he's a lucky chap to be able to do something he likes. he's got some pluck. lily. why, dear, you know you think it's very silly of him! leslie. [_laughing._] you must look after your husband, mrs. wilson, i can see. he'll be running away. well, so long, old chap! i'll come back later. just give me a hitch over the wall. you'll be sorry about those beans next week. [_pause._] _they go out. a crash is heard._ char. hullo! what's up? leslie. [_in the distance._] smashed a box of tomato plants. phew! _lily, laughing, goes out with maggie._ _a long whistle--charley comes back into the room and stands looking into the fire. pause._ _enter tennant r._ tennant. i'm just going round to carter's. anything you want? [_pause._] i suppose leslie had something to say about me? char. he doesn't want to come _with_ you. _tennant laughs._ you don't seem to know much about it, but i suppose you've fixed on a town. sydney? tennant. no, brisbane. [_pulling out a map._] the chap i know is cattle raising. look! _he opens the map on the table: they both lean over it, charley's burnt-out pipe still in his hand._ we're going to brisbane, then this way [_moving his finger_] across queensland. he knows something at merivale--here--see--in the darling district. then we shall push on to maronoa--that's the county--we're going to a tiny place--terramoa--but of course i mayn't get anything-- char. [_who is practically lying over the map._] not fruit-farming then? that's more my line. tennant. no. if ever you thought of that--see--this is a good district--i heard of a man there once--see--this way--ship to sydney--vineyards and all sorts--suit you. charley. u-m! or one could go this way. [_pointing with his pipe._] _lily's voice heard calling "charley"--tennant stands upright._ lily. [_enters--laughing._] charley! what are you doing? _charley jumps up and tennant folds up the map._ looking at the plans? tennant. i'm off. _goes out._ lily. finished gardening already, dear? charley. [_putting on his coat._] don't feel like it. lily. [_holding out a newspaper._] look here, dear, this will do for us, i think. charley. [_glancing round._] what is it? lily. an advertisement. [_reading._] "wanted, by young man, board--residence in quiet family within easy reach of city. western suburb preferred." i must answer it. charley. i say--give tennant a chance to get out first. lily. but he is going, dear, so there's no risk. and it's such a good chance. besides, we can ask mr. tennant for a reference. charley. [_sharply._] no, don't. surely we can exist a week without anybody. lily. oh, yes! only i thought--it's a pity to miss--you don't want mr. tennant to go, do you, dear? he is nice company for you. charley. he's a nice chap. but you needn't get lodgers to keep me company. lily. [_laughs._] what an idea! of course not. charley. [_going to her and turning her face towards him._] i say, lil, aren't you ever dull here? lily. no--well--hardly ever. there's always something to do. what a question! charley. don't you ever get sick of it? it's jolly hard work sometimes. [_he takes her hands and looks at them, stroking them as if unconsciously._] why they're getting quite rough. [_she pulls them away._] lily. it's the washing, dear. it does roughen your hands. charley. [_taking them again and kissing them._] they weren't rough when we married. lily. [_she turns away._] you silly boy, of course they weren't. i never did washing at home. what do you think, dear? maggie is going to be married. charley. [_with little interest._] to foster? lily. yes. isn't she lucky? he's quite well off. charley. so _she_ won't do the washing. i shall never be rich. lily. you'll be head clerk one of these days. charley. one of these days! lily. and then we'll have a servant. charley. perhaps i shall never be head clerk. lily. oh, yes, you will! charley. i don't know that i'm excited at the idea--a sort of policeman over the other chaps. i'd rather be as i am. lily. but think of the position--and the money! _charley nods gloomily--he walks to garden door._ where's your ambition, dear? charley. perfectly safe. no fear of that getting lost. the man who built that road [_pointing out of the window_] ought to be hanged. lily. they're not very pretty, those houses. mrs. freeman told me this morning that they're going to raise our rents a little. charley. [_turning round sharply._] what? _that's_ because they've brought the fares down. just like 'em. lily. i was thinking this morning, dear, that perhaps we could take two boarders. it would help a little. that little room at the back, over the scullery, would do nicely with a single bed. charley. that's where i keep my cuttings and things. lily. yes, dear, but you could have half the coal shed. we never fill it. charley. i don't want the coal shed. i say--must we have two? lily. it would make things better, dear. charley. but it's beastly, choking up your house with a lot of fellers. _you_ don't like it, do you? lily. no, dear, of course not. charley. you don't seem much put out. lily. it's no good being cross about it, dear, is it? if it's got to be done, we may as well make the best of it. charley. oh, make the best of it. [_fretfully._] you might at least seem vexed. lily. [_patiently._] of course i don't like it, dear, and of course i'd much rather be alone with you and have all my house to myself--though really the boarders don't worry much, you know. they are always home late and only have meals with us. charley. who wants 'em at meals? i don't, if you do! lily. [_pathetically._] you are very unkind. i never said i wanted them. i'm only doing my best to make things smooth. you might help me, charley. [_she turns away._] charley. [_crossing to lily and patting her on her hand._] i'll be all right later. but i say it is a bit thick. an englishman's home is his castle. i like that! why, the only place where you can be alone is the bedroom. we'll be letting that next. [_he laughs sarcastically._] lily. [_shocked._] charley! what are you saying? charley. ha, ha, what a joke! the--well, never mind. the day we let the bathroom, lil--i'm off to the colonies. [_he stops, suddenly struck with a thought._] lily. you silly boy. charley. supposing i did, eh? lily. we're not going to let the bathroom, so you needn't suppose anything. charley. [_abstractedly--sitting on a corner of the table._] why not? lily. did you speak, dear? charley. [_starting._] eh?--no, no!--nothing. _lily goes, closing door._ curtain act ii _scene: sitting-room at acacia avenue. the folding doors between front and back parlour are opened, with red curtains looped up. the front parlour, a glimpse of which is visible between curtains, is in full light and a corner of the piano can be seen. the furniture in this room is of the imitation sheraton variety. there is an ornamental overmantel with photographs and vases, and a marble clock in the middle of the mantelpiece._ _someone is playing the piano, and lily, standing beside it, is singing in a sweet but rather weak voice, "sing me to sleep." no one is in the back parlour, but through the curtains can be seen morton leslie, lolling on mantelpiece; sybil frost, a pretty fair-haired girl, much given to laughing at everything; percy massey, a good-looking, somewhat weak youth of perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two, sitting very close to sybil, and tennant, standing in the bay window._ _charley comes in quietly through the side door into the back parlour during the singing. when lily comes to the refrain of the song, everyone except charley joins in. he stays in the back parlour and sitting down in the shadow, lights a cigarette. lily sits down amid a good deal of clapping and words of admiration._ sybil. i do love that song. percy. now you sing something. sybil. [_with a giggle._] i couldn't really--you know i couldn't. percy. oh, yes, you can--that nice little coon thing you sang at the richards. sybil. i've got a cold. maggie. [_crossing from piano._] of course you have. sybil. [_laughing._] but it's quite true. really. and i couldn't really sing after mrs. wilson. lily. sybil! do sing, _please._ leslie. we're all waiting, miss frost. sybil. oh, please--i can't. let someone else sing first. _maggie comes to the doorway and catches sight of charley. she comes in. in the front parlour sybil can be seen still resisting, while lily, leslie, and percy massey beseech her._ maggie. you here--all alone? charley. 'um. maggie. what's the matter? charley. nothing. maggie. why didn't you come into the front room? charley. i can hear quite as well here. maggie. got the hump? charley. what for? head's a bit nasty, so i'm smoking it off. maggie. it isn't that--it's all this about tennant. charley. [_irritably._] i'm not grieving over him, if that's what you mean. maggie. as if i did! and as if you'd confess if you were. are you sick of everything? charley. sick! i'd cut the whole beastly show tomorrow if-- [_he stops suddenly._] _lily's voice can be heard distinctly from the front room._ lily. well, we'll ask mr. tennant to sing first. sybil. oh, i can't sing, really-- charley. why doesn't the girl sing when she's asked? maggie. she says she has a cold. [_she laughs a little._] charley. rot! affectation, i call it. maggie. percy's awfully smitten, isn't he? charley. [_surprised._] with her? maggie. of course. but you haven't noticed that. lily's been arranging it. charley. but he's such a kid. maggie. he's twenty-two. charley. what's that? maggie. lots of men marry at twenty-two. charley. more fools they! getting tied up before they've seen anything. maggie. [_thoughtfully._] i can never understand why a man gets married. he's got so many chances to see the world and do things--and then he goes and marries and settles down and is a family man before he's twenty-four. charley. it's a habit. maggie. if i were a man i wouldn't stay in england another week. i wouldn't be a quill-driver all my life. _charley gets up and walks restlessly up and down the room._ if i were a man-- charley. men can't do everything. maggie. i say, don't you think it's fine of mr. tennant to throw up everything and take the risk? charley. i'd do the same if . . . lily. [_coming forward a little._] where's charley? oh, never mind, i daresay he's got a lantern and is looking for worms or something. are you ready, mr. tennant? maggie. i wonder what lil would say if you did! _charley stops dead and looks at maggie._ charley. if i _did?_ what are you talking about? maggie. why shouldn't you? charley. why shouldn't i? aren't there a thousand reasons? maggie. there's lily, certainly--but . . . charley. she wouldn't understand. she'd think i was deserting her. _a pause._ but that's not all. i might manage her--i don't know--but--you see, i've got a berth i can stay in all my life . . . _tennant starts singing the first verse of "off to philadelphia."_ it's like throwing up a dead cert. and then. . . . maggie. it _would_ be a splash. charley. yes--and think of all your people? what'd they say? they'd say i was running away from lil--of course, it would seem like it. . . . _another pause._ it's impossible. i might never get anything to do--and then-- _his voice is suddenly drowned as the front room party sing the chorus "with my knapsack," etc. knock at front door._ i-- maggie. i believe i heard a knock. _she goes out in corridor as tennant commences the second verse._ _charley sits on the edge of the table watching and listening. the door opens and maggie enters, followed by fenwick. fenwick is a man of middle age, short and slight, with a quiet, rather crushed manner._ maggie. mr. fenwick didn't want to come in when he heard all the singing. he thought we had a party. _she goes through curtains._ charley. oh, it's nothing--a sort of family sing-song. fenwick. miss massey would have me come in--but really i'd rather come some other-- charley. stuff! sit down. i'll pull the curtains if it's anything special you've come about. i thought it was perhaps over those geranium cuttings. afterwards, if you feel like it, we'll go and join them. [_draws curtains and turns up light._] freddy tennant--you know him, don't you--he's going to seek his fortune in the colonies. fen. is he? charley. yes, and we'll drink his health. what's up? fen. i didn't see you at the train to-day. charley. no, you were late. i came on with malcolm. fen. the chief sent for me. charley. wasn't a rise, i suppose? fen. do i look like it? it's the other thing. charley. docking? fen. [_nodding first and then speaking slowly._] he said he'd sent for me as senior of my department. the company has had a bad year and they can't give the usual rises. charley. none? fen. none. haven't you had a letter? charley. no. i say, have i got the sack? fen. no, you haven't. but they're offering you the same alternative they offered me--stay on at less--or go. charley. [_walking up and down._] what are you going to do? fen. what can i do? stay, of course--what else is there? charley. sit down under it? fen. what else? _postman's knock._ charley. there's the postman. wait a bit. _he goes out r. and the voices in the other room can be distinctly heard laughing, while someone is playing a waltz tune very brilliantly._ _charley comes back with a letter in his hand, closes door and music dies down._ charley. here it is. [_he opens and reads it, then throws it on the table._] fenwick. a bit of a blow, isn't it? charley. i didn't expect it. did you? fenwick. not until last week when morgan started making enquiries as to salaries, et cetera. then i guessed. charley. we can't do anything. fenwick. of course not. charley. but i say, you know, it's all rot about a bad year. don't expect we've been exactly piling it up, but it's nothing to grumble about. fenwick. that doesn't affect us, anyway. we've got to do as we're told. i fancy old morgan is hit, too. he was sugary, but of course he had to obey the instructions of the directors and so on. charley. it's no good swearing at him. fenwick. it's no good swearing at anybody. what's a board? where is it? _the curtains part and lily appears in the opening._ lily. charley--are you there? are you never coming back? oh, mr. fenwick! _fenwick rises; shake hands._ fenwick. good evening. i'm afraid i'm an awful nuisance, but i just called to see your husband about a little business. lily. you'll stay to supper, won't you? you and charley can sit and talk business the whole time. i'm afraid charley doesn't like music very much--do you, dear? charley. oh, sometimes. lily. [_big laugh from behind curtains._] you should hear mr. leslie. he's so funny, he's been giving mr. tennant advice what to do when he's a lonely bachelor in australia. he made us _roar_ with laughter. _goes back laughing._ charley. silly ass! fenwick. [_startled._] what? charley. that chap leslie! it'd do him good to go to australia for a bit. he'd stick to his berth if they docked his screw to ten bob. he's got no pride in him. fenwick. well, we--at least, i--can't say much--i'm going to stay on. you, too, i suppose. charley. [_with a sort of defiance._] why should i? what's to hinder me leaving? why shouldn't i go to morgan and say, "look here--just tell those directors that i won't stand it! i'm not going to be put up or down--take this or that--at their will and pleasure." _there is a burst of laughter from the inner room._ fenwick. that's all very well--and if you've got something else-- charley. [_fiercely._] i haven't--not an idea of one--but why should that hinder? look at tennant, he's chucked his job and no one wanted to take off anything. fenwick. [_quite undisturbed._] tennant? oh, he's going to the colonies? very risky. i nearly went there myself once. charley. why didn't you quite? fenwick. various things. all my people were against it. oh, well, what was the good of going? it was only a passing fancy, i daresay. once you leave a place the chances are you won't get another. there are so many of us. . . . charley. of course, it's safe and it's wise and it's sensible and all that--but it's _damnable._ fenwick. it's come suddenly to you--i've almost got used to the idea. [_with a little laugh._] you do, you know, after a little. you're young. . . . [_with sigh._] well, there it is. [_a pause._] but i'd looked for that rise. it'll make a difference. [_pulling himself together._] however, it can't be helped. we've got something left and i'm safe, and that's more than a good many people can say. i'm sorry i came tonight, wilson. _leslie's voice can be heard, shouting out a comic song._ [_smiling._] life doesn't seem to worry him. charley. won't you stay and have supper? fenwick. thanks, no. i don't feel exactly sociable. charley. [_with a short laugh._] neither do i, old chap. fact is, i was feeling a bit off when you came. fenwick. you're a little restless, but it'll work off. look at me. i felt like that once. _they go out._ _the curtains are pulled wide and leslie and percy massey enter. tennant can be seen in the front parlour._ leslie. may we interrupt? [_looking around._] empty was the cradle. _re-enter charley._ where's the business? charley. fenwick's been, but he's just gone. leslie. fenwick? wasn't cheerful company, was he? charley. [_crossly._] what's the matter with him? leslie. he never is, that's all. charley. he isn't exactly boisterous. he nearly emigrated once, he tells me. tennant. [_coming forward._] why didn't he quite? leslie. not enough devil in him. hundreds of 'em almost go. charley. did you? leslie. [_with energy._] i'm comfortable enough where i am. i've been telling this chap here he's a fool, but he won't believe me. he says he'd rather be a fool in the colonies than a wise man here. don't know what he means quite, but it sounds rather smart. [_waving his pipe oracularly as he faces the three men._] i've known lots of chaps who've wanted to go. the guv'nor is unpleasant or there's too much overtime or they get jealous of their girl or something of that sort and off they must go. i've known a few who went--and sorry they were, too. you can't do anything out there. read the emigration books, read your papers. failure all along the line. market overcrowded. only capitalists need apply--the colonies don't want you-- charley. neither does england-- leslie. of course not but [_waving his arm impressively_] but you're here and got something. that's the whole point. my advice is--stick where you are. tennant's a stupid ass to give up a decent berth; he deserves to fail. of course, we should all like to see the world. _i_ should-- tennant. it's more than that. charley. yes, yes, you don't understand. it isn't the idea of travelling--it's because you want to feel--oh! [_he stretches out his arms._] i don't suppose you ever feel so-- leslie. can't say i did. tennant. aren't you ever sick of the thing, leslie? charley. and don't you ever want to pitch all the ledgers into the dustbin and burn the stools? leslie. never--though i've met many that have. i tell you, it's a good thing to have a safe berth nowadays. many fellows would only be too glad to pick up tennant's berth--or yours, wilson. think of the crowds that will answer the advertisement at molesey's-- last week our firm wanted a man to do overtime work, and they don't pay too high a rate--i can tell you. they had five hundred and fifteen applications--five hundred and fifteen! think of that! and that's what would happen to you if you went, wilson, and that'll be the end of tennant. sorry to be unpleasant--but truth-- tennant. but there's room on the land-- leslie. land! what on earth can a bally clerk do with a spade? he'd be trying to stick it behind his ear-- _shout of laughter from percy massey._ he's got no muscle--he's got a back that would break if he stooped--he'd always have a cold in his nose-- charley. shut it, leslie. you can't call tennant exactly anæmic. and look at this. [_he strips off his coat and turns back his shirt sleeves to display his arms._] how's that? _tennant looks on with interest. leslie comes near and pinches charley's arm, while percy massey looks on smilingly._ leslie. all right for a back garden. i suppose you think you're an authority on the land question 'cause you grow sweet peas? charley. [_digging his hands into the pockets without turning down his sleeves again._] i don't think anything of the kind. what i do know is that if i had a chance i could farm land with anybody. _do_ you think i chose this beastly business of quill-driving because it's the best work i know. do you? leslie. i don't suppose you chose it at all. your father chose it for you. percy. [_to charley._] well, i say, what's the matter with it? charley. you wait till you're a few years older. leslie. wilson's caught the land fever. take up an allotment--that'll cure you. your garden isn't big enough. have you got that map, tennant? tennant. it's in my room. shall we go up? leslie. is there a fire? tennant. no. leslie. bring it down, there's a good chap. i like to take things comfortable. i'll wait down here. _tennant goes out r._ _leslie rises; goes back to the front room._ percy. i say, charley-- charley. well? percy. i've got a rise. charley. congratulations--wish i had. percy. foster's given me beckett's job. charley. and beckett? percy. well, he's got the sack, you know. it's a bit rough on him, but i couldn't help it, could i? charley. i suppose you're doing it cheaper? percy. that's about the line. i'm awfully sorry for beckett. he's not young, and it's awfully hard to get anything when you're middle-aged. charley. so i believe. well, anyhow, you're in luck--aren't you? percy. yes, it's sooner than i thought. _they sit in silence._ _tennant re-enters, and goes into inner room._ i say, charley, what did you start on? charley. eh? what d'ye mean? percy. you--and--and lily--you know. _charley looks at him steadily._ charley. oh, that's it, is it? percy. you didn't begin with a house, of course. charley. you know as well as i do that we had three rooms--and jolly small ones. percy. still you were comfortable. charley. it was warm--winter and summer. percy. it wasn't very expensive? charley. you have to choose your housekeeper carefully. percy. if you're going to chaff-- charley. don't be an idiot. you've now got ninety, i suppose. you can manage on that. percy. you really think so? charley. i know from experience. percy. you don't ask who the lady is? charley. sybil is a pretty little girl. percy. well, i suppose you did guess a bit. charley. not me! maggie and lil did it between them. percy. did it? charley. made the match--maggie told me. percy. [_indignantly._] they did nothing of the kind. i met sybil here and . . . charley. 'um--um! percy. we just came together--it was bound to be. _there is a sound of laughter outside and lily and sybil are seen carrying in cakes and lemonade._ charley. she _is_ pretty-- percy. yes, in rather an unusual-- charley. but so are others. percy. i say, old man. charley. well, aren't they? i suppose you won't listen to advice. percy. what about? charley. you're too young to marry. percy. i'm twenty-three. so were you when you married. charley. i was too young. percy. do you mean. . . . charley. [_impatiently._] oh, don't look so scandalised. no, i'm not tired of lily. it's not that at all--but, are you satisfied to be a clerk all your life? percy. i say, tennant's upset you. of course i'm satisfied to be a clerk. charley. but _are_ you? percy. [_impatiently._] don't i say so? charley. have you ever felt a desire to kick your hat into the fire? have you? percy. no! not yet! charley. not yet. there you are--but you will. don't you ever want to see anything more of the world--did you ever have that feeling? percy. [_a little thoughtfully._] well, i did once. i wanted to go out with robinson. but the dad wouldn't consent. it was a bit risky, you know, and this job came along--and so i wouldn't go. charley. did robinson come back? percy. no, he's got a decent little place out there. charley. they don't all fail, then? percy. of course not--but lots do. i might be one of those. charley. well, the thing is if you ever thought of doing anything now's your time. you can't do it afterwards. take my tip and don't get engaged yet. you're too young to decide such an important question. percy. no younger than you were--and i must say. . . . charley. don't be so touchy--can't you see i'm talking to you for your good? percy. i think you're crazed. charley. [_sharply._] why am i crazed, as you call it? isn't it because i know a little what your life is going to be? haven't i gone backwards and forwards to the city every day of my life since i was sixteen and am i crazed because i suggest it's a bit monotonous? [_going close to percy and putting his hand on his shoulder solemnly._] i'm not saying she isn't the right girl for you--i'm only suggesting that perhaps she isn't! she's pretty and she's handy. . . . percy. i say! i won't have that. charley. don't. pass it over. it's just this--think--and don't marry the first pretty girl and live in three rooms because your brother-in-law did it. percy. she wasn't--the first pretty girl. . . . sybil. [_appearing at opening and smiling demurely._] mrs. wilson says--oh, mr. wilson, have you been fighting? charley. [_suddenly remembering that he has his coat off._] i beg your pardon. [_he pulls it on hastily._] [_to percy._] remember! percy. [_with his eyes on sybil._] rot! [_goes back with sybil._] lily. [_coming towards him._] who said anything about fighting? now i suppose you've been arguing with everybody and shouted at them. you do get so cross when you argue--don't you, dear? supper is quite ready. i sent sybil to tell you. . . . charley. sybil's feeding percy. she's got all her work cut out. lily. how rude you are! do you know, i'm quite angry with you. you've hardly been in the whole evening. charley. fenwick. . . . lily. yes, i saw him. he looks so lifeless, don't you think? charley. he says i shall grow like him. lily. what an idea! why, how could you? _the company move about the two rooms, the men handing refreshments to the women--they all come more forward._ leslie. what do you think--? i lost the . this morning! charley. should have thought it would have waited for you. leslie. i left the house at the usual time and there was a confounded woman at the station with about five trunks and a paper parcel, who took up the whole doorway. _much laughing from sybil and an encouraging smile from lily._ by the time i got over the train was gone. never did such a thing in my life before. lily. _you_ haven't sung to us, charley, dear. maggie. he's tired. lily. not too tired for that, are you? sybil. oh, do, mr. wilson, i know you sing splendidly. per-- mr. massey told me so. percy. s'sh! don't give me away--he's my brother-in-law. charley. not to-night, lil--i--i'm a little hoarse. lily. that's being out in the garden at all hours. leslie. don't say that, mrs. wilson. your husband wants to go as a farmer in the colonies--and you'll discourage him. lily. you silly man, mr. leslie. [_to charley._] you must have something hot when you go to bed, dear. leslie. i love being a little ill. my wife's an awfully good nurse. sybil. i believe you put it on sometimes, mr. leslie. leslie. well, do you know--i believe i do. ladies won't put their pretty fingers round your neck for nothing. but if you have a little hoarseness--not too much to be really unpleasant--or a headache is a very good thing--it is delightful--i always say to myself: "o woman--in our hours of ease-- uncertain, coy and hard to please, when pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering angel thou." lily. we ought to have "auld lang syne"-- tennant. please don't. lily. it would be so nice for you to remember. [_going up l._] yes, we must. come. [_she puts out her hands and makes them all form a ring, with hands crossed and all round table._] _tennant and charley join most reluctantly and are not seen to sing a note._ there! that's better. sybil. now i must go, mrs. wilson. lily. must you really? come and get your things. _they go out._ _a tapping is heard at the window in the near room--maggie runs and opens it._ voice. is my husband there, mrs. wilson? leslie. y--es. i'm here. coming, darling. _sybil and lily re-enter r._ leslie. my wife has sent for me home, mrs. wilson. maggie. are you going over the wall? sybil. oh, do, mr. leslie--i should love to see you. leslie. if it will give you any pleasure it shall be done, though i am not at my best on the fence. _they all crowd round--he shakes hands, smiling profusely, and disappears through the window._ voice. mind the flower-pot. no--not there--that's the dustbin. not the steps. _there is a great shout to announce his safe arrival._ leslie. safe! sybil. i do think he is so funny! lily. yes, isn't he? are you going by 'bus? percy. _i'm_ going miss frost's way. sybil. [_much surprised._] are you really? maggie. how extraordinary! _much kissing between sybil, lily and maggie. sybil and percy go out._ lily. she's so sweet, isn't she? and percy's so awfully gone. maggie. [_as they start clearing away the dishes._] very. so he was over daisy mallock and ruby denis--and who's the other girl with the hair? lily. the hair? what do you mean? maggie. the one with the hair all over her eyes--nice hair, too. lily. gladys vancouver? poor percy--i'm afraid he is a little bit of a flirt. maggie. he's got nothing else to do with his evenings. lily. and then people like mr. tennant think it's a dull life. maggie. well, good night all. no, don't come out, mr. tennant--i'm quite a capable person. tennant. oh, but i shall--if you'll allow me. maggie. i'd rather you didn't--still, if you will. [_they go out with lily._] _charley looks round and sighs with relief--he walks round, looks out of the window, then at the garden--he takes up the paper, but after trying in vain to settle to it, throws it on the floor--he re-fills his pipe and lights it. re-enter tennant._ tennant. well. [_he pauses, but charley does not stir._] i say, wilson, i never thought you'd take it like this. _charley does not answer, but only shifts restlessly._ i thought you'd think i was a fool too. in fact i was half ashamed to say anything about it. it wouldn't do for most people, you know. i'm in an exceptional position, and even in spite of that they call me an ass. i've got a little cash, too. charley. [_quickly._] so have i. tennant. yes, but the cases are different. i can rough it. charley. let me have the chance to rough it. tennant. you're married. _charley does not reply._ you're settled. your friends are here. i've got nothing and nobody to worry about. _they both smoke in silence._ i say, don't sit up and think. go to bed. charley. i'm going soon. don't stay up, old chap. tennant. you'll get over it. _he goes out._ _enter lily--she pulls down blind and fastens catch of window._ lily. i'm going up now. don't be long. you look so tired. charley. [_irritably._] oh, don't fret about me. i'm a little worried, that's all. lily. [_timidly._] did mr. fenwick bring bad news? he looked miserable enough. charley. [_looking at her steadily._] yes, i'm not going to have that rise. lily. oh, dear--what a shame! why? charley. lots of reasons--but that's all. lily. of course, you're worried. still--it might have been worse. you might have been sent away. charley. yes. lily. it's very disheartening--after all we'd planned to do with it. you won't be able to have the greenhouse, now, will you, dear? charley. [_with a short laugh._] what's the good of a greenhouse in that yard. it isn't that. lily. [_a little timidly._] but we can manage very well, dear. we--you remember what i said this morning--about the other lodger. charley. oh, don't, for heaven's sake. it isn't losing the cash i mind; it's having to give in like this. i want to go to them and tell them to do their worst and get somebody else. lily. but dear, you might lose your place. charley. i should. lily. but that--we couldn't afford that, could we? why, we can manage quite well as we are. i can be very careful still-- charley. i'm tired of going on as we've been going. lily. what do you want to do? charley. i--i want to go away. [_pause._] lily. and leave me? charley. [_suddenly remembering._] oh--er-- lily. it's just that horrid mr. tennant-- charley. it's nothing to do with him--at least. . . . lily. i said it was. he wants you to go with him--and you want to go--you're tired of me-- charley. [_going up to her and trying to speak gently but being very irritated--his voice is sharp._] oh, don't cry . . . you don't understand. look, lil, supposing i went and you came out afterwards. lily. you want to go without me. charley. i couldn't take you, dear, but i would soon send for you; it wouldn't be long. lily. you want to go without me. you're tired of me. charley. oh, don't cry, lil. i didn't say i was going. of course i don't want to leave you, dear. you mustn't take any notice. [_attempting to take her in his arms._] lily. [_turning away from him, sobs._] but you do. . . . charley. i don't want to go because i want to leave you. . . . lily. but you said. . . . charley. never mind what i said. [_he kisses her and pets her like a child._] come, go to bed. it's the news--and the excitement about tennant--and all that. come, go back to bed and i'll be up in a few minutes. _charley leads her to the door and coaxes her outside and stands at the door a few seconds, then he comes back into the room, stands still, looking round. he goes to the front parlour and hunts over the chairs and the piano as if in search of something. finally he picks up a paper off the floor and brings to table--it is the map of australia. he opens it on the table and leans over it, his pipe unnoticed burning out in his left hand._ curtain act iii _scene: the sitting-room at "sunnybank," hammersmith. there is no centre table, but there are various small ones against the wall and in the window. there is a piano, a tall palm in the window, and one or two wicker chairs that creak. the rest of the furniture is upholstered in saddlebags with antimacassars over the sofa head and armchairs. gramophone in the corner. big mirror over mantelpiece. gilt clock in glass case and lustres._ _mrs. massey is sleeping in one armchair. mr. massey is asleep on sofa, pulled across centre. maggie sits reading at small table. maggie softly rises and goes to fire. she pokes it and a piece of coal falls out. mrs. m. turns her head._ maggie. i'm so sorry, mother, i tried to poke it gently. mrs. m. i was hardly asleep, my dear. maggie. mother!--you've been sleeping for half an hour! mrs. m. it didn't seem like it, dear. why, your father's asleep. maggie. isn't that extraordinary! mrs. m. [_admiringly._] how soundly he sleeps! what's the time? maggie. four o'clock. mrs. m. i should have thought they'd have been here now. maggie. not percy and sybil, i hope. you don't expect _them,_ until the last minute, do you? mrs. m. no, dear--of course not. maggie. i wouldn't walk the streets this afternoon for any man. mrs. m. i don't suppose they find it cold. maggie. oh, i daresay they're sitting in the park. mrs. m. i hope they won't be late for tea. i shall want mine soon. maggie. i'll put on the kettle now and when lil and charley come, we will have tea and not wait for the others. we'll have it cosily in here. [_she goes out, returning with kettle, which she puts on fire. sits close to mrs. massey._] maggie. mother! mrs. m. yes. maggie. mother, did you love father when you married him--very much, i mean, very, very much! mrs. m. [_much astonished._] what a question! of course. maggie. more than any other man you'd ever seen? mrs. m. of course! maggie. more than everything and everybody? mrs. m. _of course!_ maggie. well, there's something wrong with me, then--or else with walter. i don't feel a bit like that. there's no "of course" with me. i wouldn't go and sit in the park with him this afternoon for anything. mrs. m. i suppose you've quarrelled? maggie. no, we haven't. i wish we had. mrs. m. maggie! don't talk like that. maggie. but i do. he wants me to marry him next month. mrs. m. and a very good thing too. maggie. he says he's found a house, and wants me to go and look at it. _i_ don't want to see it. mrs. m. what's come over you lately? you used to be satisfied. walter is very nice and attentive--in fact, quite devoted. maggie. yes, i know. just like he was to his first wife, i expect. mrs. m. you've such an absurd prejudice against widowers, maggie. you're jealous. maggie. i'm not. not a bit. but i do wish he would do something, and not worry about getting married. mrs. m. the poor man is doing something, i should think, running after you every spare minute, and house hunting. maggie. i would much rather he went to australia--or somewhere. mrs. m. that's that absurd tennant man again. you're not in love with _him,_ i hope? maggie. [_promptly._] not a scrap! i find him rather dull. mrs. m. then what is it? maggie. i should like walter to go out and seek his fortune instead of getting it in a coal merchant's office. mrs. m. he mightn't come back. maggie. [_thoughtfully._] perhaps he wouldn't. _click of gate._ mrs. m. there's the gate, maggie. _maggie goes out r. she comes back in a moment, followed by lily. lily goes to her mother and kisses her. she looks at her father._ lily. father asleep? maggie. what a question. shall i take your hat and coat? _lily takes them off and hands them to maggie._ you're shivering! sit close to the fire. aren't you well? lily. [_in a pathetic voice._] yes, i'm well, thank you. mrs. m. are you alone? lily. charley is coming on. he's gone to the station with mr. tennant. mrs. m. to see him off? lily. no--mr. tennant goes to-morrow. _maggie goes out with hat and coat. she brings back with her a tray, with cloth, etc., and prepares for tea on a small table._ mrs. m. have you got another lodger? lily. no. we--we've got to have two. mrs. m. two? what for? _maggie stops to listen._ lily. they've reduced charley's salary. mrs. m. [_sitting up energetically._] reduced it? what for? lily. i don't know--i . . . oh, i'm so miserable. [_she suddenly covers her face with her hands and sobs._] maggie. [_stooping over her._] lil, dear, you're not crying over _that,_ are you? lily. [_sobbing._] oh, no, no! it doesn't matter. we can make room for two lodgers quite well. i don't mind the work. maggie. then what is it? mrs. m. i suppose you and charley have quarrelled? maggie. tell us, dear. lily. charley--wants--to go away--and leave me. mrs. m. what? what's this? lily. [_looking apprehensively round at the sleeping figure._] hush! don't wake father! maggie. he won't wake till the tea-cups rattle. charley wants to leave you! mrs. m. i _knew_ they'd quarrelled. lily. we haven't--not exactly--but he's been so _funny_ ever since mr. tennant said he was going to australia. he wants to go too. mrs. m. what next? charley ought to be ashamed of himself. go to australia indeed! he forgets he is married. lily. i don't want him to stay just because he's married, if he wants to leave me. maggie. you are quite _wrong,_ i'm sure, lil. he doesn't want to leave you at all. he wants to leave his work. mrs. m. perhaps he does. so do other people very often. suppose we all stopped work when we didn't like it? a pretty muddle the world would be in. charley is forgetting there is such a thing as duty. lily. he's very unhappy--and i--i can't make him happy. mrs. m. so he ought to be miserable with such ideas in his head. i never heard of such a thing! the sooner mr. tennant goes the better. he's been putting charley up to this, i suppose? maggie. you don't know mr. tennant, mother. he's not that sort. mrs. m. then what made charley think of it at all? maggie. it's just a feeling you get sometimes, mother. you can't help it. office work is awf'lly monotonous. mrs. m. of course it is. so is all work. do you expect work to be pleasant? does anybody ever like work? the idea is absurd. anyone would think work was to be pleasant. you don't come into the world to have pleasure. we've got to do our duty, and the more cheerfully we can do it, the better for ourselves and everybody else. lily. i--i didn't mean to tell you. mrs. m. he ought to be talked to. lily. don't say anything, please--not yet. perhaps after tea we can all talk about it, and it may do him good. _maggie goes out. lily starts to arrange the tea-cups. mr. massey rouses. re-enter maggie with tea-pot._ massey. tea? maggie. yes, daddy. massey. in here? there's no room. maggie. it's cosey. i'll bring yours to the sofa. massey. where am i to put it?--on the floor? maggie. i'll bring up a table for you if you must have one. you wouldn't do for a society gentleman. can't you balance a cup on your knee? massey. i don't mean to try. hope you haven't got out those finnicky little cups. i want my own. maggie. i've got your own--here. [_she holds up a very big breakfast cup, plain white with gilt band._] massey. i didn't hear you come in, lil. where's charley? lily. coming on. massey. what've you done with foster, mag? maggie. he's not coming. _maggie takes tea round._ massey. gone away for the week end? maggie. [_taking a cup for herself and sitting down beside lily._] oh, no! he's not coming. that's all. lily and i are grass widows. it's a very nice feeling. massey. it's all right about you, but lil looks a bit off. you've got a cold. your eyes are red. lily. yes, father. mrs. m. you've dropped some bread and butter on the carpet, alfred. massey. [_irritably._] of course i have! i knew i should. maggie. [_running to pick it up._] percy hasn't come back with sybil yet, dad. we expect they're sitting in the park. massey. [_his attention taken from his grievance._] what, in this weather? maggie. the seats will be dry and they sit close together, you know. i've often seen them do it. massey. [_chuckling._] you have, have you? and what about yourself? what about yourself? you! lord! what a nest of turtle doves it is--nothing but billing and cooing! maggie. especially percy. massey. p'raps so. he's young at it. well, he'll be the next, i suppose. and you, too, mag? maggie. i'm in no hurry. mrs. m. [_a little impatiently to maggie._] don't talk like that, my dear. massey. of course she says she isn't. she's a modest young woman--i never heard _you_ say you were in a hurry, my dear. mrs. m. of course i shouldn't--to you. massey. ha, ha! you put on the shy business then. lord! these women. [_maggie moves towards table._] come, now, mag, confess! you think of it sometimes. maggie. i think of it a lot. massey. there you are! there you are! what did i say? maggie. and what do you think i think about it? massey. how should i know. wedding, i suppose. i bet you never think of anything else after the wedding day. maggie. [_slowly._] i think of the wedding dress, and the bridesmaids, and the pages. shall i have pages, mum? mrs. m. maggie! maggie. i suppose i shan't. i think of the house i'm going to have, daddy--and the furniture, and i'm going to have a cat and a dog-- massey. [_slyly._] nothing else, of course. just a cat and a dog. ha, ha! mrs. m. alfred, don't suggest. it isn't nice. massey. a cat and dog--ha, ha, ha! maggie. don't laugh, daddy. i'm telling you the solemn truth--i think most of all that i shall never, never, never have to go into a shop again. massey. i wish old foster could hear you. maggie. why? massey. he'd say--"and where do i come in?" maggie. well, of course he'll be there. i wish-- mrs. m. maggie, my dear--i should like a little more tea! have you got some more hot water? maggie. i'll get some. [_goes out._] massey. it's all very well for her to chaff, but she ain't quite natural about this affair of hers. she ought to be more pleased--excited like. mrs. m. i think they've had a little quarrel. people often do. she's a little bit down about it. we've had a talk about it. massey. well, she can't have any quarrel about him himself. _he's_ all right, and got a jolly soft job, too. he'll make her a good husband. he's insured for £ . mrs. m. is he? that's very nice. if anything happened to him she'd be all right. massey. he's a thoughtful sort of chap. of course he's not exactly young, but he's steady. mrs. m. the poor child is jealous of his first wife. massey. you don't say so? jealous, is she? that's all right--that's a healthy feeling. i'm glad she's jealous, but she'll get over it once she's married. jealous! lord! fancy, mag too--i wouldn't have thought it. he'll be head clerk, one of these days--he can stay at whitakers all his life. he told me. lily. do you think he'll ever get tired of it? mrs. m. what an idea! massey. [_roaring._] tired! tired of what? a good job? why ever should he be? he couldn't have anything better--ten to half-past five every day of his life, except saturdays, and then it's _one_--and three weeks' holiday. think of that? lily. but, i-- _enter maggie with hot water. the door-bell is heard._ mrs. m. let them in, lily, my dear--it's percy and syb. _lily goes out r._ _re-enter lily a moment after, followed by percy and sybil._ _sybil kisses mrs. massey and maggie._ sybil. aren't we dreadfully late, mrs. massey? i'm _so_ sorry! percy. awfully sorry, but my watch is-- maggie. don't blame the poor thing--it's all right. massey. the watch, was it? come here, my girl! _sybil goes to him with giggling shyness. he takes her face between his hands._ _was_ it the watch? not a bit of it! it was this--[_he pats her cheek_] these roses. lucky young dog! percy! [_he kisses her._] maggie. rather cold in the park, isn't it? percy. not very. maggie. there's a northeast wind. still, you can find a sheltered seat. percy. just beyond the glass house thing. maggie. what did i tell you? [_looking triumphantly round._] sybil. [_covering her cheeks._] what a tease you are, maggie! massey. don't listen to her! percy. you're only giving yourself away, mag. what do you know about sheltered seats and glass houses? maggie. it wasn't exactly guess work. [_click of gate._] mrs. m. there's walter. maggie. what? massey. isn't she surprised? now isn't she surprised? fancy! walter! maggie. he said he wasn't coming. [_she looks out of the window._] charley is with him. lily. will you open the door, maggie? maggie. [_almost at the same moment._] go to the door, percy. percy. well, you're two dutifully loving young women, i must say. maggie. you forget--we're used to it. [_percy goes out._] come, sybil, and take off your things. _exeunt sybil and maggie._ _enter walter foster, a man of about , prosperous looking, rather stout of build, and fair. charley also enters, and percy._ foster. [_looking round for maggie._] good afternoon. [_shakes hands with mrs. m. and massey._] mrs. m. she's gone up with sybil, walter. foster. oh! i was afraid she was out, perhaps. massey. well, charles, you're not looking spry. charley. i'm a bit seedy--nothing much. massey. and when's that madman lodger of yours going, eh? charley. to-morrow. massey. of all the fools he's the biggest i know. _the door opens, and sybil and maggie come back._ maggie. i was just telling sybil, percy, that tea is laid in the sitting-room. we didn't know when you'd be in. _she crosses up to foster and lifts her face to be kissed._ sybil. isn't she dreadful? massey. well, you won't be alone, don't you worry. charley here wants some tea, and lil will have to see he gets it, won't you, lil? lily. yes, dad. maggie. [_to foster._] have you had tea? foster. yes, thanks. _exeunt all, except massey, maggie and foster._ massey. [_finally he looks at the two, then at the clock; poking the fire, then humming a little._] have you seen the "argus," mag? maggie. in the kitchen. i'll get it. [_makes a move to the door._] massey. no, no, i'm going out. _goes._ maggie. father calls that tact. foster. [_coming over to her._] what? maggie. didn't you notice? he doesn't want the "argus," really. foster. [_just understanding._] you mean he's left us together? maggie. yes. foster. awfully kind of him! i say, maggie, you don't mind my coming, do you? i really had to. we--hadn't made arrangements about tuesday. _maggie laughing a little sadly._ maggie. and you couldn't write them? you are very good to me, walter. foster. don't talk like that. _a pause._ maggie, i--you haven't kissed me yet. maggie. i did--when you came in. foster. no--i kissed _you._ maggie. i'm sorry--i--i don't care for kissing in front of people. foster. [_getting bolder._] there's no one here now. _maggie rises, turns, and looking at him very straight, then lifts her face--pause--and going to him, kisses him on the lips. he keeps her close to him till she gently moves herself away._ i've got something here--you said the other day you wanted--you would like one of those dutch brooches. _he puts his hand in his coat pocket and brings out a little parcel._ here it is! maggie. [_unfastens it._] it _is_ good of you! you are so thoughtful! _she looks at him._ i suppose-- [_she kisses him again._] _delighted, he keeps hold of her hand. she looks at him and then at her hand imprisoned in his, and then away at the fire._ foster. what's the matter, dear? maggie. [_impatiently drawing her hand away._] it's still the mood. i can't help it. i don't feel like love-making. foster. all right, dear--i won't bother you. maggie. perhaps if you did bother--no, never mind. you know i asked you not to come to-day. foster. yes. maggie. well, i had no reason, except that i didn't feel like it. but i ought to feel like you always, didn't i? foster. you're different from me. i always feel like you. maggie. walter, i don't want to settle down. i want to go and--and do things. foster. what things, dear? maggie. oh, i don't know. [_a pause._] did you ever go abroad? foster. yes, to paris, once at easter. maggie. oh! just for a holiday. wouldn't you just love to go out and try your luck? have a change?--do something with your hands? aren't you ever tired of what you are doing? foster. i can't say i am, really. why should i? the work is not too hard. but you like change. i have a good salary, you know, dear. when we are married you can go about a lot, you'll be quite free. maggie. no, i shan't. foster. but you can have a servant and all that, you know. maggie. oh, yes--yes--i understand. foster. if i went abroad--suppose it, for instance--i shouldn't have you, should i? maggie. no, and a good thing for you. you deserve something better. you know--you _know,_ walter, that i don't love you half or a quarter as you love me. foster. yes, i know that. but you don't love anybody else. maggie. no. have you ever thought that i'm really marrying you to get out of the shop? foster. of course not. of course you are glad to leave the shop because you don't like it. you are so tied. maggie. i should love to be absolutely independent, quite--altogether free for a whole year. oh! foster. [_a little hurt._] you will be free when you are married to me, maggie. you can do anything you like. maggie. [_looking at him despairingly for a moment, then suddenly going up to him._] you are a dear!--you are, really! marry me quick, walter! _he takes her in his arms delightedly._ quick--or--or-- foster. or what? [_very tenderly._] maggie. or i shall run away. foster. and where would you run to? maggie. perhaps if i'd known where to run to--i should have gone before. foster. dearest, don't talk like that! maggie. [_turning away a little._] but i don't! i'm safe! _massey is heard outside the door, coughing and making a noise. enters._ i'm afraid you've caught a cold in the kitchen, daddy. i thought you went for the "argus"? massey. so i did. [_he looks down at it._] maggie. and you've brought the "family herald." [_she takes it from him._] _enter mrs. massey, charley, lily, percy and sybil._ mrs. m. play something, lily. _lily goes to piano and picks out some music. sybil and percy occupy one big chair between them. charley stands idly at window, turning over an album._ percy. going to church, mother? mrs. m. no, dear, it's a very nasty night. such a cold wind. percy. last sunday it was the rain--and the week before it was foggy, and the week before-- sybil. don't be such a very rude boy! _she puts her hand over his mouth and he takes it and holds it._ mrs. m. [_complacently._] you're a bad boy to make fun of your old mother. i went to church this morning. percy. you're getting a oncer, mother. mrs. m. well, i should only go to sleep if i went. percy. think of the example you set if you put in an appearance. mrs. m. yes, dear; i have thought of that, but it wouldn't do for them to see me asleep. foster. [_who always has the effect of trying to smooth things over._] i'm sure it is better for you to rest, mrs. massey, than walk such a distance twice a day! mrs. m. yes, it is rather a long way. it's quite a quarter of an hour's walk, and i don't care to ride on sundays. _lily plays, choosing the mournful hymn, "abide with me." charley fidgets, goes to the piano and then back again to the window._ massey. can't you find a seat, charles? you look uncomfortable. charley. plenty, thanks. sybil only has half a one. sybil. oh, mr. wilson. [_she fidgets away from percy, who pulls her back again._] _lily has played the tune through. she stops._ mrs. m. that's such a nice tune, don't you think, walter? foster. very!--rather plaintive, but soothing. _lily starts another--this time "sun of my soul."_ charley. for heaven's sake, lil, play something cheerful. _lily stops, turns undecidedly on the stool, looks round imploringly at charley, turns a few pages and then rises and goes out of the room hurriedly._ sybil. she's crying! massey. what? mrs. m. you've hurt her, charley, speaking like that. there was nothing to get cross about. she came this afternoon crying. charley. i've done nothing! i-- _exit mrs. massey in much indignation._ massey. had a tiff? charley. a tiff--we don't tiff. massey. well, then, don't shout at her like that. [_to sybil._] here--are you sure she was crying? sybil. yes, quite. massey. that's queer. she didn't use to. charley. she's been worrying, i expect. women worry so quick. massey. what's she got to worry about? a bit hysterical, perhaps. _re-enter mrs. massey._ massey. is she better? mrs. m. she's got a headache, she says. but it isn't that; i know what's the matter. when she came to-day she could hardly speak-- charley. [_interrupting._] is she worrying over me? massey. what's she got to worry over you about? charley. i happened to say--i got the hump, i think. . . . i feel a bit restless. . . . mrs. m. [_hotly._] you know what it is well enough. you want to go away with that tennant man and leave your wife-- massey. [_shouting._] what! _sybil looks shocked, percy astonished, while foster tries to pretend he didn't hear._ mrs. m. the poor child's breaking her heart because she says he wants to leave her. charley. i never said anything of the kind--i never thought of such a thing, i-- mrs. m. _do_ you want to go away with that man? massey. i should think you're mad, both of you, to talk about it. go with who? what for? what're you talking about? mrs. m. sybil told me distinctly this afternoon that charley wanted to go to australia. she nearly cried her eyes out. of course that means he wants to leave her. what else could it mean? she said he'd been funny and she was miserable. i said charley ought to be ashamed of himself to want to go away like that, and so i think so. massey. [_sitting up very straight and looking angry._] what's all this, charley? what . . . _foster on tip toe slowly goes to door._ charley. don't go, foster. let's have all the family in. you're going to be part of it some day. foster. [_sitting down again._] i'm quite ready to go. charley. no, don't. let's have it out. you may as well know, all of you. mrs. m. [_with a resignation of despair._] then you do want--to go and leave her? it's disgraceful! charley. [_angrily._] what stuff you all talk! i-- mrs. m. do you or do you not want to go? charley. yes, i do! _general consternation._ mrs. m. there! i said so. _enter maggie._ how's the poor dear? maggie. she says her head is better and she will come down in a minute. what's the matter? mrs. m. charley wants to go to australia and leave his wife. he's _told_ us so. charley. well, suppose it was true, wouldn't it be better than going without telling you? but it isn't true. massey. do you want to take lil with you? charley. how could i? _enter lily--all mutter words of encouragement. general movement towards her. everybody offers chairs in sympathy. she sits by her father._ charley. look here now, just listen! it's quite true i want to go. i want to do as tennant's done, chuck everything and try my luck in the colonies. as soon as i had a fair start lil would come out. massey. [_interrupting._] yes, and suppose you failed? you should have thought of that before you married. you can't run off when you like when you've a wife. charley. [_excitedly._] but why not? mrs. m. [_interrupting._] why not?--just hear him. charley. it's that i'm just sick of the office and the grind every week and no change!--nothing new, nothing happening. why, i haven't seen anything of the world. i just settled down to it--why?--just because other chaps do, because it's the right thing. i only live for saturday-- percy. so do i!--so does everybody! charley. but they shouldn't-- percy. you don't mean to suggest, i hope, that we ought to _like_ our work, do you? massey. do you suppose i like plumbing? do you think i ever did? no, but i stuck to it, and now look at me, got a nice little bit in the bank and bought my own house. [_looks proudly round._] of course, i hated it, just as you do. maggie. then why didn't you try something else, daddy? massey. i like that! what could i do? i was taught plumbing. we don't have choice. your grandfather put me to it, and of course i stuck to it. maggie. but why didn't you ask for a choice? massey. me! why should i do such a thing? father was a plumber, and if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me. suppose i had thrown it up and gone to canada for a lark? a _nice_ thing for my family. [_to maggie._] you wouldn't have had the education you've had, my girl. we've got to live somehow, and if you get a good job stick to it, say i--none of your highty flighty notions. live 'em down! foster. [_gently._] we all have moments of discontent, i fancy, but we get over them. maggie. [_turns to foster._] did you ever have any? foster. a long time ago, but i'm quite safe now, dear. _maggie shrugs her shoulders and turns half away impatiently._ charley. i never said you couldn't live them down. i never said, did i, that i was going away? i only said i should like to. did i ever say more, lil? lily. [_meekly._] no, dear. mrs. m. but you shouldn't want to. it's ridiculous. charley. it wasn't till tennant started about his going-- mrs. m. i knew it was that man tennant-- charley. . . . that i thought of it. but if he threw up his job, i thought, why shouldn't i? massey. because he's a fool, you needn't be another. maggie. he's not a fool, and i wish charley could go, too. lily. maggie, how can you? maggie. [_crossing to fireplace._] why should a young man be bound down to one trade all his life? i wish i were a man--i'd-- mrs. m. well, you're not, so it doesn't matter. charley. of course it must make a difference my being married. massey. remember your wife's here and don't talk as if you were sorry about it. charley. [_turning on them fiercely._] for heaven's sake, can't you listen fair? my wife needn't go to her father for protection from me? i'm not a scoundrel just because i've got an idea, am i? _a pause--nobody answers._ but i'll tell you what, marriage shouldn't tie a man up as if he was a slave. i don't want to desert lily--she's my wife and i'm proud of it--but because i married, am i never to strike out in anything? people like us are just cowards. we seize on the first soft job--and there we stick, like whipped dogs. we're afraid to ask for anything, afraid to ask for a rise even--we wait till it comes. and when the boss says he won't give you one--do we up and say, "then i'll go somewhere where i can get more." not a bit of it! what's the good of sticking on here all our lives? why shouldn't somebody risk something sometimes? we're all so jolly frightened--we've got no spunk--that's where the others get the hold over us--we slog on day after day and when they cut our wages down we take it as meek as moses. we're not men, we're machines. next week i've got my choice--either to take less money to keep my job or to chuck it and try something else. you say--everybody says--keep the job. i expect i shall--i'm a coward like all of you--but what i want to know is, why can't a man have a fit of restlessness and all that, without being thought a villain? foster. but after all, we undertake responsibilities when we marry, mr. wilson. we can't overlook them. charley. i don't want to. but i don't think we ought to talk as if when a man gets married he must always bring in just the same money. foster. if you have the misfortune to have your salary reduced, nobody would blame you. charley. i don't know. i felt a bit of a beast when i had to tell lil about that. maggie. [_suddenly._] if you went away, lily could come and live with us. mrs. m. [_scandalised._] how could she? everybody would think she was divorced or something. foster. live with _us,_ dear? maggie. [_impatiently._] no, here, i meant. charley. i've got a little cash put by that she could live on. _don't_ cry, lil, for heaven's sake! can't any of you see my point--or won't you? massey. i suppose you're a socialist. charley. doesn't anybody but a socialist ever have an idea? massey. they're mostly mad, if that's what you mean. and they're always talking about the wickedness of the boss and the sweetness of the working man. charley. i never said anything about either, and i'm not a socialist. percy. you'll be better when tennant's gone. charley. [_viciously._] just you wait till you're two years older, my boy. foster. you see it isn't as if you had any prospects in the colonies. has mr. tennant? charley. he's got an introduction to a firm. massey. what's the good of that? lily. [_tearfully._] perhaps i could go with charlie. i'm quite willing to--rough it a little. maggie. you'd help him more by staying here. mrs. m. he doesn't want her. he said so. lily. [_still tearfully._] if charley really means it--i think--i-- mrs. m. my dear, don't think anything about it. it's worrying you and making you ill--you want nursing, not frightening. [_this with a glare of indignation at charley._] lily. i'm all right. charley. [_suddenly dropping his defiance._] oh, let's go home, lil. you're tired. mrs. m. have you just noticed that? maggie. mother! mrs. m. she's my child, and if her husband won't think of her, i must. lily. mother, dear, charley means all right. i'm sure he does. yes, dear--i'm quite ready to go. _lily and mrs. massey go out._ [transcriber's note: stage direction missing from source.] foster. [_with the air of pouring oil on troubled waters._] well, at any rate, it needn't be settled tonight. perhaps after a night's rest-- maggie. [_vehemently._] i like impulse. massey. i expect you do. you don't know what's good for you. maggie. well, at any rate, daddy, you can't say i have much. there's not much chance at jones & freeman's. percy. so you've caught it, too, mag. sybil. don't tease. _enter lily, dressed for going out, also mrs. massey. lily goes round, kissing and shaking hands, with a watery smile and a forced tearful cheerfulness._ charley. [_without going all round and calling from the door._] good night, all! _exeunt lily and charley._ mrs. m. well, i must say-- percy. oh, let's drop it, mother. play something, maggie. maggie. i don't want to. mrs. m. walter would like to hear something, wouldn't you, walter? foster. if maggie feels like it. maggie. she doesn't feel like it. massey. be as pleasant as you can, my girl--charley's enough for one evening. _maggie goes to the piano and sitting down plays noisily with both pedals on, the chorus, "off to philadelphia."_ mrs. m. maggie, it's sunday! maggie. i forgot! mrs. m. you shouldn't forget such things--sybil, my dear-- sybil. i don't play. massey. rubbish! come on! _sybil goes to the piano and percy follows her._ percy. [_very near to sybil and helping to find the music._] charley is a rotter! what d'ye think he was telling me the other day? sybil. i don't know. percy. told me to be sure i'd got the right girl. sybil. brute! percy. what do you think i said? darling! _kisses her behind music._ massey. [_looking round._] take a bigger sheet. _sybil sits at piano quickly and plays the chorus to "count your many blessings."_ _to which they all sing--_ count your blessings, count them one by one, count your blessings, see what god has done. count your blessings, count them one by one, and it will surprise you what the lord has done. curtain act iv _scene:--sitting-room at acacia avenue. early morning._ _lily discovered, cutting sandwiches. ring at door. lily admits maggie, who is dressed for the shop._ lily. [_rather nervously._] you, maggie! how early. what is it? maggie. i've come to help mr. tennant off, lil. where's charley? is he up? lily. oh, yes. [_maggie goes to the garden door and stands looking out._] he's been up a long while. maggie. so the great day has come. [_turning._] is charley going, or isn't he, lil? lily. [_nervously and avoiding maggie's eyes._] no, of course not. maggie. why not? lily. because--why, how can he? [_tearfully._] don't speak in that tone, maggie. maggie. he would have decided to go, if you had encouraged him. lily. i _did_ encourage him. you heard me last night. i told him--and i told him again after we got home--"if you want to go, i'll never stand in your way." maggie. yes, i heard. is that how you told him last night? lily. it doesn't matter how i said it. he'll get over it. everybody says he will--except you. and how could he go? it's just an idea he's got over mr. tennant. maggie. [_angrily._] of course it's mr. tennant. everybody speaks as if mr. tennant was a wicked person going round tempting poor husbands to desert their wives. "it's all that mr. tennant." "what a blessing when that man goes," etc., etc., as if he had a bad character. the truth is, that he's done a jolly good thing. he's stirred us all up. he's made us dissatisfied. lily. what's the good of that? nobody can make things different if they wanted to. maggie. don't talk nonsense. hasn't he made things different himself? [_getting a little heroic._] heaps of fellows in london go on doing the same old thing, in the same old way, only too glad if it's safe. look how everybody runs for the civil service. why? because it's safe, of course, and because they'll get a pension. look at the post office clerks and somerset house and lawyer's clerks and bank clerks-- lily. bank clerks don't get pensions-- maggie. i know they don't, but once in a bank, always in a bank. is there anything to look forward to--and aren't they all just--exactly _alike?_ i once went past a lot of offices in the city--i don't know what sort of offices they were. but the windows had dingy drab blinds, and inside there were rows and _rows_ of clerks, sitting on high stools, bending over great books on desks. and over each there was an electric light under a green shade. there they were scribbling away--and outside there was a most beautiful sunset. i shall never, never, forget those men. lily. they don't have long hours. maggie [_promptly._] nine to six. lily. i always thought it was ten to four. maggie. don't you believe it. that's what i thought once. you're thinking of the bank clerks, of course. my dear, the doors close at half-past three or four--but the clerks--why, they never see the daylight. lily. in the summer they do. maggie. [_impressively._] i don't care what you say, or what anybody says, it's not right. and if the men have got used to it, it's all the worse. they want stirring up--and it's the women who've got to do the stirring. lily. whatever can _they_ do? maggie. lots. it's the women who make the men afraid. in the old days the women used to help the men on with their armour and give them favours to wear, and send them forth to fight. that's the spirit we want now. instead of that we say to the men:--"i shouldn't trouble, my dear, if i were you. you're safe here. do be careful." lily. you're very unjust. look at the boer war, and how brave the women were then. maggie. that isn't the only kind of war. is a soldier to be the only kind of man, that a woman's going to encourage? can't she help the man who wants to make a better thing of life? oh, what a lovely chance you had and didn't take it, lil! lily. how can you talk like that! what a fuss you're making over a little thing. maggie. it wasn't a little thing. here is charley, with all sorts of "go" in him and fire and energy. why couldn't you go to him and say, "i'm proud of you. throw up the horrid business and go and seek your fortune." it was all he wanted, i do believe. instead of which, he's got every blessed person against him--wife, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and all his friends and relations, and everything he can have. everybody thinks him mad. lily. _you_ ought to have married him, i should think! maggie. don't get spiteful, lil! lily. wait till you're married yourself to walter-- maggie. i'm not going to marry walter. lily. [_struck with astonishment._] you're not going to marry walter? maggie! maggie. i've broken it off. i did it last night. lily. whatever for? did you quarrel? you were a little touchy last night, i thought--but walter is so good tempered. maggie. i'm sure it's very good of him, but i don't wish to be forgiven and taken back. it was all through mr. tennant. lily. [_anxiously._] you don't love _him?_ maggie. [_exasperated._] no, i'm not in love with _anybody;_ but all last week i was thinking and thinking, and it wasn't till last night that i found i was just marrying--to get away from the shop! lily. but he was _devoted_ to you and so kind. maggie. i don't want kindness. my shopwalker is very kind where i am, and i don't see any need to change. lily. how extraordinary you talk! maggie. well, when i heard charley talking last night, i thought what a fool i was to throw up one sort of--cage--for another. lily. but you _are_ free when you're married-- maggie. nobody is--more especially the woman. but the thing is, i shouldn't want to be, if i loved the man. but i don't love walter, only his house. now, i can leave the shop any day, when i've saved enough--and run away. but i couldn't run away from walter. lily. [_horrified._] run away-- maggie. [_suddenly beginning to laugh._] can you see me? running away from walter? _walter!_ oh! [_she laughs, but lily looks very grave._] lily. you don't take the matter seriously. maggie. it shows how seriously i do take it. have you ever heard of any girl, throwing up a good match, who wasn't dead serious? _tennant enters._ tennant. good morning. oh, good morning, miss massey. lily. you're ready for breakfast, aren't you? _goes out._ maggie. aren't you surprised to see me here? i wanted to give you a send off. tennant. awfully good of you. maggie. you're quite a hero in my eyes, you know, and i feel i must cheer or do something extra. [_lily comes in with porridge._] lily. you'll have some, won't you, maggie? maggie. thanks. here, i'll pour out the tea. _lily goes out._ [_to tennant._] aren't you just frightfully excited? tennant. can't say i am. maggie. [_sighing and looking admiringly at him._] i should be _wild,_ absolutely wild, if i were going. tennant. i'm going to chance it, you know. there's no fortune waiting for me. maggie. that's the point of it. you know it's awfully unsettling, all this talk about australia. you've made me so dissatisfied. i don't feel i can go back to the shop. tennant. [_easily._] you'll get over that. maggie. oh, i suppose so. _lily enters with toast and puts it down beside him._ tennant. [_turning._] please don't bring anything else, mrs. wilson. i can't eat it. lily. but it's such a journey to the boat. tennant. oh, that's nothing--besides, i've got these sandwiches. [_laying his hand on the package near him._] lily. are you sure there are enough? i can soon cut some more. tennant. heaps, thanks. [_earnestly._] really, i shan't know what to do with them. lily. i'll put you an apple or two in. tennant. no, don't-- lily. oh, but they won't take up much room. tennant. [_resignedly._] thanks very much. _charley enters._ lily. oh, there you are. you'll have breakfast now, dear, won't you? charley. i'll have it later. you here, mag? maggie. of course. do you think this great event could go off without me? _lily and maggie go out._ tennant. [_smilingly._] miss massey seems to think it's a sort of picnic. charley. [_absently._] does she? tennant. she'd marry well out there, i daresay. charley. would she? tennant. she looks strong and healthy. her sort get snapped up in no time. charley. you're catching the . , aren't you? tennant. [_surprised._] yes. why? coming to the station? charley. there's another just after twelve-- _tennant, who has been swinging his chair backwards, comes to a pause as charley comes up to him._ tennant. is there? i don't know. but what-- charley. [_lowering his voice._] look here, old chap, suppose i come too? tennant. what! charley. [_who keeps his voice rather low the whole time, though visibly excited._] don't shout! i haven't told anybody--but i mean it. i want you to look out for me at plymouth. tennant. but, wilson--i say--you-- charley. don't! it's all settled. there's no use arguing. i've made up my mind. i'm going to leave here as usual and coming on by the second train and pick you up at plymouth. don't stare like that--i've thought it all out-- tennant. but your wife--your people here--you can't do it. when i've gone, you'll get over it. charley. get over it? i'm not going to get over anything. i've been a coward, see?--and now i'm going to cut and run. it's no good telling _lil_--she wouldn't understand--but when i'm out there and get something and making a tidy little place for her, she'll be all right. she's nervous--the women are like that, you know--they can't help it--and her people, too--well, they're old, and when you're old, you're afraid. tennant. [_interrupting._] you mean to go! to-day? charley. why not? why not? if i put it off, i'll never go. it wants a bit of doing, and if you don't do these things at the time, well, you give in. i've packed a bag with some things--i did it this morning. tennant. that's why you were up so early-- charley. i have written a note to lil. [_argumentatively._] it's the only thing to do--there's no other way--i say, freddy, you'll stand by me? it's easy for chaps like you-- _leslie morton crosses behind sitting-room window._ tennant. [_uneasily._] well--you know best-- charley. of course--it's the only thing-- _the door opens and voices can be heard outside, laughing._ who's this coming? it's that ass. . . . _he rises as maggie, lily and morton leslie enter._ leslie. [_a little short of breath._] where's that fool? thought i'd come and give you a good-bye kiss, old fellow. i would cry, but i've only brought one handkerchief. maggie. lily will lend you one of charley's. but won't you miss the . ? do be careful. leslie. miss maggie, i'll tell you a great, an awful secret. [_he goes to her and says in a loud whisper._] i mean to miss it. maggie. i don't believe it--you couldn't do such a thing. leslie. [_to charley._] well, wilson, how is it? you look-- charley. [_curtly._] i'm all right. you don't expect me to laugh all the time, do you? leslie. certainly not. i'm afraid you're still pining for the flesh pots--or is it cocoanuts-- charley. no, it's gourds-- tennant. tin mugs, you mean. leslie. take my word for it, before a week's out, you'll be thankful you're sitting opposite your own best tea service, on a sunday afternoon. charley. i say, it's about time you were off, freddy. tennant. [_looking at his watch._] so it is. lily. you're sure you've got everything. [_to tennant._] leslie. _don't_ forget to write, please--and _do_ let us know what boat you're coming back by. tennant. [_laughing._] shut up! where did i put my cap? _they all make a rush for the cap, and maggie brings it from the hall._ charley. [_picking up a paper off the table._] here, is this yours? tennant. another map--it doesn't matter. burn it. charley. australia! tennant. [_looking at charley._] put it in the fire. charley. [_defiantly._] it might be useful. [_he opens it and fixes it with a pin against the wall._] lily. now we shall be able to follow your travels, shan't we? leslie. the time has come! well, good-bye--old man. allow me to prophesy you'll soon be back--remember what i said-- maggie. [_from the door._] it's a most glorious morning! the sun is shining for you, mr. tennant--and there's not a cloud in the sky. leslie. i hope you won't lose _all_ your money-- maggie. the sea will be all beautiful with the dearest little ripples. leslie. and if by any wonderful stroke of luck you do make anything, let us know. good-bye. maggie. all the men are running off to the city--but _you're_ going to australia. _tennant is rushed out._ _lily and charley follow him._ _maggie runs in quickly and opens the sitting-room window, through which tennant can be seen shaking hands again and again with charley and lily._ maggie. good luck! leslie. [_shouting through window._] give my love to what's-his-name, the prime minister! maggie. [_singing._] "for i've lately got a notion for to cross the briny ocean." leslie. [_joining._] "and i'm off to philadelphia in the morning." _leslie drawls out the last word, bursts out laughing and turns away._ maggie. anybody would think you were excited. leslie. if a man _will_ be a fool, miss maggie, he may as well go away a happy fool. a cheer costs nothing. so much for _him._ now it's me. maggie. how many trains _have_ you missed? leslie. [_seriously._] quite two, i should think. but i promise you it shan't happen again. _goes out._ _charley and lily enter._ lily. [_wiping her eyes._] so he's gone. poor man, i do hope he'll get on all right. charley. [_easily and in a brighter tone._] he'll be all right. he can stand a little roughing. lily. it was such a pity you couldn't get the time to go and see him off, dear. charley. oh, that's nothing. lily. i'll have breakfast ready for you soon. _goes out._ charley. there's no hurry. _maggie is looking at the map._ maggie. it's a big place. charley. um. a chance to get some fresh air there. maggie. [_turning._] so you're not going after all? charley. oh--er--how can i, mag? maggie. it means such a lot, of course. charley. courage or cheek--i don't know which. of course, it's quite a mad idea--any fool can see that. maggie. you're not a fool. it's the others who're fools. if only you could hold out a little longer. lil would be all right. she might fret a little at first--but she's the clinging sort-- charley. but think what everybody would say! maggie. you're getting over it already! charley. what else can i do? i--i--shall settle down. maggie. settle down! charley--why should you? _i've_ refused to settle down. why can't you? charley. what do you mean? what's it got to do with you? maggie. [_triumphantly._] i've refused to marry walter. charley. [_surprised, but not particularly interested._] what on earth for? maggie. it was all through mr. tennant-- charley. tennant? you're-- maggie. [_impatiently._] oh, dear, no. i'm not pining for him. but i found out, when there was all this talk about mr. tennant, that i was marrying walter, because i wanted to be safe and was afraid of risk. then i made up my mind i wouldn't do that. i tell you because--if a girl can risk things--surely a man-- charley. there wasn't any risk for you with walter. i can't see it. maggie. a woman isn't tested in the same way as a man. it's the only way i have-- charley. well, you know best, and if you don't like him--but everybody thought you did. i must say you've been rather hard on foster. you led him on. i should have thought it was rather a good thing for you. still. . . . maggie. [_sighing._] so it's no good, then, saying anything? charley. [_uneasily._] no--er-- [_turning to her._] mag! what would you really think of me if i did? maggie. what? [_looks at him for a second._] charley--will you--after all? charley. supposing i don't give in--supposing i did go-- maggie. do you mean it? charley. are you sure about lil--i'm ready to throw up everything-- maggie. i would look after her--she would be all right in a week--i would do anything-- charley. but if i go it must be at once--at once, you understand. maggie. yes, yes. . . . charley. and if lil thinks me a brute beast for leaving her like this--in this way--you'll explain--you'll stick up for me-- maggie. this way? i don't-- charley. i'm going to-day, mag. i've arranged everything. i couldn't stand it. i had to go. i've written to lil. she'll be all right for money--i've thought of that and i shall soon send for her. i know i shall, and then she'll be glad i did it. i look a brute, but, mag, it's got to be. [_postman's knock on front door._] hush! here comes lil--don't breathe a word-- maggie. to-day! _lily enters with letters._ lily. here's the post. two for you, dear. [_gives letters to charley, who, however, doesn't look at them, but goes up to map._] maggie. [_quickly._] i'll call back for you, to go to the station. charley. all right. _maggie goes out hurriedly._ lily. i'm sure you're ready for breakfast now, dear--and you won't have very much time. charley. i'm not very hungry. lily. it was so nice of mr. leslie to come in like that, wasn't it? charley. yes. he means all right. lily. [_as he eats._] they're very nice neighbours. i think we're very lucky to have them. charley. um. you were up very early. you'll be tired to-night. lily. these things don't often happen, do they, and i can keep better hours in future. we generally go along so regularly, don't we? charley. [_suddenly turning from his breakfast._] yes. lily. i've been thinking, dear, that we shall feel a little dull to-night without mr. tennant. shall we go to the theatre?--something light-- charley. oh--no--i don't think so-- lily. shall we ask the leslies for whist? charley. [_rising._] no--not them--it doesn't matter, lil--unless you'd rather. lily. oh, i shall be quite happy at home, by ourselves. i am so glad you would prefer that, dear. [_she goes up to him._] charley. i haven't been up to much in the company line lately, have i? lily. you'll be better now, dear. what time shall you be home? charley. ok--er--you know my usual-- lily. yes, dear. don't be late. i've got something to tell you--which will please you, i think. charley. have you? lily. would you like to hear it now? charley. is it important? lily. _is_ it important? you'll have to be such a good man soon, dear--you'll have to set a good example. charley. [_uneasily._] what do you mean? lily. can't you guess? how dull you are! bend down and let me tell you. [_she pulls down his face and whispers._] charley. [_pulling himself away._] what! god! [_taking her by the arms._] charley. [_turning away a second, and then turning back._] is that true? lily. yes, dear. charley. lil--i. . . . lily. you _are_ pleased! but of course you are. charley. of course, dear. lily. isn't it lovely to think of! and can't you imagine mother as grandmamma! won't she be a fuss! why, you're quite overcome. there! go away and get ready. you didn't open your letters. there's the door. i suppose it's maggie back. _lily goes out, and re-enters a moment after with maggie._ _they meet charley going out, and maggie, looking at him almost stops him._ maggie. what have you been saying to charley, lil? lily. why? maggie. i thought he looked a little--upset. . . . lily. he is rather. he's quite overcome, in fact. but then he would be, of course. _maggie closes door, still looking at lily._ maggie. what about? lily. what could i tell him, that would make him more pleased than anything else? maggie. i'm sure i don't know. lily. what generally happens when people are married? maggie. that! [_pause._] lily! lily. charley is delighted. maggie. [_unconsciously speaking her thought._] so you've _got_ him after all. lily. [_indignant._] maggie!! maggie. why did you tell him _now?_ _lily goes out, a little indignant._ _charley enters from kitchen, dressed for the office._ maggie. charley! charley. what's up? don't rot, mag! maggie. and now-- charley. oh, let's drop it. i was a fool all along--a bit of a beast, too--it's done with. . . . maggie. but-- charley. what's the good of talking? don't make me out more of a brute than i am! no, the thing was meant to be! i was mad. after all, a man can't do just what he likes! it's better as it is. if this hadn't happened i should have done it--and a pretty mess, i daresay, i'd have been in--and dragged her in, too-- maggie. if-- _lily enters._ . . . i don't think i can wait for you, after all, charley. charley. don't trouble. maggie. good-bye. _she goes._ lily. you didn't open your letters, dear. charley. what are they? lily. [_tearing one open._] about the new lodger--very quick replies. . . . charley. [_hastily._] oh, leave them over. lily. ready? charley. [_moving his neck uneasily in the high collar._] yes--this beastly collar. lily. it's a pity they make you wear such things. charley. i've got a short neck. i suppose you shouldn't be a clerk, if you've got a short neck. it doesn't fit the collars. lily. what an idea! _charley stands looking at the map a moment. suddenly he tears it down and throws it into the fire._ charley. good-bye, lil. [_he kisses her._] lily. good-bye, dear. _he picks up his silk hat and gloves and puts the hat on as he reaches the door._ _lily runs to the door._ good-bye. charley. good-bye. [_from outside._] _there is a sound of the front door slamming._ _lily starts chorus of hymn:_ count your blessings, count them one by one. count your blessings, see what god has done, etc. curtain transcriber's note this transcription is based on scanned images posted by the internet archive from a copy in the university of toronto libraries: archive.org/details/chainsplayinfour bakeuoft the following changes were made: - p. : lily. who's poppy, dear.--changed period to a question mark. - p. : i've er--got some news for you.--inserted dash after "i've". - p. : you are quite free to do as you like, aren't' you, mr. tennant?--deleted apostrophe after "aren't". - p. : [_lifting the curtain and coming forward with leslie._]--changed "_leslie_" to unitalicized all caps. - p. : charley. (_digging his hands into the pockets. . ._--changed opening parenthesis to opening bracket for consistency. - p. : [_to charley._] you must have something hot. . .--changed "_charley_" to unitalicized all caps. - p. : _she brings back with her a tray, with cloth, etc.. and prepares for tea on a small table._--changed second period after "_etc_" to a comma. - p. : mrs. m. [_a little impatiently to maggie._]--changed "_maggie_" to unitalicized all caps. - p. : the work is not too hard, but you like change.--changed comma after "hard" to a period. - p. : added stage direction: "_lily and mrs. massey go out._"--a few lines after lily says "i'm quite ready to go", there is a stage direction for lily and mrs. massey to re-enter, but the source text has no direction indicating their exit. a stage direction indicating their exit was added right after lily's line. - p. : _lil goes out, and re-enters a moment after with maggie._--changed "lil" to "lily". - p. : _lily runs to the door._ good-bye.--placed line of dialogue ("good-bye.") on a separate line from the preceding stage direction. some inconsistencies in the source text have been noted but allowed to stand as-is. for example, lily's husband's name is spelled both "charley" and "charlie." on p. , mrs. massey says, "sybil told me distinctly this afternoon that charley wanted to go to australia." she is clearly referring to lily, but the line has been left as printed. the html version of this etext attempts to reproduce the layout of the printed text. however, some concessions have been made. for example, all stage directions were indented the same amount from the left margin and coded as hanging paragraphs. to let by john galsworthy author's note with this volume, the forsyte saga--that series comprising "the man of property," "indian summer of a forsyte" (from the volume "five tales"), "in chancery," and "awakening"--comes to an end. j. g. contents part i i. encounter ii. fine fleur forsyte iii. at robin hill iv. the mausoleum v. the native heath vi. jon vii. fleur viii. idyll on grass ix. goya x. trio xi. duet xii. caprice part ii i. mother and son ii. fathers and daughters iii. meetings iv. in green street v. purely forsyte affairs vi. soames' private life vii. june takes a hand viii. the bit between the teeth ix. fat in the fire x. decision xi. timothy prophesies part iii i. old jolyon walks ii. confession iii. irene! iv. soames cogitates v. the fixed idea vi. desperate vii. embassy viii. the dark tune ix. under the oak-tree x. fleur's wedding xi. the last of the forsytes part i i encounter soames forsyte emerged from the knightsbridge hotel, where he was staying, in the afternoon of the th of may, , with the intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a gallery off cork street, and looking into the future. he walked. since the war he never took a cab if he could help it. their drivers were, in his view, an uncivil lot, though, now that the war was over and supply beginning to exceed demand again, getting more civil in accordance with the custom of human nature. still, he had not forgiven them, deeply identifying them with gloomy memories and, now dimly, like all members of their class, with revolution. the considerable anxiety he had passed through during the war, and the more considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious nature. he had, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he had ceased to believe in its material probability. paying away four thousand a year in income and super-tax, one could not very well be worse off! a fortune of a quarter of a million, encumbered only by a wife and one daughter, and very diversely invested, afforded substantial guarantee even against that "wildcat notion"--a levy on capital. and as to confiscation of war profits, he was entirely in favor of it, for he had none, and "serve the beggars right!" the price of pictures, moreover, had, if anything, gone up, and he had done better with his collection since the war began than ever before. air-raids, also, had acted beneficially on a spirit congenitally cautious, and hardened a character already dogged. to be in danger of being entirely dispersed inclined one to be less apprehensive of the more partial dispersions involved in levies and taxation, while the habit of condemning the impudence of the germans had led naturally to condemning that of labor, if not openly at least in the sanctuary of his soul. he walked. there was, moreover, time to spare, for fleur was to meet him at the gallery at four o'clock, and it was as yet but half past two. it was good for him to walk--his liver was a little constricted and his nerves rather on edge. his wife was always out when she was in town, and his daughter would flibberty-gibbet all over the place like most young women since the war. still, he must be thankful that she had been too young to do anything in that war itself. not, of course, that he had not supported the war from its inception, with all his soul, but between that and supporting it with the bodies of his wife and daughter, there had been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within him which abhorred emotional extravagance. he had, for instance, strongly objected to annette, so attractive, and in only thirty-five, going to her native france, her "chere patrie" as, under the stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her "braves poilus," forsooth! ruining her health and her looks! as if she were really a nurse! he had put a stopper on it. let her do needlework for them at home, or knit! she had not gone, therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since. a bad tendency of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual little ways, had grown. as for fleur, the war had resolved the vexed problem whether or not she should go to school. she was better away from her mother in her war mood, from the chance of air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant things; so he had placed her in a seminary as far west as had seemed to him compatible with excellence, and had missed her horribly. fleur! he had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he had decided so suddenly to call her--marked concession though it had been to the french. fleur! a pretty name--a pretty child! but restless--too restless; and wilful! knowing her power too over her father! soames often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. to get old and dote! sixty-five! he was getting on; but he didn't feel it, for, fortunately perhaps, considering annette's youth and good looks, his second marriage had turned out a cool affair. he had known but one real passion in his life--for that first wife of his--irene. yes, and that fellow, his cousin jolyon, who had gone off with her, was looking very shaky, they said. no wonder, at seventy-two, after twenty years of a third marriage! soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the row. a suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in park lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and the little house in montpellier square where thirty-five years ago he had enjoyed his first edition of matrimony. now, after twenty years of his second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous existence--which had ended when fleur was born in place of the son he had hoped for. for many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son who had not been born; fleur filled the bill in his heart. after all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to the time when she would change it. indeed, if he ever thought of such a calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow who married her--why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men nowadays? and soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his curved hand over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his chin. thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and flabby; his nose was pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight unimpaired. a slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to his face by the heightening of his forehead in the recession of his grey hair. little change had time wrought in the "warmest" of the young forsytes, as the last of the old forsytes--timothy--now in his hundred and first year, would have phrased it. the shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat homburg hat; he had given up top hats--it was no use attracting attention to wealth in days like these. plane-trees! his thoughts travelled sharply to madrid--the easter before the war, when, having to make up his mind about that goya picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study the painter on his spot. the fellow had impressed him--great range, real genius! highly as the chap ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished with him. the second goya craze would be greater even than the first; oh, yes! and he had bought. on that visit he had--as never before--commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called "la vendimia," wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded him of his daughter. he had it now in the gallery at mapledurham, and rather poor it was--you couldn't copy goya. he would still look at it, however, if his daughter were not there, for the sake of something irresistibly reminiscent in the light, erect balance of the figure, the width between the arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark eyes. curious that fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were grey--no pure forsyte had brown eyes--and her mother's blue! but of course her grandmother lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle! he began to walk on again towards hyde park corner. no greater change in all england than in the row! born almost within hail of it, he could remember it from on. brought there as a child between the crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding with a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top hats; the leisurely air of it all, and the little bow-legged man in a long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs on several strings, and try to sell one to his mother: king charles spaniels, italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline--you never saw them now. you saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory colonials charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there, little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip--nothing; only the trees the same--the trees indifferent to the generations and declensions of mankind. a democratic england--dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an apex. and that something fastidious in the soul of soames turned over within him. gone for ever, the close borough of rank and polish! wealth there was--oh, yes! wealth--he himself was a richer man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling cheerio. little half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here and there, dispersed and chetif, as annette would say; but nothing ever again firm and coherent to look up to. and into this new hurly-burly of bad manners and loose morals his daughter--flower of his life--was flung! and when those labour chaps got power--if they ever did--the worst was yet to come! he passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank goodness!--disfigured by the gun-grey of its search-light. 'they'd better put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought, 'and light up their precious democracy!' and he directed his steps along the club fronts of piccadilly. george forsyte, of course, would be sitting in the bay window of the iseeum. the chap was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye noting the decline of men and things. and soames hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin's glance. george, who, as he had heard, had written a letter signed "patriot" in the middle of the war, complaining of the government's hysteria in docking the oats of race-horses. yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. well, he didn't change! and for perhaps the first time in his life soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. with his weight, his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take some shifting yet. he saw george move the pink paper as if inviting him to ascend--the chap must want to ask something about his property. it was still under soames's control; for in the adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years back when he had divorced irene, soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control of all purely forsyte affairs. hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. since the death of his brother-in-law montague dartie, in paris, which no one had quite known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide--the iseeum club had seemed more respectable to soames. george, too, he knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely to the joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep his weight down, and owning, as he said, "just one or two old screws to give me an interest in life." he joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel up there. george put out a well-kept hand. "haven't seen you since the war," he said. "how's your wife?" "thanks," said soames coldly, "well enough." some hidden jest curved, for a moment, george's fleshy face, and gloated from his eye. "that belgian chap, profond," he said, "is a member here now. he's a rum customer." "quite!" muttered soames. "what did you want to see me about?" "old timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. i suppose he's made his will." "yes." "well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old lot; he's a hundred, you know. they say he's like a mummy. where are you goin' to put him? he ought to have a pyramid by rights." soames shook his head. "highgate, the family vault." "well, i suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else. they say he still takes an interest in food. he might last on, you know. don't we get anything for the old forsytes? ten of them--average age eighty-eight--i worked it out. that ought to be equal to triplets." "is that all?" said soames. "i must be getting on." 'you unsociable devil,' george's eyes seemed to answer. "yes, that's all: look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might want to prophesy." the grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he added: "haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this damned income tax? it hits the fixed inherited income like the very deuce. i used to have two thousand five hundred a year; now i've got a beggarly fifteen hundred, and the price of living doubled." "ah!" murmured soames, "the turf's in danger." over george's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence. "well," he said, "they brought me up to do nothing, and here i am in the sere and yellow, getting poorer every day. these labour chaps mean to have the lot before they've done. what are you going to do for a living when it comes? i shall work a six-hour day teaching politicians how to see a joke. take my tip, soames; go into parliament, make sure of your four hundred--and employ me." and, as soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window. soames moved along piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his cousin's words. he himself had always been a worker and a saver, george always a drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation once began, it was he--the worker and the saver--who would be looted! that was the negation of all virtue, the overturning of all forsyte principles. could civilisation be built on any other? he did not think so. well, they wouldn't confiscate his pictures, for they wouldn't know their worth. but what would they be worth, if these maniacs once began to milk capital? a drug on the market. 'i don't care about myself,' he thought; 'i could live on five hundred a year, and never know the difference, at my age.' but fleur! this fortune, so wisely invested, these treasures so carefully chosen and amassed, were all for her. and if it should turn out that he couldn't give or leave them to her--well, life had no meaning, and what was the use of going in to look at this crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of seeing whether it had any future? arriving at the gallery off cork street, however, he paid his shilling, picked up a catalogue, and entered. some ten persons were prowling round. soames took steps and came on what looked to him like a lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. it was advanced some three paces from the wall, and was described in his catalogue as "jupiter." he examined it with curiosity, having recently turned some of his attention to sculpture. 'if that's jupiter,' he thought, 'i wonder what juno's like.' and suddenly he saw her, opposite. she appeared to him like nothing so much as a pump with two handles, lightly clad in snow. he was still gazing at her, when two of the prowlers halted on his left. "epatant!" he heard one say. "jargon!" growled soames to himself. the other's boyish voice replied: "missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg. when jove and juno created he them, he was saying: 'i'll see how much these fools will swallow.' and they've lapped up the lot." "you young duffer! vospovitch is an innovator. don't you see that he's brought satire into sculpture? the future of plastic art, of music, painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. it was bound to. people are tired--the bottom's tumbled out of sentiment." "well, i'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. i was through the war. you've dropped your handkerchief, sir." soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. he took it with some natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. it had the right scent--of distant eau de cologne--and his initials in a corner. slightly reassured, he raised his eyes to the young man's face. it had rather fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with half a toothbrush growing out of it on each side, and small lively eyes, above a normally dressed appearance. "thank you," he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added: "glad to hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays." "i dote on it," said the young man; "but you and i are the last of the old guard, sir." soames smiled. "if you really care for pictures," he said, "here's my card. i can show you some quite good ones any sunday, if you're down the river and care to look in." "awfully nice of you, sir. i'll drop in like a bird. my name's mont-michael." and he took off his hat. soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly in response, with a downward look at the young man's companion, who had a purple tie, dreadful little slug-like whiskers, and a scornful look--as if he were a poet! it was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that he went and sat down in an alcove. what had possessed him to give his card to a rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like that? and fleur, always at the back of his thoughts, started out like a filagree figure from a clock when the hour strikes. on the screen opposite the alcove was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-colored blobs on it, and nothing else, so far as soames could see from where he sat. he looked at his catalogue: "no. --'the future town'--paul post." 'i suppose that's satiric too,' he thought. 'what a thing!' but his second impulse was more cautious. it did not do to condemn hurriedly. there had been those stripey, streaky creations of monet's, which had turned out such trumps; and then the stippled school; and gauguin. why, even since the post-impressionists there had been one or two painters not to be sneezed at. during the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur's life, indeed, he had marked so many "movements," seen the tides of taste and technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no telling anything except that there was money to be made out of every change of fashion. this too might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial instinct, or lose the market. he got up and stood before the picture, trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people. above the tomato blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some one passing said: "he's got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you think!" below the tomato blobs was a band of white with vertical black stripes, to which he could assign no meaning whatever, till some one else came by, murmuring: "what expression he gets with his foreground!" expression? of what? soames went back to his seat. the thing was "rich," as his father would have said, and he wouldn't give a damn for it. expression! ah! they were all expressionists now, he had heard, on the continent. so it was coming here too, was it? he remembered the first wave of influenza in --or --hatched in china, so they said. he wondered where this--this expressionism--had been hatched. the thing was a regular disease! he had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between him and the "future town." their backs were turned; but very suddenly soames put his catalogue before his face, and drawing his hat forward, gazed through the slit between. no mistaking that back, elegant as ever though the hair above had gone grey. irene! his divorced wife--irene! and this, no doubt, was her son--by that fellow jolyon forsyte--their boy, six months older than his own girl! and mumbling over in his mind the bitter days of his divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but quickly sat down again. she had turned her head to speak to her boy; her profile was still so youthful that it made her grey hair seem powdery, as if fancy-dressed; and her lips were smiling as soames, first possessor of them, had never seen them smile. grudgingly he admitted her still beautiful, and in figure almost as young as ever. and how that boy smiled back at her! emotion squeezed soames' heart. the sight infringed his sense of justice. he grudged her that boy's smile--it went beyond what fleur gave him, and it was undeserved. their son might have been his son; fleur might have been her daughter, if she had kept straight! he lowered his catalogue. if she saw him, all the better! a reminder of her conduct in the presence of her son, who probably knew nothing of it, would be a salutary touch from the finger of that nemesis which surely must soon or late visit her! then, half-conscious that such a thought was extravagant for a forsyte of his age, soames took out his watch. past four! fleur was late. she had gone to his niece imogen cardigan's, and there they would keep her smoking cigarettes and gossiping, and that. he heard the boy laugh, and say eagerly: "i say, mum, is this one of auntie june's lame ducks?" "paul post--i believe it is, darling." the word produced a little shock in soames; he had never heard her use it. and then she saw him. his eyes must have had in them something of george forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand crisped the folds of her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went stony. she moved on. "it is a caution," said the boy, catching her arm again. soames stared after them. that boy was good-looking, with a forsyte chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something sunny, like a glass of old sherry spilled over him; his smile perhaps, his hair. better than they deserved--those two! they passed from his view into the next room, and soames continued to regard the future town, but saw it not. a little smile snarled up his lips. he was despising the vehemence of his own feelings after all these years. ghosts! and yet as one grew old--was there anything but what was ghost-like left? yes, there was fleur! he fixed his eyes on the entrance. she was due; but she would keep him waiting, of course! and suddenly he became aware of a sort of human breeze--a short, slight form clad in a sea-green djibbah with a metal belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all streaked with grey. she was talking to the gallery attendants, and something familiar riveted his gaze--in her eyes, her chin, her hair, her spirit--something which suggested a thin skye terrier just before its dinner. surely june forsyte! his cousin june--and coming straight to his recess! she sat down beside him, deep in thought, took out a tablet, and made a pencil note. soames sat unmoving. a confounded thing cousinship! "disgusting!" he heard her murmur; then, as if resenting the presence of an overhearing stranger, she looked at him. the worst had happened. "soames!" soames turned his head a very little. "how are you?" he said. "haven't seen you for twenty years." "no. whatever made you come here?" "my sins," said soames. "what stuff!" "stuff? oh, yes--of course; it hasn't arrived yet." "it never will," said soames; "it must be making a dead loss." "of course it is." "how d'you know?" "it's my gallery." soames sniffed from sheer surprise. "yours? what on earth makes you run a show like this?" "_i_ don't treat art as if it were grocery." soames pointed to the future town. "look at that! who's going to live in a town like that, or with it on his walls?" june contemplated the picture for a moment. "it's a vision," she said. "the deuce!" there was silence, then june rose. 'crazy-looking creature!' he thought. "well," he said, "you'll find your young stepbrother here with a woman i used to know. if you take my advice, you'll close this exhibition." june looked back at him. "oh! you forsyte!" she said, and moved on. about her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away, was a look of dangerous decisions. forsyte! of course, he was a forsyte! and so was she! but from the time when, as a mere girl, she brought bosinney into his life to wreck it, he had never hit it off with june--and never would! and here she was, unmarried to this day, owning a gallery!... and suddenly it came to soames how little he knew now of his own family. the old aunts at timothy's had been dead so many years; there was no clearing-house for news. what had they all done in the war? young roger's boy had been wounded, st. john hayman's second son killed; young nicholas' eldest had got an o. b. e., or whatever they gave them. they had all joined up somehow, he believed. that boy of jolyon's and irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own generation, of course, too old, though giles hayman had driven a car for the red cross--and jesse hayman been a special constable--those "dromios" had always been of a sporting type! as for himself, he had given a motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of them, passed through much anxiety, invested in war bonds, bought no clothes, lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he could have done at his age. indeed, it struck him that he and his family had taken this war very differently to that affair with the boers, which had been supposed to tax all the resources of the empire. in that old war, of course, his nephew val dartie had been wounded, that fellow jolyon's first son had died of enteric, "the dromios" had gone out on horses, and june had been a nurse; but all that had seemed in the nature of a portent, while in this war everybody had done "their bit," so far as he could make out, as a matter of course. it seemed to show the growth of something or other--or perhaps the decline of something else. had the forsytes become less individual, or more imperial, or less provincial? or was it simply that one hated germans?... why didn't fleur come, so that he could get away? he saw those three return together from the other room and pass back along the far side of the screen. the boy was standing before the juno now. and, suddenly, on the other side of her, soames saw--his daughter with eyebrows raised, as well they might be. he could see her eyes glint sideways at the boy, and the boy look back at her. then irene slipped her hand through his arm, and drew him on. soames saw him glancing round, and fleur looking after them as the three went out. a voice said cheerfully: "bit thick, isn't it, sir?" the young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again passing. soames nodded. "i don't know what we're coming to." "oh! that's all right, sir," answered the young man cheerfully; "they don't either." fleur's voice said, precisely as if he had been keeping her waiting: "hallo, father! there you are!" the young man, snatching off his hat, passed on. "well," said soames, looking her up and down, "you're a punctual sort of young woman!" this treasured possession of his life was of medium height and color, with short, dark-chestnut hair; her wide-apart brown eyes were set in whites so clear that they glinted when they moved, and yet in repose were almost dreamy under very white, black-lashed lids, held over them in a sort of suspense. she had a charming profile, and nothing of her father in her face save a decided chin. aware that his expression was softening as he looked at her, soames frowned to preserve the unemotionalism proper to a forsyte. he knew she was only too inclined to take advantage of his weakness. slipping her hand under his arm, she said: "who was that?" "he picked up my handkerchief. we talked about the pictures." "you're not going to buy that, father?" "no," said soames grimly; "nor that juno you've been looking at." fleur dragged at his arm. "oh! let's go! it's a ghastly show." in the doorway they passed the young man called mont and his partner. but soames had hung out a board marked "trespassers will be prosecuted," and he barely acknowledged the young fellow's salute. "well," he said in the street, "whom did you meet at imogen's?" "aunt winifred, and that monsieur profond." "oh!" muttered soames; "that chap! what does your aunt see in him?" "i don't know. he looks pretty deep--mother says she likes him." soames grunted. "cousin val and his wife were there, too." "what!" said soames. "i thought they were back in south africa." "oh, no! they've sold their farm. cousin val is going to train race-horses on the sussex downs. they've got a jolly old manor-house; they asked me down there." soames coughed: the news was distasteful to him. "what's his wife like now?" "very quiet, but nice, i think." soames coughed again. "he's a rackety chap, your cousin val." "oh! no, father; they're awfully devoted. i promised to go--saturday to wednesday next." "training race-horses!" said soames. it was bad enough, but not the reason for his distaste. why the deuce couldn't his nephew have stayed out in south africa? his own divorce had been bad enough, without his nephew's marriage to the daughter of the co-respondent; a half-sister too of june, and of that boy whom fleur had just been looking at from under the pump-handle. if he didn't look out, fleur would come to know all about that old disgrace! unpleasant things! they were round him this afternoon like a swarm of bees! "i don't like it!" he said. "i want to see the race-horses," murmured fleur; "and they've promised i shall ride. cousin val can't walk much, you know; but he can ride perfectly. he's going to show me their gallops." "racing!" said soames. "it's a pity the war didn't knock that on the head. he's taking after his father, i'm afraid." "i don't know anything about his father." "no," said soames grimly. "he took an interest in horses and broke his neck in paris, walking down-stairs. good riddance for your aunt." he frowned, recollecting the inquiry into those stairs which he had attended in paris six years ago, because montague dartie could not attend it himself--perfectly normal stairs in a house where they played baccarat. either his winnings or the way he had celebrated them had gone to his brother-in-law's head. the french procedure had been very loose; he had had a lot of trouble with it. a sound from fleur distracted his attention. "look! the people who were in the gallery with us." "what people?" muttered soames, who knew perfectly well. "i think that woman's beautiful." "come into this pastry-cook's," said soames abruptly, and tightening his grip on her arm, he turned into a confectioner's. it was--for him--a surprising thing to do, and he said rather anxiously: "what will you have?" "oh! i don't want anything. i had a cocktail and a tremendous lunch." "we must have something now we're here," muttered soames, keeping hold of her arm. "two teas," he said; "and two of those nougat things." but no sooner was his body seated than his soul sprang up. those three--those three were coming in! he heard irene say something to her boy, and his answer: "oh! no, mum; this place is all right. my stunt." and the three sat down. at that moment, most awkward of his existence, crowded with ghosts and shadows from his past, in presence of the only two women he had ever loved--his divorced wife and his daughter by her successor--soames was not so much afraid of them as of his cousin june. she might make a scene--she might introduce those two children--she was capable of anything. he bit too hastily at the nougat, and it stuck to his plate. working at it with his finger, he glanced at fleur. she was masticating dreamily, but her eyes were on the boy. the forsyte in him said: "think, feel, and you're done for!" and he wiggled his finger desperately. plate! did jolyon wear a plate? did that woman wear a plate? time had been when he had seen her wearing nothing! that was something, anyway, which had never been stolen from him. and she knew it, though she might sit there calm and self-possessed, as if she had never been his wife. an acid humor stirred in his forsyte blood; a subtle pain divided by hair's-breadth from pleasure. if only june did not suddenly bring her hornets about his ears! the boy was talking. "of course, auntie june,"--so he called his half-sister "auntie," did he?--well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!--"it's jolly good of you to encourage them. only--hang it all!" soames stole a glance. irene's startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy. she--she had these devotions--for bosinney--for that boy's father--for this boy! he touched fleur's arm, and said: "well, have you had enough?" "one more, father, please." she would be sick! he went to the counter to pay. when he turned round again he saw fleur standing near the door, holding a handkerchief which the boy had evidently just handed to her. "f.f.," he heard her say. "fleur forsyte--it's mine all right. thank you ever so." good god! she had caught the trick from what he'd told her in the gallery--monkey! "forsyte? why--that's my name too. perhaps we're cousins." "really! we must be. there aren't any others. i live at mapledurham; where do you?" "robin hill." question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he could lift a finger. he saw irene's face alive with startled feeling, gave the slightest shake of his head, and slipped his arm through fleur's. "come along!" he said. she did not move. "didn't you hear, father? isn't it queer--our name's the same. are we cousins?" "what's that?" he said. "forsyte? distant, perhaps." "my name's jolyon, sir. jon, for short." "oh! ah!" said soames. "yes. distant. how are you? very good of you. good-bye!" he moved on. "thanks awfully," fleur was saying. "au revoir!" "au revoir!" he heard the boy reply. ii fine fleur forsyte emerging from the "pastry-cook's," soames' first impulse was to vent his nerves by saying to his daughter: "dropping your handkerchief!" to which her reply might well be: "i picked that up from you!" his second impulse therefore was to let sleeping dogs lie. but she would surely question him. he gave her a sidelong look, and found she was giving him the same. she said softly: "why don't you like those cousins, father?" soames lifted the corner of his lip. "what made you think that?" "cela se voit." 'that sees itself!' what a way of putting it! after twenty years of a french wife soames had still little sympathy with her language; a theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all the refinements of domestic irony. "how?" he asked. "you must know them; and you didn't make a sign. i saw them looking at you." "i've never seen the boy in my life," replied soames with perfect truth. "no; but you've seen the others, dear." soames gave her another look. what had she picked up? had her aunt winifred, or imogen, or val dartie and his wife, been talking? every breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept from her at home, and winifred warned many times that he wouldn't have a whisper of it reach her for the world. so far as she ought to know, he had never been married before. but her dark eyes, whose southern glint and clearness often almost frightened him, met his with perfect innocence. "well," he said, "your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel. the two families don't know each other." "how romantic!" 'now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. the word was to him extravagant and dangerous--it was as if she had said: "how jolly!" "and they'll continue not to know each other," he added, but instantly regretted the challenge in those words. fleur was smiling. in this age, when young people prided themselves on going their own ways and paying no attention to any sort of decent prejudice, he had said the very thing to excite her wilfulness. then, recollecting the expression on irene's face, he breathed again. "what sort of a quarrel?" he heard fleur say. "about a house. it's ancient history for you. your grandfather died the day you were born. he was ninety." "ninety? are there many forsytes besides those in the red book?" "i don't know," said soames. "they're all dispersed now. the old ones are dead, except timothy." fleur clasped her hands. "timothy? isn't that delicious?" "not at all," said soames. it offended him that she should think "timothy" delicious--a kind of insult to his breed. this new generation mocked at anything solid and tenacious. "you go and see the old boy. he might want to prophesy." ah! if timothy could see the disquiet england of his greatnephews and greatnieces, he would certainly give tongue. and involuntarily he glanced up at the iseeum; yes--george was still in the window, with the same pink paper in his hand. "where is robin hill, father?" robin hill! robin hill, round which all that tragedy had centred! what did she want to know for? "in surrey," he muttered; "not far from richmond, why?" "is the house there?" "what house?" "that they quarrelled about." "yes. but what's all that to do with you? we're going home to-morrow--you'd better be thinking about your frocks." "bless you! they're all thought about. a family feud? it's like the bible, or mark twain--awfully exciting. what did you do in the feud, father?" "never you mind." "oh! but if i'm to keep it up?" "who said you were to keep it up?" "you, darling." "i? i said it had nothing to do with you." "just what _i_ think, you know; so that's all right." she was too sharp for him; fine, as annette sometimes called her. nothing for it but to distract her attention. "there's a bit of rosaline point in here," he said, stopping before a shop, "that i thought you might like." when he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress, fleur said: "don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of her age you've ever seen?" soames shivered. uncanny, the way she stuck to it! "i don't know that i noticed her." "dear, i saw the corner of your eye." "you see everything--and a great deal more, it seems to me!" "what's her husband like? he must be your first cousin, if your fathers were brothers." "dead, for all i know," said soames, with sudden vehemence. "i haven't seen him for twenty years." "what was he?" "a painter." "that's quite jolly." the words: "if you want to please me you'll put those people out of your head," sprang to soames's lips, but he choked them back--he must not let her see his feelings. "he once insulted me," he said. her quick eyes rested on his face. "i see! you didn't avenge it, and it rankles. poor father! you let me have a go!" it was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above his face. such pertinacity in fleur was new to him, and, as they reached the hotel, he said grimly: "i did my best. and that's enough about these people. i'm going up till dinner." "i shall sit here." with a parting look at her extended in a chair--a look half-resentful, half-adoring--soames moved into the lift and was transported to their suite on the fourth floor. he stood by the window of the sitting-room which gave view over hyde park, and drummed a finger on its pane. his feelings were confused, tetchy, troubled. the throb of that old wound, scarred over by time and new interests, was mingled with displeasure and anxiety, and a slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had disagreed. had annette come in? not that she was any good to him in such a difficulty. whenever she had questioned him about his first marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself but domestic makeshift. she had always kept the grudge of that up her sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. he listened. a sound--the vague murmur of a woman's movements--was coming through the door. she was in. he tapped. "who?" "i," said soames. she had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly clothed; a striking figure before her glass. there was a certain magnificence about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened since he first knew her, about the turn of her neck, the silkiness of her garments, her dark-lashed, grey-blue eyes--she was certainly as handsome at forty as she had ever been. a fine possession, an excellent housekeeper, a sensible and affectionate enough mother. if only she weren't always so frankly cynical about the relations between them! soames, who had no more real affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind of english grievance, in that she had never dropped even the thinnest veil of sentiment over their partnership. like most of his countrymen and women, he held the view that marriage should be based on mutual love, but that when from a marriage love had disappeared, or been found never to have really existed--so that it was manifestly not based on love--you must not admit it. there it was, and the love was not--but there you were, and must continue to be! thus you had it both ways, and were not tarred with cynicism, realism, and immorality, like the french. moreover, it was necessary in the interests of propriety. he knew that she knew that they both knew there was no love between them, but he still expected her not to admit in words or conduct such a thing, and he could never understand what she meant when she talked of the hypocrisy of the english. he said: "whom have you got at 'the shelter' next week?" annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve--he always wished she wouldn't do that. "your sister winifred, and the car-r-digans"--she took up a tiny stick of black--"and prosper profond." "that belgian chap? why him?" annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said: "he amuses winifred." "i want some one to amuse fleur; she's restive." "r-restive?" repeated annette. "is it the first time you see that, my friend? she was born r-restive, as you call it." would she never get that affected roll out of her r's? he touched the dress she had taken off, and asked: "what have you been doing?" annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. her just-brightened lips smiled, rather full, rather ironical. "enjoying myself," she said. "oh!" answered soames glumly. "ribbandry, i suppose." it was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out of shops that women went in for. "has fleur got her summer dresses?" "you don't ask if i have mine." "you don't care whether i do or not." "quite right. well, she has; and i have mine--terribly expensive." "h'm!" said soames. "what does that chap profond do in england?" annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished. "he yachts." "ah!" said soames; "he's a sleepy chap." "sometimes," answered annette, and her face had a sort of quiet enjoyment. "but sometimes very amusing." "he's got a touch of the tar-brush about him." annette stretched herself. "tar-brush?" she said; "what is that? his mother was armenienne." "that's it, then," muttered soames. "does he know anything about pictures?" "he knows about everything--a man of the world." "well, get some one for fleur. i want to distract her. she's going off on saturday to val dartie and his wife; i don't like it." "why not?" since the reason could not be explained without going into family history, soames merely answered: "racketing about. there's too much of it." "i like that little mrs. val; she is very quiet and clever." "i know nothing of her except--this thing's new." and soames took up a creation from the bed. annette received it from him. "would you hook me?" she said. soames hooked. glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he saw the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly contemptuous, as much as to say: 'thanks! you will never learn!' no, thank god, he wasn't a frenchman! he finished with a jerk, and the words: "it's too low here." and he went to the door, with the wish to get away from her and go down to fleur again. annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness: "que tu es grossier!" he knew the expression--he had reason to. the first time she had used it he had thought it meant "what a grocer you are!" and had not known whether to be relieved or not when better informed. he resented the word--he was not coarse! if he was coarse, what was that chap in the room beyond his, who made those horrible noises in the morning when he cleared his throat, or those people in the lounge who thought it well-bred to say nothing but what the whole world could hear at the top of their voices--quacking inanity! coarse, because he had said her dress was low! well, so it was! he went out without reply. coming into the lounge from the far end, he at once saw fleur where he had left her. she sat with crossed knees, slowly balancing a foot in silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that she was dreaming. her eyes showed it too--they went off like that sometimes. and then, in a moment, she would come to life, and be as quick and restless as a monkey. and she knew so much, so self-assured, and not yet nineteen. what was that odious word? flapper! dreadful young creatures--squealing and squawking and showing their legs! the worst of them bad dreams, the best of them powdered angels! fleur was not a flapper, not one of those slangy, ill-bred young females. and yet she was frighteningly self-willed, and full of life, and determined to enjoy it. enjoy! the word brought no puritan terror to soames; but it brought the terror suited to his temperament. he had always been afraid to enjoy to-day for fear he might not enjoy to-morrow so much. and it was terrifying to feel that his daughter was divested of that safeguard. the very way she sat in that chair showed it--lost in her dream. he had never been lost in a dream himself--there was nothing to be had out of it; and where she got it from he did not know! certainly not from annette! and yet annette, as a young girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a flowery look. well, she had lost it now! fleur rose from her chair--swiftly, restlessly, and flung herself down at a writing-table. seizing ink and writing-paper, she began to write as if she had not time to breathe before she got her letter written. and suddenly she saw him. the air of desperate absorption vanished, she smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were a little puzzled and a little bored. ah! she was "fine"--"fine!" iii at robin hill jolyon forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at robin hill, quietly going into his affairs. he did everything quietly now, because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he disliked the idea of dying. he had never realised how much till one day, two years ago, he had gone to his doctor about certain symptoms, and been told: "at any moment, on any overstrain." he had taken it with a smile--the natural forsyte reaction against an unpleasant truth. but with an increase of symptoms in the train on the way home, he had realised to the full the sentence hanging over him. to leave irene, his boy, his home, his work--though he did little enough work now! to leave them for unknown darkness, for the unimaginable state, for such nothingness that he would not even be conscious of wind stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass. of such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it, he never could, and must still hover on the hope that he might see again those he loved! to realise this was to endure very poignant spiritual anguish. before he reached home that day, he had determined to keep it from irene. he would have to be more careful than man had ever been, for the least thing would give it away and make her as wretched as himself, almost. his doctor had passed him sound in other respects, and seventy was nothing of an age--he would last a long time yet, if he could! such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to the full the subtler side of character. naturally not abrupt, except when nervously excited, jolyon had become control incarnate. the sad patience of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a smile which his lips preserved even in private. he devised continually all manner of cover to conceal his enforced lack of exertion. mocking himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the simple life; gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee with no coffee in it. in short, he made himself as safe as a forsyte in his condition could, under the rose of his mild irony. secure from discovery, since his wife and son had gone up to town, he had spent the fine may day quietly arranging his papers, that he might die to-morrow without inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final polish to his terrestrial state. having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words outside: "key of the chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the exact state of me. j.f.," and put it in his breast-pocket, where it would be, always about him, in case of accident. then, ringing for tea, he went out to have it under the old oak-tree. all are under sentence of death; jolyon, whose sentence was but a little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it, that he thought habitually, like other people, of other things. he thought of his son now. jon was nineteen that day, and jon had come of late to a decision. educated neither at eton like his father, nor at harrow, like his dead half-brother, but at one of those establishments which, designed to avoid the evil and contain the good of the public school system, may or may not contain the evil and avoid the good, jon had left in april perfectly ignorant of what he wanted to become. the war, which had promised to go on for ever, had ended just as he was about to join the army, six months before his time. it had taken him ever since to get used to the idea that he could now choose for himself. he had held with his father several discussions, from which, under a cheery show of being ready for anything--except, of course, the church, army, law, stage, stock exchange, medicine, business, and engineering--jolyon had gathered rather clearly that jon wanted to go in for nothing. he himself had felt exactly like that at the same age. with him that pleasant vacuity had soon been ended by an early marriage, and its unhappy consequences. forced to become an underwriter at lloyd's he had regained prosperity before his artistic talent had outcropped. but having--as the simple say--"learned" his boy to draw pigs and other animals, he knew that jon would never be a painter, and inclined to the conclusion that his aversion from everything else meant that he was going to be a writer. holding, however, the view that experience was necessary even for that profession, there seemed to jolyon nothing in the meantime, for jon, but university, travel, and perhaps the eating of dinners for the bar. after that one would see, or more probably one would not. in face of these proffered allurements, however, jon had remained undecided. such discussions with his son had confirmed in jolyon a doubt whether the world had really changed. people said that it was a new age. with the profundity of one not too long for any age, jolyon perceived that under slightly different surfaces, the era was precisely what it had been. mankind was still divided into two species: the few who had "speculation" in their souls, and the many who had none, with a belt of hybrids like himself in the middle. jon appeared to have speculation; it seemed to his father a bad lookout. with something deeper, therefore, than his usual smile, he had heard the boy say, a fortnight ago: "i should like to try farming, dad; if it won't cost you too much. it seems to be about the only sort of life that doesn't hurt anybody; except art, and of course that's out of the question for me." jolyon subdued his smile, and answered: "all right; you shall skip back to where we were under the first jolyon in . it'll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally, no doubt, you may grow a better turnip than he did." a little dashed, jon had answered: "but don't you think it's a good scheme, dad?" "twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it, you'll do more good than most men, which is little enough." to himself, however, he had said: "but he won't take to it. i give him four years. still, it's healthy, and harmless." after turning the matter over and consulting with irene, he wrote to his daughter mrs. val dortie, asking if they knew of a farmer near them on the downs who would take jon as an apprentice. holly's answer had been enthusiastic. there was an excellent man quite close; she and val would love jon to live with them. the boy was due to go to-morrow. sipping weak tea with lemon in it, jolyon gazed through the leaves of the old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him desirable for thirty-two years. the tree beneath which he sat seemed not a day older! so young, the little leaves of brownish gold; so old, the whitey-grey-green of its thick rough trunk, a tree of memories, which would live on hundreds of years yet, unless some barbarian cut it down--would see old england out at the pace things were going! he remembered a night three years before, when, looking from his window, with his arm close round irene, he had watched a german aeroplane hovering, it seemed, right over the old tree. next day they had found a bomb hole in a field on gage's farm. that was before he knew that he was under sentence of death. he could almost have wished the bomb had finished him. it would have saved a lot of hanging about, many hours of cold fear in the pit of his stomach. he had counted on living to the normal forsyte age of eighty-five or more, when irene would be seventy. as it was, she would miss him. still there was jon, more important in her life than himself; jon, who adored his mother. under that tree, where old jolyon--waiting for irene to come to him across the lawn--had breathed his last, jolyon wondered, whimsically, whether, having put everything in such perfect order, he had not better close his own eyes and drift away. there was something undignified in parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of a life wherein he regretted two things only--the long division between his father and himself when he was young, and the lateness of his union with irene. from where he sat he could see a cluster of apple-trees in blossom. nothing in nature moved him so much as fruit-trees in blossom; and his heart ached suddenly because he might never see them flower again. spring! decidedly no man ought to have to die while his heart was still young enough to love beauty! blackbirds sang recklessly in the shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the leaves above him glistened; and over the fields was every imaginable tint of early foliage, burnished by the level sunlight, away to where the distant 'smoke-bush' blue was trailed along the horizon. irene's flowers in their narrow beds had startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions of gay life. only chinese and japanese painters, and perhaps leonardo, had known how to get that startling little ego into each painted flower, and bird, and beast--the ego, yet the sense of species, the universality of life as well. they were the fellows! 'i've made nothing that will live!' thought jolyon; 'i've been an amateur--a mere lover, not a creator. still, i shall leave jon behind me when i go.' what luck that the boy had not been caught by that ghastly war! he might so easily have been killed, like poor jolly twenty years ago out in the transvaal. jon would do something some day--if the age didn't spoil him--an imaginative chap! his whim to take up farming was but a bit of sentiment, and about as likely to last. and just then he saw them coming up the field: irene and the boy, walking from the station, with their arms linked. and, getting up, he strolled down through the new rose garden to meet them.... irene came into his room that night and sat down by the window. she sat there without speaking till he said: "what is it, my love?" "we had an encounter to-day." "with whom?" "soames." soames! he had kept that name out of his thoughts these last two years; conscious that it was bad for him. and, now, his heart moved in a disconcerting manner, as if it had side-slipped within his chest. irene went on quietly: "he and his daughter were in the gallery, and afterwards at the confectioner's where we had tea." jolyon went over and put his hand on her shoulder. "how did he look?" "grey; but otherwise much the same." "and the daughter?" "pretty. at least, jon thought so." jolyon's heart side-slipped again. his wife's face had a strained and puzzled look. "you didn't--?" he began. "no; but jon knows their name. the girl dropped her handkerchief and he picked it up." jolyon sat down on his bed. an evil chance! "june was with you. did she put her foot into it?" "no; but it was all very queer and strained, and jon could see it was." jolyon drew a long breath, and said: "i've often wondered whether we've been right to keep it from him. he'll find out some day." "the later the better, jolyon; the young have such cheap, hard judgment. when you were nineteen what would you have thought of your mother if she had done what i have?" yes! there it was! jon worshipped his mother; and knew nothing of the tragedies, the inexorable necessities of life, nothing of the prisoned grief in an unhappy marriage, nothing of jealousy, or passion--knew nothing at all, as yet! "what have you told him?" he said at last. "that they were relations, but we didn't know them; that you had never cared much for your family, or they for you. i expect he will be asking you." jolyon smiled. "this promises to take the place of air-raids," he said. "after all, one misses them." irene looked up at him. "we've known it would come some day." he answered her with sudden energy: "i could never stand seeing jon blame you. he shan't do that, even in thought. he has imagination; and he'll understand if it's put to him properly. i think i had better tell him before he gets to know otherwise." "not yet, jolyon." that was like her--she had no foresight, and never went to meet trouble. still--who knew?--she might be right. it was ill going against a mother's instinct. it might be well to let the boy go on, if possible, till experience had given him some touchstone by which he could judge the values of that old tragedy; till love, jealousy, longing, had deepened his charity. all the same, one must take precautions--every precaution possible! and, long after irene had left him, he lay awake turning over those precautions. he must write to holly, telling her that jon knew nothing as yet of family history. holly was discreet, she would make sure of her husband, she would see to it! jon could take the letter with him when he went to-morrow. and so the day on which he had put the polish on his material estate died out with the chiming of the stable clock; and another began for jolyon in the shadow of a spiritual disorder which could not be so rounded off and polished.... but jon, whose room had once been his day nursery, lay awake too, the prey of a sensation disputed by those who have never known it, "love at first sight!" he had felt it beginning in him with the glint of those dark eyes gazing into his athwart the juno--a conviction that this was his 'dream'; so that what followed had seemed to him at once natural and miraculous. fleur! her name alone was almost enough for one who was terribly susceptible to the charm of words. in a homoeopathic age, when boys and girls were coeducated, and mixed up in early life till sex was almost abolished, jon was singularly old-fashioned. his modern school took boys only, and his holidays had been spent at robin hill with boy friends, or his parents alone. he had never, therefore, been inoculated against the germs of love by small doses of the poison. and now in the dark his temperature was mounting fast. he lay awake, featuring fleur--as they called it--recalling her words, especially that "au revoir!" so soft and sprightly. he was still so wide-awake at dawn that he got up, slipped on tennis shoes, trousers, and a sweater, and in silence crept down-stairs and out through the study window. it was just light; there was a smell of grass. 'fleur!' he thought; 'fleur!' it was mysteriously white out-of-doors, with nothing awake except the birds just beginning to chirp. 'i'll go down into the coppice,' he thought. he ran down through the fields, reached the pond just as the sun rose, and passed into the coppice. bluebells carpeted the ground there; among the larch-trees there was mystery--the air, as it were, composed of that romantic quality. jon sniffed its freshness, and stared at the bluebells in the sharpening light. fleur! it rhymed with her! and she lived at mapledurham--a jolly name, too, on the river somewhere. he could find it in the atlas presently. he would write to her. but would she answer? oh! she must. she had said "au revoir!" not good-bye! what luck that she had dropped her handkerchief. he would never have known her but for that. and the more he thought of that handkerchief, the more amazing his luck seemed. fleur! it certainly rhymed with her! rhythm thronged his head; words jostled to be joined together; he was on the verge of a poem. jon remained in this condition for more than half an hour, then returned to the house, and getting a ladder, climbed in at his bedroom window out of sheer exhilaration. then, remembering that the study window was open, he went down and shut it, first removing the ladder, so as to obliterate all traces of his feeling. the thing was too deep to be revealed to mortal soul--even to his mother. iv the mausoleum there are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of time, leaving their bodies in the limbo of london. such was not quite the condition of "timothy's" on the bayswater road, for timothy's soul still had one foot in timothy forsyte's body, and smither kept the atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows are only opened to air it twice a day. to forsyte imagination that house was now a sort of chinese pill-box, a series of layers in the last of which was timothy. one did not reach him, or so it was reported by members of the family who, out of old-time habit or absent-mindedness, would drive up once in a blue moon and ask after their surviving uncle. such were francie, now quite emancipated from god (she frankly avowed atheism), euphemia, emancipated from old nicholas, and winifred dartie from her "man of the world." but, after all, everybody was emancipated now, or said they were--perhaps not quite the same thing! when soames, therefore, took it on his way to paddington station on the morning after that encounter, it was hardly with the expectation of seeing timothy in the flesh. his heart made a faint demonstration within him while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly whitened doorstep of that little house where four forsytes had once lived, and now but one dwelt on like a winter fly; the house into which soames had come and out of which he had gone times without number, divested of, or burdened with, fardels of family gossip; the house of the "old people" of another century, another age. the sight of smither--still corseted up to the armpits because the new fashion which came in as they were going out about had never been considered "nice" by aunts juley and hester--brought a pale friendliness to soames's lips; smither, still faithfully arranged to old pattern in every detail, an invaluable servant--none such left--smiling back at him, with the words: "why! it's mr. soames, after all this time! and how are you, sir? mr. timothy will be so pleased to know you've been." "how is he?" "oh! he keeps fairly bobbish for his age, sir; but of course he's a wonderful man. as i said to mrs. dartie when she was here last: it would please miss forsyte and mrs. juley and miss hester to see how he relishes a baked apple still. but he's quite deaf. and a mercy, i always think. for what we should have done with him in the air-raids, i don't know." "ah!" said soames. "what did you do with him?" "we just left him in his bed, and had the bell run down into the cellar, so that cook and i could hear him if he rang. it would never have done to let him know there was a war on. as i said to cook, 'if mr. timothy rings, they may do what they like--i'm going up. my dear mistresses would have a fit if they could see him ringing and nobody going to him.' but he slept through them all beautiful. and the one in the daytime he was having his bath. it was a mercy, because he might have noticed the people in the street all looking up--he often looks out of the window." "quite!" murmured soames. smither was getting garrulous! "i just want to look round and see if there's anything to be done." "yes, sir. i don't think there's anything except a smell of mice in the dining-room that we don't know how to get rid of. it's funny they should be there, and not a crumb, since mr. timothy took to not coming down, just before the war. but they're nasty little things; you never know where they'll take you next." "does he leave his bed?" "oh! yes, sir; he takes nice exercise between his bed and the window in the morning, not to risk a change of air. and he's quite comfortable in himself; has his will out every day regular. it's a great consolation to him--that." "well, smither, i want to see him, if i can; in case he has anything to say to me." smither coloured up above her corsets. "it will be an occasion!" she said. "shall i take you round the house, sir, while i send cook to break it to him?" "no, you go to him," said soames. "i can go round the house by myself." one could not confess to sentiment before another, and soames felt that he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms so saturated with the past. when smither, creaking with excitement, had left him, soames entered the dining-room and sniffed. in his opinion it wasn't mice, but incipient wood-rot, and he examined the panelling. whether it was worth a coat of paint, at timothy's age, he was not sure. the room had always been the most modern in the house; and only a faint smile curled soames's lips and nostrils. walls of a rich green surmounted the oak dado; a heavy metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling divided by imitation beams. the pictures had been bought by timothy, a bargain, one day at jobson's sixty years ago--three snyder "still lifes," two faintly coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather charming, which bore the initials "j.r."--timothy had always believed they might turn out to be joshua reynolds, but soames, who admired them, had discovered that they were only john robinson; and a doubtful morland of a white pony being shod. deep-red plush curtains, ten high-backed dark mahogany chairs with deep-red plush seats, a turkey carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as large as the room was small, such was an apartment which soames could remember unchanged in soul or body since he was four years old. he looked especially at the two drawings, and thought: 'i shall buy those at the sale.' from the dining-room he passed into timothy's study. he did not remember ever having been in that room. it was lined from floor to ceiling with volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity. one wall seemed devoted to educational books, which timothy's firm had published two generations back--sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book. soames read their titles and shuddered. the middle wall had precisely the same books as used to be in the library at his own father's in park lane, from which he deduced the fancy that james and his youngest brother had gone out together one day and bought a brace of small libraries. the third wall he approached with more excitement. here, surely, timothy's own taste would be found. it was. the books were dummies. the fourth wall was all heavily curtained window. and turned towards it was a large chair with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on which a yellowish and folded copy of the times, dated july , , the day timothy first failed to come down, as if in preparation for the war, seemed waiting for him still. in a corner stood a large globe of that world never visited by timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality of everything but england, and permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been very sick one sunday afternoon in , out of a pleasure boat off the pier at brighton, with juley and hester, swithin and hatty chessman; all due to swithin, who was always taking things into his head, and who, thank goodness, had been sick too. soames knew all about it, having heard the tale fifty times at least from one or other of them. he went up to the globe, and gave it a spin; it emitted a faint creak and moved about an inch, bringing into his purview a daddy-long-legs which had died on it in latitude . 'mausoleum!' he thought. 'george was right!' and he went out and up the stairs. on the half landing he stopped before the case of stuffed humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. they looked not a day older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. if the case were opened the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he suspected. it wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale! and suddenly he was caught by a memory of aunt ann--dear old aunt ann--holding him by the hand in front of that case and saying: "look, soamey! aren't they bright and pretty, dear little humming-birds!" soames remembered his own answer: "they don't hum, auntie." he must have been six, in a black velveteen suit with a light-blue collar--he remembered that suit well! aunt ann with her ringlets, and her spidery kind hands, and her grave old aquiline smile--a fine old lady, aunt ann! he moved on up to the drawing-room door. there on each side of it were the groups of miniatures. those he would certainly buy in! the miniatures of his four aunts, one of his uncle swithin adolescent, and one of his uncle nicholas as a boy. they had all been painted by a young lady friend of the family at a time, , about, when miniatures were considered very genteel, and lasting too, painted as they were on ivory. many a time had he heard the tale of that young lady: "very talented, my dear; she had quite a weakness for swithin, and very soon after she went into a consumption and died: so like keats--we often spoke of it." well, there they were! ann, juley, hester, susan--quite a small child; swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white waistcoat--large as life; and nicholas, like cupid with an eye on heaven. now he came to think of it, uncle nick had always been rather like that--a wonderful man to the last. yes, she must have had talent, and miniatures had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little subject to the currents of competition on aesthetic change. soames opened the drawing-room door. the room was dusted, the furniture uncovered, the curtains drawn back, precisely as if his aunts still dwelt there patiently waiting. and a thought came to him: when timothy died--why not? would it not be almost a duty to preserve this house--like carlyle's--and put up a tablet, and show it? "specimen of mid-victorian abode--entrance, one shilling, with catalogue." after all, it was the completest thing, and perhaps the deadest in the london of to-day. perfect in its special taste and culture, if, that is, he took down and carried over to his own collection the four barbizon pictures he had given them. the still sky-blue walls, the green curtains patterned with red flowers and ferns; the crewel-worked fire-screen before the cast-iron grate; the mahogany cupboard with glass windows, full of little knick-knacks; the beaded footstools; keats, shelley, southey, cowper, coleridge, byron's "corsair" (but nothing else), and the victorian poets in a bookshelf row; the marqueterie cabinet lined with dim red plush, full of family relics; hester's first fan; the buckles of their mother's father's shoes; three bottled scorpions; and one very yellow elephant's tusk, sent home from india by great-uncle edgar forsyte, who had been in jute; a yellow bit of paper propped up, with spidery writing on it, recording god knew what! and the pictures crowding on the walls--all water-colours save those four barbizons looking like the foreigners they were, and doubtful customers at that--pictures bright and illustrative, "telling the bees," "hey for the ferry!" and two in the style of frith, all thimblerig and crinolines, given them by swithin. oh! many, many pictures at which soames had gazed a thousand times in supercilious fascination; a marvellous collection of bright, smooth gilt frames. and the boudoir-grand piano, beautifully dusted, hermetically sealed as ever; and aunt juley's album of pressed seaweed on it. and the gilt-legged chairs, stronger than they looked. and on one side of the fireplace the sofa of crimson silk, where aunt ann, and after her aunt juley, had been wont to sit, facing the light and bolt upright. and on the other side of the fire the one really easy chair, back to the light, for aunt hester. soames screwed up his eyes; he seemed to see them sitting there. ah! and the atmosphere--even now, of too many stuffs and washed lace curtains, lavender in bags, and dried bee's wings. 'no,' he thought, 'there's nothing like it left; it ought to be preserved.' and, by george, they might laugh at it, but for a standard of gentle life never departed from, for fastidiousness of skin and eye and nose and feeling, it beat to-day hollow--to-day with its tubes and cars, its perpetual smoking, its cross-legged, bare-necked girls visible up to the knees and down to the waist if you took the trouble (agreeable to the satyr within each forsyte but hardly his idea of a lady), with their feet, too, screwed round the legs of their chairs while they ate, and their "so longs," and their "old beans," and their laughter--girls who gave him the shudders whenever he thought of fleur in contact with them; and the hard-eyed, capable, older women who managed life and gave him the shudders too. no! his old aunts, if they never opened their minds, their eyes, or very much their windows, at least had manners, and a standard, and reverence for past and future. with rather a choky feeling he closed the door and went tiptoeing up-stairs. he looked in at a place on the way: h'm! in perfect order of the eighties, with a sort of yellow oilskin paper on the walls. at the top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors. which of them was timothy's? and he listened. a sound as of a child slowly dragging a hobby-horse about, came to his ears. that must be timothy! he tapped, and a door was opened by smither very red in the face. mr. timothy was taking his walk, and she had not been able to get him to attend. if mr. soames would come into the back room, he could see him through the door. soames went into the back room and stood watching. the last of the old forsytes was on his feet, moving with the most impressive slowness, and an air of perfect concentration on his own affairs, backward and forward between the foot of his bed and the window, a distance of some twelve feet. the lower part of his square face, no longer clean-shaven, was covered with snowy beard clipped as short as it could be, and his chin looked as broad as his brow where the hair was also quite white, while nose and cheeks and brow were a good yellow. one hand held a stout stick, and the other grasped the skirt of his jaeger dressing-gown, from under which could be seen his bed-socked ankles and feet thrust into jaeger slippers. the expression on his face was that of a crossed child, intent on something that he has not got. each time he turned he stumped the stick, and then dragged it, as if to show that he could do without it. "he still looks strong," said soames under his breath. "oh! yes, sir. you should see him take his bath--it's wonderful; he does enjoy it so." those quite loud words gave soames an insight. timothy had resumed his babyhood. "does he take any interest in things generally?" he said, also aloud. "oh! yes, sir; his food and his will. it's quite a sight to see him turn it over and over, not to read it, of course; and every now and then he asks the price of consols, and i write it on a slate for him--very large. of course, i always write the same, what they were when he last took notice, in . we got the doctor to forbid him to read the paper when the war broke out. oh! he did take on about that at first. but he soon came round, because he knew it tired him; and he's a wonder to conserve energy as he used to call it when my dear mistresses were alive, bless their hearts! how he did go on at them about that; they were always so active, if you remember, mr. soames." "what would happen if i were to go in?" asked soames. "would he remember me? i made his will, you know, after miss hester died in ." "oh! that, sir," replied smither doubtfully, "i couldn't take on me to say. i think he might; he really is a wonderful man for his age." soames moved into the doorway, and, waiting for timothy to turn, said in a loud voice: "uncle timothy!" timothy trailed back half-way, and halted. "eh?" he said. "soames," cried soames at the top of his voice, holding out his hand, "soames forsyte!" "no!" said timothy, and stumping his stick loudly on the floor, he continued his walk. "it doesn't seem to work," said soames. "no, sir," replied smither, rather crestfallen; "you see, he hasn't finished his walk. it always was one thing at a time with him. i expect he'll ask me this afternoon if you came about the gas, and a pretty job i shall have to make him understand." "do you think he ought to have a man about him?" smither held up her hands. "a man! oh! no. cook and me can manage perfectly. a strange man about would send him crazy in no time. and my mistresses wouldn't like the idea of a man in the house. besides, we're so proud of him." "i suppose the doctor comes?" "every morning. he makes special terms for such a quantity, and mr. timothy's so used, he doesn't take a bit of notice, except to put out his tongue." "well," said soames, turning away, "it's rather sad and painful to me." "oh! sir," returned smither anxiously, "you mustn't think that. now that he can't worry about things, he quite enjoys his life, really he does. as i say to cook, mr. timothy is more of a man than he ever was. you see, when he's not walkin', or takin' his bath, he's eatin', and when he's not eatin', he's sleeping and there it is. there isn't an ache or a care about him anywhere." "well," said soames, "there's something in that. i'll go down. by the way, let me see his will." "i should have to take my time about that, sir; he keeps it under his pillow, and he'd see me, while he's active." "i only want to know if it's the one i made," said soames; "you take a look at its date some time, and let me know." "yes, sir; but i'm sure it's the same, because me and cook witnessed, you remember, and there's our names on it still, and we've only done it once." "quite!" said soames. he did remember. smither and jane had been proper witnesses, having been left nothing in the will that they might have no interest in timothy's death. it had been--he fully admitted--an almost improper precaution, but timothy had wished it, and, after all, aunt hester had provided for them amply. "very well," he said; "good-bye, smither. look after him, and if he should say anything at any time, put it down, and let me know." "oh! yes, mr. soames; i'll be sure to do that. it's been such a pleasant change to see you. cook will be quite excited when i tell her." soames shook her hand and went down-stairs. he stood for fully two minutes by the hat-stand whereon he had hung his hat so many times. 'so it all passes,' he was thinking; 'passes and begins again. poor old chap!' and he listened, if perchance the sound of timothy trailing his hobby-horse might come down the well of the stairs; or some ghost of an old face show over the banisters, and an old voice say: "why, it's dear soames, and we were only saying that we hadn't seen him for a week!" nothing--nothing! just the scent of camphor, and dust-motes in a sunbeam through the fanlight over the door. the little old house! a mausoleum! and, turning on his heel, he went out, and caught his train. v the native heath "his foot's upon his native heath, his name's--val dartie." with some such feeling did val dartie, in the fortieth year of his age, set out that same thursday morning very early from the old manor-house he had taken on the north side of the sussex downs. his destination was newmarket, and he had not been there since the autumn of , when he stole over from oxford for the cambridgeshire. he paused at the door to give his wife a kiss, and put a flask of port into his pocket. "don't overtire your leg, val, and don't bet too much." with the pressure of her chest against his own, and her eyes looking into his, val felt both leg and pocket safe. he should be moderate; holly was always right--she had a natural aptitude. it did not seem so remarkable to him, perhaps, as it might to others, that--half dartie as he was--he should have been perfectly faithful to his young first cousin during the twenty years since he married her romantically out in the boer war; and faithful without any feeling of sacrifice or boredom--she was so quick, so slyly always a little in front of his mood. being first cousins they had decided, or rather holly had, to have no children; and, though a little sallower, she had kept her looks, her slimness, and the colour of her dark hair. val particularly admired the life of her own she carried on, besides carrying on his, and riding better every year. she kept up her music, she read an awful lot--novels, poetry, all sorts of stuff. out on their farm in cape colony she had looked after all the "nigger" babies and women in a miraculous manner. she was, in fact,--clever; yet made no fuss about it, and had no "side." though not remarkable for humility, val had come to have the feeling that she was his superior, and he did not grudge it--a great tribute. it might be noted that he never looked at holly without her knowing of it, but that she looked at him sometimes unawares. he has kissed her in the porch because he should not be doing so on the platform, though she was going to the station with him, to drive the car back. tanned and wrinkled by colonial weather and the wiles inseparable from horses, and handicapped by the leg which, weakened in the boer war, had probably saved his life in the war just past, val was still much as he had been in the days of his courtship; his smile as wide and charming, his eyelashes, if anything, thicker and darker, his eyes screwed up under them, as bright a grey, his freckles rather deeper, his hair a little grizzled at the sides. he gave the impression of one who has lived actively with horses in a sunny climate. twisting the car sharp round at the gate, he said: "when is young jon coming?" "to-day." "is there anything you want for him? i could bring it down on saturday." "no; but you might come by the same train as fleur--one forty." val gave the ford full rein; he still drove like a man in a new country on bad roads, who refuses to compromise, and expects heaven at every hole. "that's a young woman who knows her way about," he said. "i say, has it struck you?" "yes," said holly. "uncle soames and your dad--bit awkward, isn't it?" "she won't know, and he won't know, and nothing must be said, of course. it's only for five days, val." "stable secret! righto!" if holly thought it safe, it was. glancing slyly round at him, she said: "did you notice how beautifully she asked herself?" "no!" "well, she did. what do you think of her, val?" "pretty, and clever; but she might run out at any corner if she got her monkey up, i should say." "i'm wondering," holly murmured, "whether she is the modern young woman. one feels at sea coming home into all this." "you? you get the hang of things so quick." holly slid her hand into his coat-pocket. "you keep one in the know," said val, encouraged. "what do you think of that belgian fellow, profond?" "i think he's rather 'a good devil.'" val grinned. "he seems to me a queer fish for a friend of our family. in fact, our family is in pretty queer waters, with uncle soames marrying a frenchwoman, and your dad marrying soames's first. our grandfathers would have had fits!" "so would anybody's, my dear." "this car," said val suddenly, "wants rousing; she doesn't get her hind legs under her up-hill. i shall have to give her her head on the slope if i'm to catch that train." there was that about horses which had prevented him from ever really sympathising with a car, and the running of the ford under his guidance, compared with its running under that of holly, was always noticeable. he caught the train. "take care going home; she'll throw you down if she can. good-bye, darling." "good-bye," called holly, and kissed her hand. in the train, after quarter of an hour's indecision between thoughts of holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day, and his dim memory of newmarket, val plunged into the recesses of a small square book, all names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes about the make and shape of horses. the forsyte in him was bent on the acquisition of a certain strain of blood, and he was subduing resolutely as yet the dartie hankering for a flutter. on getting back to england, after the profitable sale of his south african farm and stud, and observing that the sun seldom shone, val had said to himself: "i've absolutely got to have an interest in life, or this country will give me the blues. hunting's not enough, i'll breed and i'll train." with just that extra pinch of shrewdness and decision imparted by long residence in a new country, val had seen the weak point of modern breeding. they were all hypnotised by fashion and high price. he should buy for looks, and let names go hang! and, here he was already, hypnotised by the prestige of a certain strain of blood! half consciously, he thought: 'there's something in this damned climate which makes one go round in a ring. all the same, i must have a strain of mayfly blood.' in this mood he reached the mecca of his hopes. it was one of those quiet meetings favorable to such as wish to look into horses, rather than into the mouths of bookmakers; and val clung to the paddock. his twenty years of colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in which he had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the horseman, and given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he called "the silly haw-haw" of some englishmen, the 'flapping cockatoory' of some englishwomen--holly had none of that and holly was his model. observant, quick, resourceful, val went straight to the heart of a transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way to the heart of a mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow: "mr. val dartie? how's mrs. val dartie? she's well, i hope." and he saw beside him the belgian he had met at his sister imogen's. "prosper profond--i met you at lunch," added the voice. "how are you?" murmured val. "i'm very well," replied monsieur profond, smiling with a certain inimitable slowness. "a good devil" holly had called him. well! he looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed beard; a sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes, unexpectedly intelligent. "here's a gentleman wants to know you--cousin of yours--mr. george forsyde." val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a little lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye; he remembered it dimly from old days when he used to dine with his father at the iseeum club. "i was a racing pal of your father's," george was saying. "how's the stud? like to buy one of my screws?" val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen out of breeding. they believed in nothing over here, not even in horses. george forsyte, prosper profond! the devil himself was not more disillusioned than those two. "didn't know you were a racing man," he said to monsieur profond. "i'm not. i don' care for it. i'm a yachtin' man. i don' care for yachtin' either, but i like to see my friends. i've got some lunch, mr. val dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave some; not much--just a small one--in my car." "thanks," said val; "very good of you. i'll come along in about quarter of an hour." "over there. mr. forsyde's comin'," and monsieur profond "poinded" with a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he moved on, groomed, sleepy, and remote, george forsyte following, neat, huge, and with his jesting air. val remained gazing at the mayfly filly. george forsyte, of course, was an old chap, but this profond might be about his own age; val felt extremely young, as if the mayfly filly were a toy at which those two had laughed. the animal had lost reality. "that 'small' mare"--he seemed to hear the voice of monsieur profond--"what do you see in her--we must all die!" and george forsyte, crony of his father, racing still! the mayfly strain--was it any better than any other? he might just as well have a flutter with his money instead. "no, by gum!" he muttered suddenly, "if it's no good breeding horses, it's no good doing anything. what did i come for? i'll buy her." he stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors towards the stand. natty old chips, shrewd portly fellows, jews, trainers looking as if they had never been guilty of seeing a horse in their lives; tall, flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced women; young men with an air as if trying to take it seriously--two or three of them with only one arm! 'life over here's a game!' thought val. 'muffin bell rings, horses run, money changes hands; ring again, run again, money changes back.' but, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate to watch the mayfly filly canter down. she moved well; and he made his way over to the "small" car. the "small" lunch was the sort a man dreams of but seldom gets; and when it was concluded monsieur profond walked back with him to the paddock. "your wife's a nice woman," was his surprising remark. "nicest woman i know," returned val dryly. "yes," said monsieur profond; "she has a nice face. i admire nice women." val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct in the heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the moment. "any time you like to come on my yacht, i'll give her a small cruise." "thanks," said val, in arms again, "she hates the sea." "so do i," said monsieur profond. "then why do you yacht?" the belgian's eyes smiled. "oh! i don' know. i've done everything; it's the last thing i'm doin'." "it must be d--d expensive. i should want more reason than that." monsieur prosper profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a heavy lower lip. "i'm an easy-goin' man," he said. "were you in the war?" asked val. "ye-es. i've done that too. i was gassed; it was a small bit unpleasant." he smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity, as if he had caught it from his name. whether his saying "small" when he ought to have said "little" was genuine mistake or affectation, val could not decide; the fellow was evidently capable of anything. among the ring of buyers round the mayfly filly who had won her race, monsieur profond said: "you goin' to bid?" val nodded. with this sleepy satan at his elbow, he felt in need of faith. though placed above the ultimate blows of providence by the forethought of a grandfather who had tied him up a thousand a year to which was added the thousand a year tied up for holly by her grand-father, val was not flush of capital that he could touch, having spent most of what he had realised from his south african farm on his establishment in sussex. and very soon he was thinking: 'dash it! she's going beyond me!' his limit--six hundred--exceeded, he dropped out of the bidding. the mayfly filly passed under the hammer at seven hundred and fifty guineas. he was turning away vexed when the slow voice of monsieur profond said in his ear: "well, i've bought that small filly, but i don't want her; you take her and give her to your wife." val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good humour in his eyes was such that he really could not take offence. "i made a small lot of money in the war," began monsieur profond in answer to that look. "i 'ad armament shares. i like to give it away. i'm always makin' money. i want very small lot myself. i like my friends to 'ave it." "i'll buy her of you at the price you gave," said val with sudden resolution. "no," said monsieur profond. "you take her. i don' want her." "hang it! one doesn't--" "why not?" smiled monsieur profond. "i'm a friend of your family." "seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars," said val impatiently. "all right; you keep her for me till i want her, and do what you like with her." "so long as she's yours," said val, "i don't mind that." "that's all right," murmured monsieur profond, and moved away. val watched; he might be "a good devil," but then again he might not. he saw him rejoin george forsyte, and thereafter saw him no more. he spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in green street. winifred dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering the three-and-thirty years during which she had put up with montague dartie, till almost happily released by a french staircase. it was to her a vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from south africa after all this time, to feel him so little changed, and to have taken a fancy to his wife. winifred, who in the late seventies, before her marriage, had been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and fashion, confessed her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day. they seemed, for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and winifred sometimes regretted that she had not done the same; a second, third, fourth incident might have secured her a partner of less dazzling inebriety; though, after all, he had left her val, imogen, maud, benedict (almost a colonel and unharmed by the war)--none of whom had been divorced as yet. the steadiness of her children often amazed one who remembered their father; but, as she was fond of believing, they were really all forsytes, favouring herself, with the exception perhaps of imogen. her brother's "little girl" fleur frankly puzzled winifred. the child was as restless as any of these modern young women--"she's a small flame in a draught," prosper profond had said one day after dinner--but she did not flop, or talk at the top of her voice. the steady forsyteism in winifred's own character instinctively resented the feeling in the air, the modern girl's habits and her motto: "all's much of a muchness! spend! to-morrow we shall be poor!" she found it a saving grace in fleur that having set her heart on a thing, she had no change of heart until she got it--though what happened after, fleur was, of course, too young to have made evident. the child was a "very pretty little thing," too, and quite a credit to take about, with her mother's french taste and gift for wearing clothes; everybody turned to look at fleur--great consideration to winifred, a lover of the style and distinction which had so cruelly deceived her in the case of montague dartie. in discussing her with val, at breakfast on saturday morning, winifred dwelt on the family skeleton. "that little affair of your father-in-law and your aunt irene, val--it's old as the hills, of course, fleur need know nothing about it--making a fuss. your uncle soames is very particular about that. so you'll be careful." "yes! but it's dashed awkward--holly's young half-brother is coming to live with us while he learns farming. he's there already." "oh!" said winifred. "that is a gaff! what is he like?" "only saw him once--at robin hill, when we were home in ; he was naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes--a jolly little chap." winifred thought that "rather nice," and added comfortably: "well, holly's sensible; she'll know how to deal with it. i shan't tell your uncle. it'll only bother him. it's a great comfort to have you back, my dear boy, now that i'm getting on." "getting on! why! you're as young as ever. by the way, that chap profond, mother, is he all right?" "prosper profond! oh! the most amusing man i know." val grunted, and recounted the story of the mayfly filly. "that's so like him," murmured winifred. "he does all sorts of things." "well," said val shrewdly, "our family haven't been too lucky with that kind of cattle; they're too light-hearted for us." it was true, and winifred's blue study lasted a full minute before she answered: "oh! well! he's a foreigner, val; one must make allowances." "all right, i'll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow." and soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left her for his bookmaker's, the iseeum club, and victoria station. vi jon mrs. val dartie, after twenty years of south africa, had fallen deeply in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object of her passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool clear light on the green downs. it was england again, at last! england more beautiful than she had dreamed. chance had, in fact, guided the val darties to a spot where the south downs had real charm when the sun shone. holly had enough of her father's eye to apprehend the rare quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along towards chanctonbury or amberley, was still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with val, whose admiration of nature was confused by a forsyte's instinct for getting something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses' exercise. driving the ford home with a certain humouring smoothness, she promised herself that the first use she would make of jon would be to take him up there, and show him "the view" under this may-day sky. she was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness not exhausted by val. a three-day visit to robin hill, soon after their arrival home, had yielded no sight of him--he was still at school; so that her recollection, like val's, was of a little sunny-haired boy striped blue and yellow, down by the pond. those three days at robin hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing. memories of her dead brother, memories of val's courtship; the aging of her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct; above all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was little and grandfather alive and mademoiselle beauce so cross because that intruder gave her music lessons--all these confused and tantalised a spirit which had longed to find robin hill untroubled. but holly was adept at keeping things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well. her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was sure had trembled. "well, my dear," he said, "the war hasn't changed robin hill, has it? if only you could have brought jolly back with you! i say, can you stand this spiritualistic racket? when the oak-tree dies, it dies, i'm afraid." from the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the cat out of his bag, for he rode off at once on irony. "spiritualism--queer word, when the more they manifest the more they prove that they've got hold of matter." "how?" said holly. "why! look at their photographs of auric presences. you must have something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take a photograph. no, it'll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all spirit matter--i don't know which." "but don't you believe in survival, dad?" jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face impressed her deeply. "well, my dear, i should like to get something out of death. i've been looking into it a bit. but for the life of me i can't find anything that telepathy, subconsciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of this world can't account for just as well. wish i could! wishes father thoughts but they don't breed evidence." holly had pressed her lips again to his forehead with a feeling that it confirmed his theory that all matter was becoming spirit--his brow felt somehow so insubstantial. but the most poignant memory of that little visit had been watching, unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter from jon. it was--she decided--the prettiest sight she had ever seen. irene, lost as it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a window where the light fell on her face and her fine grey hair; her lips were moving, smiling, her dark eyes laughing, dancing, and the hand which did not hold the letter was pressed against her breast. holly withdrew as from a vision of perfect love, convinced that jon must be nice. when she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in either hand, she was confirmed in her predisposition. he was a little like jolly, that long-lost idol of her childhood, but eager-looking and less formal, with deeper eyes and brighter-coloured hair, for he wore no hat; altogether a very interesting "little" brother! his tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to assurance in the youthful manner; he was disturbed because she was to drive him home, instead of his driving her. shouldn't he have a shot? they hadn't a car at robin hill since the war, of course, and he had only driven once, and landed up a bank, so she oughtn't to mind his trying. his laugh, soft and infectious, was very attractive, though that word, she had heard, was now quite old-fashioned. when they reached the house he pulled out a crumpled letter which she read while he was washing--a quite short letter, which must have cost her father many a pang to write. "my dear, "you and val will not forget, i trust, that jon knows nothing of family history. his mother and i think he is too young at present. the boy is very dear, and the apple of her eye. verbum sapientibus. your loving father, j. f." that was all; but it renewed in holly an uneasy regret that fleur was coming. after tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took jon up the hill. they had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over with brambles and goosepenny. milkwort and liverwort starred the green slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky, where the vague moon was coming up. delicious fragrance came to them, as if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of the blades of grass. jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly: "i say, this is wonderful! there's no fat on it at all. gull's flight and sheep-bells--" "gull's flight and sheep-bells! you're a poet, my dear!" jon sighed. "oh, golly! no go!" "try! i used to at your age." "did you? mother says 'try' too; but i'm so rotten. have you any of yours for me to see?" "my dear," holly murmured, "i've been married nineteen years. i only wrote verses when i wanted to be." "oh!" said jon, and turned over on to his face: the one cheek she could see was a charming colour. was jon "touched in the wind," then, as val would have called it? already? but, if so, all the better, he would take no notice of young fleur. besides, on monday he would begin his farming. and she smiled. was it burns who followed the plough, or only piers plowman? nearly every young man and most young women seemed to be poets nowadays, from the number of their books she had read out in south africa, importing them from hatchus and bumphards; and quite good--oh! quite; much better than she had been herself! but then poetry had only really come in since her day--with motor-cars. another long talk after dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there seemed little left to know about jon except anything of real importance. holly parted from him at his bedroom door, having seen twice over that he had everything, with the conviction that she would love him, and val would like him. he was eager, but did not gush; he was a splendid listener, sympathetic, reticent about himself. he evidently loved their father, and adored his mother. he liked riding, rowing, and fencing, better than games. he saved moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but put them out of doors in screws of paper sooner than kill them. in a word, he was amiable. she went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer horribly if anybody hurt him; but who would hurt him? jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper and a pencil, writing his first "real poem" by the light of a candle because there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the night seem fluttery and as if engraved on silver. just the night for fleur to walk, and turn her eyes, and lead on--over the hills and far away. and jon, deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on the paper and rubbed them out and wrote them in again, and did all that was necessary for the completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling such as the winds of spring must have, trying their first songs among the coming blossom. jon was one of those boys (not many) in whom a home-trained love of beauty had survived school life. he had had to keep it to himself, of course, so that not even the drawing-master knew of it; but it was there, fastidious and clear within him. and his poem seemed to him as lame and stilted as the night was winged. but he kept it all the same. it was a "beast," but better than nothing as an expression of the inexpressible. and he thought with a sort of discomfiture: 'i shan't be able to show it to mother.' he slept terribly well, when he did sleep, overwhelmed by novelty. vii fleur to avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered, all that had been told jon was: "there's a girl coming down with val for the week-end." for the same reason, all that had been told fleur was: "we've got a youngster staying with us." the two yearlings, as val called them in his thoughts, met therefore in a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired. they were thus introduced by holly: "this is jon, my little brother; fleur's a cousin of ours, jon." jon, who was coming in through a french window out of strong sunlight, was so confounded by the providential nature of this miracle, that he had time to hear fleur say calmly: "oh, how do you do?" as if he had never seen her, and to understand dimly from the quickest imaginable little movement of her head that he never had seen her. he bowed therefore over her hand in an intoxicated manner, and became more silent than the grave. he knew better than to speak. once in his early life, surprised reading by a night-light, he had said fatuously "i was just turning over the leaves, mum," and his mother had replied: "jon, never tell stories, because of your face--nobody will ever believe them." the saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to the success of spoken untruth. he listened therefore to fleur's swift and rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with scones and jam, and got away as soon as might be. they say that in delirium tremens you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes shape and position. jon saw the fixed object; it had dark eyes and passably dark hair, and changed its position, but never its shape. the knowledge that between him and that object there was already a secret understanding (however impossible to understand) thrilled him so that he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem--which of course he would never dare to show her--till the sound of horses' hoofs roused him, and, leaning from his window, he saw her riding forth with val. it was clear that she wasted no time; but the sight filled him with grief. he wasted his. if he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might have been asked to go too. from his window he watched them disappear, appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once more for a minute clear on the outline of the down. 'silly brute!' he thought; 'i always miss my chances.' why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? and, leaning his chin on his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her. a week-end was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it. did he know any one except himself who would have been such a flat? he did not. he dressed for dinner early, and was first down. he would miss no more. but he missed fleur, who came down last. he sat opposite her at dinner, and it was terrible--impossible to say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her in the only natural way; in sum, impossible to treat normally one with whom in fancy he had already been over the hills and far away; conscious, too, all the time, that he must seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk. yes, it was terrible! and she was talking so well--swooping with swift wing this way and that. wonderful how she had learned an art which he found so disgustingly difficult. she must think him hopeless indeed! his sister's eyes fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him at last to look at fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and eager, seeming to say: "oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look at val; where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at least, had no eyes, and no grin, and he ate it hastily. "jon is going to be a farmer," he heard holly say; "a farmer and a poet." he glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow just like their father's, laughed, and felt better. val recounted the incident of monsieur prosper profond; nothing could have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded holly, who in turn regarded him, while fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight frown some thought of her own, and jon was really free to look at her at last. she had on a white frock, very simple and well made; her arms were bare, and her hair had a white rose in it. in just that swift moment of free vision, after such intense discomfort, jon saw her sublimated, as one sees in the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught her like a verse of poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a tune which floats out in the distance and dies. he wondered giddily how old she was--she seemed so much more self-possessed and experienced than himself. why mustn't he say they had met? he remembered suddenly his mother's face; puzzled, hurt-looking, when she answered: "yes, they're relations, but we don't know them." impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not admire fleur if she did know her! alone with val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and answered the advances of this new-found brother-in-law. as to riding (always the first consideration with val) he could have the young chestnut, saddle and unsaddle it himself, and generally look after it when he brought it in. jon said he was accustomed to all that at home, and saw that he had gone up one in his host's estimation. "fleur," said val, "can't ride much yet, but she's keen. of course, her father doesn't know a horse from a cartwheel. does your dad ride?" "he used to; but now he's--you know, he's--" he stopped, so hating the word old. his father was old, and yet not old; no--never! "quite!" muttered val. "i used to know your brother up at oxford, ages ago, the one who died in the boer war. we had a fight in new college gardens. that was a queer business," he added, musing; "a good deal came out of it." jon's eyes opened wide; all was pushing him towards historical research, when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway: "come along, you two," and he rose, his heart pushing him towards something far more modern. fleur having declared that it was "simply too wonderful to stay indoors," they all went out. moonlight was frosting the dew, and an old sun-dial threw a long shadow. two box hedges at right angles, dark and square, barred off the orchard. fleur turned through that angled opening. "come on!" she called. jon glanced at the others, and followed. she was running among the trees like a ghost. all was lovely and foamlike above her, and there was a scent of old trunks, and of nettles. she vanished. he thought he had lost her, then almost ran into her standing quite still. "isn't it jolly?" she cried, and jon answered: "rather!" she reached up, twisted off a blossom, and, twirling it in her fingers, said: "i suppose i can call you jon?" "i should think so just." "all right! but you know there's a feud between our families?" jon stammered: "feud? why?" "it's ever so romantic and silly? that's why i pretended we hadn't met. shall we get up early to-morrow morning and go for a walk before breakfast and have it out? i hate being slow about things, don't you?" jon murmured a rapturous assent. "six o'clock, then. i think your mother's beautiful." jon said fervently: "yes, she is." "i love all kinds of beauty," went on fleur, "when it's exciting. i don't like greek things a bit." "what! not euripides?" "euripides? oh! no, i can't bear greek plays; they're so long. i think beauty's always swift. i like to look at one picture, for instance, and then run off. i can't bear a lot of things together. look!" she held up her blossom in the moonlight. "that's better than all the orchard, i think." and, suddenly, with her other hand she caught jon's. "of all things in the world, don't you think caution's the most awful? smell the moonlight!" she thrust the blossom against his face; jon agreed giddily that of all things in the world caution was the worst, and bending over, kissed the hand which held his. "that's nice and old-fashioned," said fleur calmly. "you're frightfully silent, jon. still i like silence when it's swift." she let go his hand. "did you think i dropped my handkerchief on purpose?" "no!" cried jon, intensely shocked. "well, i did, of course. let's get back, or they'll think we're doing this on purpose too." and again she ran like a ghost among the trees. jon followed, with love in his heart, spring in his heart, and over all the moonlit white unearthly blossom. they came out where they had gone in, fleur walking demurely. "it's quite wonderful in there," she said dreamily to holly. jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be thinking it swift. she bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think he had been dreaming.... in her bedroom fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a shapeless garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she looked like a mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by candlelight. "dearest cherry: "i believe i'm in love. i've got it in the neck, only the feeling is really lower down. he's a second cousin--such a child, about six months older and ten years younger than i am. boys always fall in love with their seniors, and girls with their juniors or with old men of forty. don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest things i ever saw; and he's quite divinely silent! we had a most romantic first meeting in london under the vospovitch 'juno.' and now he's sleeping in the next room and the moonlight's on the blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody's awake, we're going to walk off into down fairyland. there's a feud between our families, which makes it really exciting. yes! and i may have to use subterfuge and come on you for invitations--if so, you'll know why! my father doesn't want us to know each other, but i can't help that. life's too short. he's got the most beautiful mother, with lovely silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. i'm staying with his sister--who married my cousin; it's all mixed up, but i mean to pump her to-morrow. we've often talked about love being a spoil-sport; well, that's all tosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you feel it, my dear, the better for you. "jon (not simplified spelling, but short for jolyon, which is a name in my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes out; about five feet ten, still growing, and i believe he's going to be a poet. if you laugh at me i've done with you for ever. i perceive all sorts of difficulties, but you know when i really want a thing i get it. one of the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited, like seeing a face in the moon; and you feel--you feel dancey and soft at the same time, with a funny sensation--like a continual first sniff of orange blossom--just above your stays. this is my first, and i feel as if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of course, by all the laws of nature and morality. if you mock me i will smite you, and if you tell anybody i will never forgive you. so much so, that i almost don't think i'll send this letter. anyway, i'll sleep over it. so good-night, my cherry--oh! your fleur." viii idyll on grass when those two young forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and set their faces east towards the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven, and the downs were dewy. they had come at a good bat up the slope and were a little out of breath; if they had anything to say they did not say it, but marched in the early awkwardness of unbreakfasted morning under the songs of the larks. the stealing out had been fun, but with the freedom of the tops the sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave place to dumbness. "we've made one blooming error," said fleur, when they had gone half a mile. "i'm hungry." jon produced a stick of chocolate. they shared it and their tongues were loosened. they discussed the nature of their homes and previous existences, which had a kind of fascinating unreality up on that lonely height. there remained but one thing solid in jon's past--his mother; but one thing solid in fleur's--her father; and of these figures, as though seen in the distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little. the down dipped and rose again towards chanctonbury ring; a sparkle of far sea came into view, a sparrowhawk hovered in the sun's eye so that the blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed nearly red. jon had a passion for birds, and an aptitude for sitting very still to watch them; keen-sighted, and with a memory for what interested him, on birds he was almost worth listening to. but in chanctonbury ring there were none--its great beech temple was empty of life, and almost chilly at this early hour; they came out willingly again into the sun on the far side. it was fleur's turn now. she spoke of dogs, and the way people treated them. it was wicked to keep them on chains! she would like to flog people who did that. jon was astonished to find her so humanitarian. she knew a dog, it seemed, which some farmer near her home kept chained up at the end of his chicken run, in all weathers till it had almost lost its voice from barking! "and the misery is," she said vehemently, "that if the poor thing didn't bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. i do think men are cunning brutes. i've let it go twice, on the sly; it's nearly bitten me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy; but it always runs back home at last, and they chain it up again. if i had my way, i'd chain that man up." jon saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. "i'd brand him on his forehead with the word 'brute'; that would teach him!" jon agreed that it would be a good remedy. "it's their sense of property," he said, "which makes people chain things. the last generation thought of nothing but property; and that's why there was the war." "oh!" said fleur, "i never thought of that. your people and mine quarrelled about property. and anyway we've all got it--at least, i suppose your people have." "oh! yes, luckily; i don't suppose i shall be any good at making money." "if you were, i don't believe i should like you." jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm. fleur looked straight before her, and chanted: "jon, jon, the farmer's son, stole a pig, and away he run!" jon's arm crept round her waist. "this is rather sudden," said fleur calmly; "do you often do it?" jon dropped his arm. but when she laughed, his arm stole back again; and fleur began to sing: "o who will o'er the downs so free, o who will with me ride? o who will up and follow me--" "sing, jon!" jon sang. the larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning church far away over in steyning. they went on from tune to tune, till fleur said: "my god! i am hungry now!" "oh! i am sorry!" she looked round into his face. "jon, you're rather a darling." and she pressed his hand against her waist. jon almost reeled with happiness. a yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled them apart. they watched the two vanish down the slope, till fleur said with a sigh: "he'll never catch it, thank goodness! what's the time? mine's stopped. i never wound it." jon looked at his watch. "by jove!" he said, "mine's stopped, too." they walked on again, but only hand in hand. "if the grass is dry," said fleur, "let's sit down for half a minute." jon took off his coat, and they shared it. "smell! actually wild thyme!" with his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in silence. "we are goats!" cried fleur, jumping up; "we shall be most fearfully late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard. look here, jon! we only came out to get an appetite for breakfast, and lost our way. see?" "yes," said jon. "it's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us. are you a good liar?" "i believe not very; but i can try." fleur frowned. "you know," she said, "i realise that they don't mean us to be friends." "why not?" "i told you why." "but that's silly." "yes; but you don't know my father!" "i suppose he's fearfully fond of you." "you see, i'm an only child. and so are you--of your mother. isn't it a bore? there's so much expected of one. by the time they've done expecting, one's as good as dead." "yes," muttered jon, "life's beastly short. one wants to live for ever, and know everything." "and love everybody?" "no," cried jon; "i only want to love once--you." "indeed! you're coming on! oh! look! there's the chalk-pit; we can't be very far now. let's run." jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her. the chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees. fleur flung back her hair. "well," she said, "in case of accidents, you may give me one kiss, jon," and she pushed her cheek forward. with ecstasy he kissed that hot soft cheek. "now, remember! we lost our way; and leave it to me as much as you can. i'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try and be beastly to me!" jon shook his head. "that's impossible." "just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events." "anybody will be able to see through it," said jon gloomily. "well, do your best. look! there they are! wave your hat! oh! you haven't got one. well, i'll cooee! get a little away from me, and look sulky." five minutes later, entering the house and, doing his utmost to look sulky, jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room: "oh! i'm simply ravenous! he's going to be a farmer--and he loses his way! the boy's an idiot!" ix goya lunch was over and soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house near mapledurham. he had what annette called "a grief." fleur was not yet home. she had been expected on wednesday; had wired that it would be friday; and again on friday that it would be sunday afternoon; and here were her aunt, and her cousins the cardigans, and this fellow profond, and everything flat as a pancake for the want of her. he stood before his gauguin--sorest point of his collection. he had bought the ugly great thing with two early matisses before the war, because there was such a fuss about those post-impressionist chaps. he was wondering whether profond would take them off his hands--the fellow seemed not to know what to do with his money--when he heard his sister's voice say: "i think that's a horrid thing, soames." and saw that winifred had followed him up. "oh! you do?" he said dryly; "i gave five hundred for it." "fancy! women aren't made like that even if they are black." soames uttered a glum laugh. "you didn't come up to tell me that." "no. do you know that jolyon's boy is staying with val and his wife?" soames spun round. "what?" "yes," drawled winifred; "he's gone to live with them there while he learns farming." soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up and down. "i warned val that neither of them was to be spoken to about old matters." "why didn't you tell me before?" winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders. "fleur does what she likes. you've always spoiled her. besides, my dear boy, what's the harm?" "the harm!" muttered soames. "why, she--" he checked himself. the juno, the handkerchief, fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this delay in her return--the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that, faithful to his nature, he could not part with them. "i think you take too much care," said winifred; "if i were you, i should tell her of that old matter. it's no good thinking that girls in these days are as they used to be. where they pick up their knowledge i can't tell, but they seem to know everything." over soames's face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and winifred added hastily: "if you don't like to speak of it, i could for you." soames shook his head. unless there was absolute necessity the thought that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal hurt his pride too much. "no," he said, "not yet. never if i can help it." "nonsense, my dear. think what people are!" "twenty years is a long time," muttered soames, "outside our family, who's likely to remember?" winifred was silenced. she inclined more and more to that peace and quietness of which montague dartie had deprived her in her youth. and, since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again. soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real goya, and the copy of the fresco "la vendimia." his acquisition of the real goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and passions, which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. the real goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into possession of it during some spanish war--it was in a word loot. the noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a spanish painter named goya was a genius. it was only a fair goya, but almost unique in england, and the noble owner became a marked man. having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after he was dead. fortunately for soames, the house of lords was violently attacked in , and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. "if," he said to himself, "they think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. so long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures at my death. but if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like this, i'm damned if i won't sell the--lot. they can't have my private property and my public spirit--both." he brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring bodkin. on going over the collection bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to america, germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a lot more money could be made than by selling in england. the noble owner's public spirit--he said--was well known but the pictures were unique. the noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year. at the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his agents: "give bodkin a free hand." it was at this juncture that bodkin conceived the idea which salved the goya and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. with one hand bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with the other he formed a list of private british collectors. having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private british collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid. in three instances (including the goya) out of twenty-one he was successful. and why? one of the private collectors made buttons--he had made so many that he desired that his wife should be called lady "buttons." he therefore bought an unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. it was "part," his friends said, "of his general game." the second of the private collectors was an americo-phobe, and bought a unique picture to "spite the damned yanks." the third of the private collectors was soames, who--more sober than either of the others--bought after a visit to madrid, because he was certain that goya was still on the up grade. goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and, looking at that portrait, hogarthian, manetesque in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had been--heaviest he had ever paid. and next to it was hanging the copy of "la vendimia." there she was--the little wretch--looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like that. he was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils, and a voice said: "well, mr. forsyde, what you goin' to do with this small lot?" that belgian chap, whose mother--as if flemish blood were not enough--had been armenian! subduing a natural irritation, he said: "are you a judge of pictures?" "well, i've got a few myself." "any post-impressionists?" "ye-es, i rather like them." "what do you think of this?" said soames, pointing to the gauguin. monsieur profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard. "rather fine, i think," he said; "do you want to sell it?" soames checked his instinctive "not particularly"--he would not chaffer with this alien. "yes," he said. "what do you want for it?" "what i gave." "all right," said monsieur profond. "i'll be glad to take that small picture. post-impressionists--they're awful dead, but they're amusin'. i don' care for pictures much, but i've got some, just a small lot." "what do you care for?" monsieur profond shrugged his shoulders. "life's awful like a lot of monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts." "you're young," said soames. if the fellow must make a generalisation, he needn't suggest that the forms of property lacked solidity! "i don' worry," replied monsieur profond smiling; "we're born, and we die. half the world's starvin'. i feed a small lot of babies out in my mother's country; but what's the use? might as well throw my money in the river." soames looked at him, and turned back towards his goya. he didn't know what the fellow wanted. "what shall i make my cheque for?" pursued monsieur profond. "five hundred," said soames shortly; "but i don't want you to take it if you don't care for it more than that." "that's all right," said monsieur profond; "i'll be 'appy to 'ave that picture." he wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold. soames watched the process uneasily. how on earth had the fellow known that he wanted to sell that picture? monsieur profond held out the cheque. "the english are awful funny about pictures," he said. "so are the french, so are my people. they're all awful funny." "i don't understand you," said soames stiffly. "it's like hats," said monsieur profond enigmatically, "small or large, turnin' up or down--just the fashion. awful funny." and, smiling, he drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like the smoke of his excellent cigar. soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of ownership had been called in question. 'he's a cosmopolitan,' he thought, watching profond emerge from under the verandah with annette, and saunter down the lawn towards the river. what his wife saw in the fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he could speak her language; and there passed in soames what monsieur profond would have called a "small doubt" whether annette was not too handsome to be walking with any one so "cosmopolitan." even at that distance he could see the blue fumes from profond's cigar wreathe out in the quiet sunlight; and his grey buckskin shoes, and his grey hat--the fellow was a dandy! and he could see the quick turn of his wife's head, so very straight on her desirable neck and shoulders. that turn of her neck always seemed to him a little too showy, and in the "queen of all i survey" manner--not quite distinguished. he watched them walk along the path at the bottom of the garden. a young man in flannels joined them down there--a sunday caller no doubt, from up the river. soames went back to his goya. he was still staring at that replica of fleur, and worrying over winifred's news, when his wife's voice said: "mr. michael mont, soames. you invited him to see your pictures." there was the cheerful young man of the gallery off cork street! "turned up, you see, sir; i live only four miles from pangbourne. jolly day, isn't it?" confronted with the results of his expansiveness, soames scrutinised his visitor. the young man's mouth was excessively large and curly--he seemed always grinning. why didn't he grow the rest of those idiotic little moustaches, which made him look like a music-hall buffoon? what on earth were young men about, deliberately lowering their class with these tooth-brushes, or little slug whiskers? ugh! affected young idiots! in other respects he was presentable, and his flannels very clean. "happy to see you!" he said. the young man, who had been turning his head from side to side, became transfixed. "i say!" he said, "'some' picture!" soames saw, with mixed sensations, that he had addressed the remark to the goya copy. "yes," he said dryly, "that's not a goya. it's a copy. i had it painted because it reminded me of my daughter." "by jove! i thought i knew the face, sir. is she here?" the frankness of his interest almost disarmed soames. "she'll be in after tea," he said. "shall we go round the gallery?" and soames began that round which never tired him. he had not anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy for an original, but as they passed from section to section, period to period, he was startled by the young man's frank and relevant remarks. natively shrewd himself, and even sensuous beneath his mask, soames had not spent thirty-eight years over his one hobby without knowing something more about pictures than their market values. he was, as it were, the missing link between the artist and the commercial public. art for art's sake and all that, of course, was cant. but aesthetics and good taste were necessary. the appreciation of enough persons of good taste was what gave a work of art its permanent market value, or in other words made it "a work of art." there was no real cleavage. and he was sufficiently accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors, to be intrigued by one who did not hesitate to say of mauve: "good old haystacks!" or of james maris: "didn't he just paint and paper 'em! mathew was the real swell, sir; you could dig into his surfaces!" it was after the young man had whistled before a whistler, with the words: "d'you think he ever really saw a naked woman, sir?" that soames remarked: "what are you, mr. mont, if i may ask?" "i, sir? i was going to be a painter, but the war knocked that. then in the trenches, you know, i used to dream of the stock exchange, snug and warm and just noisy enough. but the peace knocked that; shares seem off, don't they? i've only been demobbed about a year. what do you recommend, sir?" "have you got money?" "well," answered the young man; "i've got a father, i kept him alive during the war, so he's bound to keep me alive now. though, of course, there's the question whether he ought to be allowed to hang on to his property. what do you think about that, sir?" soames, pale and defensive, smiled. "the old man has fits when i tell him he may have to work yet. he's got land, you know; it's a fatal disease." "this is my real goya," said soames dryly. "by george! he was a swell. i saw a goya in munich once that bowled me middle stump. a most evil-looking old woman in the most gorgeous lace. he made no compromise with the public taste. that old boy was 'some' explosive; he must have smashed up a lot of convention in his day. couldn't he just paint! he makes velasquez stiff, don't you think?" "i have no velasquez," said soames. the young man stared. "no," he said; "only nations or profiteers can afford him, i suppose. i say, why shouldn't all the bankrupt nations sell their velasquezes and titians and other swells to the profiteers by force, and then pass a law that any one who holds a picture by an old master--see schedule--must hang it in a public gallery? there seems something in that." "shall we go down to tea?" said soames. the young man's ears seemed to droop on his skull. 'he's not dense,' thought soames, following him off the premises. goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision, his original "line," and the daring of his light and shade, could have reproduced to admiration the group assembled round annette's tea-tray in the ingle-nook below. he alone, perhaps, of painters would have done justice to the sunlight filtering through a screen of creeper, to the lovely pallor of brass, the old cut glasses, the thin slices of lemon in pale amber tea; justice to annette in her black lacey dress; there was something of the fair spaniard in her beauty, though it lacked the spirituality of that rare type; to winifred's grey-haired, corseted solidity; to soames, of a certain grey and flat-cheeked distinction; to the vivacious michael mont, pointed in ear and eye; to imogen, dark, luscious of glance, growing a little stout; to prosper profond, with his expression as who should say: "well, mr. goya, what's the use of paintin' this small party?" finally, to jack cardigan, with his shining stare and tanned sanguinity betraying the moving principle: "i'm english, and i live to be fit." curious, by the way, that imogen, who as a girl had declared solemnly one day at timothy's that she would never marry a good man--they were so dull--should have married jack cardigan, in whom health had so destroyed all traces of original sin, that she might have retired to rest with ten thousand other englishmen without knowing the difference from the one she had chosen to repose beside. "oh!" she would say of him, in her "amusing" way; "jack keeps himself so fearfully fit; he's never had a day's illness in his life. he went right through the war without a finger-ache. you really can't imagine how fit he is!" indeed, he was so "fit" that he couldn't see when she was flirting, which was such a comfort in a way. all the same she was quite fond of him, so far as one could be of a sports-machine, and of the two little cardigans made after his pattern. her eyes just then were comparing him maliciously with prosper profond. there was no "small" sport or game which monsieur profond had not played at too, it seemed, from skittles to harpon-fishing, and worn out every one. imogen would sometimes wish that they had worn out jack, who continued to play at them and talk of them with the simple zeal of a schoolgirl learning hockey; at the age of great-uncle timothy she well knew that jack would be playing carpet golf in her bedroom, and "wiping somebody's eye." he was telling them now how he had "pipped the pro--a charmin' fellow, playin' a very good game," at the last hole this morning; and how he had pulled down to caversham since lunch, and trying to incite prosper profond to play him a set of tennis after tea--do him good--"keep him fit." "but what's the use of keepin' fit?" said monsieur profond. "yes, sir," murmured michael mont, "what do you keep fit for?" "jack," cried imogen, enchanted, "what do you keep fit for?" jack cardigan stared with all his health. the questions were like the buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away. during the war, of course, he had kept fit to kill germans; now that it was over he either did not know, or shrank in delicacy from explanation of his moving principle. "but he's right," said monsieur profond unexpectedly, "there's nothin' left but keepin' fit." the saying, too deep for sunday afternoon, would have passed unanswered, but for the mercurial nature of young mont. "good!" he cried. "that's the great discovery of the war. we all thought we were progressing--now we know we're only changing." "for the worse," said monsieur profond genially. "how you are cheerful, prosper!" murmured annette. "you come and play tennis!" said jack cardigan; "you've got the hump. we'll soon take that down. d'you play, mr. mont?" "i hit the ball about, sir." at this juncture soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of preparation for the future which guided his existence. "when fleur comes--" he heard jack cardigan say. ah! and why didn't she come? he passed through drawing-room, hall, and porch out onto the drive, and stood there listening for the car. all was still and sunday-fied; the lilacs in full flower scented the air. there were white clouds, like the feathers of ducks gilded by the sunlight. memory of the day when fleur was born, and he had waited in such agony with her life and her mother's balanced in his hands, came to him sharply. he had saved her then, to be the flower of his life. and now! was she going to give him trouble--pain--give him trouble? he did not like the look of things! a blackbird broke in on his reverie with an evening song--a great big fellow up in that acacia-tree. soames had taken quite an interest in his birds of late years; he and fleur would walk round and watch them; her eyes were sharp as needles, and she knew every nest. he saw her dog, a retriever, lying on the drive in a patch of sunlight, and called to him, "hallo, old fellow--waiting for her too!" the dog came slowly with a grudging tail, and soames mechanically laid a pat on his head. the dog, the bird, the lilac all were part of fleur for him; no more, no less. 'too fond of her!' he thought, 'too fond!' he was like a man uninsured, with his ships at sea. uninsured again--as in that other time, so long ago, when he would wander dumb and jealous in the wilderness of london, longing for that woman--his first wife--he mother of this infernal boy. ah! there was the car at last! it drew up, it had luggage, but no fleur. "miss fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path" walking all those miles? soames stared. the man's face had the beginning of a smile on it. what was he grinning at? and very quickly he turned, saying: "all right, sims!" and went into the house. he mounted to the picture-gallery once more. he had from there a view of the river bank, and stood with his eyes fixed on it, oblivious of the fact that it would be an hour at least before her figure showed there. walking up! and that fellow's grin! the boy--! he turned abruptly from the window. he couldn't spy on her. if she wanted to keep things from him--she must; he could not spy on her. his heart felt empty; and bitterness mounted from it into his very mouth. the staccato shouts of jack cardigan pursuing the ball, the laugh of young mont rose in the stillness and came in. he hoped they were making that chap profond run. and the girl in "la vendimia" stood with her arm akimbo and her dreamy eyes looking past him. 'i've done all i could for you,' he thought, 'since you were no higher than my knee. you aren't going to--to--hurt me, are you?' but the goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just beginning to tone down. 'there's no real life in it,' thought soames. 'why doesn't she come?' x trio among those four forsytes of the third, and, as one might say, fourth generation, at wansdon under the downs, a week-end prolonged unto the ninth day had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almost to snapping-point. never had fleur been so "fine," holly so watchful, val so stable-secretive, jon so silent and disturbed. what he learned of farming in that week might have been balanced on the point of a pen-knife and puffed off. he, whose nature was essentially averse to intrigue, and whose adoration of fleur disposed him to think that any need for concealing it was "skittles," chafed and fretted, yet obeyed, taking what relief he could in the few moments when they were alone. on thursday, while they were standing in the bay window of the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, she said to him: "jon, i'm going home on sunday by the . from paddington; if you were to go home on saturday you could come up on sunday and take me down, and just get back here by the last train, after. you were going home anyway, weren't you?" jon nodded. "anything to be with you," he said; "only why need i pretend--" fleur slipped her little finger into his palm: "you have no instinct, jon; you must leave things to me. it's serious about our people. we've simply got to be secret at present, if we want to be together." the door was opened, and she added loudly: "you are a duffer, jon." something turned over within jon; he could not bear this subterfuge about a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet. on friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was leaning out of his window, half miserable and half lost in a dream of paddington station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a finger-nail tapping on his door. he rushed to it and listened. again the sound. it was a nail. he opened. oh! what a lovely thing came in! "i wanted to show you my fancy dress," it said, and struck an attitude at the foot of his bed. jon drew a long breath and leaned against the door. the apparition wore white muslin on its head, a fichu round its bare neck over a wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender waist. it held one arm akimbo, and the other raised right-angled holding a fan which touched its head. "this ought to be a basket of grapes," it whispered, "but i haven't got it here. it's my goya dress. and this is the attitude in the picture. do you like it?" "it's a dream." the apparition pirouetted. "touch it, and see." jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently. "grape colour," came the whisper, "all grapes--la vendimia--the vintage." jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked up, with adoring eyes. "oh! jon," it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again, and,--gliding out, was gone. jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed. how long he stayed like that he did not know. the little noises of the tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling--as in a dream--went on about him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. and his forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the brows, like the imprint of a flower. love filled his soul, that love of boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the down off for the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory--a searing passion--a humdrum mateship--or, once in many times, vintage full and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes. enough has been said about jon forsyte here and in another place to show what long marches lay between him and his great-great-grandfather, the first jolyon, in dorset down by the sea. jon was sensitive as a girl, more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the day; imaginative as one of his half-sister june's "lame duck" painters; affectionate as a son of his father and his mother naturally would be. and yet, in his inner tissue, there was something of the old founder of his family, a secret tenacity of soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a determination not to know when he was beaten. sensitive, imaginative, affectionate boys get a bad time at school, but jon had instinctively kept his nature dark, and been but normally unhappy there. only with his mother had he, up till then, been absolutely frank and natural; and when he went home to robin hill that saturday his heart was heavy because fleur had said that he must not be frank and natural with her from whom he had never yet kept anything, must not even tell her that they had met again, unless he found that she knew already. so intolerable did this seem to him that he was very near to telegraphing an excuse and staying up in london. and the first thing his mother said to him was: "so you've had our little friend of the confectioner's there, jon. what is she like on second thoughts?" with relief, and a high colour, jon answered: "oh! awfully jolly, mum." her arm pressed his. jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to falsify fleur's fears and to release his soul. he turned to look at her, but something in her smiling face--something which only he perhaps would have caught--stopped the words bubbling up in him. could fear go with a smile? if so, there was fear in her face. and out of jon tumbled quite other words, about farming, holly, and the downs. talking fast, he waited for her to come back to fleur. but she did not. nor did his father mention her, though of course he, too, must know. what deprivation, and killing of reality was in this silence about fleur--when he was so full of her, when his mother was so full of jon, and his father so full of his mother! and so the trio spent the evening of that saturday. after dinner his mother played; she seemed to play all the things he liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped, and his hair standing up where his fingers had run through it. he gazed at his mother while she played, but he saw fleur--fleur in the moonlit orchard, fleur in the sunlit gravel-pit, fleur in that fancy dress, swaying, whispering, stooping, kissing his forehead. once, while he listened, he forgot himself and glanced at his father in that other easy chair. what was dad looking like that for? the expression on his face was so sad and puzzling. it filled him with a sort of remorse, so that he got up and went and sat on the arm of his father's chair. from there he could not see his face; and again he saw fleur--in his mother's hands, slim and white on the keys, in the profile of her face and her powdery hair; and down the long room in the open window where the may night walked outside. when he went up to bed his mother came into his room. she stood at the window, and said: "those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done wonderfully. i always think they look beautiful under a dropping moon. i wish you had known your grandfather, jon." "were you married to father, when he was alive?" asked jon suddenly. "no, dear; he died in ' --very old--eighty-five, i think." "is father like him?" "a little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid." "i know, from grandfather's portrait; who painted that?" "one of june's 'lame ducks.' but it's quite good." jon slipped his hand through his mother's arm. "tell me about the family quarrel, mum." he felt her arm quivering. "no, dear; that's for your father some day, if he thinks fit." "then it was serious," said jon, with a catch in his breath. "yes." and there was a silence, during which neither knew whether the arm or the hand within it were quivering most. "some people," said irene softly, "think the moon on her back is evil; to me she's always lovely. look at those cypress shadows! jon, father says we may go to italy, you and i, for two months. would you like?" jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp and so confused. italy with his mother! a fortnight ago it would have been perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that the sudden suggestion had to do with fleur. he stammered out: "oh! yes; only--i don't know. ought i--now i've just begun? i'd like to think it over." her voice answered, cool and gentle: "yes, dear; think it over. but better now than when you've begun farming seriously. italy with you--! it would be nice!" jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's. "do you think you ought to leave father?" he said feebly, feeling very mean. "father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see italy at least before you settle down to anything." the sense of meanness died in jon; he knew, yes--he knew--that his father and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he himself. they wanted to keep him from fleur! his heart hardened. and, as if she felt that process going on, his mother said: "good-night, darling. have a good sleep and think it over. but it would be lovely!" she pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face. jon stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy; sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his own eyes. but irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed through the dressing-room between it and her husband's. "well?" "he will think it over, jolyon." watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, jolyon said quietly: "you had better let me tell him, and have done with it. after all, jon has the instincts of a gentleman. he has only to understand--" "only! he can't understand; that's impossible." "i believe i could have at his age." irene caught his hand. "you were always more of a realist than jon; and never so innocent." "that's true," said jolyon. "it's queer, isn't it? you and i would tell our stories to the world without a particle of shame; but our own boy stumps us." "we've never cared whether the world approves or not." "jon would not disapprove of us!" "oh! jolyon, yes. he's in love, i feel he's in love. and he'd say: 'my mother once married without love! how could she have!' it'll seem to him a crime! and so it was!" jolyon took her hand, and said with a wry smile: "ah! why on earth are we born young? now, if only we were born old and grew younger year by year we should understand how things happen, and drop all our cursed intolerance. but you know if the boy is really in love, he won't forget, even if he goes to italy. we're a tenacious breed; and he'll know by instinct why he's being sent. nothing will really cure him but the shock of being told." "let me try, anyway." jolyon stood a moment without speaking. between this devil and this deep sea--the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of losing his wife for two months--he secretly hoped for the devil; yet if she wished for the deep sea he must put up with it. after all, it would be training for that departure from which there would be no return. and, taking her in his arms, he kissed her eyes, and said: "as you will, my love." xi duet that "small" emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with extinction. jon reached paddington station half an hour before his time and a full week after, as it seemed to him. he stood at the appointed book-stall amid a crowd of sunday travellers, in a harris tweed suit exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his thumping heart. he read the names of the novels on the bookstall, and bought one at last, to avoid being regarded with suspicion by the book-stall clerk. it was called "the heart of the trail" which must mean something, though it did not seem to. he also bought "the lady's mirror" and "the landsman." every minute was an hour long, and full of horrid imaginings. after nineteen had passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling her luggage. she came swiftly; she came cool. she greeted him as if he were a brother. "first class," she said to the porter, "corner seats; opposite." jon admired her frightful self-possession. "can't we get a carriage to ourselves?" he whispered. "no good; it's a stopping train. after maidenhead perhaps. look natural, jon." jon screwed his features into a scowl. they got in--with two other beasts!--oh! heaven! he tipped the porter unnaturally, in his confusion. the brute deserved nothing for putting them in there, and looking as if he knew all about it into the bargain. fleur hid herself behind "the lady's mirror." jon imitated her behind "the landsman." the train started. fleur let "the lady's mirror" fall and leaned forward. "well?" she said. "it's seemed about fifteen days." she nodded, and jon's face lighted up at once. "look natural," murmured fleur, and went off into a bubble of laughter. it hurt him. how could he look natural with italy hanging over him? he had meant to break it to her gently, but now he blurted it out. "they want me to go to italy with mother for two months." fleur drooped her eyelids; turned a little pale, and bit her lips. "oh!" she said. it was all, but it was much. that "oh!" was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing ready for riposte. it came. "you must go!" "go?" said jon in a strangled voice. "of course." "but--two months--it's ghastly." "no," said fleur, "six weeks. you'll have forgotten me by then. we'll meet in the national gallery the day after you get back." jon laughed. "but suppose you've forgotten me," he muttered into the noise of the train. fleur shook her head. "some other beast--" murmured jon. her foot touched his. "no other beast," she said, lifting the "lady's mirror." the train stopped; two passengers got out, and one got in. 'i shall die,' thought jon, 'if we're not alone at all.' the train went on; and again fleur leaned forward. "i never let go," she said; "do you?" jon shook his head vehemently. "never!" he said. "will you write to me?" "no; but you can--to my club." she had a club; she was wonderful! "did you pump holly?" he muttered. "yes, but got nothing. i didn't dare pump hard." "what can it be?" cried jon. "i shall find out all right." a long silence followed till fleur said: "this is maidenhead, stand by, jon!" the train stopped. the remaining passenger got out. fleur drew down her blind. "quick!" she cried. "hang out! look as much of a beast as you can." jon blew his nose, and scowled; never in all his life had he scowled like that! an old lady recoiled, a young one tried the handle. it turned, but the lock would not open. the train moved, the young lady darted to another carriage. "what luck!" cried jon. "it jammed." "yes," said fleur; "i was holding it." the train moved out, and jon fell on his knees. "look out for the corridor," she whispered; "and--quick!" her lips met his. and though their kiss only lasted perhaps ten seconds jon's soul left his body and went so far beyond that, when he was again sitting opposite that demure figure, he was pale as death. he heard her sigh, and the sound seemed to him the most precious he had ever heard--an exquisite declaration that he meant something to her. "six weeks isn't really long," she said; "and you can easily make it six if you keep your head out there, and never seem to think of me." jon gasped. "this is just what's really wanted, jon, to convince them, don't you see? if we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop being ridiculous about it. only, i'm sorry it's not spain; there's a girl in a goya picture at madrid who's like me, father says. only she isn't--we've got a copy of her." it was to jon like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog. "i'll make it spain," he said, "mother won't mind; she's never been there. and my father thinks a lot of goya." "oh! yes, he's a painter--isn't he?" "only water-colour," said jon, with honesty. "when we come to reading, jon, get out first and go down to caversham lock and wait for me. i'll send the car home and we'll walk by the towing-path." jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the world well lost, and one eye on the corridor. but the train seemed to run twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of jon's sighing. "we're getting near," said fleur; "the towing-path's awfully exposed. one more! oh! jon, don't forget me." jon answered with his kiss. and very soon, a flushed, distracted-looking youth could have been seen--as they say--leaping from the train and hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets for his ticket. when at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure of equanimity. if they had to part, he would not make a scene! a breeze by the bright river threw the white side of the willow leaves up into the sunlight, and followed those two with its faint rustle. "i told our chauffeur that i was train-giddy," said fleur. "did you look pretty natural as you went out?" "i don't know. what is natural?" "it's natural to you to look seriously happy. when i first saw you i thought you weren't a bit like other people." "exactly what i thought when i saw you. i knew at once i should never love anybody else." fleur laughed. "we're absurdly young. and love's young dream is out of date, jon. besides, it's awfully wasteful. think of all the fun you might have. you haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. and there's me. i wonder!" confusion came on jon's spirit. how could she say such things just as they were going to part? "if you feel like that," he said, "i can't go. i shall tell mother that i ought to try and work. there's always the condition of the world!" "the condition of the world!" jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets. "but there is," he said; "think of the people starving!" fleur shook her head. "no, no, i never, never will make myself miserable for nothing." "nothing! but there's an awful state of things, and of course one ought to help." "oh! yes, i know all that. but you can't help people, jon; they're hopeless. when you pull them out of a hole they only get into another. look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though they're dying in heaps all the time. idiots!" "aren't you sorry for them?" "oh! sorry--yes, but i'm not going to make myself unhappy about it; that's no good." and they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's natures. "i think people are brutes and idiots," said fleur stubbornly. "i think they're poor wretches," said jon. it was as if they had quarrelled--and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting visible out there in that last gap of the willows! "well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me." jon stood still. sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs trembled. fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river. "i must believe in things," said jon with a sort of agony; "we're all meant to enjoy life." fleur laughed: "yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't take care. but perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself wretched. there are lots of people like that, of course." she was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. was it fleur thus staring at the water? jon had an unreal feeling as if he were passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to choose between love and duty. but just then she looked round at him. never was anything so intoxicating as that vivacious look. it acted on him exactly as the tug of a chain acts on a dog--brought him up to her with his tail wagging and his tongue out. "don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. look, jon, you can just see where i've got to cross the river. there, round the bend, where the woods begin." jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the trees--and felt his heart sink. "i mustn't dawdle any more. it's no good going beyond the next hedge, it gets all open. let's get on to it and say good-bye." they went side by side, hand in hand, silently towards the hedge, where the mayflower, both pink and white, was in full bloom. "my club's the 'talisman,' stratton street, piccadilly. letters there will be quite safe, and i'm almost always up once a week." jon nodded. his face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight before him. "to-day's the twenty-third of may," said fleur; "on the ninth of july i shall be in front of the 'bacchus and ariadne' at three o'clock; will you?" "i will." "if you feel as bad as i it's all right. let those people pass!" a man and woman airing their children went by strung out in sunday fashion. the last of them passed the wicket gate. "domesticity!" said fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn hedge. the blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster brushed her cheek. jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off. "good-bye, jon!" for a second they stood with hands hard clasped. then their lips met for the third time, and when they parted fleur broke away and fled through the wicket gate. jon stood where she had left him, with his forehead against that pink cluster. gone! for an eternity--for seven weeks all but two days! and here he was, wasting the last sight of her! he rushed to the gate. she was walking swiftly on the heels of the straggling children. she turned her head, he saw her hand make a little flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her out from his view. the words of a comic song-- "paddington groan--worst ever known-- he gave a sepulchral paddington groan--" came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to reading station. all the way up to london and down to wansdon he sat with "the heart of the trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of feeling that it would not rhyme. xii caprice fleur sped on. she had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted all her wits about her when she got in. she passed the islands, the station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry, when she saw a skiff with a young man standing up in it, and holding to the bushes. "miss forsyte," he said; "let me put you across. i've come on purpose." she looked at him in blank amazement. "it's all right, i've been having tea with your people. i thought i'd save you the last bit. it's on my way, i'm just off back to pangbourne. my name's mont. i saw you at the picture-gallery--you remember--when your father invited me to see his pictures." "oh!" said fleur; "yes--the handkerchief." to this young man she owed jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped down into the skiff. still emotional, and a little out of breath, she sat silent; not so the young man. she had never heard any one say so much in so short a time. he told her his age, twenty-four, his weight, ten stone eleven; his place of residence, not far away; described his sensations under fire, and what it felt like to be gassed; criticised the juno, mentioned his own conception of that goddess; commented on the goya copy, said fleur was not too awfully like it; sketched in rapidly the condition of england; spoke of monsieur profond--or whatever his name was--as "an awful sport"; thought her father had some ripping pictures and some rather "dug-up"; hoped he might row down again and take her on the river because he was quite trustworthy; inquired her opinion of tchekov, gave her his own; wished they could go to the russian ballet together some time--considered the name fleur forsyte simply topping; cursed his people for giving him the name of michael on the top of mont; outlined his father, and said that if she wanted a good book she should read "job"; his father was rather like job while job still had land. "but job didn't have land," fleur murmured; "he only had flocks and herds and moved on." "ah!" answered michael mont, "i wish my gov'nor would move on. not that i want his land. land's an awful bore in these days, don't you think?" "we never have it in my family," said fleur. "we have everything else. i believe one of my great-uncles once had a sentimental farm in dorset, because we came from there originally, but it cost him more than it made him happy." "did he sell it?" "no; he kept it." "why?" "because nobody would buy it." "good for the old boy!" "no, it wasn't good for him. father says it soured him. his name was swithin." "what a corking name!" "do you know," said fleur, "that we're getting farther off, not nearer? this river flows." "splendid!" cried mont, dipping his sculls vaguely; "it's good to meet a girl who's got wit." "but better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural." young mont raised a hand to tear his hair. "look out!" cried fleur. "your scull!" "all right! it's thick enough to bear a scratch." "do you mind sculling?" said fleur severely, "i want to get in." "ah! but when you get in, you see, i shan't see you any more to-day. fini, as the french girl said when she jumped on her bed after saying her prayers. don't you bless the day that gave you a french mother, and a name like yours?" "i like my name, but father gave it me. mother wanted me called marguerite." "which is absurd. do you mind calling me m. m. and letting me call you f. f.? it's in the spirit of the age." "i don't mind anything, so long as i get in." mont caught a little crab, and answered: "that was a nasty one!" "please row." "i am." and he did for several strokes, looking at her with rueful eagerness. "of course, you know," he ejaculated, pausing, "that i came to see you, not your father's pictures." fleur rose. "if you don't row, i shall get out and swim." "really and truly? then i could come in after you." "mr. mont, i'm late and tired; please put me on shore at once." when she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and grasping his hair with both hands, looked at her. fleur smiled. "don't!" cried the irrepressible mont. "i know you're going to say: 'out, damned hair!'" fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. "good-bye, mr. m. m.!" she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. she looked at her wrist-watch and the windows of the house. it struck her as curiously uninhabited. past six! the pigeons were just gathering to roost, and sunlight slanted on the dove-cot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond in a shower on the top boughs of the woods. the click of billiard-balls came from the ingle-nook--jack cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling, too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling southerner in this old english garden. she reached the verandah, and was passing in, but stopped at the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. mother! profond! from behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard these words! "i don't, annette." did father know that he called her mother "annette"? always on the side of her father--as children are ever on one side or the other in houses where relations are a little strained--she stood, uncertain. her mother was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice--one word she caught: "demain." and profond's answer: "all right." fleur frowned. a little sound came out into the stillness. then profond's voice: "i'm takin' a small stroll." fleur darted through the window into the morning room. there he came--from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and the click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she had ceased to hear, began again. she shook herself, passed into the hall, and opened the drawing-room door. her mother was sitting on the sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. she looked extraordinarily handsome. "ah! here you are, fleur! your father is beginning to fuss." "where is he?" "in the picture-gallery. go up!" "what are you going to do to-morrow, mother?" "to-morrow? i go up to london with your aunt. why?" "i thought you might be. will you get me a quite plain parasol?" "what color?" "green. they're all going back, i suppose." "yes, all; you will console your father. kiss me, then." fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other corner. she ran up-stairs. fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard imposed on herself. she claimed to regulate her own life, not those of others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage her own case was already at work. in a disturbed domestic atmosphere the heart she had set on jon would have a better chance. none the less was she offended, as a flower by a crisping wind. if that man had really been kissing her mother it was--serious, and her father ought to know. "demain!" "all right!" and her mother going up to town! she turned in to her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had suddenly grown very hot. jon must be at the station by now! what did her father know about jon! probably everything--pretty nearly! she changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some time, and ran up to the gallery. soames was standing stubbornly still before his alfred stevens--the picture he loved best. he did not turn at the sound of the door, but she knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt. she came up softly behind him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his shoulder, till her cheek lay against his. it was an advance which had never yet failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst. "well," he said stonily, "so you've come!" "is that all," murmured fleur, "from a bad parent?" and rubbed her cheek against his. soames shook his head so far as that was possible. "why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and off?" "darling, it was very harmless." "harmless! much you know what's harmless and what isn't." fleur dropped her arms. "well, then, dear, suppose you tell me; and be quite frank about it." and she went over to the window-seat. her father had turned from his picture, and was staring at his feet. he looked very grey. 'he has nice small feet,' she thought, catching his eye, at once averted from her. "you're my only comfort," said soames suddenly, "and you go on like this." fleur's heart began to beat. "like what, dear?" again soames gave her a look which, but for the affection in it, might have been called furtive. "you know what i told you," he said. "i don't choose to have anything to do with that branch of our family." "yes, ducky, but i don't know why _i_ shouldn't." soames turned on his heel. "i'm not going into the reasons," he said; "you ought to trust me, fleur!" the way he spoke those words affected fleur, but she thought of jon, and was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscot. unconsciously she had assumed a modern attitude, with one leg twisted in and out of the other, with her chin on one bent wrist, her other arm across her chest, and its hand hugging her elbow; there was not a line of her that was not involuted, and yet--in spite of all--she retained a certain grace. "you knew my wishes," soames went on, "and yet you stayed on there four days. and i suppose that boy came with you to-day." fleur kept her eyes on him. "i don't ask you anything," said soames; "i make no inquisition where you're concerned." fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin on her hands. the sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were perched, quite still, on the edge of the dove-cot; the click of the billiard-balls mounted, and a faint radiance shone out below where jack cardigan had turned the light up. "will it make you any happier," she said suddenly, "if i promise you not to see him for say--the next six weeks?" she was not prepared for a sort of tremble in the blankness of his voice. "six weeks? six years--sixty years more like. don't delude yourself, fleur; don't delude yourself!" fleur turned in alarm. "father, what is it?" soames came close enough to see her face. "don't tell me," he said, "that you're foolish enough to have any feeling beyond caprice. that would be too much!" and he laughed. fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought: 'then it is deep! oh! what is it?' and putting her hand through his arm she said lightly: "no, of course; caprice. only, i like my caprices and i don't like yours, dear." "mine!" said soames bitterly, and turned away. the light outside had chilled, and threw a chalky whiteness on the river. the trees had lost all gaiety of colour. she felt a sudden hunger for jon's face, for his hands, and the feel of his lips again on hers. and pressing her arms tight across her breast she forced out a little light laugh. "o la! la! what a small fuss! as profond would say. father, i don't like that man." she saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket. "you don't?" he said. "why?" "nothing," murmured fleur; "just caprice!" "no," said soames; "not caprice!" and he tore what was in his hands across. "you're right. _i_ don't like him either!" "look!" said fleur softly. "there he goes! i hate his shoes; they don't make any noise." down in the failing light prosper profond moved, his hands in his side pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and glanced up at the sky, as if saying: "i don't think much of that small moon." fleur drew back. "isn't he a great cat?" she whispered; and the sharp click of the billiard-balls rose, as if jack cardigan had capped the cat, the moon, caprice, and tragedy with: "in off the red!" monsieur profond had resumed his strolling, to a teasing little tune in his beard. what was it? oh! yes, from "rigoletto": "donna e mobile." just what he would think! she squeezed her father's arm. "prowling!" she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house. it was past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night--still and lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac scent clinging on the riverside air. a blackbird suddenly burst out. jon would be in london by now; in the park perhaps, crossing the serpentine, thinking of her! a little sound beside her made her turn her eyes; her father was again tearing the paper in his hands. fleur saw it was a cheque. "i shan't sell him my gauguin," he said. "i don't know what your aunt and imogen see in him." "or mother." "your mother!" said soames. 'poor father!' she thought. 'he never looks happy--not really happy. i don't want to make him worse, but of course i shall have to, when jon comes back. oh! well, sufficient unto the night!' "i'm going to dress," she said. in her room she had a fancy to put on her "freak" dress. it was of gold tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the ankles, a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and a gold-winged mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells, especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed. when she was dressed she felt quite sick because jon could not see her; it even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man michael mont would not have a view. but the gong had sounded, and she went down. she made a sensation in the drawing-room. winifred thought it "most amusing." imogen was enraptured. jack cardigan called it "stunning," "ripping," "topping," and "corking." monsieur profond, smiling with his eyes, said: "that's a nice small dress!" her mother, very handsome in black, sat looking at her, and said nothing. it remained for her father to apply the test of common sense. "what did you put on that thing for? you're not going to dance." fleur spun round, and the bells pealed. "caprice!" soames stared at her, and, turning away, gave his arm to winifred. jack cardigan took her mother. prosper profond took imogen. fleur went in by herself, with her bells jingling.... the "small" moon had soon dropped down, and may night had fallen soft and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men and women. happy was jack cardigan who snored into imogen's white shoulder, fit as a flea; or timothy in his "mausoleum," too old for anything but baby's slumber. for so many lay awake, or dreamed, teased by the crisscross of the world. the dew fell and the flowers closed; cattle grazed on in the river meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they could not see; and the sheep on the downs lay quiet as stones. pheasants in the tall trees of the pangbourne woods, larks on their grassy nests above the gravel-pit at wansdon, swallows in the eaves at robin hill, and the sparrows of mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by the lack of wind. the mayfly filly, hardly accustomed to her new quarters, scraped at her straw a little; and the few night-flitting things--bats, moths, owls--were vigorous in the warm darkness; but the peace of night lay in the brain of all day-time nature, colourless and still. men and women, alone, riding the hobbyhorses of anxiety or love, burned their wavering tapers of dream and thought into the lonely hours. fleur, leaning out of her window, heard the hall clock's muffled chime of twelve, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of an aspen's leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the river, the distant rumble of a night train, and time and again the sounds which none can put a name to in the darkness, soft obscure expressions of uncatalogued emotions from man and beast, bird and machine, or, maybe, from departed forsytes, darties, cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world which had once suited their embodied spirits. but fleur heeded not these sounds, her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after jon, tenacious of his forbidden image, and the sound of his voice which was taboo. and she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek. long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings at life's candle; while the moths brushed her cheeks on their pilgrimage to the lamp on her dressing-table, ignorant that in a forsyte's house there is no open flame. but at last even she felt sleepy, and, forgetting her bells, drew quickly in. through the open window of his room, alongside annette's, soames, wakeful too, heard their thin faint tinkle, as it might be shaken from stars, or the dewdrops falling from a flower, if one could hear such sounds. 'caprice!' he thought. 'i can't tell. she's wilful. what shall i do? fleur!' and long into the "small" night he brooded. part ii i mother and son to say that jon forsyte accompanied his mother to spain unwillingly would scarcely have been adequate. he went as a well-natured dog goes for a walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on the lawn. he went looking back at it. forsytes deprived of their mutton-bones are wont to sulk. but jon had little sulkiness in his composition. he adored his mother, and it was his first travel. spain had become italy by his simply saying: "i'd rather go to spain, mum; you've been to italy so many times; i'd like it new to both of us." the fellow was subtle besides being naif. he never forgot that he was going to shorten the proposed two months into six weeks, and must therefore show no sign of wishing to do so. for one with so enticing a mutton-bone and so fixed an idea, he made a good enough travelling companion, indifferent to where or when he arrived, superior to food, and thoroughly appreciative of a country strange to the most travelled englishman. fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages, water-sellers, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming grey-brown mountains of a fascinating land. it was already hot, and they enjoyed an absence of their compatriots. jon, who, so far as he knew, had blood in him which was not english, was often innately unhappy in the presence of his own countrymen. he felt they had no nonsense about them, and took a more practical view of things than himself. he confided to his mother that he must be an unsociable beast--it was jolly to be away from everybody who could talk about the things people did talk about. to which irene had replied simply: "yes, jon, i know." in this isolation he had unparalleled opportunities of appreciating what few sons can apprehend, the whole-heartedness of a mother's love. knowledge of something kept from her made him, no doubt, unduly sensitive; and a southern people stimulated his admiration for her type of beauty, which he had been accustomed to hear called spanish, but which he now perceived to be no such thing. her beauty was neither english, french, spanish, nor italian--it was special! he appreciated, too, as never before, his mother's subtlety of instinct. he could not tell, for instance, whether she had noticed his absorption in that goya picture, "la vendimia," or whether she knew that he had slipped back there after lunch and again next morning, to stand before it full half an hour, a second and third time. it was not fleur, of course, but like enough to give him heartache--so dear to lovers--remembering her standing at the foot of his bed with her hand held above her head. to keep a postcard reproduction of this picture in his pocket and slip it out to look at became for jon one of those bad habits which soon or late disclose themselves to eyes sharpened by love, fear, or jealousy. and his mother's were sharpened by all three. in granada he was fairly caught, sitting on a sun-warmed stone bench in a little battlemented garden on the alhambra hill, whence he ought to have been looking at the view. his mother, he had thought, was examining the potted stocks between the polled acacias, when her voice said: "is that your favourite goya, jon?" he checked, too late, a movement such as he might have made at school to conceal some surreptitious document, and answered: "yes." "it certainly is most charming; but i think i prefer the 'quitasol.' your father would go crazy about goya; i don't believe he saw them when he was in spain in ' ." in ' --nine years before he had been born! what had been the previous existences of his father and his mother? if they had a right to share in his future, surely he had a right to share in their pasts. he looked up at her. but something in her face--a look of life hard-lived, the mysterious impress of emotions, experience, and suffering--seemed with its incalculable depth, its purchased sanctity, to make curiosity impertinent. his mother must have had a wonderfully interesting life; she was so beautiful, and so--so--but he could not frame what he felt about her. he got up, and stood gazing down at the town, at the plain all green with crops, and the ring of mountains glamorous in sinking sunlight. her life was like the past of this old moorish city, full, deep, remote--his own life as yet such a baby of a thing, hopelessly ignorant and innocent! they said that in those mountains to the west, which rose sheer from the blue-green plain, as if out of a sea, phoenicians had dwelt--a dark, strange, secret race, above the land! his mother's life was as unknown to him, as secret, as that phoenician past was to the town down there, whose cocks crowed and whose children played and clamoured so gaily, day in, day out. he felt aggrieved that she should know all about him and he nothing about her except that she loved him and his father, and was beautiful. his callow ignorance--he had not even had the advantage of the war, like nearly everybody else!--made him small in his own eyes. that night, from the balcony of his bedroom, he gazed down on the roof of the town--as if inlaid with honey-comb of jet, ivory, and gold; and, long after, he lay awake, listening to the cry of the sentry as the hours struck, and forming in his head these lines: "voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping spanish city darkened under her white stars! what says the voice--its clear--lingering anguish? just the watchman, telling his dateless tale of safety? just a roadman, flinging to the moon his song? no! 'tis one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping. just his cry: 'how long?'" the word "deprived" seemed to him cold and unsatisfactory, but bereaved was too final, and no other word of two syllables short-long came to him, which would enable him to keep "whose lover's heart is weeping." it was past two by the time he had finished it, and past three before he went to sleep, having said it over to himself at least twenty-four times. next day he wrote it out and enclosed it in one of those letters to fleur, which he always finished before he went down, so as to have his mind free and companionable. about noon that same day, on the tiled terrace of their hotel, he felt a sudden dull pain in the back of his head, a queer sensation in the eyes, and sickness. the sun had touched him too affectionately. the next three days were passed in semi-darkness, and a dulled, aching indifference to all except the feel of ice on his forehead and his mother's smile. she never moved from his room, never relaxed her noiseless vigilance, which seemed to jon angelic. but there were moments when he was extremely sorry for himself, and wished terribly that fleur could see him. several times he took a poignant imaginary leave of her and of the earth, tears oozing out of his eyes. he even prepared the message he would send to her by his mother--who would regret to her dying day that she had ever sought to separate them--his poor mother! he was not slow, however, in perceiving that he had now his excuse for going home. towards half past six each evening came a "gasgacha" of bells--a cascade of tumbling chimes, mounting from the city below and falling back chime on chime. after listening to them on the fourth day he said suddenly: "i'd like to be back in england, mum, the sun's too hot." "very well, darling. as soon as you're fit to travel." and at once he felt better, and--meaner. they had been out five weeks when they turned towards home. jon's head was restored to its pristine clarity, but he was confined to a hat lined by his mother with many layers of orange and green silk, and he still walked from choice in the shade. as the long struggle of discretion between them drew to its close, he wondered more and more whether she could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had brought him away from. condemned by spanish providence to spend a day in madrid between their trains, it was but natural to go again to the prado. jon was elaborately casual this time before his goya girl. now that he was going back to her, he could afford a lesser scrutiny. it was his mother who lingered before the picture, saying: "the face and figure of the girl are exquisite." jon heard her uneasily. did she understand? but he felt once more that he was no match for her in self-control and subtlety. she could, in some supersensitive way, of which he had not the secret, feel the pulse of his thoughts; she knew by instinct what he hoped and feared and wished. it made him terribly uncomfortable and guilty, having, beyond most boys, a conscience. he wished she would be frank with him; he almost hoped for an open struggle. but none came, and steadily, silently, they travelled north. thus did he first learn how much better than men women play a waiting game. in paris they had again to pause for a day. jon was grieved because it lasted two, owing to certain matters in connection with a dressmaker; as if his mother, who looked beautiful in anything, had any need of dresses! the happiest moment of his travel was that when he stepped on to the folkestone boat. standing by the bulwark rail, with her arm in his, she said: "i'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, jon. but you've been very sweet to me." jon squeezed her arm. "oh! yes, i've enjoyed it awfully--except for my head lately." and now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of glamour over the past weeks--a kind of painful pleasure, such as he had tried to screw into those lines about the voice in the night crying; a feeling such as he had known as a small boy listening avidly to chopin, yet wanting to cry. and he wondered why it was that he couldn't say to her quite simply what she had said to him: "you were very sweet to me." odd--one never could be nice and natural like that! he substituted the words: "i expect we shall be sick." they were, and reached london somewhat attenuated, having been away six weeks and two days, without a single allusion to the subject which had hardly ever ceased to occupy their minds. ii fathers and daughters deprived of his wife and son by the spanish adventure, jolyon found the solitude at robin hill intolerable. a philosopher when he has all that he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not. accustomed, however, to the idea, if not to the reality of resignation, he would perhaps have faced it out but for his daughter june. he was a "lame duck" now, and on her conscience. having achieved--momentarily--the rescue of an etcher in low circumstances, which she happened to have in hand, she appeared at robin hill a fortnight after irene and jon had gone. the little lady was living now in a tiny house with a big studio at chiswick. a forsyte of the best period, so far as the lack of responsibility was concerned, she had overcome the difficulty of a reduced income in a manner satisfactory to herself and her father. the rent of the gallery off cork street which he had bought for her, and her increased income tax happening to balance, it had been quite simple--she no longer paid him the rent. the gallery might be expected now at any time, after eighteen years of barren usufruct, to pay its way, so that she was sure her father would not feel it. through this device she still had twelve hundred a year, and by reducing what she ate, and, in place of two belgians in a poor way, employing one austrian in a poorer, practically the same surplus for the relief of genius. after three days at robin hill she carried her father back with her to town. in those three days she had stumbled on the secret he had kept for two years, and had instantly decided to cure him. she knew, in fact, the very man. he had done wonders with paul post--that painter a little in advance of futurism; and she was impatient with her father because his eyebrows would go up, and because he had heard of neither. of course, if he hadn't "faith" he would never get well! it was absurd not to have faith in the man who had healed paul post so that he had only just relapsed, from having overworked, or overlived, himself again. the great thing about this healer was that he relied on nature. he had made a special study of the symptoms of nature--when his patient failed in any natural symptom he supplied the poison which caused it--and there you were! she was extremely hopeful. her father had clearly not been living a natural life at robin hill, and she intended to provide the symptoms. he was--she felt--out of touch with the times, which was not natural; his heart wanted stimulating. in the little chiswick house she and the austrian--a grateful soul, so devoted to june for rescuing her that she was in danger of decease from overwork--stimulated jolyon in all sorts of ways, preparing him for his cure. but they could not keep his eyebrows down; as--for example--when the austrian woke him at eight o'clock just as he was going to sleep or june took the times away from him, because it was unnatural to read "that stuff" when he ought to be taking an interest in "life." he never failed, indeed, to be astonished at her resource, especially in the evenings. for his benefit, as she declared, though he suspected that she also got something out of it, she assembled the age so far as it was satellite to genius; and with some solemnity it would move up and down the studio before him in the fox-trot, and that more mental form of dancing--the one-step--which so pulled against the music, that jolyon's eyebrows would be almost lost in his hair from wonder at the strain it must impose on the dancers' will-power. aware that, hung on the line in the water colour society, he was a back number to those with any pretension to be called artists, he would sit in the darkest corner he could find, and wonder about rhythm, on which so long ago he had been raised. and when june brought some girl or young man up to him, he would rise humbly to their level so far as that was possible, and think: 'dear me! this is very dull for them!' having his father's perennial sympathy with youth, he used to get very tired from entering into their points of view. but it was all stimulating, and he never failed in admiration of his daughter's indomitable spirit. even genius itself attended these gatherings now and then, with its nose on one side; and june always introduced it to her father. this, she felt, was exceptionally good for him, for genius was a natural symptom he had never had--fond as she was of him. certain as a man can be that she was his own daughter, he often wondered whence she got herself--her red-gold hair, now greyed into a special colour; her direct, spirited face, so different from his own rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little light figure, when he and most of the forsytes were tall. and he would dwell on the origin of species, and debate whether she might be danish or celtic. celtic, he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs. it was not too much to say that he preferred her to the age with which she was surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. she took, however, too much interest in his teeth, for he still had some of those natural symptoms. her dentist at once found "staphylococcus aureus present in pure culture" (which might cause boils, of course) and wanted to take out all the teeth he had and supply him with two complete sets of unnatural symptoms. jolyon's native tenacity was roused, and in the studio that evening he developed his objections. he had never had any boils, and his own teeth would last his time. of course--june admitted--they would last his time if he didn't have them out! but if he had more teeth he would have a better heart and his time would be longer. his recalcitrance--she said--was a symptom of his whole attitude; he was taking it lying down. he ought to be fighting. when was he going to see the man who had cured paul post? jolyon was very sorry, but the fact was he was not going to see him. june chafed. pondridge--she said--the healer, was such a fine man, and he had such difficulty in making two ends meet and getting his theories recognised. it was just such indifference and prejudice as her father manifested which was keeping him back. it would be so splendid for both of them! "i perceive," said jolyon, "that you are trying to kill two birds with one stone." "to cure, you mean!" cried june. "my dear, it's the same thing." june protested. it was unfair to say that without a trial. jolyon thought he might not have the chance of saying it after. "dad!" cried june, "you're hopeless." "that," said jolyon, "is a fact, but i wish to remain hopeless as long as possible. i shall let sleeping dogs lie, my child. they are quiet at present." "that's not giving science a chance," cried june. "you've no idea how devoted pondridge is. he puts his science before everything." "just," replied jolyon, puffing the mild cigarette to which he was reduced, "as mr. paul post puts his art, eh? art for art's sake--science for the sake of science. i know those enthusiastic egomaniac gentry. they vivisect you without blinking. i'm enough of a forsyte to give them the go-by, june." "dad," said june, "if you only knew how old-fashioned that sounds! nobody can afford to be half-hearted nowadays." "i'm afraid," murmured jolyon, with his smile, "that's the only natural symptom with which mr. pondridge need not supply me. we are born to be extreme or to be moderate, my dear; though if you'll forgive my saying so, half the people nowadays who believe they're extreme are really very moderate. i'm getting on as well as i can expect, and i must leave it at that." june was silent, having experienced in her time the inexorable character of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own freedom of action was concerned. how he came to let her know why irene had taken jon to spain puzzled jolyon, for he had little confidence in her discretion. after she had brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp discussion, during which he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her active temperament and his wife's passivity. he even gathered that a little soreness still remained from that generation-old struggle between them over the body of philip bosinney, in which the passive had so signally triumphed over the active principle. according to june, it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the past from jon. sheer opportunism, she called it. "which," jolyon put in mildly, "is the working principle of real life, my dear." "oh!" cried june, "you don't really defend her for not telling jon, dad. if it were left to you, you would." "i might, but simply because i know he must find out, which will be worse than if we told him." "then why don't you tell him? it's just sleeping dogs again." "my dear," said jolyon, "i wouldn't for the world go against irene's instinct. he's her boy." "yours too," cried june. "what is a man's instinct compared with a mother's?" "well, i think it's very weak of you." "i dare say," said jolyon, "i dare say." and that was all she got from him; but the matter rankled in her brain. she could not bear sleeping dogs. and there stirred in her a tortuous impulse to push the matter towards decision. jon ought to be told, so that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud, or, flowering in spite of the past, come to fruition. and she determined to see fleur, and judge for herself. when june determined on anything, delicacy became a somewhat minor consideration. after all, she was soames' cousin, and they were both interested in pictures. she would go and tell him that he ought to buy a paul post, or perhaps a piece of sculpture by boris strumolowski, and of course she would say nothing to her father. she went on the following sunday, looking so determined that she had some difficulty in getting a cab at reading station. the river country was lovely in those days of her own month, and june ached at its loveliness. she who had passed through this life without knowing what union was had a love of natural beauty which was almost madness. and when she came to that choice spot where soames had pitched his tent, she dismissed her cab, because, business over, she wanted to revel in the bright water and the woods. she appeared at his front door, therefore, as a mere pedestrian, and sent in her card. it was in june's character to know that when her nerves were fluttering she was doing something worth while. if one's nerves did not flutter, she was taking the line of least resistance, and knew that nobleness was not obliging her. she was conducted to a drawing-room, which, though not in her style, showed every mark of fastidious elegance. thinking: 'too much taste--too many knick-knacks,' she saw in an old lacquer-framed mirror the figure of a girl coming in from the verandah. clothed in white, and holding some white roses in her hand, she had, reflected in that silvery-grey pool of glass, a vision-like appearance, as if a pretty ghost had come out of the green garden. "how do you do?" said june, turning round. "i'm a cousin of your father's." "oh, yes; i saw you in that confectioner's." "with my young stepbrother. is your father in?" "he will be directly. he's only gone for a little walk." june slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin. "your name's fleur, isn't it? i've heard of you from holly. what do you think of jon?" the girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered calmly: "he's quite a nice boy." "not a bit like holly or me, is he?" "not a bit." 'she's cool,' thought june. and suddenly the girl said: "i wish you'd tell me why our families don't get on?" confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer, june was silent; either because this girl was trying to get something out of her, or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always what one will do when it comes to the point. "you know," said the girl, "the surest way to make people find out the worst is to keep them ignorant. my father's told me it was a quarrel about property. but i don't believe it; we've both got heaps. they wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that." june flushed. the word applied to her grandfather and father offended her. "my grandfather," she said, "was very generous, and my father is, too; neither of them was in the least bourgeois." "well, what was it then?" repeated the girl. conscious that this young forsyte meant having what she wanted, june at once determined to prevent her, and to get something for herself instead. "why do you want to know?" the girl smelled at her roses. "i only want to know because they won't tell me." "well, it was about property, but there's more than one kind." "that makes it worse. now i really must know." june's small and resolute face quivered. she was wearing a round cap, and her hair had fluffed out under it. she looked quite young at that moment, rejuvenated by encounter. "you know," she said, "i saw you drop your handkerchief. is there anything between you and jon? because, if so, you'd better drop that too." the girl grew paler, but she smiled. "if there were, that isn't the way to make me." at the gallantry of that reply june held out her hand. "i like you; but i don't like your father; i never have. we may as well be frank." "did you come down to tell him that?" june laughed. "no; i came down to see you." "how delightful of you!" this girl could fence. "i'm two-and-a-half times your age," said june, "but i quite sympathise. it's horrid not to have one's own way." the girl smiled again. "i really think you might tell me." how the child stuck to her point! "it's not my secret. but i'll see what i can do, because i think both you and jon ought to be told. and now i'll say good-bye." "won't you wait and see father?" june shook her head. "how can i get over to the other side?" "i'll row you across." "look!" said june impulsively, "next time you're in london, come and see me. this is where i live. i generally have young people in the evening. but i shouldn't tell your father that you're coming." the girl nodded. watching her scull the skiff across, june thought: 'she's awfully pretty and well made. i never thought soames would have a daughter as pretty as this. she and jon would make a lovely couple.' the instinct to couple, starved within herself, was always at work in june. she stood watching fleur row back; the girl took her hand off a scull to wave farewell; and june walked languidly on between the meadows and the river, with an ache in her heart. youth to youth, like the dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them through and through. her youth! so long ago--when phil and she--! and since? nothing--no one had been quite what she had wanted. and so she had missed it all. but what a coil was round those two young things, if they really were in love, as holly would have it--as her father, and irene, and soames himself seemed to dread. what a coil, and what a barrier! and the itch for the future, the contempt, as it were, for what was overpast, which forms the active principle, moved in the heart of one who ever believed that what one wanted was more important than what other people did not want. from the bank, awhile, in the warm summer stillness, she watched the water-lily plants and willow leaves, the fishes rising; sniffed the scent of grass and meadow-sweet, wondering how she could force everybody to be happy. jon and fleur! two little lame ducks--charming callow yellow little ducks! a great pity! surely something could be done! one must not take such situations lying down. she walked on, and reached a station, hot and cross. that evening, faithful to the impulse towards direct action, which made many people avoid her, she said to her father: "dad, i've been down to see young fleur. i think she's very attractive. it's no good hiding our heads under our wings, is it?" the startled jolyon set down his barley water, and began crumbling his bread. "it's what you appear to be doing," he said: "do you realise whose daughter she is?" "can't the dead past bury its dead?" jolyon rose. "certain things can never be buried." "i disagree," said june. "it's that which stands in the way of all happiness and progress. you don't understand the age, dad. it's got no use for outgrown things. why do you think it matters so terribly that jon should know about his mother? who pays any attention to that sort of thing now? the marriage laws are just as they were when soames and irene couldn't get a divorce, and you had to come in. we've moved, and they haven't. so nobody cares. marriage without a decent chance of relief is only a sort of slave-owning; people oughtn't to own each other. everybody sees that now. if irene broke such laws, what does it matter?" "it's not for me to disagree there," said jolyon; "but that's all quite beside the mark. this is a matter of human feeling." "of course, it is," cried june, "the human feeling of those two young things." "my dear," said jolyon with gentle exasperation, "you're talking nonsense." "i'm not. if they prove to be really fond of each other, why should they be made unhappy because of the past?" "you haven't lived that past. i have--through the feelings of my wife; through my own nerves and my imagination, as only one who is devoted can." june, too, rose, and began to wander restlessly. "if," she said suddenly, "she were the daughter of phil bosinney, i could understand you better. irene loved him, she never loved soames." jolyon uttered a deep sound--the sort of noise an italian peasant woman utters to her mule. his heart had begun beating furiously, but he paid no attention to it, quite carried away by his feelings. "that shows how little you understand. neither i nor jon, if i know him, would mind a love-past. it's the brutality of a union without love. this girl is the daughter of the man who once owned jon's mother as a negro-slave was owned. you can't lay that ghost; don't try to, june! it's asking us to see jon joined to the flesh and blood of the man who possessed jon's mother against her will. it's no good mincing words; i want it clear once for all. and now i mustn't talk any more, or i shall have to sit up with this all night." and, putting his hand over his heart, jolyon turned his back on his daughter and stood looking at the river thames. june, who by nature never saw a hornets' nest until she had put her head into it, was seriously alarmed. she came and slipped her arm through his. not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong, because that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed by the obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him. she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, and said nothing. after taking her elderly cousin across, fleur did not land at once, but pulled in among the reeds, into the sunshine. the peaceful beauty of the afternoon seduced for a little one not much given to the vague and poetic. in the field beyond the bank where her skiff lay up, a machine drawn by a grey horse was turning an early field of hay. she watched the grass cascading over and behind the light wheels with fascination--it looked so green and fresh. the click and swish blended with the rustle of the willows and the poplars, and the cooing of a wood-pigeon, in a true river song. alongside, in the grey-green water, weeds like yellow snakes were writhing and nosing with the current; pied cattle on the farther side stood in the shade lazily swishing their tails. it was an afternoon to dream. and she took out jon's letters--not flowery effusions, but haunted in their recital of things seen and done by a longing very agreeable to her, and all ending "your devoted j." fleur was not sentimental, her desires were ever concrete and concentrated, but what poetry there was in the daughter of soames and annette had certainly in those weeks of waiting gathered round her memories of jon. they all belonged to grass and blossom, flowers and running water. she enjoyed him in the scents absorbed by her crinkling nose. the stars could persuade her that she was standing beside him in the centre of the map of spain; and of an early morning the dewy cobwebs, the hazy sparkle and promise of the day down in the garden, were jon personified to her. two white swans came majestically by, while she was reading his letters, followed by their brood of six young swans in a line, with just so much space between each tail and head, a flotilla of grey destroyers. fleur thrust her letters back, got out her sculls, and pulled up to the landing-stage. crossing the lawn, she wondered whether she should tell her father of june's visit. if he learned of it from the butler, he might think it odd if she did not. it gave her, too, another chance to startle out of him the reason of the feud. she went, therefore, up the road to meet him. soames had gone to look at a patch of ground on which the local authorities were proposing to erect a sanatorium for people with weak lungs. faithful to his native individualism, he took no part in local affairs, content to pay the rates which were always going up. he could not, however, remain indifferent to this new and dangerous scheme. the site was not half a mile from his own house. he was quite of opinion that the country should stamp out tuberculosis; but this was not the place. it should be done farther away. he took, indeed, an attitude common to all true forsytes, that disability of any sort in other people was not his affair, and the state should do its business without prejudicing in any way the natural advantages which he had acquired or inherited. francie, the most free-spirited forsyte of his generation (except perhaps that fellow jolyon) had once asked him in her malicious way: "did you ever see the name forsyte in a subscription list, soames?" that was as it might be, but a sanatorium would depreciate the neighbourhood, and he should certainly sign the petition which was being got up against it. returning with this decision fresh within him, he saw fleur coming. she was showing him more affection of late, and the quiet time down here with her in this summer weather had been making him feel quite young; annette was always running up to town for one thing or another, so that he had fleur to himself almost as much as he could wish. to be sure, young mont had formed a habit of appearing on his motor-cycle almost every other day. thank goodness, the young fellow had shaved off his half-toothbrushes, and no longer looked like a mountebank! with a girl friend of fleur's who was staying in the house, and a neighbouring youth or so, they made two couples after dinner, in the hall, to the music of the electric pianola which performed fox-trots unassisted, with a surprised shine on its expressive surface. annette, even, now and then passed gracefully up and down in the arms of one or other of the young men. and soames, coming to the drawing-room door, would lift his nose a little sideways, and watch them, waiting to catch a smile from fleur; then move back to his chair by the drawing-room hearth, to peruse the times or some other collector's price-list. to his ever-anxious eyes fleur showed no sign of remembering that caprice of hers. when she reached him on the dusty road, he slipped his hand within her arm. "who, do you think, has been to see you, dad? she couldn't wait! guess!" "i never guess," said soames uneasily. "who?" "your cousin, june forsyte." quite unconsciously soames gripped her arm. "what did she want?" "i don't know. but it was rather breaking through the feud, wasn't it?" "feud? what feud?" "the one that exists in your imagination, dear." soames dropped her arm. was she mocking, or trying to draw him on? "i suppose she wanted me to buy a picture," he said at last. "i don't think so. perhaps it was just family affection." "she's only a first cousin once removed," muttered soames. "and the daughter of your enemy." "what d'you mean by that?" "i beg your pardon, dear; i thought he was." "enemy!" repeated soames. "it's ancient history. i don't know where you get your notions." "from june forsyte." it had come to her as an inspiration that if he thought she knew, or were on the edge of knowledge, he would tell her. soames was startled, but she had underrated his caution and tenacity. "if you know," he said coldly, "why do you plague me?" fleur saw that she had overreached herself. "i don't want to plague you, darling. as you say, why want to know more? why want to know anything of that 'small' mystery--je m'en fiche, as profond says." "that chap!" said soames profoundly. that chap, indeed, played a considerable, if invisible, part this summer--for he had not turned up again. ever since the sunday when fleur had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn, soames had thought of him a good deal, and always in connection with annette, for no reason, except that she was looking handsomer than for some time past. his possessive instinct, subtler, less formal, more elastic since the war, kept all misgiving underground. as one looks on some american river, quiet and pleasant, knowing that an alligator perhaps is lying in the mud with his snout just raised and indistinguishable from a snag of wood--so soames looked on the river of his own existence, subconscious of monsieur profond, refusing to see more than the suspicion of his snout. he had at this epoch in his life practically all he wanted, and was as nearly happy as his nature would permit. his senses were at rest; his affections found all the vent they needed in his daughter; his collection was well known, his money well invested; his health excellent, save for a touch of liver now and again; he had not yet begun to worry seriously about what would happen after death, inclining to think that nothing would happen. he resembled one of his own gilt-edged securities, and to knock the gilt off by seeing anything he could avoid seeing, would be, he felt instinctively, perverse and retrogressive. those two crumpled rose-leaves, fleur's caprice and monsieur profond's snout, would level away if he lay on them industriously. that evening chance, which visits the lives of even the best-invested forsytes, put a clue into fleur's hands. her father came down to dinner without a handkerchief, and had occasion to blow his nose. "i'll get you one, dear," she had said, and run upstairs. in the sachet where she sought for it--an old sachet of very faded silk--there were two compartments: one held handkerchiefs; the other was buttoned, and contained something flat and hard. by some childish impulse fleur unbuttoned it. there was a frame and in it a photograph of herself as a little girl. she gazed at it, fascinated, as one is by one's own presentment. it slipped under her fidgeting thumb, and she saw that another photograph was behind. she pressed her own down further, and perceived a face, which she seemed to know, of a young woman, very good-looking, in a very old style of evening dress. slipping her own photograph up over it again, she took out a handkerchief and went down. only on the stairs did she identify that face. surely--surely jon's mother! the conviction came as a shock. and she stood still in a flurry of thought. why, of course! jon's father had married the woman her father had wanted to marry, had cheated him out of her, perhaps. then, afraid of showing by her manner that she had lighted on his secret, she refused to think further, and, shaking out the silk handkerchief, entered the dining-room. "i chose the softest, father." "h'm!" said soames; "i only use those after a cold. never mind!" that evening passed for fleur in putting two and two together; recalling the look on her father's face in the confectioner's shop--a look strange, and coldly intimate, a queer look. he must have loved that woman very much to have kept her photograph all this time, in spite of having lost her. unsparing and matter-of-fact, her mind darted to his relations with her own mother. had he ever really loved her? she thought not. jon was the son of the woman he had really loved. surely, then, he ought not to mind his daughter loving him; it only wanted getting used to. and a sigh of sheer relief was caught in the folds of her nightgown slipping over her head. iii meetings youth only recognises age by fits and starts. jon, for one, had never really seen his father's age till he came back from spain. the face of the fourth jolyon, worn by waiting, gave him quite a shock--it looked so wan and old. his father's mask had been forced awry by the emotion of the meeting, so that the boy suddenly realised how much he must have felt their absence. he summoned to his aid the thought: 'well, i didn't want to go!' it was out of date for youth to defer to age. but jon was by no means typically modern. his father had always been "so jolly" to him, and to feel that one meant to begin again at once the conduct which his father had suffered six weeks' loneliness to cure, was not agreeable. at the question, "well, old man, how did the great goya strike you?" his conscience pricked him badly. the great goya only existed because he had created a face which resembled fleur's. on the night of their return he went to bed full of compunction; but awoke full of anticipation. it was only the fifth of july, and no meeting was fixed with fleur until the ninth. he was to have three days at home before going back to farm. somehow he must contrive to see her! in the lives of men an inexorable rhythm, caused by the need for trousers, not even the fondest parents can deny. on the second day, therefore, jon went to town, and having satisfied his conscience by ordering what was indispensable in conduit street, turned his face towards piccadilly. stratton street, where her club was, adjoined devonshire house. it would be the merest chance that she should be at her club. but he dawdled down bond street with a beating heart, noticing the superiority of all other young men to himself. they wore their clothes with such an air; they had assurance; they were old. he was suddenly overwhelmed by the conviction that fleur must have forgotten him. absorbed in his own feeling for her all these weeks, he had mislaid that possibility. the corners of his mouth drooped, his hands felt clammy. fleur with the pick of youth at the beck of her smile--fleur incomparable! it was an evil moment. jon, however, had a great idea that one must be able to face anything. and he braced himself with that dour reflection in front of a bric-a-brac shop. at this high-water mark of what was once the london season, there was nothing to mark it out from any other except a grey top hat or two, and the sun. jon moved on, and turning the corner into piccadilly, ran into val dartie moving towards the iseeum club, to which he had just been elected. "hallo! young man! where are you off to?" jon flushed. "i've just been to my tailor's." val looked him up and down. "that's good! i'm going in here to order some cigarettes, then come and have some lunch." jon thanked him. he might get news of her from val. the condition of england, that nightmare of its press and public men, was seen in different perspective within the tobacconist's which they now entered. "yes, sir; precisely the cigarette i used to supply your father with. bless me! mr. montague dartie was a customer here from--let me see--the year melton won the derby. one of my very best customers he was." and a faint smile illumined the tobacconist's face. "many's the tip he's given me, to be sure! i suppose he took a couple of hundred of these every week, year in, year out, and never changed his cigarette. very affable gentleman, brought me a lot of custom. i was sorry he met with that accident. one misses an old customer like him." val smiled. his father's decease had closed an account which had been running longer, probably, than any other; and in a ring of smoke puffed out from that time-honoured cigarette he seemed to see again his father's face, dark, good-looking, moustachioed, a little puffy, in the only halo it had earned. his father had his fame here, anyway--a man who smoked two hundred cigarettes a week, who could give tips, and run accounts for ever! to his tobacconist a hero! even that was some distinction to inherit! "i pay cash," he said; "how much?" "to his son, sir, and cash--ten and six. i shall never forget mr. montague dartie. i've known him stand talkin' to me half an hour. we don't get many like him now, with everybody in such a hurry. the war was bad for manners, sir--it was bad for manners. you were in it, i see." "no," said val, tapping his knee, "i got this in the war before. saved my life, i expect. do you want any cigarettes, jon?" rather ashamed, jon murmured: "i don't smoke, you know," and saw the tobacconist's lips twisted, as if uncertain whether to say "good god!" or "now's your chance, sir!" "that's right," said val; "keep off it while you can. you'll want it when you take a knock. this is really the same tobacco, then?" "identical, sir; a little dearer, that's all. wonderful staying power--the british empire, i always say." "send me down a hundred a week to this address, and invoice it monthly. come on, jon." jon entered the iseeum with curiosity. except to lunch now and then at the hotch-potch with his father, he had never been in a london club. the iseeum, comfortable and unpretentious, did not move, could not, so long as george forsyte sat on its committee, where his culinary acumen was almost the controlling force. the club had made a stand against the newly rich, and it had taken all george forsyte's prestige, and praise of him as a "good sportsman," to bring in prosper profond. the two were lunching together when the half-brothers-in-law entered the dining-room, and attracted by george's forefinger, sat down at their table, val with his shrewd eyes and charming smile, jon with solemn lips and an attractive shyness in his glance. there was an air of privilege around that corner table, as though past masters were eating there. jon was fascinated by the hypnotic atmosphere. the waiter, lean in the chaps, pervaded with such freemasonical deference. he seemed to hang on george forsyte's lips, to watch the gloat in his eye with a kind of sympathy, to follow the movements of the heavy club-marked silver fondly. his liveried arm and confidential voice alarmed jon, they came so secretly over one's shoulder. except for george's: "your grandfather tipped me once; he was a deuced good judge of a cigar!" neither he nor the other past master took any notice of him, and he was grateful for this. the talk was all about the breeding, points, and prices of horses, and he listened to it vaguely at first, wondering how it was possible to retain so much knowledge in a head. he could not take his eyes off the dark past master--what he said was so deliberate and discouraging--such heavy, queer, smiled-out words. jon was thinking of butterflies, when he heard him say: "i want to see mr. soames forsyde take an interest in 'orses." "old soames! he's too dry a file!" with all his might jon tried not to grow red, while the dark past master went on. "his daughter's an attractive small girl. mr. soames forsyde is a bit old-fashioned. i want to see him have a pleasure some day." george forsyte grinned. "don't you worry; he's not so miserable as he looks. he'll never show he's enjoying anything--they might try and take it from him. old soames! once bit, twice shy!" "well, jon," said val hastily, "if you've finished, we'll go and have coffee." "who were those?" jon asked on the stairs: "i didn't quite--" "old george forsyte is a first cousin of your father's, and of my uncle soames. he's always been here. the other chap, profond, is a queer fish. i think he's hanging round soames' wife, if you ask me!" jon looked at him, startled. "but that's awful," he said: "i mean--for fleur." "don't suppose fleur cares very much; she's very up-to-date." "her mother!" "you're very green, jon." jon grew red. "mothers," he stammered angrily, "are different." "you're right," said val suddenly; "but things aren't what they were when i was your age. there's a 'tomorrow we die' feeling. that's what old george meant about my uncle soames. he doesn't mean to die tomorrow." jon said quickly: "what's the matter between him and my father?" "stable secret, jon. take my advice, and bottle up. you'll do no good by knowing. have a liqueur?" jon shook his head. "i hate the way people keep things from one," he muttered, "and then sneer at one for being green." "well, you can ask holly. if she won't tell you, you'll believe it's for your own good, i suppose." jon got up. "i must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch." val smiled up at him, half-sorry and yet amused. the boy looked so upset. "all right! see you on friday." "i don't know," murmured jon. and he did not. this conspiracy of silence made him desperate. it was humiliating to be treated like a child. he retraced his moody steps to stratton street. but he would go to her club now, and find out the worst. to his inquiry the reply was that miss forsyte was not in the club. she might be in perhaps later. she was often in on monday--they could not say. jon said he would call again, and, crossing into the green park, flung himself down under a tree. the sun was bright, and a breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he lay; but his heart ached. such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. he heard big ben chime "three" above the traffic. the sound moved something in him, and taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil. he had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder--a green parasol. there above him stood fleur! "they told me you'd been, and were coming back. so i thought you might be out here; and you are--it's rather wonderful!" "oh, fleur! i thought you'd have forgotten me." "when i told you that i shouldn't!" jon seized her arm. "it's too much luck! let's get away from this side." he almost dragged her on through that too thoughtfully regulated park, to find some cover where they could sit and hold each other's hands. "hasn't anybody cut in?" he said, gazing round at her lashes, in suspense above her cheeks. "there is a young idiot, but he doesn't count." jon felt a twitch of compassion for the--young idiot. "you know i've had sunstroke, i didn't tell you." "really! was it interesting?" "no. mother was an angel. has anything happened to you?" "nothing. except that i think i've found out what's wrong between our families, jon." his heart began beating very fast. "i believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father got her instead." "oh!" "i came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of me. of course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made him pretty mad, wouldn't it?" jon thought for a minute. "not if she loved my father best." "but suppose they were engaged?" "if we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, i might go cracked, but i shouldn't grudge it you." "i should. you mustn't ever do that with me, jon." "my god! not much!" "i don't believe that he's ever really cared for my mother." jon was silent. val's words, the two past masters in the club! "you see, we don't know," went on fleur; "it may have been a great shock. she may have behaved badly to him. people do." "my mother wouldn't." fleur shrugged her shoulders. "i don't think we know much about our fathers and mothers. we just see them in the light of the way they treat us; but they've treated other people, you know, before we were born--plenty, i expect. you see, they're both old. look at your father, with three separate families!" "isn't there any place," cried jon, "in all this beastly london where we can be alone?" "only a taxi." "let's get one, then." when they were installed, fleur asked suddenly: "are you going back to robin hill? i should like to see where you live, jon. i'm staying with my aunt for the night, but i could get back in time for dinner. i wouldn't come to the house, of course." jon gazed at her enraptured. "splendid! i can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet anybody. there's a train at four." the god of property and his forsytes great and small, leisured, official, commercial, or professional, unlike the working classes, still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth generation travelled down to robin hill in an empty first-class carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early train. they travelled in blissful silence, holding each other's hands. at the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or two unknown to jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of dust and honeysuckle. for jon--sure of her now, and without separation before him--it was a miraculous dawdle, more wonderful than those on the downs, or along the river thames. it was love-in-a-mist--one of those illumined pages of life, where every word and smile, and every light touch they gave each other were as little gold and red and blue butterflies and flowers and birds scrolled in among the text--a happy communing, without afterthought, which lasted twenty-seven minutes. they reached the coppice at the milking-hour. jon would not take her as far as the farmyard; only to where she could see the field leading up to the gardens, and the house beyond. they turned in among the larches, and suddenly, at the winding of the path, came on irene, sitting on an old log seat. there are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae; to the nerves; to moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal dignity. this last was the shock jon received, coming thus on his mother. he became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate thing. to have brought fleur down openly--yes! but to sneak her in like this! consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his nature would permit. fleur was smiling a little defiantly; his mother's startled face was changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious. it was she who uttered the first words: "i'm very glad to see you. it was nice of jon to think of bringing you down to us." "we weren't coming to the house," jon blurted out. "i just wanted fleur to see where i lived." his mother said quietly: "won't you come up and have tea?" feeling that he had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he heard fleur answer: "thanks very much; i have to get back to dinner. i met jon by accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see his home." how self-possessed she was! "of course; but you must have tea. we'll send you down to the station. my husband will enjoy seeing you." the expression of his mother's eyes, resting on him for a moment, cast jon down level with the ground--a true worm. then she led on, and fleur followed her. he felt like a child, trailing after those two, who were talking so easily about spain and wansdon, and the house up there beyond the trees and the grassy slope. he watched the fencing of their eyes, taking each other in--the two beings he loved most in the world. he could see his father sitting under the oak-tree; and suffered in advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes of that tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant; already he could feel the faint irony which would come into his voice and smile. "this is fleur forsyte, jolyon; jon brought her down to see the house. let's have tea at once--she has to catch a train. jon, tell them, dear, and telephone to the dragon for a car." to leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up into the house. now he would not see fleur alone again--not for a minute, and they had arranged no further meeting! when he returned under cover of the maids and teapots, there was not a trace of awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself, but not the less for that. they were talking of the gallery off cork street. "we back-numbers," his father was saying, "are awfully anxious to find out why we can't appreciate the new stuff; you and jon must tell us." "it's supposed to be satiric, isn't it?" said fleur. he saw his father's smile. "satiric? oh! i think it's more than that. what do you say, jon?" "i don't know at all," stammered jon. his father's face had a sudden grimness. "the young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals. off with their heads, they say--smash their idols! and let's get back to--nothing! and, by jove, they've done it! jon's a poet. he'll be going in, too, and stamping on what's left of us. property, beauty, sentiment--all smoke. we mustn't own anything nowadays, not even our feelings. they stand in the way of--nothing." jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words, behind which he felt a meaning that he could not reach. he didn't want to stamp on anything! "nothing's the god of to-day," continued jolyon; "we're back where the russians were sixty years ago, when they started nihilism." "no, dad," cried jon suddenly; "we only want to live, and we don't know how, because of the past--that's all!" "by george!" said jolyon, "that's profound, jon. is it your own? the past! old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath. let's have cigarettes." conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips, quickly, as if to hush something, jon handed the cigarettes. he lighted his father's and fleur's, then one for himself. had he taken the knock that val had spoken of? the smoke was blue when he had not puffed, grey when he had; he liked the sensation in his nose, and the sense of equality it gave him. he was glad no one said: "so you've begun!" he felt less young. fleur looked at her watch, and rose. his mother went with her into the house. jon stayed with his father, puffing at the cigarette. "see her into the car, old man," said jolyon; "and when she's gone, ask your mother to come back to me." jon went. he waited in the hall. he saw her into the car. there was no chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand. he waited all that evening for something to be said to him. nothing was said. nothing might have happened. he went up to bed; and in the mirror on his dressing-table met himself. he did not speak, nor did the image; but both looked as if they thought the more. iv in green street uncertain, whether the impression that prosper profond was dangerous should be traced to his attempt to give val the mayfly filly; to the remark of fleur's: "isn't he a great cat? prowling!" to his preposterous inquiry of jack cardigan: "what's the use of keepin' fit?" or, more simply, to the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as it was now called. certain that annette was looking particularly handsome, and that soames had sold him a gauguin and then torn up the cheque, so that monsieur profond himself had said: "i didn't get that small picture i bought from mr. forsyde." however suspiciously regarded, he still frequented winifred's evergreen little house in green street, with a good-natured obtuseness which no one mistook for naivete; a word hardly applicable to monsieur prosper profond. winifred still found him "amusing," and would write him little notes saying: "come and have a 'jolly' with us"--it was breath of life to her to keep up with the phrases of the day. the mystery, with which all felt him to be surrounded, was due to his having done, seen, heard, and known everything, and found nothing in it--which was unnatural. the english type of disillusionment was familiar enough to winifred, who had always moved in fashionable circles. it gave a certain cachet or distinction, so that one got something out of it. but to see nothing in anything, not as a pose, but because there was nothing in anything, was not english; and that which was not english one could not help secretly feeling dangerous, if not precisely bad form. it was like having the mood which the war had left, seated--dark, heavy, smiling, indifferent--in your empire chair; it was like listening to that mood talking through thick pink lips above a little diabolic beard. it was, as jack cardigan expressed it--for the english character at large--"a bit too thick"--for if nothing was really worth getting excited about, there were always games, and one could make it so! even winifred, ever a forsyte at heart, felt that there was nothing to be had out of a mood of disillusionment; it really ought not to be there. monsieur profond, in fact, made the mood too plain, in a country which decently veiled such realities. when fleur, after her hurried return from robin hill, came down to dinner that evening, the mood was standing at the window of winifred's little drawing-room, looking out into green street, with an air of seeing nothing in it. and fleur gazed promptly into the fireplace with an air of seeing a fire which was not there. monsieur profond came from the window. he was in full fig, with a white waistcoat and a white flower in his buttonhole. "well, miss forsyde," he said, "i'm awful pleased to see you. mr. forsyde well? i was sayin' to-day i want to see him have some pleasure. he worries." "you think so?" said fleur shortly. "worries," repeated monsieur profond, burring the r's. fleur spun round. "shall i tell you," she said, "what would give him pleasure?" but the words: "to hear that you had cleared out" died at the expression on his face. all his fine white teeth were showing. "i was hearin' at the club to-day, about his old trouble." "what do you mean?" monsieur profond moved his sleek head as if to minimise his statement. "before you were born," he said; "that small business." though conscious that he had cleverly diverted her from his own share in her father's worry, fleur could not withstand a rush of nervous curiosity. "what did you hear?" "why!" murmured monsieur profond, "you know all that." "i expect i do. but i should like to know that you haven't heard it all wrong." "his first wife," murmured monsieur profond. choking back the words: "he was never married before"; she said: "well, what about her?" "mr. george forsyde was tellin' me about your father's first wife marryin' his cousin jolyon afterwards. it was a small bit unpleasant, i should think. i saw their boy--nice boy!" fleur looked up. monsieur profond was swimming, heavily diabolical, before her. that--the reason! with the most heroic effort of her life so far, she managed to arrest that swimming figure. she could not tell whether he had noticed. and just then winifred came in. "oh! here you both are already! imogen and i have had the most amusing afternoon at the babies' bazaar." "what babies?" said fleur mechanically. "the 'save the babies.' i got such a bargain, my dear. a piece of old armenian work--from before the flood. i want your opinion on it, prosper." "auntie," whispered fleur suddenly. at the tone in the girl's voice winifred closed in on her. "what's the matter? aren't you well?" monsieur profond had withdrawn into the window, where he was practically out of hearing. "auntie, he told me that father has been married before. is it true that he divorced her, and she married jon forsyte's father?" never in all the life of the mother of four little darties had winifred felt more seriously embarrassed. her niece's face was so pale, her eyes so dark, her voice so whispery and strained. "your father didn't wish you to hear," she said, with all the aplomb she could muster. "these things will happen. i've often told him he ought to let you know." "oh!" said fleur, and that was all, but it made winifred pat her shoulder--a firm little shoulder, nice and white! she never could help an appraising eye and touch in the matter of her niece, who would have to be married, of course--though not to that boy jon. "we've forgotten all about it years and years ago," she said comfortably. "come and have dinner!" "no, auntie. i don't feel very well. may i go upstairs?" "my dear!" murmured winifred, concerned; "you're not taking this to heart? why, you haven't properly come out yet! that boy's a child!" "what boy? i've only got a headache. but i can't stand that man to-night." "well, well," said winifred; "go and lie down. i'll send you some bromide, and i shall talk to prosper profond. what business had he to gossip? though i must say i think it's much better you should know." fleur smiled. "yes," she said, and slipped from the room. she went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her throat, a fluttered, frightened feeling in her breast. never in her life as yet had she suffered from even momentary fear that she would not get what she had set her heart on. the sensations of the afternoon had been full, and poignant, and this gruesome discovery coming on the top of them had really made her head ache. no wonder her father had hidden that photograph so secretly behind her own--ashamed of having kept it! but could he hate jon's mother and yet keep her photograph? she pressed her hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly. had they told jon--had her visit to robin hill forced them to tell him? everything now turned on that! she knew, they all knew, except--perhaps--jon! she walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately hard. jon loved his mother. if they had told him, what would he do? she could not tell. but if they had not told him, should she not--could she not get him for herself--get married to him, before he knew? she searched her memories of robin hill. his mother's face so passive--with its dark eyes and as if powdered hair, its reserve, its smile--baffled her; and his father's--kindly, sunken, ironic. instinctively she felt they would shrink from telling jon, even now, shrink from hurting him--for of course it would hurt him awfully to know! her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew. so long as neither she herself nor jon were supposed to know, there was still a chance--freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what her heart was set on. but she was almost overwhelmed by her isolation. every one's hand was against her--every one's! it was as jon had said--he and she just wanted to live and the past was in their way, a past they hadn't shared in, and didn't understand! oh! what a shame! and suddenly she thought of june. would she help them? for somehow june had left on her the impression that she would be sympathetic with their love, impatient of obstacle. then, instinctively, she thought: 'i won't give anything away, though, even to her. i daren't! i mean to have jon; in spite of them all.' soup was brought up to her, and one of winifred's pet headache cachets. she swallowed both. then winifred herself appeared. fleur opened her campaign with the words: "you know, auntie, i do wish people wouldn't think i'm in love with that boy. why, i've hardly seen him!" winifred, though experienced, was not 'fine'. she accepted the remark with considerable relief. of course, it was not pleasant for the girl to hear of the family scandal, and she set herself to minimise the matter, a task for which she was eminently qualified, raised fashionably under a comfortable mother and a father whose nerves might not be shaken, and for many years the wife of montague dartie. her description was a masterpiece of understatement. fleur's father's first wife had been very foolish. there had been a young man who had got run over, and she had left fleur's father. then, years after, when it might all have come right again, she had taken up with their cousin jolyon; and, of course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce. nobody remembered anything of it now, except just the family. and, perhaps, it had all turned out for the best; her father had fleur; and jolyon and irene had been quite happy, they said, and their boy was a nice boy. "val having holly, too, is a sort of plaster, don't you know?" with these soothing words, winifred patted her niece's shoulder, thought: "she's a nice, plump little thing!" and went back to prosper profond, who, in spite of his indiscretion, was very "amusing" this evening. for some minutes after her aunt had gone fleur remained under influence of bromide material and spiritual. but then reality came back. her aunt had left out all that mattered--all the feeling, the hate, the love, the unforgivingness of passionate hearts. she, who knew so little of life, and had touched only the fringe of love, was yet aware by instinct that words have as little relation to fact and feeling as coin to the bread it buys. 'poor father!' she thought. 'poor me! poor jon! but i don't care, i mean to have him!' from the window of her darkened room she saw "that man" issue from the door below and "prowl" away. if he and her mother--how would that affect her chance? surely it must make her father cling to her more closely, so that he would consent in the end to anything she wanted, or become reconciled the sooner to what she did without his knowledge. she took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with all her might flung it after that disappearing figure. it fell short, but the action did her good. and a little puff of air came up from green street, smelling of petrol, not sweet. v purely forsyte affairs soames, coming up to the city, with the intention of calling in at green street at the end of his day and taking fleur back home with him, suffered from rumination. sleeping partner that he was, he seldom visited the city now, but he still had a room of his own at cuthcott kingson & forsyte's, and one special clerk and a half assigned to the management of purely forsyte affairs. they were somewhat in flux just now--an auspicious moment for the disposal of house property. and soames was unloading the estates of his father and uncle roger, and to some extent of his uncle nicholas. his shrewd and matter-of-course probity in all money concerns had made him something of an autocrat in connection with these trusts. if soames thought this or thought that, one had better save oneself the bother of thinking too. he guaranteed, as it were, irresponsibility to numerous forsytes of the third and fourth generations. his fellow trustees, such as his cousins roger or nicholas, his cousins-in-law tweetyman and spender, or his sister cicely's husband all trusted him; he signed first, and where he signed first they signed after, and nobody was a penny the worse. just now they were all a good many pennies the better, and soames was beginning to see the close of certain trusts, except for distribution of the income from securities as gilt-edged as was compatible with the period. passing the more feverish parts of the city towards the most perfect backwater in london, he ruminated. money was extraordinarily tight; and morality extraordinarily loose! the war had done it. banks were not lending; people breaking contracts all over the place. there was a feeling in the air and a look on faces that he did not like. the country seemed in for a spell of gambling and bankruptcies. there was satisfaction in the thought that neither he nor his trusts had an investment which could be affected by anything less maniacal than national repudiation or a levy on capital. if soames had faith, it was in what he called "english common sense"--or the power to have things, if not one way then another. he might--like his father james before him--say he didn't know what things were coming to, but he never in his heart believed they were. if it rested with him, they wouldn't--and, after all, he was only an englishman like any other, so quietly tenacious of what he had that he knew he would never really part with it without something more or less equivalent in exchange. take his own case, for example! he was well off. did that do anybody harm? he did not eat ten meals a day; he ate no more than, perhaps not so much as, a poor man. he spent no money on vice; breathed no more air, used no more water to speak of than the mechanic or the porter. he certainly had pretty things about him, but they had given employment in the making, and somebody must use them. he bought pictures, but art must be encouraged. he was, in fact, an accidental channel through which money flowed, employing labour. what was there objectionable in that? in his charge money was in quicker and more useful flux than it would be in charge of the state and a lot of slow-fly money-sucking officials. and as to what he saved each year--it was just as much in flux as what he didn't save, going into water board or council stocks, or something sound and useful. the state paid him no salary for being trustee of his own or other people's money--he did all that for nothing. therein lay the whole case against nationalisation--owners of private property were unpaid, and yet had every incentive to quicken up the flux. under nationalisation--just the opposite! in a country smarting from officialism he felt that he had a strong case. it particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect peace, to think that a lot of unscrupulous trusts and combinations had been cornering the market in goods of all kinds, and keeping prices at an artificial height. such abusers of the individualistic system were the ruffians who caused all the trouble, and it was some satisfaction to see them getting into a stew at last lest the whole thing might come down with a run-and land in the soup. the offices of cuthcott kingson & forsyte occupied the ground and first floors of a house on the right-hand side; and, ascending to his room, soames thought: 'time we had a coat of paint.' his old clerk gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge bureau with countless pigeonholes. half-the-clerk stood beside him, with a broker's note recording investment of the proceeds from sale of the bryanston square house, in roger forsyte's estate. soames took it, and said: "vancouver city stock. h'm! it's down to-day!" with a sort of grating ingratiation old gradman answered him: "ye-es; but everything's down, mr. soames." and half-the-clerk withdrew. soames skewered the document onto a number of other papers and hung up his hat. "i want to look at my will and marriage settlement, gradman." old gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out two drafts from the bottom left-hand drawer. recovering his body, he raised his grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping. "copies, sir." soames took them. it struck him suddenly how like gradman was to the stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his chain at 'the shelter,' till one day fleur had come and insisted it should be let loose, so that it had at once bitten the cook and been destroyed. if you let gradman off his chair, would he bite the cook? checking this frivolous fancy, soames unfolded his marriage settlement. he had not looked at it for over eighteen years, not since he remade his will when his father died and fleur was born. he wanted to see whether the words "during coverture" were in. yes, they were--odd expression, when you thought of it, and derived perhaps from horse-breeding! interest on fifteen thousand pounds (which he paid her without deducting income tax) so long as she remained his wife, and afterwards during widowhood "dum casta"--old-fashioned and rather pointed words, put in to insure the conduct of fleur's mother. his will made it up to an annuity of a thousand under the same conditions. all right! he returned the copies to gradman, who took them without looking up, swung the chair, restored the papers to their drawer, and went on casting up. "gradman! i don't like the condition of the country; there are a lot of people about without any common sense. i want to find a way by which i can safeguard miss fleur against anything which might arise." gradman wrote the figure " " on his blotting-paper. "ye-es," he said; "there's a nahsty spirit." "the ordinary restraint against anticipation doesn't meet the case." "nao," said gradman. "suppose those labour fellows come in, or worse! it's these people with fixed ideas who are the danger. look at ireland!" "ah!" said gradman. "suppose i were to make a settlement on her at once with myself as beneficiary for life, they couldn't take anything but the interest from me, unless of course they alter the law." gradman moved his head and smiled. "aoh!" he said, "they wouldn't do tha-at!" "i don't know," muttered soames; "i don't trust them." "it'll take two years, sir, to be valid against death duties." soames sniffed. two years! he was only sixty-five! "that's not the point. draw a form of settlement that passes all my property to miss fleur's children in equal shares, with antecedent life-interests first to myself and then to her without power of anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of anything happening to divert her life-interest, that interest passes to the trustees, to apply for her benefit, in their absolute discretion." gradman grated: "rather extreme at your age, sir; you lose control." "that's my business," said soames sharply. gradman wrote on a piece of paper. "life-interest--anticipation--divert interest--absolute discretion..." and said: "what trustees? there's young mr. kingson, he's a nice steady young fellow." "yes, he might do for one. i must have three. there isn't a forsyte now who appeals to me." "not young mr. nicholas? he's at the bar. we've given 'im briefs." "he'll never set the thames on fire," said soames. a smile oozed out on gradman's face, greasy with countless mutton-chops, the smile of a man who sits all day. "you can't expect it, at his age, mr. soames." "why? what is he? forty?" "ye-es, quite a young fellow." "well, put him in; but i want somebody who'll take a personal interest. there's no one that i can see." "what about mr. valerius, now he's come home?" "val dartie? with that father?" "we-ell," murmured gradman, "he's been dead seven years--the statute runs against him." "no," said soames. "i don't like the connection." he rose. gradman said suddenly: "if they were makin' a levy on capital, they could come on the trustees, sir. so there you'd be just the same. i'd think it over, if i were you." "that's true," said soames, "i will. what have you done about that dilapidation notice in vere street?" "i 'aven't served it yet. the party's very old. she won't want to go out at her age." "i don't know. this spirit of unrest touches every one." "still, i'm lookin' at things broadly, sir. she's eighty-one." "better serve it," said soames, "and see what she says. oh! and mr. timothy? is everything in order in case of accidents." "i've got the inventory of his estate all ready; had the furniture and pictures valued so that we know what reserves to put on. i shall be sorry when he goes, though. dear me! it is a time since i first saw mr. timothy!" "we can't live for ever," said soames, taking down his hat. "nao," said gradman; "but it'll be a pity--the last of the old family! shall i take up the matter of that nuisance in old compton street? those organs--they're nahsty things." "do. i must call for miss fleur and catch the four o'clock. good-day, gradman." "good-day, mr. soames. i hope miss fleur--" "well enough, but gads about too much." "ye-es," grated gradman; "she's young." soames went out, musing: "old gradman! if he were younger i'd put him in the trust. there's nobody i can depend on to take a real interest." leaving the bilious and mathematical exactitude, the preposterous peace of that backwater, he thought suddenly: 'during coverture! why can't they exclude fellows like profond, instead of a lot of hard-working germans?' and was surprised at the depth of uneasiness which could provoke so unpatriotic a thought. but there it was! one never got a moment of real peace. always something at the back of everything! and he made his way towards green street. two hours later by his watch, thomas gradman, stirring in his swivel chair, closed the last drawer of his bureau, and putting into his waistcoat pocket a bunch of keys so fat that they gave him a protuberance on the liver side, brushed his old top hat round with his sleeve, took his umbrella, and descended. thick, short, and buttoned closely into his old frock coat, he walked towards covent garden market. he never missed that daily promenade to the tube for highgate, and seldom some critical transaction on the way in connection with vegetables and fruit. generations might be born, and hats might change, wars be fought, and forsytes fade away, but thomas gradman, faithful and grey, would take his daily walk and buy his daily vegetable. times were not what they were, and his son had lost a leg, and they never gave him those nice little plaited baskets to carry the stuff in now, and these tubes were convenient things--still he mustn't complain; his health was good considering his time of life, and after fifty-four years in the law he was getting a round eight hundred a year and a little worried of late, because it was mostly collector's commission on the rents, and with all this conversion of forsyte property going on, it looked like drying up, and the price of living still so high; but it was no good worrying--"the good god made us all"--as he was in the habit of saying; still, house property in london--he didn't know what mr. roger or mr. james would say if they could see it being sold like this--seemed to show a lack of faith; but mr. soames--he worried. life and lives in being and twenty-one years after--beyond that you couldn't go; still, he kept his health wonderfully--and miss fleur was a pretty little thing--she was; she'd marry; but lots of people had no children nowadays--he had had his first child at twenty-two; and mr. jolyon, married while he was at cambridge, had his child the same year--gracious peter! that was back in ' , a long time before old mr. jolyon--fine judge of property--had taken his will away from mr. james--dear, yes! those were the days when they were buyin' property right and left, and none of this khaki and fallin' over one another to get out of things; and cucumbers at twopence; and a melon--the old melons, that made your mouth water! fifty years since he went into mr. james' office, and mr. james had said to him: "now, gradman, you're only a shaver--you pay attention, and you'll make your five hundred a year before you've done." and he had, and feared god, and served the forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night. and, buying a copy of john bull--not that he approved of it, an extravagant affair--he entered the tube elevator with his mere brown-paper parcel, and was borne down into the bowels of the earth. vi soames' private life on his way to green street it occurred to soames that he ought to go into dumetrius' in suffolk street about the possibility of the bolderby old crome. almost worth while to have fought the war to have the bolderby old crome, as it were, in flux! old bolderby had died, his son and grandson had been killed--a cousin was coming into the estate, who meant to sell it, some said because of the condition of england, others said because he had asthma. if dumetrius once got hold of it the price would become prohibitive; it was necessary for soames to find out whether dumetrius had got it, before he tried to get it himself. he therefore confined himself to discussing with dumetrius whether monticellis would come again now that it was the fashion for a picture to be anything except a picture; and the future of johns, with a side-slip into buxton knights. it was only when leaving that he added: "so they're not selling the bolderby old crome, after all?" in sheer pride of racial superiority, as he had calculated would be the case, dumetrius replied: "oh! i shall get it, mr. forsyte, sir." the flutter of his eyelid fortified soames in a resolution to write direct to the new bolderby, suggesting that the only dignified way of dealing with an old crome was to avoid dealers. he therefore said: "well, good-day!" and went, leaving dumetrius the wiser. at green street he found that fleur was out and would be all the evening; she was staying one more night in london. he cabbed on dejectedly, and caught his train. he reached his house about six o'clock. the air was heavy, midges biting, thunder about. taking his letters he went up to his dressing-room to cleanse himself of london. an uninteresting post. a receipt, a bill for purchases on behalf of fleur. a circular about an exhibition of etchings. a letter beginning: "sir, "i feel it my duty--" that would be an appeal or something unpleasant. he looked at once for the signature. there was none! incredulously he turned the page over and examined each corner. not being a public man, soames had never yet had an anonymous letter, and his first impulse was to tear it up, as a dangerous thing; his second to read it, as a thing still more dangerous. "sir, "i feel it my duty to inform you that having no interest in the matter your lady is carrying on with a foreigner--" reaching that word soames stopped mechanically and examined the post-mark. so far as he could pierce the impenetrable disguise in which the post office had wrapped it, there was something with a "sea" at the end and a "t" in it. chelsea? no! battersea? perhaps! he read on. "these foreigners are all the same. sack the lot! this one meets your lady twice a week. i know it of my own knowledge--and to see an englishman put on goes against the grain. you watch it and see if what i say isn't true. i shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty foreigner that's in it. yours obedient." the sensation with which soames dropped the letter was similar to that he would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full of black-beetles. the meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering obscenity to the moment. and the worst of it was that this shadow had been at the back of his mind ever since the sunday evening when fleur had pointed down at prosper profond strolling on the lawn, and said: "prowling cat!" had he not in connection therewith, this very day, perused his will and marriage settlement? and now this anonymous ruffian, with nothing to gain, apparently, save the venting of his spite against foreigners, had wrenched it out of the obscurity in which he had hoped and wished it would remain. to have such knowledge forced on him, at his time of life, about fleur's mother! he picked the letter up from the carpet, tore it across, and then, when it hung together by just the fold at the back, stopped tearing, and re-read it. he was taking at that moment one of the decisive resolutions of his life. he would not be forced into another scandal. no! however he decided to deal with this matter--and it required the most far-sighted and careful consideration--he would do nothing that might injure fleur. that resolution taken, his mind answered the helm again, and he made his ablutions. his hands trembled as he dried them. scandal he would not have, but something must be done to stop this sort of thing! he went into his wife's room and stood looking round him. the idea of searching for anything which would incriminate, and entitle him to hold a menace over her, did not even come to him. there would be nothing--she was much too practical. the idea of having her watched had been dismissed before it came--too well he remembered his previous experience of that. no! he had nothing but this torn-up letter from some anonymous ruffian, whose impudent intrusion into his private life he so violently resented. it was repugnant to him to make use of it, but he might have to. what a mercy fleur was not at home to-night! a tap on the door broke up his painful cogitations. "mr. michael mont, sir, is in the drawing-room. will you see him?" "no," said soames; "yes. i'll come down." anything that would take his mind off for a few minutes! michael mont in flannels stood on the verandah, smoking a cigarette. he threw it away as soames came up, and ran his hand through his hair. soames' feeling towards this young man was singular. he was no doubt a rackety, irresponsible young fellow according to old standards, yet somehow likeable, with his extraordinarily cheerful way of blurting out his opinions. "come in," he said; "have you had tea?" mont came in. "i thought fleur would have been back, sir; but i'm glad she isn't. the fact is, i--i'm fearfully gone on her; so fearfully gone that i thought you'd better know. it's old-fashioned, of course, coming to fathers first, but i thought you'd forgive that. i went to my own dad, and he says if i settle down he'll see me through. he rather cottons to the idea, in fact. i told him about your goya." "oh!" said soames, inexpressibly dry. "he rather cottons?" "yes, sir; do you?" soames smiled faintly. "you see," resumed mont, twiddling his straw hat, while his hair, ears, eyebrows, all seemed to stand up from excitement, "when you've been through the war you can't help being in a hurry." "to get married; and unmarried afterwards," said soames slowly. "not from fleur, sir. imagine, if you were me!" soames cleared his throat. that way of putting it was forcible enough. "fleur's too young," he said. "oh! no, sir. we're awfully old nowadays. my dad seems to me a perfect babe; his thinking apparatus hasn't turned a hair. but he's a baronight, of course; that keeps him back." "baronight," repeated soames; "what may that be?" "bart, sir. i shall be a bart some day. but i shall live it down, you know." "go away and live this down," said soames. young mont said imploringly: "oh! no, sir. i simply must hang round, or i shouldn't have a dog's chance. you'll let fleur do what she likes, i suppose, anyway. madame passes me." "indeed!" said soames frigidly. "you don't really bar me, do you?" and the young man looked so doleful that soames smiled. "you may think you're very old," he said; "but you strike me as extremely young. to rattle ahead of everything is not a proof of maturity." "all right, sir; i give you our age. but to show you i mean business--i've got a job." "glad to hear it." "joined a publisher; my governor is putting up the stakes." soames put his hand over his mouth--he had so very nearly said: "god help the publisher." his grey eyes scrutinised the agitated young man. "i don't dislike you, mr. mont, but fleur is everything to me. everything--do you understand?" "yes, sir, i know; but so she is to me." "that's as may be. i'm glad you've told me, however. and now i think there's nothing more to be said." "i know it rests with her, sir." "it will rest with her a long time, i hope." "you aren't cheering," said mont suddenly. "no," said soames; "my experience of life has not made me anxious to couple people in a hurry. good-night, mr. mont. i shan't tell fleur what you've said." "oh!" murmured mont blankly; "i really could knock my brains out for want of her. she knows that perfectly well." "i dare say," and soames held out his hand. a distracted squeeze, a heavy sigh, and, soon after, sounds from the young man's motor-cycle called up visions of flying dust and broken bones. 'the younger generation!' he thought heavily, and went out on to the lawn. the gardeners had been mowing, and there was still the smell of fresh-cut grass--the thundery air kept all scents close to earth. the sky was of a purplish hue--the poplars black. two or three boats passed on the river, scuttling, as it were, for shelter before the storm. 'three days fine weather,' thought soames, 'and then a storm!' where was annette? with that chap, for all he knew--she was a young woman! impressed with the queer charity of that thought, he entered the summer-house and sat down. the fact was--and he admitted it--fleur was so much to him that his wife was very little--very little; french--had hardly been more than a mistress, and he was getting indifferent to that side of things! it was odd how, with all his ingrained care for moderation and secure investment, soames ever put his emotional eggs into one basket. first irene--now fleur. he was just conscious of it, sitting there, conscious of its odd dangerousness. it had brought him to wreck and scandal once, but now--now it should save him! he cared so much for fleur that he would have no further scandal. if only he could get at that anonymous letter writer, he would teach the fellow not to meddle and stir up mud at the bottom of water which he wished should remain stagnant!... a distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of rain spattered on the thatch above him. he remained indifferent, tracing a pattern with his finger on the dusty surface of a little rustic table. fleur's future! 'i want fair sailing for her,' he thought. 'nothing else matters at my time of life.' a lonely business--life! what you had you never could keep to yourself! as you warned one off, you let another in. one could make sure of nothing! he reached up and pulled a red rambler rose from a cluster which blocked the window. flowers grew and dropped--you couldn't keep them! the thunder rumbled and crashed, travelling east along the river, the paling flashes flicked his eyes; the poplar tops showed sharp and dense against the sky, a heavy shower rustled and rattled and veiled in the little house wherein he sat, indifferent, thinking. when the storm was over, he left his retreat and went down the wet path to the river bank. two swans had come, sheltering in among the reeds. he knew the birds well, and stood watching the dignity in the curve of those white necks and formidable snake-like heads. 'not dignified--what i have to do!' he thought. and yet it must be tackled, lest worse befell. annette must be back by now from wherever she had gone, for it was nearly dinner-time, and as the moment for seeing her approached, the difficulty of knowing what to say and how to say it had increased. a new and scaring thought occurred to him. suppose she wanted her liberty to marry this fellow! well, if she did, she couldn't have it. he had not married her for that. the image of prosper profond dawdled before him reassuringly. not a marrying man! no, no! anger replaced that momentary scare. 'he had better not come my way,' he thought. the mongrel represented--! ah! what did prosper profond represent? nothing that mattered surely. and yet something real enough in the world--unmorality let off its chain, disillusionment on the prowl! that expression annette had caught from him: "je m'en fiche!" a fatalistic chap! a continental--a cosmopolitan--a product of the age! if there were condemnation more complete, soames felt that he did not know it. the swans had turned their heads, and were looking past him into some distance of their own. one of them uttered a little hiss, wagged its tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam away. the other followed. their white bodies, their stately necks, passed out of his sight, and he went towards the house. annette was in the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, and he thought as he went up-stairs: 'handsome is as handsome does.' handsome! except for remarks about the curtains in the drawing-room, and the storm, there was practically no conversation during a meal distinguished by exactitude of quantity and perfection of quality. soames drank nothing. he followed her into the drawing-room afterwards, and found her smoking a cigarette on the sofa between the two french windows. she was leaning back, almost upright, in a low black frock, with her knees crossed and her blue eyes half closed; grey-blue smoke issued from her red, rather full lips, a fillet bound her chestnut hair, she wore the thinnest silk stockings, and shoes with very high heels showing off her instep. a fine piece in any room! soames, who held that torn letter in a hand thrust deep into the side-pocket of his dinner-jacket, said: "i'm going to shut the window; the damp's lifting in." he did so, and stood looking at a david cox adorning the cream-panelled wall close by. what was she thinking of? he had never understood a woman in his life--except fleur--and fleur not always! his heart beat fast. but if he meant to do it, now was the moment. turning from the david cox, he took out the torn letter. "i've had this." her eyes widened, stared at him, and hardened. soames handed her the letter. "it's torn, but you can read it." and he turned back to the david cox--a seapiece, of good tone but without movement enough. 'i wonder what that chap's doing at this moment?' he thought. 'i'll astonish him yet.' out of the corner of his eye he saw annette holding the letter rigidly; her eyes moved from side to side under her darkened lashes and frowning darkened eyebrows. she dropped the letter, gave a little shiver, smiled, and said: "dirrty!" "i quite agree," said soames; "degrading. is it true?" a tooth fastened on her red lower lip. "and what if it were?" she was brazen! "is that all you have to say?" "no." "well, speak out!" "what is the good of talking?" soames said icily: "so you admit it?" "i admit nothing. you are a fool to ask. a man like you should not ask. it is dangerous." soames made a tour of the room, to subdue his rising anger. "do you remember," he said, halting in front of her, "what you were when i married you? working at accounts in a restaurant." "do you remember that i was not half your age?" soames broke off the hard encounter of their eyes, and went back to the david cox. "i am not going to bandy words. i require you to give up this--friendship. i think of the matter entirely as it affects fleur." "ah!--fleur!" "yes," said soames stubbornly; "fleur. she is your child as well as mine." "it is kind to admit that!" "are you going to do what i say?" "i refuse to tell you." "then i must make you." annette smiled. "no, soames," she said. "you are helpless. do not say things that you will regret." anger swelled the veins on his forehead. he opened his mouth to vent that emotion, and--could not. annette went on: "there shall be no more such letters, i promise you. that is enough." soames writhed. he had a sense of being treated like a child by this woman who had deserved he did not know what. "when two people have married, and lived like us, soames, they had better be quiet about each other. there are things one does not drag up into the light for people to laugh at. you will be quiet, then; not for my sake--for your own. you are getting old; i am not, yet. you have made me ver-ry practical." soames, who had passed through all the sensations of being choked, repeated dully: "i require you to give up this friendship." "and if i do not?" "then--then i will cut you out of my will." somehow it did not seem to meet the case. annette laughed. "you will live a long time, soames." "you--you are a bad woman," said soames suddenly. annette shrugged her shoulders. "i do not think so. living with you has killed things in me, it is true; but i am not a bad woman. i am sensible--that is all. and so will you be when you have thought it over." "i shall see this man," said soames sullenly, "and warn him off." "mon cher, you are funny. you do not want me, you have as much of me as you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead. i admit nothing, but i am not going to be dead, soames, at my age; so you had better be quiet, i tell you. i myself will make no scandal; none. now, i am not saying any more, whatever you do." she reached out, took a french novel off a little table, and opened it. soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his feelings. the thought of that man was almost making him want her, and this was a revelation of their relationship, startling to one little given to introspective philosophy. without saying another word he went out and up to the picture-gallery. this came of marrying a frenchwoman! and yet, without her there would have been no fleur! she had served her purpose. 'she's right,' he thought; 'i can do nothing. i don't even know that there's anything in it.' the instinct of self-preservation warned him to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air. unless one believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't. that night he went into her room. she received him in the most matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them. and he returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace. if one didn't choose to see, one needn't. and he did not choose--in future he did not choose. there was nothing to be gained by it--nothing! opening the drawer he took from the sachet a handkerchief, and the framed photograph of fleur. when he had looked at it a little he slipped it down, and there was that other one--that old one of irene. an owl hooted while he stood in his window gazing at it. the owl hooted, the red climbing roses seemed to deepen in colour, there came a scent of lime-blossom. god! that had been a different thing! passion--memory! dust! vii june takes a hand one who was a sculptor, a slav, a sometime resident in new york, an egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in june forsyte's studio on the bank of the thames at chiswick. on the evening of july , boris strumolowski--several of whose works were on show there because they were as yet too advanced to be on show anywhere else--had begun well, with that aloof and rather christlike silence which admirably suited his youthful, round, broad-cheekboned countenance framed in bright hair banged like a girl's. june had known him three weeks, and he still seemed to her the principal embodiment of genius, and hope of the future; a sort of star of the east which had strayed into an unappreciative west. until that evening he had conversationally confined himself to recording his impressions of the united states, whose dust he had just shaken from off his feet--a country, in his opinion, so barbarous in every way that he had sold practically nothing there, and become an object of suspicion to the police; a country, as he said, without a race of its own, without liberty, equality, or fraternity, without principles, traditions, taste, without--in a word--a soul. he had left it for his own good, and come to the only other country where he could live well. june had dwelt unhappily on him in her lonely moments, standing before his creations--frightening, but powerful and symbolic once they had been explained! that he, haloed by bright hair like an early italian painting, and absorbed in his genius to the exclusion of all else--the only sign of course by which real genius could be told--should still be a "lame duck" agitated her warm heart almost to the exclusion of paul post. and she had begun to take steps to clear her gallery, in order to fill it with strumolowski masterpieces. she had at once encountered trouble. paul post had kicked; vospovitch had stung. with all the emphasis of a genius which she did not as yet deny them, they had demanded another six weeks at least of her gallery. the american stream, still flowing in, would soon be flowing out. the american stream was their right, their only hope, their salvation--since nobody in this "beastly" country cared for art. june had yielded to the demonstration. after all boris would not mind their having the full benefit of an american stream, which he himself so violently despised. this evening she had put that to boris with nobody else present, except hannah hobdey, the mediaeval black-and-whitist, and jimmy portugal, editor of the neo-artist. she had put it to him with that sudden confidence which continual contact with the neo-artistic world had never been able to dry up in her warm and generous nature. he had not broken his christlike silence, however, for more than two minutes before she began to move her blue eyes from side to side, as a cat moves its tail. this--he said--was characteristic of england, the most selfish country in the world; the country which sucked the blood of other countries; destroyed the brains and hearts of irishmen, hindus, egyptians, boers, and burmese, all the finest races in the world; bullying, hypocritical england! this was what he had expected, coming to such a country, where the climate was all fog, and the people all tradesmen perfectly blind to art, and sunk in profiteering and the grossest materialism. conscious that hannah hobdey was murmuring: "hear, hear!" and jimmy portugal sniggering, june grew crimson, and suddenly rapped out: "then why did you ever come? we didn't ask you." the remark was so singularly at variance with all that she had led him to expect from her, that strumolowski stretched out his hand and took a cigarette. "england never wants an idealist," he said. but in june something primitively english was thoroughly upset; old jolyon's sense of justice had risen, as it were, from bed. "you come and sponge on us," she said, "and then abuse us. if you think that's playing the game, i don't." she now discovered that which others had discovered before her--the thickness of hide beneath which the sensibility of genius is sometimes veiled. strumolowski's young and ingenuous face became the incarnation of a sneer. "sponge, one does not sponge, one takes what is owing--a tenth part of what is owing. you will repent to say that, miss forsyte." "oh, no," said june, "i shan't." "ah! we know very well, we artists--you take us to get what you can out of us. i want nothing from you"--and he blew out a cloud of june's smoke. decision rose in an icy puff from the turmoil of insulted shame within her. "very well, then, you can take your things away." and, almost in the same moment, she thought: 'poor boy! he's only got a garret, and probably not a taxi fare. in front of these people, too; it's positively disgusting!' young strumolowski shook his head violently; his hair, thick, smooth, close as a golden plate, did not fall off. "i can live on nothing," he said shrilly; "i have often had to for the sake of my art. it is you bourgeois who force us to spend money." the words hit june like a pebble, in the ribs. after all she had done for art, all her identification with its troubles and lame ducks. she was struggling for adequate words when the door was opened, and her austrian murmured: "a young lady, gnadiges fraulein." "where?" "in the little meal-room." with a glance at boris strumolowski, at hannah hobdey, at jimmy portugal, june said nothing, and went out, devoid of equanimity. entering the "little meal-room," she perceived the young lady to be fleur--looking very pretty, if pale. at this disenchanted moment a lame duck of her own breed was welcome to june, so homoeopathic by instinct. the girl must have come, of course, because of jon; or, if not, at least to get something out of her. and june felt just then that to assist somebody was the only bearable thing. "so you've remembered to come," she said. "yes. what a jolly little duck of a house! but please don't let me bother you, if you've got people." "not at all," said june. "i want to let them stew in their own juice for a bit. have you come about jon?" "you said you thought we ought to be told. well, i've found out." "oh!" said june blankly. "not nice, is it?" they were standing one on each side of the little bare table at which june took her meals. a vase on it was full of iceland poppies; the girl raised her hand and touched them with a gloved finger. to her new-fangled dress, frilly about the hips and tight below the knees, june took a sudden liking--a charming colour, flax-blue. 'she makes a picture,' thought june. her little room, with its whitewashed walls, its floor and hearth of old pink brick, its black paint, and latticed window athwart which the last of the sunlight was shining, had never looked so charming, set off by this young figure, with the creamy, slightly frowning face. she remembered with sudden vividness how nice she herself had looked in those old days when her heart was set on philip bosinney, that dead lover, who had broken from her to destroy for ever irene's allegiance to this girl's father. did fleur know of that, too? "well," she said, "what are you going to do?" it was some seconds before fleur answered. "i don't want jon to suffer. i must see him once more to put an end to it." "you're going to put an end to it!" "what else is there to do?" the girl seemed to june, suddenly, intolerably spiritless. "i suppose you're right," she muttered. "i know my father thinks so; but--i should never have done it myself. i can't take things lying down." how poised and watchful that girl looked; how unemotional her voice sounded! "people will assume that i'm in love." "well, aren't you?" fleur shrugged her shoulders. 'i might have known it,' thought june; 'she's soames' daughter--fish! and yet--he!' "well, what do you want me to do?" she said with a sort of disgust. "could i see jon here to-morrow on his way down to holly's? he'd come if you sent him a line to-night, and perhaps afterwards you'd let them know quietly at robin hill that it's all over, and that they needn't tell jon about his mother." "all right!" said june abruptly. "i'll write now, and you can post it. half-past two to-morrow. i shan't be in, myself." she sat down at the tiny bureau which filled one corner. when she looked round with the finished note fleur was still touching the poppies with her gloved finger. june licked a stamp. "well, here it is. if you're not in love, of course, there's no more to be said. jon's lucky." fleur took the note. "thanks awfully!" 'cold-blooded little baggage!' thought june. jon, son of her father, to love, and not to be loved by the daughter of--soames! it was humiliating! "is that all?" fleur nodded; her frills shook and trembled as she swayed towards the door. "good-bye!" "good-bye! ... little piece of fashion!" muttered june, closing the door. "that family!" and she marched back towards her studio. boris strumolowski had regained his christlike silence, and jimmy portugal was damning everybody, except the group in whose behalf he ran the neo-artist. among the condemned were eric cobbley, and several other "lame-duck" genii who at one time or another had held first place in the repertoire of june's aid and adoration. she experienced a sense of futility and disgust, and went to the window to let the river-wind blow those squeaky words away. but when at length jimmy portugal had finished, and gone with hannah hobdey, she sat down and mothered young strumolowski for half an hour, promising him a month, at least, of the american stream; so that he went away with his halo in perfect order. 'in spite of all,' june thought, 'boris is wonderful.' viii the bit between the teeth to know that your hand is against every one's is--for some natures--to experience a sense of moral release. fleur felt no remorse when she left june's house. reading condemnatory resentment in her little kinswoman's blue eyes--she was glad that she had fooled her, despising june because that elderly idealist had not seen what she was after. end it, forsooth! she would soon show them all that she was only just beginning. and she smiled to herself on the top of the 'bus which carried her back to mayfair. but the smile died, squeezed out by spasms of anticipation and anxiety. would she be able to manage jon? she had taken the bit between her teeth, but could she make him take it too? she knew the truth and the real danger of delay--he knew neither; therein lay all the difference in the world. 'suppose i tell him,' she thought; 'wouldn't it really be safer?' this hideous luck had no right to spoil their love; he must see that! they could not let it! people always accepted an accomplished fact, in time! from that piece of philosophy--profound enough at her age--she passed to another consideration less philosophic. if she persuaded jon to a quick and secret marriage, and he found out afterwards that she had known the truth! what then? jon hated subterfuge. again, then, would it not be better to tell him? but the memory of his mother's face kept intruding on that impulse. fleur was afraid. his mother had power over him; more power perhaps than she herself. who could tell? it was too great a risk. deep-sunk in these instinctive calculations she was carried on past green street as far as the ritz hotel. she got down there, and walked back on the green park side. the storm had washed every tree; they still dripped. heavy drops fell on to her frills, and to avoid them she crossed over under the eyes of the iseeum club. chancing to look up she saw monsieur profond with a tall stout man in the bay window. turning into green street she heard her name called, and saw "that prowler" coming up. he took off his hat--a glossy "bowler" such as she particularly detested: "good-evenin'! miss forsyde. isn't there a small thing i can do for you?" "yes, pass by on the other side." "i say! why do you dislike me?" "it looks like it." "well, then, because you make me feel life isn't worth living." monsieur profond smiled. "look here, miss forsyde, don't worry. it'll be all right. nothing lasts." "things do last," cried fleur; "with me anyhow--especially likes and dislikes." "well, that makes me a bit un'appy." "i should have thought nothing could ever make you happy or unhappy." "i don't like to annoy other people. i'm goin' on my yacht." fleur looked at him, startled. "where?" "small voyage to the south seas or somewhere," said monsieur profond. fleur suffered relief and a sense of insult. clearly he meant to convey that he was breaking with her mother. how dared he have anything to break, and yet how dared he break it? "good-night, miss forsyde! remember me to mrs. dartie. i'm not so bad, really. good-night!" fleur left him standing there with his hat raised. stealing a look round, she saw him stroll--immaculate and heavy--back towards his club. 'he can't even love with conviction,' she thought. 'what will mother do?' her dreams that night were endless and uneasy; she rose heavy and unrested, and went at once to the study of whitaker's almanac. a forsyte is instinctively aware that facts are the real crux of any situation. she might conquer jon's prejudice, but without exact machinery to complete their desperate resolve, nothing would happen. from the invaluable tome she learned that they must each be twenty-one; or some one's consent would be necessary, which of course was unobtainable; then she became lost in directions concerning licenses, certificates, notices, districts, coming finally to the word "perjury." but that was nonsense! who would really mind their giving wrong ages in order to be married for love! she ate hardly any breakfast, and went back to whitaker. the more she studied the less sure she became; till, idly turning the pages, she came to scotland. people could be married there without any of this nonsense. she had only to go and stay there twenty-one days, then jon could come, and in front of two people they could declare themselves married. and what was more--they would be! it was far the best way; and at once she ran over her school-fellows. there was mary lambe who lived in edinburgh and was "quite a sport!" she had a brother too. she could stay with mary lambe, who with her brother would serve for witnesses. she well knew that some girls would think all this unnecessary, and that all she and jon need do was to go away together for a week-end and then say to their people: "we are married by nature, we must now be married by law." but fleur was forsyte enough to feel such a proceeding dubious, and to dread her father's face when he heard of it. besides, she did not believe that jon would do it; he had an opinion of her such as she could not bear to diminish. no! mary lambe was preferable, and it was just the time of year to go to scotland. more at ease now, she packed, avoided her aunt, and took a 'bus to chiswick. she was too early and went on to kew gardens. she found no peace among its flower-beds, labelled trees, and broad green spaces, and having lunched off anchovy-paste sandwiches and coffee, returned to chiswick and rang june's bell. the austrian admitted her to the "little meal-room." now that she knew what she and jon were up against, her longing for him had increased tenfold, as if he were a toy with sharp edges or dangerous paint such as they had tried to take from her as a child. if she could not have her way, and get jon for good and all, she felt like dying of privation. by hook or crook she must and would get him! a round dim mirror of very old glass hung over the pink brick hearth. she stood looking at herself reflected in it, pale, and rather dark under the eyes; little shudders kept passing through her nerves. then she heard the bell ring, and, stealing to the window, saw him standing on, the doorstep smoothing his hair and lips, as if he too were trying to subdue the fluttering of his nerves. she was sitting on one of the two rush-seated chairs, with her back to the door, when he came in, and she said at once: "sit down, jon, i want to talk seriously." jon sat on the table by her side, and without looking at him she went on: "if you don't want to lose me, we must get married." jon gasped. "why? is there anything new?" "no, but i felt it at robin hill, and among my people." "but--" stammered jon, "at robin hill--it was all smooth--and they've said nothing to me." "but they mean to stop us. your mother's face was enough. and my father's." "have you seen him since?" fleur nodded. what mattered a few supplementary lies? "but," said jon eagerly, "i can't see how they can feel like that after all these years." fleur looked up at him. "perhaps you don't love me enough." "not love you enough! why-i--" "then make sure of me" "without telling them?" "not till after." jon was silent. how much older he looked than on that day, barely two months ago, when she first saw him--quite two years older! "it would hurt mother awfully," he said. fleur drew her hand away. "you've got to choose." jon slid off the table onto his knees. "but why not tell them? they can't really stop us, fleur!" "they can! i tell you, they can." "how?" "we're utterly dependent--by putting money pressure, and all sorts of other pressure. i'm not patient, jon." "but it's deceiving them." fleur got up. "you can't really love me, or you wouldn't hesitate. 'he either fears his fate too much--!'" lifting his hands to her waist, jon forced her to sit down again. she hurried on: "i've planned it all out. we've only to go to scotland. when we're married they'll soon come round. people always come round to facts. don't you see, jon?" "but to hurt them so awfully!" so he would rather hurt her than those people of his! "all right, then; let me go!" jon got up and put his back against the door. "i expect you're right," he said slowly; "but i want to think it over." she could see that he was seething with feelings he wanted to express; but she did not mean to help him. she hated herself at this moment, and almost hated him. why had she to do all the work to secure their love? it wasn't fair. and then she saw his eyes, adoring and distressed. "don't look like that! i only don't want to lose you, jon." "you can't lose me so long as you want me." "oh, yes, i can." jon put his hands on her shoulders. "fleur, do you know anything you haven't told me?" it was the point-blank question she had dreaded. she looked straight at him, and answered: "no." she had burnt her boats; but what did it matter, if she got him? he would forgive her. and throwing her arms round his neck, she kissed him on the lips. she was winning! she felt it in the beating of his heart against her, in the closing of his eyes. "i want to make sure! i want to make sure!" she whispered. "promise!" jon did not answer. his face had the stillness of extreme trouble. at last he said: "it's like hitting them. i must think a little, fleur. i really must." fleur slipped out of his arms. "oh! very well!" and suddenly she burst into tears of disappointment, shame, and overstrain. followed five minutes of acute misery. jon's remorse and tenderness knew no bounds; but he did not promise. despite her will to cry: "very well, then, if you don't love me enough--good-bye!" she dared not. from birth accustomed to her own way, this check from one so young, so tender, so devoted, baffled and surprised her. she wanted to push him away from her, to try what anger and coldness would do, and again she dared not. the knowledge that she was scheming to rush him blindfold into the irrevocable weakened everything--weakened the sincerity of pique, and the sincerity of passion; even her kisses had not the lure she wished for them. that stormy little meeting ended inconclusively. "will you some tea, gnadiges fraulein?" pushing jon from her, she cried out: "no--no, thank you! i'm just going." and before he could prevent her she was gone. she went stealthily, mopping her flushed, stained cheeks, frightened, angry, very miserable. she had stirred jon up so fearfully, yet nothing definite was promised or arranged! but the more uncertain and hazardous the future, the more "the will to have" worked its tentacles into the flesh of her heart--like some burrowing tick! no one was at green street. winifred had gone with imogen to see a play which some said was allegorical, and others "very exciting, don't you know?" it was because of what others said that winifred and imogen had gone. fleur went on to paddington. through the carriage the air from the brick-kilns of west drayton and the late hay-fields fanned her still-flushed cheeks. flowers had seemed to be had for the picking; now they were all thorned and prickled. but the golden flower within the crown of spikes seemed to her tenacious spirit all the fairer and more desirable. ix fat in the fire on reaching home fleur found an atmosphere so peculiar that it penetrated even the perplexed aura of her own private life. her mother was in blue stockingette and a brown study; her father in a white felt hat and the vinery. neither of them had a word to throw to a dog. 'is it because of me?' thought fleur. 'or because of profond?' to her mother she said: "what's the matter with father?" her mother answered with a shrug of her shoulders. to her father: "what's the matter with mother?" her father answered: "matter? what should be the matter?" and gave her a sharp look. "by the way," murmured fleur, "monsieur profond is going a 'small' voyage on his yacht, to the south seas." soames examined a branch on which no grapes were growing. "this vine's a failure," he said. "i've had young mont here. he asked me something about you." "oh! how do you like him, father?" "he--he's a product--like all these young people." "what were you at his age, dear?" soames smiled grimly. "we went to work, and didn't play about--flying and motoring, and making love." "didn't you ever make love?" she avoided looking at him while she said that, but she saw him well enough. his pale face had reddened, his eyebrows, where darkness was still mingled with the grey, had come close together. "i had no time or inclination to philander." "perhaps you had a grand passion." soames looked at her intently. "yes--if you want to know--and much good it did me." he moved away, along by the hot-water pipes. fleur tiptoed silently after him. "tell me about it, father!" soames became very still. "what should you want to know about such things, at your age?" "is she alive?" he nodded. "and married?" "yes." "it's jon forsyte's mother, isn't it? and she was your wife first." it was said in a flash of intuition. surely his opposition came from his anxiety that she should not know of that old wound to his pride. but she was startled. to see some one so old and calm wince as if struck, to hear so sharp a note of pain in his voice! "who told you that? if your aunt--! i can't bear the affair talked of." "but, darling," said fleur, softly, "it's so long ago." "long ago or not, i--" fleur stood stroking his arm. "i've tried to forget," he said suddenly; "i don't wish to be reminded." and then, as if venting some long and secret irritation, he added: "in these days people don't understand. grand passion, indeed! no one knows what it is." "i do," said fleur, almost in a whisper. soames, who had turned his back on her, spun round. "what are you talking of--a child like you!" "perhaps i've inherited it, father." "what?" "for her son, you see." he was pale as a sheet, and she knew that she was as bad. they stood staring at each other in the steamy heat, redolent of the mushy scent of earth, of potted geranium, and of vines coming along fast. "this is crazy," said soames at last, between dry lips. scarcely moving her own, she murmured: "don't be angry, father. i can't help it." but she could see he wasn't angry; only scared, deeply scared. "i thought that foolishness," he stammered, "was all forgotten." "oh, no! it's ten times what it was." soames kicked at the hot-water pipe. the hapless movement touched her, who had no fear of her father--none. "dearest!" she said: "what must be, must, you know." "must!" repeated soames. "you don't know what you're talking of. has that boy been told?" the blood rushed into her cheeks. "not yet." he had turned from her again, and, with one shoulder a little raised, stood staring fixedly at a joint in the pipes. "it's most distasteful to me," he said suddenly; "nothing could be more so. son of that fellow--it's--it's--perverse!" she had noted, almost unconsciously, that he did not say "son of that woman," and again her intuition began working. did the ghost of that grand passion linger in some corner of his heart? she slipped her hand under his arm. "jon's father is quite ill and old; i saw him." "you--?" "yes, i went there with jon; i saw them both." "well, and what did they say to you?" "nothing. they were very polite." "they would be." he resumed his contemplation of the pipe-joint, and then said suddenly: "i must think this over--i'll speak to you again to-night." she knew this was final for the moment, and stole away, leaving him still looking at the pipe-joint. she wandered into the fruit-garden, among the raspberry and currant bushes, without impetus to pick and eat. two months ago--she was light-hearted! even two days ago--light-hearted, before prosper profond told her. now she felt tangled in a web--of passions, vested rights, oppressions and revolts, the ties of love and hate. at this dark moment of discouragement there seemed, even to her hold-fast nature, no way out. how deal with it--how sway and bend things to her will, and get her heart's desire? and, suddenly, round the corner of the high box hedge, she came plump on her mother, walking swiftly, with an open letter in her hand. her bosom was heaving, her eyes dilated, her cheeks flushed. instantly fleur thought: "the yacht! poor mother!" annette gave her a wide startled look, and said: "j'ai la migraine." "i'm awfully sorry, mother." "oh; yes! you and your father--sorry!" "but, mother--i am. i know what it feels like." annette's startled eyes grew wide, till the whites showed above them. "you innocent!" she said. her mother--so self-possessed, and commonsensical--to look and speak like this! it was all frightening! her father, her mother, herself! and only two months back they had seemed to have everything they wanted in this world. annette crumpled the letter in her hand. fleur knew that she must ignore the sight. "can't i do anything for your head, mother?" annette shook that head and walked on, swaying her hips. 'it's cruel,' thought fleur, 'and i was glad! that man! what do men come prowling for, disturbing everything! i suppose he's tired of her. what business has he to be tired of my mother? what business!' and at that thought, so natural and so peculiar, she uttered a little choked laugh. she ought, of course, to be delighted, but what was there to be delighted at? her father didn't really care! her mother did, perhaps? she entered the orchard, and sat down under a cherry-tree. a breeze sighed in the higher boughs; the sky seen through their green was very blue and very white in cloud--those heavy white clouds almost always present in river landscape. bees, sheltering out of the wind, hummed softly, and over the lush grass fell the thick shade from those fruit-trees planted by her father five-and-twenty years ago. birds were almost silent, the cuckoos had ceased to sing, but wood-pigeons were cooing. the breath and drone and cooing of high summer were not for long a sedative to her excited nerves. crouched over her knees she began to scheme. her father must be made to back her up. why should he mind so long as she was happy? she had not lived for nearly nineteen years without knowing that her future was all he really cared about. she had, then, only to convince him that her future could not be happy without jon. he thought it a mad fancy. how foolish the old were, thinking they could tell what the young felt! had not he confessed that he--when young--had loved with a grand passion! he ought to understand. 'he piles up his money for me,' she thought; 'but what's the use, if i'm not going to be happy?' money, and all it bought, did not bring happiness. love only brought that. the ox-eyed daisies in this orchard, which gave it such a moony look sometimes, grew wild and happy, and had their hour. 'they oughtn't to have called me fleur,' she mused, 'if they didn't mean me to have my hour, and be happy while it lasts.' nothing real stood in the way, like poverty, or disease--sentiment only, a ghost from the unhappy past! jon was right. they wouldn't let you live, these old people! they made mistakes, committed crimes, and wanted their children to go on paying! the breeze died away; midges began to bite. she got up, plucked a piece of honeysuckle, and went in. it was hot that night. both she and her mother had put on thin, pale low frocks. the dinner flowers were pale. fleur was struck with the pale look of everything: her father's face, her mother's shoulders; the pale panelled walls, the pale-grey velvety carpet, the lamp-shade, even the soup was pale. there was not one spot of colour in the room, not even wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it. what was not pale was black--her father's clothes, the butler's clothes, her retriever stretched out exhausted in the window, the curtains black with a cream pattern. a moth came in, and that was pale. and silent was that half-mourning dinner in the heat. her father called her back as she was following her mother out. she sat down beside him at the table, and, unpinning the pale honeysuckle, put it to her nose. "i've been thinking," he said. "yes, dear?" "it's extremely painful for me to talk, but there's no help for it. i don't know if you understand how much you are to me--i've never spoken of it, i didn't think it necessary; but--but you're everything. your mother--" he paused, staring at his finger-bowl of venetian glass. "yes?" "i've only you to look to. i've never had--never wanted anything else, since you were born." "i know," fleur murmured. soames moistened his lips. "you may think this a matter i can smooth over and arrange for you. you're mistaken. i--i'm helpless." fleur did not speak. "quite apart from my own feelings," went on soames with more resolution, "those two are not amenable to anything i can say. they--they hate me, as people always hate those whom they have injured." "but he--jon--" "he's their flesh and blood, her only child. probably he means to her what you mean to me. it's a deadlock." "no," cried fleur, "no, father!" soames leaned back, the image of pale patience, as if resolved on the betrayal of no emotion. "listen!" he said. "you're putting the feelings of two months--two months--against the feelings of thirty-five years! what chance do you think you have? two months--your very first love-affair, a matter of half a dozen meetings, a few walks and talks, a few kisses--against, against what you can't imagine, what no one could who hasn't been through it. come, be reasonable, fleur! it's midsummer madness!" fleur tore the honeysuckle into little, slow bits. "the madness is in letting the past spoil it all. what do we care about the past? it's our lives, not yours." soames raised his hand to his forehead, where suddenly she saw moisture shining. "whose child are you?" he said. "whose child is he? the present is linked with the past, the future with both. there's no getting away from that." she had never heard philosophy pass those lips before. impressed even in her agitation, she leaned her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands. "but, father, consider it practically. we want each other. there's ever so much money, and nothing whatever in the way but sentiment. let's bury the past, father." soames shook his head. "impossible!" "besides," said fleur gently, "you can't prevent us." "i don't suppose," said soames, "that if left to myself i should try to prevent you; i must put up with things, i know, to keep your affection. but it's not i who control this matter. that's what i want you to realise before it's too late. if you go on thinking you can get your way, and encourage this feeling, the blow will be much heavier when you find you can't." "oh!" cried fleur, "help me, father; you can help me, you know." soames made a startled movement of negation. "i?" he said bitterly. "help? i am the impediment--the just cause and impediment--isn't that the jargon? you have my blood in your veins." he rose. "well, the fat's in the fire. if you persist in your wilfulness you'll have yourself to blame. come! don't be foolish, my child--my only child!" fleur laid her forehead against his shoulder. all was in such turmoil within her. but no good to show it! no good at all! she broke away from him, and went out into the twilight, distraught, but unconvinced. all was indeterminate and vague within her, like the shapes and shadows in the garden, except--her will to have. a poplar pierced up into the dark-blue sky and touched a white star there. the dew wetted her shoes, and chilled her bare shoulders. she went down to the river bank, and stood gazing at a moonstreak on the darkening water. suddenly she smelled tobacco smoke, and a white figure emerged as if created by the moon. it was young mont in flannels, standing in his boat. she heard the tiny hiss of his cigarette extinguished in the water. "fleur," came his voice, "don't be hard on a poor devil! i've been waiting hours." "for what?" "come in my boat!" "not i." "why not?" "i'm not a water-nymph." "haven't you any romance in you? don't be modern, fleur!" he appeared on the path within a yard of her. "go away!" "fleur, i love you. fleur!" fleur uttered a short laugh. "come again," she said, "when i haven't got my wish." "what is your wish?" "ask another." "fleur," said mont, and his voice sounded strange, "don't mock me! even vivisected dogs are worth decent treatment before they're cut up for good." fleur shook her head; but her lips were trembling. "well, you shouldn't make me jump. give me a cigarette." mont gave her one, lighted it, and another for himself. "i don't want to talk rot," he said, "but please imagine all the rot that all the lovers that ever were have talked, and all my special rot thrown in." "thank you, i have imagined it. good-night!" they stood for a moment facing each other in the shadow of an acacia-tree with very moonlit blossoms, and the smoke from their cigarettes mingled in the air between them. "also ran: 'michael mont'?" he said. fleur turned abruptly towards the house. on the lawn she stopped to look back. michael mont was whirling his arms above him; she could see them dashing at his head, then waving at the moonlit blossoms of the acacia. his voice just reached her. "jolly--jolly!" fleur shook herself. she couldn't help him, she had too much trouble of her own! on the verandah she stopped very suddenly again. her mother was sitting in the drawing-room at her writing bureau, quite alone. there was nothing remarkable in the expression of her face except its utter immobility. but she looked desolate! fleur went up-stairs. at the door of her room she paused. she could hear her father walking up and down, up and down the picture-gallery. 'yes,' she thought, jolly! oh, jon!' x decision when fleur left him jon stared at the austrian. she was a thin woman with a dark face and the concerned expression of one who has watched every little good that life once had slip from her, one by one. "no tea?" she said. susceptible to the disappointment in her voice, jon murmured: "no, really; thanks." "a lil cup--it ready. a lil cup and cigarette." fleur was gone! hours of remorse and indecision lay before him! and with a heavy sense of disproportion he smiled, and said: "well--thank you!" she brought in a little pot of tea with two cups, and a silver box of cigarettes on a little tray. "sugar? miss forsyte has much sugar--she buy my sugar, my friend's sugar also. miss forsyte is a veree kind lady. i am happy to serve her. you her brother?" "yes," said jon, beginning to puff the second cigarette of his life. "very young brother," said the austrian, with a little anxious smile, which reminded him of the wag of a dog's tail. "may i give you some?" he said. "and won't you sit down?" the austrian shook her head. "your father a very nice man--the most nice old man i ever see. miss forsyte tell me all about him. is he better?" her words fell on jon like a reproach. "oh! i think he's all right." "i like to see him again," said the austrian, putting a hand on her heart; "he have veree kind heart." "yes," said jon. and again her words seemed to him a reproach. "he never give no trouble to no one, and smile so gentle." "yes! doesn't he?" "he look at miss forsyte so funny sometimes. i tell him all my story; he so sympatisch. your mother--she nice and well?" "very." "he have her photograph on his dressing-table. veree beautiful." jon gulped down his tea. this woman, with her concerned face and her reminding words, was like the first and second murderers. "thank you," he said; "i must go now. may--may i leave this with you?" he put a ten-shilling note on the tray with a doubting hand and gained the door. he heard the austrian gasp, and hurried out. he had just time to catch his train, and all the way to victoria looked at every face that passed, as lovers will, hoping against hope. on reaching worthing he put his luggage into the local train, and set out across the downs for wansdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. so long as he went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes, stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of a wild rose, or listen to a lark's song. but the war of motives within him was but postponed--the longing for fleur, and the hatred of deception. he came to the old chalk-pit above wansdon with his mind no more made up than when he started. to see both sides of a question vigorously was at once jon's strength and weakness. he tramped in, just as the first dinner-bell rang. his things had already been brought up. he had a hurried bath and came down to find holly alone--val had gone to town and would not be back till the last train. since val's advice to him to ask his sister what was the matter between the two families, so much had happened--fleur's disclosure in the green park, her visit to robin hill, to-day's meeting--that there seemed nothing to ask. he talked of spain, his sunstroke, val's horses, their father's health. holly startled him by saying that she thought their father not at all well. she had been twice to robin hill for the week-end. he had seemed fearfully languid, sometimes even in pain, but had always refused to talk about himself. "he's awfully dear and unselfish--don't you think, jon?" feeling far from dear and unselfish himself, jon answered: "rather!" "i think, he's been a simply perfect father, so long as i can remember." "yes," answered jon, very subdued. "he's never interfered, and he's always seemed to understand. i've not forgotten how he let me go out to south africa in the boer war when i was in love with val." "that was before he married mother, wasn't it?" said jon suddenly. "yes. why?" "oh! nothing. only, wasn't she engaged to fleur's father first?" holly put down the spoon she was using, and raised her eyes. her stare was circumspect. what did the boy know? enough to make it better to tell him? she could not decide. he looked strained and worried, altogether older, but that might be the sunstroke. "there was something," she said. "of course we were out there, and got no news of anything." she could not take the risk. it was not her secret. besides, she was in the dark about his feelings now. before spain she had made sure he was in love; but boys were boys; that was seven weeks ago, and all spain between. she saw that he knew she was putting him off, and added: "have you heard anything of fleur?" "yes." his face told her more than the most elaborate explanations. he had not forgotten! she said very quietly: "fleur is awfully attractive, jon, but you know--val and i don't really like her very much." "why?" "we think she's got rather a 'having' nature." "'having?' i don't know what you mean. she--she--" he pushed his dessert plate away, got up, and went to the window. holly, too, got up, and put her arm round his waist. "don't be angry, jon dear. we can't all see people in the same light, can we? i believe each of us only has about one or two people who can see the best that's in us, and bring it out. for you i think it's your mother. i once saw her looking at a letter of yours; it was wonderful to see her face. i think she's the most beautiful woman i ever saw--age doesn't seem to touch her." jon's face softened, then again became tense. he recognised the intention of those words. everybody was against him and fleur! it all strengthened her appeal: "make sure of me--marry me, jon!" here, where he had passed that wonderful week with her--the tug of her enchantment, the ache in his heart increased with every minute that she was not there to make the room, the garden, the very air magical. would he ever be able to live down here, not seeing her? and he closed up utterly, going early to bed. it would not make him healthy, wealthy, and wise, but it closeted him with memory of fleur in her fancy frock. he heard val's arrival--the ford discharging cargo, then the stillness of the summer night stole back--with only the bleating of very distant sheep, and a night-jar's harsh purring. he leaned far out. cold moon--warm air--the downs like silver! small wings, a stream bubbling, the rambler roses! god-how empty all of it without her! in the bible it was written: thou shalt leave father and mother and cleave to--fleur! let him have pluck, and go and tell them! they couldn't stop him marrying her--they wouldn't want to stop him when they knew how he felt. yes! he would go! bold and open--fleur was wrong! the night-jar ceased, the sheep were silent; the only sound in the darkness was the bubbling of the stream. and jon in his bed slept, freed from the worst of life's evils--indecision. xi timothy prophesies on the day of the cancelled meeting at the national gallery, began the second anniversary of the resurrection of england's pride and glory--or, more shortly, the top hat. "lord's"--that festival which the war had driven from the field--raised its light and dark blue flags for the second time, displaying almost every feature of a glorious past. here, in the luncheon interval, were all species of female and one species of male hat, protecting the multiple types of face associated with "the classes" the observing forsyte might discern in the free or unconsidered seats a certain number of the squash-hatted, but they hardly ventured on the grass; the old school--or schools--could still rejoice that the proletariat was not yet paying the necessary half-crown. here was still a close borough, the only one left on a large scale--for the papers were about to estimate the attendance at ten thousand. and the ten thousand, all animated by one hope, were asking each other one question: "where are you lunching?" something wonderfully uplifting and reassuring in that query and the sight of so many people like themselves voicing it! what reserve power in the british realm--enough pigeons, lobsters, lamb, salmon mayonnaise, strawberries, and bottles of champagne, to feed the lot! no miracle in prospect--no case of seven loaves and a few fishes--faith rested on surer foundations. six thousand top hats, four thousand parasols would be doffed and furled, ten thousand mouths all speaking the same english would be filled. there was life in the old dog yet! tradition! and again tradition! how strong and how elastic! wars might rage, taxation prey, trades unions take toll, and europe perish of starvation; but the ten thousand would be fed; and, within their ring fence, stroll upon green turf, wear their top hats, and meet--themselves. the heart was sound, the pulse still regular. e-ton! e-ton! har-r-o-o-o-w! among the many forsytes present, on a hunting-ground theirs, by personal prescriptive right, or proxy, was soames, with his wife and daughter. he had not been at either school, he took no interest in cricket, but he wanted fleur to show her frock, and he wanted to wear his top hat--parade it again in peace and plenty among his peers. he walked sedately with fleur between him and annette. no women equalled them, so far as he could see. they could walk, and hold themselves up; there was substance in their good looks; the modern woman had no build, no chest, no anything! he remembered suddenly with what intoxication of pride he had walked round with irene in the first years of his first marriage. and how they used to lunch on the drag which his mother would make his father have, because it was so "chic"--all drags and carriages in those days, not these lumbering great stands! and how consistently montague dartie had drunk too much. he supposed that people drank too much still, but there was not the scope for it there used to be. he remembered george forsyte--whose brothers roger and eustace had been at harrow and eton--towering up on the top of the drag waving a light-blue flag with one hand and a dark-blue flag with the other, and shouting: "etroow--harrton!" just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he had always been; and eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified to wear any colour or take any notice. h'm! old days, and irene in grey silk shot with palest green. he looked, sideways, at fleur's face. rather colourless--no light, no eagerness! that love affair was preying on her--a bad business! he looked beyond, at his wife's face, rather more touched up than usual, a little disdainful--not that she had any business to disdain, so far as he could see. she was taking profond's defection with curious quietude; or was his "small" voyage just a blind? if so, he should refuse to see it! after promenading round the pitch and in front of the pavilion, they sought winifred's table in the bedouin club tent. this club--a new "cock and hen"--had been founded in the interests of travel, and of a gentleman with an old scottish name, whose father had somewhat strangely been called levi. winifred had joined, not because she had travelled, but because instinct told her that a club with such a name and such a founder was bound to go far; if one didn't join at once one might never have the chance. its tent, with a text from the koran on an orange ground, and a small green camel embroidered over the entrance, was the most striking on the ground. outside it they found jack cardigan in a dark-blue tie (he had once played for harrow), batting with a malacca cane to show how that fellow ought to have hit that ball. he piloted them in. assembled in winifred's corner were imogen, benedict with his young wife, val dartie without holly, maud and her husband, and, after soames and his two were seated, one empty place. "i'm expecting prosper," said winifred, "but he's so busy with his yacht." soames stole a glance. no movement in his wife's face! whether that fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it. it did not escape him that fleur, too, looked at her mother. if annette didn't respect his feelings, she might think of fleur! the conversation, very desultory, was syncopated by jack cardigan talking about "mid-off." he cited all the "great mid-offs" from the beginning of time, as if they had been a definite racial entity in the composition of the british people. soames had finished his lobster, and was beginning on pigeon-pie, when he heard the words: "i'm a small bit late, mrs. dartie," and saw that there was no longer any empty place. that fellow was sitting between annette and imogen. soames ate steadily on, with an occasional word to maud and winifred. conversation buzzed around him. he heard the voice of profond say: "i think you're mistaken, mrs. forsyde i'll--i'll bet miss forsyde agrees with me." "in what?" came fleur's clear tones across the table. "i was sayin', young gurls are much the same as they always were--there's very small difference." "do you know so much about them?" that sharp reply caught the ears of all, and soames moved uneasily on his thin green chair. "well, i don't know, i think they want their own small way, and i think they always did." "indeed!" "oh, but--prosper," winifred interjected comfortably, "the girls in the streets--the girls who've been in munitions, the little flappers in the shops; their manners now really quite hit you in the eye." at the word "hit" jack cardigan stopped his disquisition; and in the silence monsieur profond said: "it was inside before, now it's outside; that's all." "but their morals!" cried imogen. "just as moral as they ever were, mrs. cardigan, but they've got more opportunity." the saying, so cryptically cynical, received a little laugh from imogen, a slight opening of jack cardigan's mouth, and another creak from soames' chair. winifred said: "that's too bad, prosper." "what do you say, mrs. forsyde; don't you think human nature's always the same?" soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow. he heard his wife reply: "human nature is not the same in england as anywhere else." that was her confounded mockery! "well, i don't know much about this small country"--'no, thank god!' thought soames--"but i should say the pot was boilin' under the lid everywhere. we all want pleasure, and we always did." damn the fellow! his cynicism was outrageous! when lunch was over they broke up into couples for the digestive promenade. too proud to notice, soames knew perfectly that annette and that fellow had gone prowling round together. fleur was with val; she had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that boy. he himself had winifred for partner. they walked in the bright, circling stream, a little flushed and sated, till winifred sighed: "i wish we were back forty years, old boy!" before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her own "lord's" frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father, to save a recurrent crisis. "it's been very amusing, after all. sometimes i even wish monty was back. what do you think of people nowadays, soames?" "precious little style. the thing began to go to pieces with bicycles and motor-cars; the war has finished it." "i wonder what's coming?" said winifred in a voice dreamy from pigeon-pie. "i'm not at all sure we shan't go back to crinolines and pegtops. look at that dress!" soames shook his head. "there's money, but no faith in things. we don't lay by for the future. these youngsters--it's all a short life and a merry one with them." "there's a hat!" said winifred. "i don't know--when you come to think of the people killed and all that in the war, it's rather wonderful, i think. there's no other country--prosper says the rest are all bankrupt, except america; and of course her men always took their style in dress from us." "is that chap," said soames, "really going to the south seas?" "oh, one never knows where prosper's going!" "he's a sign of the times," muttered soames, "if you like." winifred's hand gripped his arm. "don't turn your head," she said in a low voice, "but look to your right in the front row of the stand." soames looked as best he could under that limitation. a man in a grey top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock, whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. soames looked quickly at his feet. how funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! winifred's voice said in his ear: "jolyon looks very ill, but he always had style. she doesn't change--except her hair." "why did you tell fleur about that business?" "i didn't; she picked it up. i always knew she would." "well, it's a mess. she's set her heart upon their boy." "the little wretch," murmured winifred. "she tried to take me in about that. what shall you do, soames?" "be guided by events." they moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd. "really," said winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like fate. only that's so old-fashioned. look! there are george and eustace!" george forsyte's lofty bulk had halted before them. "hallo, soames!" he said. "just met profond and your wife. you'll catch 'em if you put on steam. did you ever go to see old timothy?" soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart. "i always liked old george," said winifred. "he's so droll." "i never did," said soames. "where's your seat? i shall go to mine. fleur may be back there." having seen winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the cheers and counter-cheers. no fleur, and no annette! you could expect nothing of women nowadays! they had the vote. they were "emancipated," and much good it was doing them. so winifred would go back, would she, and put up with dartie all over again? to have the past once more--to be sitting here as he had sat in ' and ' , before he was certain that his marriage with irene had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had become so glaring that with the best will in the world he could not overlook it. the sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory back. even now he could not understand why she had been so impracticable. she could love other men; she had it in her! to himself, the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her heart. it seemed to him, fantastically, as he looked back, that all this modern relaxation of marriage--though its forms and laws were the same as when he married her--that all this modern looseness had come out of her revolt; it seemed to him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on the point of going. all came from her! and now--a pretty state of things! homes! how could you have them without mutual ownership? not that he had ever had a real home! but had that been his fault? he had done his best. and his reward--those two sitting in that stand! and this affair of fleur's! and overcome by loneliness he thought: 'shan't wait any longer! they must find their own way back to the hotel--if they mean to come!' hailing a cab outside the ground, he said: "drive me to the bayswater road." his old aunts had never failed him. to them he had meant an everwelcome visitor. though they were gone, there, still, was timothy! smither was standing in the open doorway. "mr. soames! i was just taking the air. cook will be so pleased." "how is mr. timothy?" "not himself at all these last few days, sir; he's been talking a great deal. only this morning he was saying: 'my brother james, he's getting old.' his mind wanders, mr. soames, and then he will talk of them. he troubles about their investments. the other day he said: 'there's my brother jolyon won't look at consols'--he seemed quite down about it. come in, mr. soames, come in! it's such a pleasant change!" "well," said soames, "just for a few minutes." "no," murmured smither in the hall, where the air had the singular freshness of the outside day, "we haven't been very satisfied with him, not all this week. he's always been one to leave a titbit to the end; but ever since monday he's been eating it first. if you notice a dog, mr. soames, at its dinner, it eats the meat first. we've always thought it such a good sign of mr. timothy at his age to leave it to the last, but now he seems to have lost all his self-control; and, of course, it makes him leave the rest. the doctor doesn't make anything of it, but"--smither shook her head--"he seems to think he's got to eat it first, in case he shouldn't get to it. that and his talking makes us anxious." "has he said anything important?" "i shouldn't like to say that, mr. soames; but he's turned against his will. he gets quite pettish--and after having had it out every morning for years, it does seem funny. he said the other day: 'they want my money.' it gave me such a turn, because, as i said to him, nobody wants his money, i'm sure. and it does seem a pity he should be thinking about money at his time of life. i took my courage in my 'ands. 'you know, mr. timothy,' i said, 'my dear mistress'--that's miss forsyte, mr. soames, miss ann that trained me--'she never thought about money,' i said, 'it was all character with her.' he looked at me, i can't tell you how funny, and he said quite dry: 'nobody wants my character.' think of his saying a thing like that! but sometimes he'll say something as sharp and sensible as anything." soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat-rack, thinking, 'that's got value!' murmured: "i'll go up and see him, smither." "cook's with him," answered smither above her corsets; "she will be pleased to see you." he mounted slowly, with the thought: 'shan't care to live to be that age.' on the second floor, he paused, and tapped. the door was opened, and he saw the round homely face of a woman about sixty. "mr. soames!" she said: "why! mr. soames!" soames nodded. "all right, cook!" and entered. timothy was propped up in bed, with his hands joined before his chest, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where a fly was standing upside down. soames stood at the foot of the bed, facing him. "uncle timothy," he said, raising his voice; "uncle timothy!" timothy's eyes left the fly, and levelled themselves on his visitor. soames could see his pale tongue passing over his darkish lips. "uncle timothy," he said again, "is there anything i can do for you? is there anything you'd like to say?" "ha!" said timothy. "i've come to look you up and see that everything's all right." timothy nodded. he seemed trying to get used to the apparition before him. "have you got everything you want?" "no," said timothy. "can i get you anything?" "no," said timothy. "i'm soames, you know; your nephew, soames forsyte. your brother james' son." timothy nodded. "i shall be delighted to do anything i can for you." timothy beckoned. soames went close to him. "you--" said timothy in a voice which seemed to have outlived tone, "you tell them all from me--you tell them all--" and his finger tapped on soames' arm, "to hold on--hold on--consols are goin' up," and he nodded thrice. "all right!" said soames; "i will." "yes," said timothy, and, fixing his eyes again on the ceiling, he added: "that fly!" strangely moved, soames looked at the cook's pleasant fattish face, all little puckers from staring at fires. "that'll do him a world of good, sir," she said. a mutter came from timothy, but he was clearly speaking to himself, and soames went out with the cook. "i wish i could make you a pink cream, mr. soames, like in old days; you did so relish them. good-bye, sir; it has been a pleasure." "take care of him, cook, he is old." and, shaking her crumpled hand, he went down-stairs. smither was still taking the air in the doorway. "what do you think of him, mr. soames?" "h'm!" soames murmured: "he's lost touch." "yes," said smither, "i was afraid you'd think that, coming fresh out of the world to see him like." "smither," said soames, "we're all indebted to you." "oh, no, mr. soames, don't say that! it's a pleasure--he's such a wonderful man." "well, good-bye!" said soames, and got into his taxi. 'going up!' he thought; 'going up!' reaching the hotel at knightsbridge he went to their sitting-room, and rang for tea. neither of them were in. and again that sense of loneliness came over him. these hotels! what monstrous great places they were now! he could remember when there was nothing bigger than long's or brown's, morley's or the tavistock, and the heads that were shaken over the langham and the grand. hotels and clubs--clubs and hotels; no end to them now! and soames, who had just been watching at lord's a miracle of tradition and continuity, fell into reverie over the changes in that london where he had been born five-and-sixty years before. whether consols were going up or not, london had become a terrific property. no such property in the world, unless it were new york! there was a lot of hysteria in the papers nowadays; but any one who, like himself, could remember london sixty years ago, and see it now, realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth. they had only to keep their heads, and go at it steadily. why! he remembered cobble-stones, and stinking straw on the floor of your cab. and old timothy--what could he not tell them, if he had kept his memory! things were unsettled, people in a funk or in a hurry, but here were london and the thames, and out there the british empire, and the ends of the earth. "consols are goin' up!" he shouldn't be a bit surprised. it was the breed that counted. and all that was bull-dogged in soames stared for a moment out of his grey eyes, till diverted by the print of a victorian picture on the walls. the hotel had bought three dozen of that little lot! the old hunting or "rake's progress" prints in the old inns were worth looking at--but this sentimental stuff--well, victorianism had gone! "tell them to hold on!" old timothy had said. but to what were they to hold on in this modern welter of the "democratic principle"? why, even privacy was threatened! and at the thought that privacy might perish, soames pushed back his teacup and went to the window. fancy owning no more of nature than the crowd out there owned of the flowers and trees and waters of hyde park! no, no! private possession underlay everything worth having. the world had slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full moon slipped theirs and went off for a night's rabbiting; but the world, like the dog, knew where its bread was buttered and its bed warm, and would come back sure enough to the only home worth having--to private ownership. the world was in its second childhood for the moment, like old timothy--eating its titbit first! he heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter had come in. "so you're back!" he said. fleur did not answer; she stood for a moment looking at him and her mother, then passed into her bedroom. annette poured herself out a cup of tea. "i am going to paris, to my mother, soames." "oh! to your mother?" "yes." "for how long?" "i do not know." "and when are you going?" "on monday." was she really going to her mother? odd, how indifferent he felt! odd, how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel so long as there was no scandal. and suddenly between her and himself he saw distinctly the face he had seen that afternoon--irene's. "will you want money?" "thank you; i have enough." "very well. let us know when you are coming back." annette put down the cake she was fingering, and, looking up through darkened lashes, said: "shall i give maman any message?" "my regards." annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in french: "what luck that you have never loved me, soames!" then rising, she too left the room. soames was glad she had spoken it in french--it seemed to require no dealing with. again that other face--pale, dark-eyed, beautiful still! and there stirred far down within him the ghost of warmth, as from sparks lingering beneath a mound of flaky ash. and fleur infatuated with her boy! queer chance! yet, was there such a thing as chance? a man went down a street, a brick fell on his head. ah! that was chance, no doubt. but this! "inherited," his girl had said. she--she was "holding on!" part iii i old jolyon walks twofold impulse had made jolyon say to his wife at breakfast: "let's go up to lord's!" "wanted"--something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived during the sixty hours since jon had brought fleur down. "wanted"--too, that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one who knew he might lose them any day! fifty-eight years ago jolyon had become an eton boy, for old jolyon's whim had been that he should be canonised at the greatest possible expense. year after year he had gone to lord's from stanhope gate with a father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed without polish in the game of cricket. old jolyon would speak quite openly of swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young jolyon with the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should be overheard. only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been nervous, for his father--in crimean whiskers then--had ever impressed him as the beau ideal. though never canonised himself, old jolyon's natural fastidiousness and balance had saved him from the errors of the vulgar. how delicious, after howling in a top hat and a sweltering heat, to go home with his father in a hansom cab, bathe, dress, and forth to the "disunion" club, to dine off whitebait, cutlets, and a tart, and go--two "swells," old and young, in lavender kid gloves--to the opera or play. and on sunday, when the match was over, and his top hat duly broken, down with his father in a special hansom to the "crown and sceptre," and the terrace above the river--the golden sixties when the world was simple, dandies glamorous, democracy not born, and the books of whyte melville coming thick and fast. a generation later, with his own boy, jolly, harrow--buttonholed with cornflowers--by old jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at a trifle less expense--again jolyon had experienced the heat and counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the strawberry beds of robin hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying to seem languid and grown-up. those two days each year he and his son had been alone together in the world, one on each side--and democracy just born! and so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of light-blue ribbon from irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car and train and taxi, had reached lord's ground. there, beside her in a lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched the game, and felt the old thrill stir within him. when soames passed, the day was spoiled, and irene's face distorted by compression of the lips. no good to go on sitting here with soames or perhaps his daughter recurring in front of them, like decimals. and he said: "well, dear, if you've had enough--let's go!" that evening jolyon felt exhausted. not wanting her to see him thus, he waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the little study. he opened the long window for air, and the door, that he might still hear her music drifting in; and, settled in his father's old armchair, closed his eyes, with his head against the worn brown leather. like that passage of the cesar franck sonata--so had been his life with her, a divine third movement. and now this business of jon's--this bad business! drifted to the edge of consciousness, he hardly knew if it were in sleep that he smelled the scent of a cigar, and seemed to see a shape in the blackness before his closed eyes. that shape formed, went, and formed again; as if in the very chair where he himself was sitting, he saw his father, black-coated, with knees crossed, glasses balanced between thumb and finger; saw the big white moustaches, and the deep eyes looking up below a dome of forehead, seeming to search his own; seeming to speak. "are you facing it, jo? it's for you to decide. she's only a woman!" how well he knew his father in that phrase; how all the victorian age came up with it!--and his answer "no, i've funked it--funked hurting her and jon and myself. i've got a heart; i've funked it." but the old eyes, so much older, so much younger than his own, kept at it: "it's your wife, your son, your past. tackle it, my boy!" was it a message from walking spirit; or but the instinct of his sire living on within him? and again came that scent of cigar smoke--from the old saturated leather. well! he would tackle it, write to jon, and put the whole thing down in black and white! and suddenly he breathed with difficulty, with a sense of suffocation, as if his heart were swollen. he got up and went out into the air. orion's belt was very bright. he passed along the terrace round the corner of the house, till, through the window of the music-room, he could see irene at the piano, with lamplight falling on her powdery hair; withdrawn into herself she seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her hands idle. jolyon saw her raise those hands and clasp them over her breast. 'it's jon, with her,' he thought; 'all jon! i'm dying out of her--it's natural!' and, careful not to be seen, he stole back. next day, after a bad night, he sat down to his task. he wrote with difficulty and many erasures. "my dearest boy, "you are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for elders to give themselves away to their young. especially when--like your mother and myself, though i shall never think of her as anything but young--their hearts are altogether set on him to whom they must confess. i cannot say we are conscious of having sinned exactly--people in real life very seldom are, i believe, but most persons would say we had, and at all events our conduct, righteous or not, has found us out. the truth is, my dear, we both have pasts, which it is now my task to make known to you, because they so grievously and deeply affect your future. many, very many years ago, as far back indeed as , when she was only twenty, your mother had the great and lasting misfortune to make an unhappy marriage--no, not with me, jon. without money of her own, and with only a stepmother--closely related to jezebel--she was very unhappy in her home life. it was fleur's father that she married, my cousin soames forsyte. he had pursued her very tenaciously and to do him justice was deeply in love with her. within a week she knew the fearful mistake she had made. it was not his fault; it was her error of judgment--her misfortune." so far jolyon had kept some semblance of irony, but now his subject carried him away. "jon, i want to explain to you if i can--and it's very hard--how it is that an unhappy marriage such as this can so easily come about. you will of course say: 'if she didn't really love him how could she ever have married him?' you would be quite right if it were not for one or two rather terrible considerations. from this initial mistake of hers all the subsequent trouble, sorrow, and tragedy have come, and so i must make it clear to you if i can. you see, jon, in those days and even to this day--indeed, i don't see, for all the talk of enlightenment, how it can well be otherwise--most girls are married ignorant of the sexual side of life. even if they know what it means they have not experienced it. that's the crux. it is this actual lack of experience, whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the difference and all the trouble. in a vast number of marriages--and your mother's was one--girls are not and cannot be certain whether they love the man they marry or not; they do not know until after that act of union which makes the reality of marriage. now, in many, perhaps in most doubtful cases, this act cements and strengthens the attachment, but in other cases, and your mother's was one, it is a revelation of mistake, a destruction of such attraction as there was. there is nothing more tragic in a woman's life than such a revelation, growing daily, nightly clearer. coarse-grained and unthinking people are apt to laugh at such a mistake, and say 'what a fuss about nothing!' narrow and self-righteous people, only capable of judging the lives of others by their own, are apt to condemn those who make this tragic error, to condemn them for life to the dungeons they have made for themselves. you know the expression: 'she has made her bed, she must lie on it!' it is a hard-mouthed saying, quite unworthy of a gentleman or lady in the best sense of those words; and i can use no stronger condemnation. i have not been what is called a moral man, but i wish to use no words to you, my dear, which will make you think lightly of ties or contracts into which you enter. heaven forbid! but with the experience of a life behind me i do say that those who condemn the victims of these tragic mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands to help them, are inhuman or rather they would be if they had the understanding to know what they are doing. but they haven't! let them go! they are as much anathema to me as i, no doubt, am to them. i have had to say all this, because i am going to put you into a position to judge your mother, and you are very young, without experience of what life is. to go on with the story. after three years of effort to subdue her shrinking--i was going to say her loathing and it's not too strong a word, for shrinking soon becomes loathing under such circumstances--three years of what to a sensitive, beauty-loving nature like your mother's, jon, was torment, she met a young man who fell in love with her. he was the architect of this very house that we live in now, he was building it for her and fleur's father to live in, a new prison to hold her, in place of the one she inhabited with him in london. perhaps that fact played some part in what came of it. but in any case she, too, fell in love with him. i know it's not necessary to explain to you that one does not precisely choose with whom one will fall in love. it comes. very well! it came. i can imagine--though she never said much to me about it--the struggle that then took place in her, because, jon, she was brought up strictly and was not light in her ideas--not at all. however, this was an overwhelming feeling, and it came to pass that they loved in deed as well as in thought. then came a fearful tragedy. i must tell you of it because if i don't you will never understand the real situation that you have now to face. the man whom she had married--soames forsyte, the father of fleur--one night, at the height of her passion for this young man, forcibly reasserted his rights over her. the next day she met her lover and told him of it. whether he committed suicide or whether he was accidentally run over in his distraction, we never knew; but so it was. think of your mother as she was that evening when she heard of his death. i happened to see her. your grand-father sent me to help her if i could. i only just saw her, before the door was shut against me by her husband. but i have never forgotten her face, i can see it now. i was not in love with her then, nor for twelve years after, but i have never forgotten. my dear boy--it is not easy to write like this. but you see, i must. your mother is wrapped up in you, utterly, devotedly. i don't wish to write harshly of soames forsyte. i don't think harshly of him. i have long been sorry for him; perhaps i was sorry even then. as the world judges she was in error, he was within his rights. he loved her--in his way. she was his property. that is the view he holds of life--of human feelings and hearts--property. it's not his fault--so was he born! to me it is a view that has always been abhorrent--so was i born! knowing you as i do, i feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you. let me go on with the story. your mother fled from his house that night; for twelve years she lived quietly alone without companionship of any sort, until, in her husband--you see, he was still her husband, for he did not attempt to divorce her, and she of course had no right to divorce him, became conscious, it seems, of the want of children, and commenced a long attempt to induce her to go back to him and give him a child. i was her trustee then, under your grandfather's will, and i watched this going on. while watching, i became devotedly attached to her. his pressure increased, till one day she came to me here and practically put herself under my protection. her husband, who was kept informed of all her movements, attempted to force us apart by bringing a divorce suit, or at all events by threatening one; anyway our names were publicly joined. that decided us, and we became united in fact. she was divorced, married me, and you were born. we have lived in perfect happiness, at least i have, and i believe your mother also. soames, soon after the divorce, married fleur's mother, and she was born. that is the story, jon. i have told it you, because by the affection which we see you have formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving towards what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own. i don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use supposing i shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what i should suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours. but what i want you to realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never be buried or forgotten. they are alive in her to-day. only yesterday at lord's we happened to see soames forsyte. her face, if you had seen it, would have convinced you. the idea that you should marry his daughter is a nightmare to her, jon. i have nothing to say against fleur save that she is his daughter. but your children, if you married her, would be the grandchildren of soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. think what that would mean. by such a marriage you enter the camp which held your mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. you are just on the threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and however deeply you think you love her, i appeal to you to break it off at once. don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation during the rest of her life. young though she will always seem to me, she is fifty-seven. except for us two she has no one in the world. she will soon have only you. pluck up your spirit, jon, and break away. don't put this cloud and barrier between you. don't break her heart! bless you, my dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this letter must bring you--we tried to spare it you, but spain--it seems--was no good. ever your devoted father jolyon forsyte." having finished his confession, jolyon sat with a thin cheek on his hand, re-reading. there were things in it which hurt him so much, when he thought of jon reading them--that he nearly tore the letter up. to speak of such things at all to a boy--his own boy--to speak of them in relation to his own wife and the boy's own mother, seemed dreadful to the reticence of his forsyte soul. and yet without speaking of them how make jon understand the reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffaceable scar? without them, how justify this stifling of the boy's love? he might just as well not write at all! he folded the confession, and put it in his pocket. it was--thank heaven!--saturday; he had till sunday evening to think it over; for even if posted now it could not reach jon till monday. he felt a curious relief at this delay, and at the fact that, whether sent or not, it was written. in the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery, he could see irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on her arm. she was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now that he himself was idle nearly all his time. he went down to her. she held up a stained glove and smiled. a piece of lace tied under her chin concealed her hair, and her oval face with its still dark brows looked very young. "the green fly are awful this year, and yet it's cold. you look tired, jolyon." jolyon took the confession from his pocket. "i've been writing this. i think you ought to see it." "to jon?" her whole face had changed, in that instant, becoming almost haggard. "yes; the murder's out." he gave it her, and walked away among the roses. presently, seeing that she had finished reading and was standing quite still with the sheets of the letter against her skirt, he came back to her. "well?" "it's wonderfully put. i don't see how it could be put better. thank you, dear." "is there anything you would like left out?" she shook her head. "no; he must know all, if he's to understand." "that's what i thought, but i hate it like the devil!" he had the feeling that he hated it more than she--to him sex was so much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man; and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive like his forsyte self. "i wonder if he will understand, even now, jolyon? he's so young; and he shrinks from the physical." "he gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a girl in all such matters. would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and just say you hated soames?" irene shook her head. "hate's only a word. it conveys nothing. no, better as it is." "very well. it shall go to-morrow." ii confession late that same afternoon, jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. face down on his knee was la rotisserie de la reine pedaugue, and just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: 'as a people shall we ever really like the french? will they ever really like us?' he himself had always liked the french, feeling at home with their wit, their taste, their cooking. irene and he had paid many visits to france before the war, when jon had been at his private school. his romance with her had begun in paris--his last and most enduring romance. but the french--no englishman could like them who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic eye! and with that melancholy conclusion he had nodded off. when he woke he saw jon standing between him and the window. the boy had evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to wake. jolyon smiled, still half asleep. how nice the chap looked-sensitive, affectionate, straight! then his heart gave a nasty jump; and a quaking sensation overcame him. that confession! he controlled himself with an effort. "why, jon, where did you spring from?" jon bent over and kissed his forehead. only then he noticed the look on the boy's face. "i came home to tell you something, dad." with all his might jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping, gurgling sensations within his chest. "well, sit down, old man. have you seen your mother?" "no." the boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on the arm of the old chair, as, in old days, jolyon himself used to sit beside his own father, installed in its recesses. right up to the time of the rupture in their relations he had been wont to perch there--had he now reached such a moment with his own son? all his life he had hated scenes like poison, avoided rows, gone on his own way quietly and let others go on theirs. but now--it seemed--at the very end of things, he had a scene before him more painful than any he had avoided. he drew a visor down over his emotion, and waited for his son to speak. "father," said jon slowly, "fleur and i are engaged." 'exactly!' thought jolyon, breathing with difficulty. "i know that you and mother don't like the idea. fleur says that mother was engaged to her father before you married her. of course i don't know what happened, but it must be ages ago. i'm devoted to her, dad, and she says she is to me." jolyon uttered a queer sound, half laugh, half groan. "you are nineteen, jon, and i am seventy-two. how are we to understand each other in a matter like this, eh?" "you love mother, dad; you must know what we feel. it isn't fair to us to let old things spoil our happiness, is it?" brought face to face with his confession, jolyon resolved to do without it if by any means he could. he laid his hand on the boy's arm. "look, jon! i might put you off with talk about your both being too young and not knowing your own minds, and all that, but you wouldn't listen; besides, it doesn't meet the case--youth, unfortunately, cures itself. you talk lightly about 'old things like that,' knowing nothing--as you say truly--of what happened. now, have i ever given you reason to doubt my love for you, or my word?" at a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the conflict his words aroused--the boy's eager clasp, to reassure him on these points, the dread on his face of what that reassurance would bring forth; but he could only feel grateful for the squeeze. "very well, you can believe what i tell you. if you don't give up this love affair, you will make mother wretched to the end of her days. believe me, my dear, the past, whatever it was, can't be buried--it can't indeed." jon got off the arm of the chair. 'the girl--' thought jolyon--'there she goes--starting up before him--life itself--eager, pretty, loving!' "i can't, father; how can i--just because you say that? of course i can't!" "jon, if you knew the story you would give this up without hesitation; you would have to! can't you believe me?" "how can you tell what i should think? why, i love her better than anything in the world." jolyon's face twitched, and he said with painful slowness: "better than your mother, jon?" from the boy's face, and his clenched fists jolyon realised the stress and struggle he was going through. "i don't know," he burst out, "i don't know! but to give fleur up for nothing--for something i don't understand, for something that i don't believe can really matter half so much, will make me--make me--" "make you feel us unjust, put a barrier--yes. but that's better than going on with this." "i can't. fleur loves me, and i love her. you want me to trust you; why don't you trust me, father? we wouldn't want to know anything--we wouldn't let it make any difference. it'll only make us both love you and mother all the more." jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out again empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth. "think what your mother's been to you, jon! she has nothing but you; i shan't last much longer." "why not? it isn't fair to--why not?" "well," said jolyon, rather coldly, "because the doctors tell me i shan't; that's all." "oh! dad!" cried jon, and burst into tears. this downbreak of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was ten, moved jolyon terribly. he recognised to the full how fearfully soft the boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in this business, and in life generally. and he reached out his hand helplessly--not wishing, indeed not daring to get up. "dear man," he said, "don't--or you'll make me!" jon smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted, very still. 'what now?' thought jolyon; 'what can i say to move him?' "by the way, don't speak of that to mother," he said; "she has enough to scare her with this affair of yours. i know how you feel. but, jon, you know her and me well enough to be sure we wouldn't wish to spoil your happiness lightly. why, my dear boy, we don't care for anything but your happiness--at least, with me it's just yours and mother's and with her just yours. it's all the future for you both that's at stake." jon turned. his face was deadly pale; his eyes, deep in his head, seemed to burn. "what is it? what is it? don't keep me like this!" jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into his breast pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with difficulty, his eyes closed. the thought passed through his mind: 'i've had a good long innings--some pretty bitter moments--this is the worst!' then he brought his hand out with the letter, and said with a sort of fatigue: "well, jon, if you hadn't come to-day, i was going to send you this. i wanted to spare you--i wanted to spare your mother and myself, but i see it's no good. read it, and i think i'll go into the garden." he reached forward to get up. jon, who had taken the letter, said quickly: "no, i'll go"; and was gone. jolyon sank back in his chair. a blue-bottle chose that moment to come buzzing round him with a sort of fury; the sound was homely, better than nothing.... where had the boy gone to read his letter? the wretched letter--the wretched story! a cruel business--cruel to her--to soames--to those two children--to himself!... his heart thumped and pained him. life--its loves--its work--its beauty--its aching, and--its end! a good time; a fine time in spite of all; until--you regretted that you had ever been born. life--it wore you down, yet did not make you want to die--that was the cunning evil! mistake to have a heart! again the blue-bottle came buzzing--bringing in all the heat and hum and scent of summer--yes, even the scent--as of ripe fruits, dried grasses, sappy shrubs, and the vanilla breath of cows. and out there somewhere in the fragrance jon would be reading that letter, turning and twisting its pages in his trouble, his bewilderment and trouble-breaking his heart about it! the thought made jolyon acutely miserable. jon was such a tender-hearted chap, affectionate to his bones, and conscientious, too--it was so damned unfair! he remembered irene saying to him once: "never was any one born more loving and lovable than jon." poor little jon! his world gone up the spout, all of a summer afternoon! youth took things so hard! and stirred, tormented by that vision of youth taking things hard, jolyon got out of his chair, and went to the window. the boy was nowhere visible. and he passed out. if one could take any help to him now--one must! he traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden--no jon! nor where the peaches and the apricots were beginning to swell and colour. he passed the cupressus-trees, dark and spiral, into the meadow. where had the boy got to? had he rushed down to the coppice--his old hunting-ground? jolyon crossed the rows of hay. they would cock it on monday and be carrying the day after, if rain held off. often they had crossed this field together--hand in hand, when jon was a little chap. dash it! the golden age was over by the time one was ten! he came to the pond, where flies and gnats were dancing over a bright reedy surface; and on into the coppice. it was cool there, fragrant of larches. still no jon! he called. no answer! on the log seat he sat down, nervous, anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. he had been wrong to let the boy get away with that letter; he ought to have kept him under his eye from the start! greatly troubled, he got up to retrace his steps. at the farm-buildings he called again, and looked into the dark cow-house. there in the cool, and the scent of vanilla and ammonia, away from flies, the three alderneys were chewing the quiet cud; just milked, waiting for evening, to be turned out again into the lower field. one turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye; jolyon could see the slobber on its grey lower lip. he saw everything with passionate clearness, in the agitation of his nerves--all that in his time he had adored and tried to paint--wonder of light and shade and colour. no wonder the legend put christ into a manger--what more devotional than the eyes and moon-white horns of a chewing cow in the warm dusk! he called again. no answer! and he hurried away out of the coppice, past the pond, up the hill. oddly ironical--now he came to think of it--if jon had taken the gruel of his discovery down in the coppice where his mother and bosinney in those old days had made the plunge of acknowledging their love. where he himself, on the log seat the sunday morning he came back from paris, had realised to the full that irene had become the world to him. that would have been the place for irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of irene's boy! but he was not here! where had he got to? one must find the poor chap! a gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the beauty of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows, of the blue, and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the cooing of the pigeons; and the flower shapes standing tall. he came to the rosary, and the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight seemed to him unearthly. "rose, you spaniard!" wonderful three words! there she had stood by that bush of dark red roses; had stood to read and decide that jon must know it all! he knew all now! had she chosen wrong? he bent and sniffed a rose, its petals brushed his nose and trembling lips; nothing so soft as a rose-leaf's velvet, except her neck--irene! on across the lawn he went, up the slope, to the oak-tree. its top alone was glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house; the lower shade was thick, blessedly cool--he was greatly overheated. he paused a minute with his hand on the rope of the swing--jolly, holly--jon! the old swing! and, suddenly, he felt horribly--deadly ill. 'i've overdone it!' he thought: 'by jove. i've overdone it--after all!' he staggered up towards the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and fell against the wall of the house. he leaned there gasping, his face buried in the honeysuckle that he and she had taken such trouble with that it might sweeten the air which drifted in. its fragrance mingled with awful pain. 'my love!' he thought; 'the boy!' and with a great effort he tottered in through the long window, and sank into old jolyon's chair. the book was there, a pencil in it; he caught it up, scribbled a word on the open page.... his hand dropped.... so it was like this--was it?... there was a great wrench; and darkness.... iii irene! when jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion. leaning against the creepered wall he tore open the letter. it was long--very long! this added to his fear, and he began reading. when he came to the underlined words: "it was fleur's father that she married," everything swam before him. he was close to a window, and entering by it, he passed, through music-room and hall, up to his bedroom. dipping his face in cold water, he sat on his bed, and went on reading, dropping each finished page on the bed beside him. his father's writing was easy to read--he knew it so well, though he had never had a letter from him one quarter so long. he read with a dull feeling--imagination only half at work. he best grasped, on that first reading, the pain his father must have had in writing such a letter. he let the last sheet fall, and in a sort of mental, moral helplessness he began to read the first again. it all seemed to him disgusting--dead and disgusting. then, suddenly, a hot wave of horrified emotion tingled through him. he buried his face in his hands. his mother! fleur's father! he took up the letter again, and read on mechanically. and again came the feeling that it was all dead and disgusting; his own love so different! this letter said his mother--and her father! an awful letter! property! could there be men who looked on women as their property? faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up before him--red, stock-fish faces; hard, dull faces; prim, dry faces; violent faces; hundreds, thousands of them! how could he know what men who had such faces thought and did? he held his head in his hands and groaned. his mother! he caught up the letter and read on again: "horror and aversion--alive in her to-day ... your children ... grandchildren ... of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave...." he got up from his bed. this cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder his love and fleur's, was true, or his father could never have written it. 'why didn't they tell me the first thing,' he thought, 'the day i first saw fleur? they knew i'd seen her. they were afraid, and--now--i've--got it!' overcome by misery too acute for thought or reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the room and sat down on the floor. he sat there, like some unhappy little animal. there was comfort in dusk, and in the floor--as if he were back in those days when he played his battles sprawling all over it. he sat there huddled, his hair ruffled, his hands clasped round his knees, for how long he did not know. he was wrenched from his blank wretchedness by the sound of the door opening from his mother's room. the blinds were down over the windows of his room, shut up in his absence, and from where he sat he could only hear a rustle, her footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed he saw her standing before his dressing-table. she had something in her hand. he hardly breathed, hoping she would not see him, and go away. he saw her touch things on the table as if they had some virtue in them, then face the window--grey from head to foot like a ghost. the least turn of her head, and she must see him! her lips moved: "oh! jon!" she was speaking to herself; the tone of her voice troubled jon's heart. he saw in her hand a little photograph. she held it towards the light, looking at it--very small. he knew it--one of himself as a tiny boy, which she always kept in her bag. his heart beat fast. and, suddenly, as if she had heard it, she turned her eyes and saw him. at the gasp she gave, and the movement of her hands pressing the photograph against her breast, he said: "yes, it's me." she moved over to the bed, and sat down on it, quite close to him, her hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the sheets of the letter which had slipped to the floor. she saw them, and her hands grasped the edge of the bed. she sat very upright, her dark eyes fixed on him. at last she spoke. "well, jon, you know, i see." "yes." "you've seen father?" "yes." there was a long silence, till she said: "oh! my darling!" "it's all right." the emotions in him were so violent and so mixed that he dared not move--resentment, despair, and yet a strange yearning for the comfort of her hand on his forehead. "what are you going to do?" "i don't know." there was another long silence, then she got up. she stood a moment, very still, made a little movement with her hand, and said: "my darling boy, my most darling boy, don't think of me--think of yourself." and, passing round the foot of the bed, went back into her room. jon turned--curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog--into the corner made by the two walls. he must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him. it came from the terrace below. he got up, scared. again came the cry: "jon!" his mother was calling! he ran out and down the stairs, through the empty dining-room into the study. she was kneeling before the old armchair, and his father was lying back quite white, his head on his breast, one of his hands resting on an open book, with a pencil clutched in it--more strangely still than anything he had ever seen. she looked round wildly, and said: "oh! jon--he's dead--he's dead!" jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair, where he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead. icy cold! how could--how could dad be dead, when only an hour ago--his mother's arms were round the knees; pressing her breast against them. "why--why wasn't i with him?" he heard her whisper. then he saw the tottering word "irene" pencilled on the open page, and broke down himself. it was his first sight of human death, and its unutterable stillness blotted from him all other emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to this! all love and life, and joy, anxiety, and sorrow, all movement, light and beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. it made a dreadful mark on him; all seemed suddenly little, futile, short. he mastered himself at last, got up, and raised her. "mother! don't cry--mother!" some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his mother was lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed, covered with a white sheet. he stood for a long time gazing at that face which had never looked angry--always whimsical, and kind. "to be kind and keep your end up--there's nothing else in it," he had once heard his father say. how wonderfully dad had acted up to that philosophy! he understood now that his father had known for a long time past that this would come suddenly--known, and not said a word. he gazed with an awed and passionate reverence. the loneliness of it--just to spare his mother and himself! his own trouble seemed small while he was looking at that face. the word scribbled on the page! the farewell word! now his mother had no one but himself! he went up close to the dead face--not changed at all, and yet completely changed. he had heard his father say once that he did not believe in consciousness surviving death, or that if it did it might be just survival till the natural age-limit of the body had been reached--the natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if the body were broken by accident, excess, violent disease, consciousness might still persist till, in the course of nature uninterfered with, it would naturally have faded out. the whimsical conceit had struck him. when the heart failed like this--surely it was not quite natural! perhaps his father's consciousness was in the room with him. above the bed hung a picture of his father's father. perhaps his consciousness, too, was still alive; and his brother's--his half-brother, who had died in the transvaal. were they all gathered round this bed? jon kissed the forehead, and stole back to his own room. the door between it and his mother's was ajar; she had evidently been in--everything was ready for him, even some biscuits and hot milk, and the letter no longer on the floor. he ate and drank, watching the last light fade. he did not try to see into the future--just stared at the dark branches of the oak-tree, level with his window, and felt as if life had stopped. once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he was conscious of something white and still, beside his bed, and started up. his mother's voice said: "it's only i, jon dear!" her hand pressed his forehead gently back; her white figure disappeared. alone! he fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his mother's name crawling on his bed. iv soames cogitates the announcement in the times of his cousin jolyon's death affected soames quite simply. so that chap was gone! there had never been a time in their two lives when love had not been lost between them. that quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its course long since in soames' heart, and he had refused to allow any recrudescence, but he considered this early decease a piece of poetic justice. for twenty years the fellow had enjoyed the reversion of his wife and house, and--he was dead! the obituary notice, which appeared a little later, paid jolyon--he thought--too much attention. it spoke of that "diligent and agreeable painter whose work we have come to look on as typical of the best late-victorian water-colour art." soames, who had almost mechanically preferred mole, morpin, and caswell baye, and had always sniffed quite audibly when he came to one of his cousin's on the line, turned the times with a crackle. he had to go up to town that morning on forsyte affairs, and was fully conscious of gradman's glance sidelong over his spectacles. the old clerk had about him an aura of regretful congratulation. he smelled, as it were, of old days. one could almost hear him thinking: "mr. jolyon, ye-es--just my age, and gone--dear, dear! i dare say she feels it. she was a naice-lookin' woman. flesh is flesh! they've given 'im a notice in the papers. fancy!" his atmosphere in fact caused soames to handle certain leases and conversions with exceptional swiftness. "about that settlement on miss fleur, mr. soames?" "i've thought better of that," answered soames shortly. "aoh! i'm glad of that. i thought you were a little hasty. the times do change." how this death would affect fleur had begun to trouble soames. he was not certain that she knew of it--she seldom looked at the paper, never at the births, marriages, and deaths. he pressed matters on, and made his way to green street for lunch. winifred was almost doleful. jack cardigan had broken a splashboard, so far as one could make out, and would not be "fit" for some time. she could not get used to the idea. "did profond ever get off?" he said suddenly. "he got off," replied winifred, "but where--i don't know." yes, there it was--impossible to tell anything! not that he wanted to know. letters from annette were coming from dieppe, where she and her mother were staying. "you saw that fellow's death, i suppose?" "yes," said winifred. "i'm sorry for his children. he was very amiable." soames uttered a rather queer sound. a suspicion of the old deep truth--that men were judged in this world rather by what they were than by what they did--crept and knocked resentfully at the back door of his mind. "i know there was a superstition to that effect," he muttered. "one must do him justice now he's dead." "i should like to have done him justice before," said soames; "but i never had the chance. have you got a 'baronetage' here?" "yes; in that bottom row." soames took out a fat red book, and ran over the leaves. "mont--sir lawrence, th bt. cr. . e.s. of geoffrey th bt. and lavinia daur. of sir charles muskham bt. of muskham hall, shrops: marr. emily, daur. of conway charwell esq. of condaford grange, co. oxon; son, heir michael conway, b. , daurs. residence: lippinghall manor, folwell, bucks: clubs: snooks: coffee house: aeroplane. see bidlicott." "h'm!" he said: "did you ever know a publisher?" "uncle timothy." "alive, i mean." "monty knew one at his club. he brought him here to dinner once. monty was always thinking of writing a book, you know, about how to make money on the turf. he tried to interest that man." "well?" "he put him on to a horse--for the two thousand. we didn't see him again. he was rather smart, if i remember." "did it win?" "no; it ran last, i think. you know monty really was quite clever in his way.". "was he?" said soames. "can you see any connection between a sucking baronet and publishing?" "people do all sorts of things nowadays," replied winifred. "the great stunt seems not to be idle--so different from our time. to do nothing was the thing then. but i suppose it'll come again." "this young mont that i'm speaking of is very sweet on fleur. if it would put an end to that other affair i might encourage it." "has he got style?" asked winifred. "he's no beauty; pleasant enough, with some scattered brains. there's a good deal of land, i believe. he seems genuinely attached. but i don't know." "no," murmured winifred; "it's very difficult. i always found it best to do nothing. it is such a bore about jack; now we shan't get away till after bank holiday. well, the people are always amusing, i shall go into the park and watch them." "if i were you," said soames, "i should have a country cottage, and be out of the way of holidays and strikes when you want." "the country bores me," answered winifred, "and i found the railway strike quite exciting." winifred had always been noted for sang-froid. soames took his leave. all the way down to reading he debated whether he should tell fleur of that boy's father's death. it did not alter the situation except that he would be independent now, and only have his mother's opposition to encounter. he would come into a lot of money, no doubt, and perhaps the house--the house built for irene and himself--the house whose architect had wrought his domestic ruin. his daughter--mistress of that house! that would be poetic justice! soames uttered a little mirthless laugh. he had designed that house to re-establish his failing union, meant it for the seat of his descendants, if he could have induced irene to give him one! her son and fleur! their children would be, in some sort, offspring of the union between himself and her! the theatricality in that thought was repulsive to his sober sense. and yet--it would be the easiest and wealthiest way out of the impasse, now that jolyon was gone. the juncture of two forsyte fortunes had a kind of conservative charm. and she--irene--would be linked to him once more. nonsense! absurd! he put the notion from his head. on reaching home he heard the click of billiard-balls; and through the window saw young mont sprawling over the table. fleur, with her cue akimbo, was watching with a smile. how pretty she looked! no wonder that young fellow was out of his mind about her. a title--land! there was little enough in land, these days; perhaps less in a title. the old forsytes had always had a kind of contempt for titles, rather remote and artificial things--not worth the money they cost, and having to do with the court. they had all had that feeling in differing measure--soames remembered. swithin, indeed, in his most expansive days had once attended a levee. he had come away saying he shouldn't go again--"all that small fry!" it was suspected that he had looked too big in knee-breeches. soames remembered how his own mother had wished to be presented because of the fashionable nature of the performance, and how his father had put his foot down with unwonted decision. what did she want with such peacocking--wasting time and money; there was nothing in it! the instinct which had made and kept the british commons the chief power in the state, a feeling that their own world was good enough and a little better than any other because it was their world, had kept the old forsytes singularly free of "flummery," as nicholas had been wont to call it when he had the gout. soames' generation, more self-conscious and ironical, had been saved by a sense of swithin in knee-breeches. while the third and the fourth generation, as it seemed to him, laughed at everything. however, there was no harm in the young fellow's being heir to a title and estate--a thing one couldn't help. he entered quietly, as mont missed his shot. he noted the young man's eyes, fixed on fleur bending over in her turn; and the adoration in them almost touched him. she paused with the cue poised on the bridge of her slim hand, and shook her crop of short dark chestnut hair. "i shall never do it." "'nothing venture!'" "all right!" the cue struck, the ball rolled. "there!" "bad luck! never mind!" then they saw him, and soames said: "i'll mark for you." he sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and tired, furtively studying those two young faces. when the game was over mont came up to him. "i've started in, sir. rum game, business, isn't it? i suppose you saw a lot of human nature as a solicitor." "i did." "shall i tell you what i've noticed: people are quite on the wrong track in offering less than they can afford to give; they ought to offer more, and work backward." soames raised his eyebrows. "suppose the more is accepted?" "that doesn't matter a little bit," said mont; "it's much more paying to abate a price than to increase it. for instance, say we offer an author good terms--he naturally takes them. then we go into it, find we can't publish at a decent profit and tell him so. he's got confidence in us because we've been generous to him, and he comes down like a lamb, and bears us no malice. but if we offer him poor terms at the start, he doesn't take them, so we have to advance them to get him, and he thinks us damned screws into the bargain." "try buying pictures on that system"; said soames, "an offer accepted is a contract--haven't you learned that?" young mont turned his head to where fleur was standing in the window. "no," he said, "i wish i had. then there's another thing. always let a man off a bargain if he wants to be let off." "as advertisement?" said soames dryly. "of course it is; but i meant on principle." "does your firm work on those lines?" "not yet," said mont, "but it'll come." "and they will go." "no, really, sir. i'm making any number of observations, and they all confirm my theory. human nature is consistently underrated in business, people do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure and profit by that. of course, you must be perfectly genuine and open, but that's easy if you feel it. the more human and generous you are the better chance you've got in business." soames rose. "are you a partner?" "not for six months, yet." "the rest of the firm had better make haste and retire." mont laughed. "you'll see," he said. "there's going to be a big change. the possessive principle has got its shutters up." "what?" said soames. "the house is to let! good-bye, sir; i'm off now." soames watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the squeeze it received, and distinctly heard the young man's sigh as he passed out. then she came from the window, trailing her finger along the mahogany edge of the billiard-table. watching her, soames knew that she was going to ask him something. her finger felt round the last pocket, and she looked up. "have you done anything to stop jon writing to me, father?" soames shook his head. "you haven't seen, then?" he said. "his father died just a week ago to-day." "oh!" in her startled, frowning face, he saw the instant struggle to apprehend what this would mean. "poor jon! why didn't you tell me, father?" "i never know!" said soames slowly; "you don't confide in me." "i would, if you'd help me, dear." "perhaps i shall." fleur clasped her hands. "oh! darling--when one wants a thing fearfully, one doesn't think of other people. don't be angry with me." soames put out his hand, as if pushing away an aspersion. "i'm cogitating," he said. what on earth had made him use a word like that! "has young mont been bothering you again?" fleur smiled. "oh! michael! he's always bothering; but he's such a good sort--i don't mind him." "well," said soames, "i'm tired; i shall go and have a nap before dinner." he went up to his picture-gallery, lay down on the couch there, and closed his eyes. a terrible responsibility this girl of his--whose mother was--ah! what was she? a terrible responsibility! help her--how could he help her? he could not alter the fact that he was her father. or that irene--! what was it young mont had said--some nonsense about the possessive instinct--shutters up--to let? silly! the sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and roses, closed on his senses, drowsing them. v the fixed idea "the fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the avid guise of love. to hedges and ditches, and doors, to humans without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast malady--the fixed idea of love pays no attention. it runs with eyes turned inward to its own light, oblivious of all other stars. those with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on their art, on vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying supertax, on remaining ministers, on making wheels go round, on preventing their neighbours from being divorced, on conscientious objection, greek roots, church dogma, paradox and superiority to everybody else, with other forms of ego-mania--all are unstable compared with him or her whose fixed idea is the possession of some her or him. and though fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the scattered life of a little forsyte whose frocks are paid for, and whose business is pleasure, she was--as winifred would have said in the latest fashion of speech--'honest-to-god' indifferent to it all. she wished and wished for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above the river or the green park when she went to town. she even kept jon's letters covered with pink silk, on her heart, than which in days when corsets were so low, sentiment so despised, and chests so out of fashion, there could, perhaps, have been no greater proof of the fixity of her idea. after hearing of his father's death, she had written to jon, and received his answer three days later on her return from a river picnic. it was his first letter since their meeting at june's. she opened it with misgiving, and read it with dismay. "since i saw you i've heard everything about the past. i won't tell it you--i think you knew when we met at june's. she says you did. if you did, fleur, you ought to have told me. i expect you only heard your father's side of it. i have heard my mother's. it's dreadful. now that she's so sad i can't do anything to hurt her more. of course, i long for you all day, but i don't believe now that we shall ever come together--there's something too strong pulling us apart." her deception had found her out. but jon--she felt--had forgiven that. it was what he said of his mother which caused the fluttering in her heart and the weak sensation in her legs. her first impulse was to reply--her second, not to reply. these impulses were constantly renewed in the days which followed, while desperation grew within her. she was not her father's child for nothing. the tenacity, which had at once made and undone soames, was her backbone, too, frilled and embroidered by french grace and quickness. instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always with the pronoun "i." she concealed, however, all signs of her growing desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of a disagreeable july permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor did any "sucking baronet" ever neglect the business of a publisher more consistently than her attendant spirit, michael mont. to soames she was a puzzle. he was almost deceived by this careless gaiety. almost--because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at night. what was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when she ought to have been asleep? but he dared not ask what was in her mind; and, since that one little talk in the billiard-room, she said nothing to him. in this taciturn condition of affairs it chanced that winifred invited them to lunch and to go afterwards to "a most amusing little play, 'the beggar's opera,'" and would they bring a man to make four? soames, whose attitude towards theatres was to go to nothing, accepted, because fleur's attitude was to go to everything. they motored up, taking michael mont, who, being in his seventh heaven, was found by winifred "very amusing." "the beggar's opera" puzzled soames. the people were unpleasant, the whole thing cynical. winifred was "intrigued"--by the dresses. the music too did not displease her. at the opera, the night before, she had arrived too early for the russian ballet, and found the stage occupied by singers, for a whole hour pale or apoplectic from terror lest by some dreadful inadvertence they might drop into a tune. michael mont was enraptured with the whole thing. and all three wondered what fleur was thinking of it. but fleur was not thinking of it. her fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with polly peachum, mimed with filch, danced with jenny diver, postured with lucy lockit, kissed, trolled, and cuddled with macheath. her lips might smile, her hands applaud, but the comic old masterpiece made no more impression on her than if it had been pathetic, like a modern "revue." when they embarked in the car to return, she ached because jon was not sitting next her instead of michael mont. when, at some jolt, the young man's arm touched hers as if by accident, she only thought: 'if that were jon's arm!' when his cheerful voice, tempered by her proximity, murmured above the sound of the car's progress, she smiled and answered, thinking: 'if that were jon's voice!' and when once he said: "fleur, you look a perfect angel in that dress!" she answered: "oh, do you like it?" thinking: 'if only jon could see it!' during this drive she took a resolution. she would go to robin hill and see him--alone; she would take the car, without word beforehand to him or to her father. it was nine days since his letter, and she could wait no longer. on monday she would go! the decision made her well disposed towards young mont. with something to look forward to she could afford to tolerate and respond. he might stay to dinner; propose to her as usual; dance with her, press her hand, sigh--do what he liked. he was only a nuisance when he interfered with her fixed idea. she was even sorry for him so far as it was possible to be sorry for anybody but herself just now. at dinner he seemed to talk more wildly than usual about what he called 'the death of the close borough'--she paid little attention, but her father seemed paying a good deal, with a smile on his face which meant opposition, if not anger. "the younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir; does it, fleur?" fleur shrugged her shoulders--the younger generation was just jon, and she did not know what he was thinking. "young people will think as i do when they're my age, mr. mont. human nature doesn't change." "i admit that, sir; but the forms of thought change with the times. the pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that's going out." "indeed! to mind one's own business is not a form of thought, mr. mont, it's an instinct." yes, when jon was the business! "but what is one's business, sir? that's the point, everybody's business is going to be one's business. isn't it, fleur?" fleur only smiled. "if not," added young mont, "there'll be blood." "people have talked like that from time immemorial." "but you'll admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out?" "i should say increasing among those who have none." "well, look at me! i'm heir to an entailed estate. i don't want the thing; i'd cut the entail to-morrow." "you're not married, and you don't know what you're talking about." fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her. "do you really mean that marriage--?" he began. "society is built on marriage," came from between her father's close lips; "marriage and its consequences. do you want to do away with it?" young mont made a distracted gesture. silence brooded over the dinner-table, covered with spoons bearing the forsyte crest--a pheasant proper--under the electric light in an alabaster globe. and outside, the river evening darkened, charged with heavy moisture and sweet scents. 'monday,' thought fleur; 'monday!' vi desperate the weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and empty to the only jolyon forsyte left. the necessary forms and ceremonies--the reading of the will, valuation of the estate, distribution of the legacies--were enacted over the head, as it were, of one not yet of age. jolyon was cremated. by his special wish no one attended that ceremony, or wore black for him. the succession of his property, controlled to some extent by old jolyon's will, left his widow in possession of robin hill, with two thousand five hundred pounds a year for life. apart from this the two wills worked together in some complicated way to insure that each of jolyon's three children should have an equal share in their grandfather's and father's property in the future as in the present, save only that jon, by virtue of his sex, would have control of his capital when he was twenty-one, while june and holly would only have the spirit of theirs, in order that their children might have the body after them. if they had no children, it would all come to jon if he outlived them; and since june was fifty, and holly nearly forty, it was considered in lincoln's inn fields that but for the cruelty of income tax, young jon would be as warm a man as his grandfather when he died. all this was nothing to jon, and little enough to his mother. it was june who did everything needful for one who had left his affairs in perfect order. when she had gone, and those two were alone again in the great house, alone with death drawing them together, and love driving them apart, jon passed very painful days secretly disgusted and disappointed with himself. his mother would look at him with a patient sadness which yet had in it an instinctive pride, as if she were reserving her defence. if she smiled he was angry that his answering smile should be so grudging and unnatural. he did not judge or condemn her; that was all too remote--indeed, the idea of doing so had never come to him. no! he was grudging and unnatural because he couldn't have what he wanted because of her. there was one alleviation--much to do in connection with his father's career, which could not be safely intrusted to june, though she had offered to undertake it. both jon and his mother had felt that if she took his portfolios, unexhibited drawings and unfinished matter, away with her, the work would encounter such icy blasts from paul post and other frequenters of her studio, that it would soon be frozen out even of her warm heart. on its old-fashioned plane and of its kind the work was good, and they could not bear the thought of its subjection to ridicule. a one-man exhibition of his work was the least testimony they could pay to one they had loved; and on preparation for this they spent many hours together. jon came to have a curiously increased respect for his father. the quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into something really individual was disclosed by these researches. there was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of growth in depth and reach of vision. nothing certainly went very deep, or reached very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough, conscientious, and complete. and, remembering his father's utter absence of "side" or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which he had always spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself "an amateur," jon could not help feeling that he had never really known his father. to take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting them know that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle. there was something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him heartily indorse his mother's comment: "he had true refinement; he couldn't help thinking of others, whatever he did. and when he took a resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of defiance--not like the age, is it? twice in his life he had to go against everything; and yet it never made him bitter." jon saw tears running down her face, which she at once turned away from him. she was so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn't feel it much. now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell short of the reserve power and dignity in both his father and his mother. and, stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist. she kissed him swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room. the studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silk-worms, dried lavender, music, and other forms of instruction. now, at the end of july, despite its northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in between the long-faded lilac linen curtains. to redeem a little the departed glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which its master has left, irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl of red roses. this, and jolyon's favourite cat, who still clung to the deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled, sad workroom. jon, at the north window, sniffing air mysteriously scented with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up. the lawyers again about some nonsense! why did that scent so make one ache? and where did it come from--there were no strawberry beds on this side of the house. instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, and wrote down some broken words. a warmth began spreading in his chest; he rubbed the palms of his hands together. presently he had jotted this: "if i could make a little song-- a little song to soothe my heart! i'd make it all of little things-- the plash of water, rub of wings, the puffing-off of dandie's crown, the hiss of raindrop spilling down, the purr of cat, the trill of bird, and ev'ry whispering i've heard from willy wind in leaves and grass, and all the distant drones that pass. a song, as tender and as light as flower, or butterfly in flight; and when i saw it opening i'd let it fly, and sing!" he was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he heard his name called, and, turning round, saw fleur. at that amazing apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound, while her clear vivid glance ravished his heart. then he went forward to the table, saying: "how nice of you to come!" and saw her flinch as if he had thrown something at her. "i asked for you," she said, "and they showed me up here. but i can go away again." jon clutched the paint-stained table. her face and figure in its frilly frock, photographed itself with such startling vividness upon his eyes, that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have seen her. "i know i told you a lie, jon. but i told it out of love." "oh! yes! that's nothing!" "i didn't answer your letter. what was the use--there wasn't anything to answer. i wanted to see you instead." she held out both her hands, and jon grasped them across the table. he tried to say something, but all his attention was given to trying not to hurt her hands. his own felt so hard and hers so soft. she said almost defiantly: "that old story--was it so very dreadful?" "yes." in his voice, too, there was a note of defiance. she dragged her hands away. "i didn't think in these days boys were tied to their mothers' apron-strings." jon's chin went up as if he had been struck. "oh! i didn't mean it, jon. what a horrible thing to say!" swiftly she came close to him. "jon, dear; i didn't mean it." "all right." she had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down on them; the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it quivering. but, in a sort of paralysis, he made no response. she let go of his shoulder and drew away. "well, i'll go, if you don't want me. but i never thought you'd have given me up." "i haven't," cried jon, coming suddenly to life. "i can't. i'll try again." she swayed towards him. "jon--i love you! don't give me up! if you do, i don't know what i shall do--i feel so desperate. what does it matter--all that past--compared with this?" she clung to him. he kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. but while he kissed her he saw the sheets of that letter fallen down on the floor of his bedroom--his father's white dead face--his mother kneeling before it. fleur's whisper: "make her! promise! oh! jon, try!" seemed childish in his ear. he felt curiously old. "i promise!" he muttered. "only, you don't understand." "she wants to spoil our lives, just because--" "yes, of what?" again that challenge in his voice, and she did not answer. her arms tightened round him, and he returned her kisses; but even while he yielded, the poison worked in him, the poison of the letter. fleur did not know, she did not understand--she misjudged his mother; she came from the enemy's camp! so lovely, and he loved her so--yet, even in her embrace, he could not help the memory of holly's words: "i think she has a 'having' nature," and his mother's: "my darling boy; don't think of me--think of yourself." when she was gone like a passionate dream, leaving her image on his eyes, her kisses on his lips, such an ache in his heart, jon leaned in the window, listening to the car bearing her away. still the scent as of warm strawberries, still the little summer sounds that should make his song; still all the promise of youth and happiness in sighing, floating, fluttering july--and his heart torn; yearning strong in him; hope high in him, yet with its eyes cast down, as if ashamed. the miserable task before him! if fleur was desperate, so was he--watching the poplars swaying, the white clouds passing, the sunlight on the grass. he waited till evening, till after their almost silent dinner, till his mother had played to him--and still he waited, feeling that she knew what he was waiting to say. she kissed him and went up-stairs, and still he lingered, watching the moonlight and the moths, and that unreality of colouring which steals along and stains a summer night. and he would have given anything to be back in the past--barely three months back; or away forward, years, in the future. the present with this stark cruelty of a decision, one way or the other, seemed impossible. he realised now so much more keenly what his mother felt than he had at first; as if the story in that letter had been a poisonous germ producing a kind of fever of partisanship, so that he really felt there were two camps, his mother's and his--fleur's and her father's. it might be a dead thing, that old tragic ownership and enmity, but dead things were poisonous till time had cleaned them away. even his love felt tainted, less illusioned, more of the earth, and with a treacherous lurking doubt lest fleur, like her father, might want to own; not articulate, just a stealing haunt, horribly unworthy, which crept in and about the ardour of his memories, touched with its tarnishing breath the vividness and grace of that charmed face and figure--a doubt, not real enough to convince him of its presence, just real enough to deflower a perfect faith. and perfect faith, to jon, not yet twenty, was essential. he still had youth's eagerness to give with both hands, to take with neither--to give lovingly to one who had his own impulsive generosity. surely she had! he got up from the window-seat and roamed in the big grey ghostly room, whose walls were hung with silvered canvas. this house--his father said in that death-bed letter--had been built for his mother to live in--with fleur's father! he put out his hand in the half-dark, as if to grasp the shadowy hand of the dead. he clenched, trying to feel the thin vanished fingers of his father; to squeeze them, and reassure him that he--he was on his father's side. tears, prisoned within him, made his eyes feel dry and hot. he went back to the window. it was warmer, not so eerie, more comforting outside, where the moon hung golden, three days off full; the freedom of the night was comforting. if only fleur and he had met on some desert island without a past--and nature for their house! jon had still his high regard for desert islands, where breadfruit grew, and the water was blue above the coral. the night was deep, was free--there was enticement in it; a lure, a promise, a refuge from entanglement, and love! milksop tied to his mother's--! his cheeks burned. he shut the window, drew curtains over it, switched off the lighted sconce, and went up-stairs. the door of his room was open, the light turned up; his mother, still in her evening gown, was standing at the window. she turned, and said: "sit down, jon; let's talk." she sat down on the window-seat, jon on his bed. she had her profile turned to him, and the beauty and grace of her figure, the delicate line of the brow, the nose, the neck, the strange and as it were remote refinement of her, moved him. his mother never belonged to her surroundings. she came into them from somewhere--as it were! what was she going to say to him, who had in his heart such things to say to her? "i know fleur came to-day. i'm not surprised." it was as though she had added: "she is her father's daughter!" and jon's heart hardened. irene went on quietly: "i have father's letter. i picked it up that night and kept it. would you like it back, dear?" jon shook his head. "i had read it, of course, before he gave it to you. it didn't quite do justice to my criminality." "mother!" burst from jon's lips. "he put it very sweetly, but i know that in marrying fleur's father without love i did a dreadful thing. an unhappy marriage, jon, can play such havoc with other lives besides one's own. you are fearfully young, my darling, and fearfully loving. do you think you can possibly be happy with this girl?" staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, jon answered: "yes; oh! yes--if you could be." irene smiled. "admiration of beauty, and longing for possession are not love. if yours were another case like mine, jon--where the deepest things are stifled; the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!" "why should it, mother? you think she must be like her father, but she's not. i've seen him." again the smile came on irene's lips, and in jon something wavered; there was such irony and experience in that smile. "you are a giver, jon; she is a taker." that unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again! he said with vehemence: "she isn't--she isn't. it's only because i can't bear to make you unhappy, mother, now that father--" he thrust his fists against his forehead. irene got up. "i told you that night, dear, not to mind me. i meant it. think of yourself and your own happiness! i can stand what's left--i've brought it on myself." again the word: "mother!" burst from jon's lips. she came over to him and put her hands over his. "do you feel your head, darling?" jon shook it. what he felt was in his chest--a sort of tearing asunder of the tissue there, by the two loves. "i shall always love you the same, jon, whatever you do. you won't lose anything." she smoothed his hair gently, and walked away. he heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him. vii embassy enquiring for her at tea time soames learned that fleur had been out in the car since two. three hours! where had she gone? up to london without a word to him? he had never become quite reconciled with cars. he had embraced them in principle--like the born empiricist, or forsyte, that he was--adopting each symptom of progress as it came along with: "well, we couldn't do without them now." but in fact he found them tearing, great, smelly things. obliged by annette to have one--a rollhard with pearl-grey cushions, electric light, little mirrors, trays for the ashes of cigarettes, flower vases--all smelling of petrol and stephanotis--he regarded it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law, montague dartie. the thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and subcutaneously oily in modern life. as modern life became faster, looser, younger, soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and more in thought and language like his father james before him. he was almost aware of it himself. pace and progress pleased him less and less; there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered provocative in the prevailing mood of labour. on one occasion that fellow sims had driven over the only vested interest of a working man. soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many people would have stopped to put up with it. he had been sorry for the dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that ruffian hadn't been so outrageous. with four hours fast becoming five, and still no fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in person and by proxy balled within him, and sinking sensations troubled the pit of his stomach. at seven he telephoned to winifred by trunk call. no! fleur had not been to green street. then where was she? visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all blood-and-dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him. he went to her room and spied among her things. she had taken nothing--no dressing-case, no jewellery. and this, a relief in one sense, increased his fears of an accident. terrible to be helpless when his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss or publicity of any kind! what should he do, if she were not back by nightfall? at a quarter to eight he heard the car. a great weight lifted from off his heart; he hurried down. she was getting out--pale and tired-looking, but nothing wrong. he met her in the hall. "you've frightened me. where have you been?" "to robin hill. i'm sorry, dear. i had to go; i'll tell you afterwards." and, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs. soames waited in the drawing-room. to robin hill! what did that portend? it was not a subject they could discuss at dinner--consecrated to the susceptibilities of the butler. the agony of nerves soames had been through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to condemn what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he waited in a relaxed stupor for her revelation. life was a queer business. there he was at sixty-five and no more in command of things than if he had not spent forty years in building up security--always something one couldn't get on terms with! in the pocket of his dinner-jacket was a letter from annette. she was coming back in a fortnight. he knew nothing of what she had been doing out there. and he was glad that he did not. her absence had been a relief. out of sight was out of mind! and now she was coming back. another worry! and the bolderby old crome was gone--dumetrius had got it--all because that anonymous letter had put it out of his thoughts. he furtively remarked the strained look on his daughter's face, as if she too were gazing at a picture that she couldn't buy. he almost wished the war back. worries didn't seem, then, quite so worrying. from the caress in her voice, the look on her face, he became certain that she wanted something from him, uncertain whether it would be wise of him to give it her. he pushed his savoury away uneaten, and even joined her in a cigarette. after dinner she set the electric piano-player going. and he augured the worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his knee, and put her hand on his. "darling, be nice to me. i had to see jon--he wrote to me. he's going to try what he can do with his mother. but i've been thinking. but it's really in your hands, father. if you'd persuade her that it doesn't mean renewing the past in any way! that i shall stay yours, and jon will stay hers; that you need never see him or her, and she need never see you or me! only you could persuade her, dear, because only you could promise. one can't promise for other people. surely it wouldn't be too awkward for you to see her just this once--now that jon's father is dead?" "too awkward?" soames repeated. "the whole thing's preposterous." "you know," said fleur, without looking up, "you wouldn't mind seeing her, really." soames was silent. her words had expressed a truth too deep for him to admit. she slipped her fingers between his own--hot, slim, eager, they clung there. this child of his would corkscrew her way into a brick wall! "what am i to do, if you won't, father?" she said very softly. "i'll do anything for your happiness," said soames; "but this isn't for your happiness." "oh! it is; it is!" "it'll only stir things up," he said grimly. "but they are stirred up. the thing is to quiet them. to make her feel that this is just our lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers. you can do it, father, i know you can." "you know a great deal, then," was soames' glum answer. "if you will, jon and i will wait a year--two years if you like." "it seems to me," murmured soames, "that you care nothing about what i feel." fleur pressed his hand against her cheek. "i do, darling. but you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable." how she wheedled to get her ends! and trying with all his might to think she really cared for him--he was not sure--not sure. all she cared for was this boy! why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing her affection for himself? why should he? by the laws of the forsytes it was foolish! there was nothing to be had out of it--nothing! to give her to that boy! to pass her into the enemy's camp, under the influence of the woman who had injured him so deeply! slowly--inevitably--he would lose this flower of his life! and suddenly he was conscious that his hand was wet. his heart gave a little painful jump. he couldn't bear her to cry. he put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear dropped on that, too. he couldn't go on like this! "well, well," he said, "i'll think it over, and do what i can. come, come!" if she must have it for her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her. and lest she should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went up to the piano-player--making that noise! it ran down, as he reached it, with a faint buzz. that musical box of his nursery days: "the harmonious blacksmith," "glorious port"--the thing had always made him miserable when his mother set it going on sunday afternoons. here it was again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it played: "the wild wild women" and "the policeman's holiday," and he was no longer in black velvet with a sky-blue collar. 'profond's right,' he thought, 'there's nothing in it! we're all progressing to the grave!' and with that surprising mental comment he walked out. he did not see fleur again that night. but, at breakfast, her eyes followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he intended to try. no! he had made up his mind to the nerve-racking business. he would go to robin hill--to that house of memories. a pleasant memory--the last! of going down to keep that boy's father and irene apart by threatening divorce. he had often thought, since, that it had clenched their union. and, now, he was going to clench the union of that boy with his girl. 'i don't know what i've done,' he thought, 'to have such things thrust on me!' he went up by train and down by train, and from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very much as he remembered it over thirty years ago. funny--so near london! some one evidently was holding on to the land there. this speculation soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get overheated, though the day was chill enough. after all was said and done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. land, and good pictures! the values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a "here to-day and gone to-morrow" spirit. the french were right, perhaps, with their peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of the french. one's bit of land! something solid in it! he had heard peasant-proprietors described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young mont call his father a pig-headed morning poster--disrespectful young devil. well, there were worse things than being pig-headed or reading the morning post. there was profond and his tribe, and all these labour chaps, and loud-mouthed politicians, and "wild, wild women"! a lot of worse things! and, suddenly, soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky. sheer nerves at the meeting before him! as aunt juley might have said--quoting "superior dosset"--his nerves were "in a proper fantigue." he could see the house now among its trees, the house he had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman, who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all! he began to think of dumetrius, local loans, and other forms of investment. he could not afford to meet her with his nerves all shaking; he who represented the day of judgment for her on earth as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless beauty, incarnate. his dignity demanded impassivity during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved herself, would have been brother and sister. that wretched tune: "the wild wild women" kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes did not run there as a rule. passing the poplars in front of the house, he thought: 'how they've grown; i had them planted!' a maid answered his ring. "will you say--mr. forsyte, on a very special matter." if she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him. 'by george!' he thought, hardening as the tug came: 'it's a topsyturvy affair!' the maid came back. would the gentleman state his business, please? "say it concerns mr. jon," said soames. and once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white marble designed by her first lover. ah! she had been a bad lot--had loved two men, and not himself! he must remember that when he came face to face with her once more. and suddenly he saw her in the opening chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed gravity; the old calm defensive voice: "will you come in, please?" he passed through that opening. as in the picture-gallery and the confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. and this was the first time--the very first--since he married her five and thirty years ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call her his. she was not wearing black--one of that fellow's radical notions, he supposed. "i apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be settled one way or the other." "won't you sit down?" "no, thank you." anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them, mastered him, and words came tumbling out: "it's an infernal mischance; i've done my best to discourage it. i consider my daughter crazy, but i've got into the habit of indulging her; that's why i'm here. i suppose you're fond of your son." "devotedly." "well?" "it rests with him." he had a sense of being met and baffled. always--always she had baffled him, even in those old first married days. "it's a mad notion," he said. "it is." "if you had only--! well--they might have been--" he did not finish that sentence "brother and sister and all this saved," but he saw her shudder as if he had, and stung by the sight, he crossed over to the window. out there the trees had not grown--they couldn't, they were old! "so far as i'm concerned," he said, "you may make your mind easy. i desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about. young people in these days are--are unaccountable. but i can't bear to see my daughter unhappy. what am i to say to her when i go back?" "please say to her, as i said to you, that it rests with jon." "you don't oppose it?" "with all my heart; not with my lips." soames stood, biting his finger. "i remember an evening--" he said suddenly; and was silent. what was there--what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four comers of his hate or condemnation? "where is he--your son?" "up in his father's studio, i think." "perhaps you'd have him down." he watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in. "please tell mr. jon that i want him." "if it rests with him," said soames hurriedly, when the maid was gone, "i suppose i may take it for granted that this unnatural marriage will take place: in that case there'll be formalities. whom do i deal with--herring's?" irene nodded. "you don't propose to live with them?" irene shook her head. "what happens to this house?" "it will be as jon wishes." "this house," said soames suddenly: "i had hopes when i began it. if they live in it--their children! they say there's such a thing as nemesis. do you believe in it?" "yes." "oh! you do!" he had come back from the window, and was standing close to her, who, in the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed. "i'm not likely to see you again," he said slowly: "will you shake hands," his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily, "and let the past die?" he held out his hand. her pale face grew paler, her eyes so dark, rested immovably on his, but her hands remained clasped in front of her. he heard a sound and turned. that boy was standing in the opening of the curtains. very queer he looked, hardly recognisable as the young fellow he had seen in the gallery off cork street--very queer; much older, no youth in the face at all--haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled, his eyes deep in his head. soames made an effort, and said with a lift of his lip, not quite a smile nor quite a sneer: "well, young man! i'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it seems--this matter. your mother leaves it in your hands." the boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer. "for my daughter's sake i've brought myself to come," said soames. "what am i to say to her when i go back?" still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly: "tell fleur that it's no good, please; i must do as my father wished before he died." "jon!" "it's all right, mother." in a kind of stupefaction soames looked from one to the other; then, taking up hat and umbrella, which he had put down on a chair, he walked towards the curtains. the boy stood aside for him to go by. he passed through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn behind him. the sound liberated something in his chest. 'so that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door. viii the dark tune as soames walked away from the house at robin hill the sun broke through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. so absorbed in landscape-painting that he seldom looked seriously for effects of nature out-of-doors, he was struck by that moody effulgence--it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling. victory in defeat! his embassy had come to naught. but he was rid of those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of--her happiness. what would fleur say to him? would she believe he had done his best? and under that sunlight flaring on the elms, hazels, hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields, soames felt dread. she would be terribly upset! he must appeal to her pride. that boy had given her up, declared part and lot with the woman who so long ago had given her father up! soames clenched his hands. given him up, and why? what had been wrong with him? and once more he felt the malaise of one who contemplates himself as seen by another--like a dog who chances on his reflection in a mirror, and is intrigued and anxious at the unseizable thing. not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the connoisseurs. while eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not gone down to robin hill, the boy might not have so decided. he remembered the expression on his face while his mother was refusing the hand he had held out. a strange, an awkward thought! had fleur cooked her own goose by trying to make too sure? he reached home at half-past nine. while the car was passing in at one drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing out by the other. young mont, no doubt, so fleur had not been lonely. but he went in with a sinking heart. in the cream-panelled drawing-room she was sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands, in front of a white camellia plant which filled the fireplace. that glance at her before she saw him renewed his dread. what was she seeing among those white camellias? "well, father!" soames shook his head. his tongue failed him. this was murderous work! he saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering. "what? what? quick, father!" "my dear," said soames, "i--i did my best, but--" and again he shook his head. fleur ran to him and put a hand on each of his shoulders. "she?" "no," muttered soames; "he. i was to tell you that it was no use; he must do what his father wished before he died." he caught her by the waist. "come, child, don't let them hurt you. they're not worth your little finger." fleur tore herself from his grasp. "you didn't--you couldn't have tried. you--you betrayed me, father!" bitterly wounded, soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing there in front of him. "you didn't try--you didn't--i was a fool--i won't believe he could--he ever could! only yesterday he--! oh! why did i ask you?" "yes," said soames quietly, "why did you? i swallowed my feelings; i did my best for you, against my judgment--and this is my reward. good-night!" with every nerve in his body twitching he went towards the door. fleur darted after him. "he gives me up? you mean that? father!" soames turned and forced himself to answer: "yes." "oh!" cried fleur. "what did you--what could you have done in those old days?" the breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of speech in soames' throat. what had he done! what had they done to him! and with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and looked at her. "it's a shame!" cried fleur passionately. soames went out. he mounted, slow and icy, to his picture-gallery, and paced among his treasures. outrageous! oh! outrageous! she was spoiled! ah! and who had spoiled her? he stood still before the goya copy. accustomed to her own way in everything--flower of his life! and now that she couldn't have it. he turned to the window for some air. daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! what sound was that? why! that piano thing! a dark tune, with a thrum and a throb! she had set it going--what comfort could she get from that? his eyes caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of rambler roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. there she was, roaming up and down. his heart gave a little sickening jump. what would she do under this blow? how could he tell? what did he know of her--he had only loved her all his life--looked on her as the apple of his eye! he knew nothing--had no notion. there she was--and that dark tune--and the river gleaming in the moonlight! 'i must go out,' he thought. he hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left it, with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever they called it in these days, and passed through on to the verandah. where could he watch, without her seeing him? and he stole down through the fruit garden to the boat-house. he was between her and the river now, and his heart felt lighter. she was his daughter, and annette's--she wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was--he didn't know! from the boat-house window he could see the last acacia and the spin of her skirt when she turned in her restless march. that tune had run down at last--thank goodness! he crossed the floor and looked through the farther window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. it made little bubbles against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. he remembered suddenly that early morning when he had slept in this boat-house after his father died, and she had just been born--nearly nineteen years ago! even now he recalled the unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it had given him. that day the second passion of his life began--for this girl of his, roaming under the acacias. what a comfort she had been to him! and all the soreness and sense of outrage left him. if he could make her happy again, he didn't care! an owl flew, queeking, queeking; a bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water. how long was she going to roam about like this! he went back to the window, and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank. she stood quite close, on the landing-stage. and soames watched, clenching his hands. should he speak to her? his excitement was intense. the stillness of her figure, its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing, in--itself. he would always remember it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the river and the shivering of the willow leaves. she had everything in the world that he could give her, except the one thing that she could not have because of him! the perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a fish-bone in his throat. then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back towards the house. what could he give her to make amends? pearls, travel, horses, other young men--anything she wanted--that he might lose the memory of her young figure lonely by the water! there! she had set that tune going again! why--it was a mania! dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the house. it was as though she had said: "if i can't have something to keep me going, i shall die of this!" soames dimly understood. well, if it helped her, let her keep it thrumming on all night! and, mousing back through the fruit garden, he regained the verandah. though he meant to go in and speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love. he ought to know, ought to remember--and he could not! gone--all real recollection; except that it had hurt him horribly. in this blankness he stood passing his handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry. by craning his head he could just see fleur, standing with her back to that piano still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face. the expression on it was strange to soames, the eyes shone and stared, and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger. once or twice he had seen annette look like that--the face was too vivid, too naked, not his daughter's at that moment. and he dared not go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. he sat down in the shadow of the ingle-nook. monstrous trick, that fate had played him! nemesis! that old unhappy marriage! and in god's name--why? how was he to know, when he wanted irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she would never love him? the tune died and was renewed, and died again, and still soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what. the fag of fleur's cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning itself out. the moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden. comfortless light, mysterious, withdrawn--like the beauty of that woman who had never loved him--dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth. flowers! and his flower so unhappy! ah, why could one not put happiness into local loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down? light had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window. all was silent and dark in there. had she gone up? he rose, and, tiptoeing, peered in. it seemed so! he entered. the verandah kept the moonlight out; and at first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture blacker than the darkness. he groped towards the farther window to shut it. his foot struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. there she was, curled and crushed into the corner of the sofa! his hand hovered. did she want his consolation? he stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. how leave her there? at last he touched her hair, and said: "come, darling, better go to bed. i'll make it up to you, somehow." how fatuous! but what could he have said? ix under the oak-tree when their visitor had disappeared jon and his mother stood without speaking, till he said suddenly: "i ought to have seen him out." but soames was already walking down the drive, and jon went up-stairs to his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back. the expression on his mother's face confronting the man she had once been married to, had sealed a resolution growing within him ever since she left him the night before. it had put the finishing touch of reality. to marry fleur would be to hit his mother in the face; to betray his dead father! it was no good! jon had the least resentful of natures. he bore his parents no grudge in this hour of his distress. for one so young there was a rather strange power in him of seeing things in some sort of proportion. it was worse for fleur, worse for his mother even, than it was for him. harder than to give up was to be given up, or to be the cause of some one you loved giving up for you. he must not, would not behave grudgingly! while he stood watching the tardy sunlight, he had again that sudden vision of the world which had come to him the night before. sea on sea, country on country, millions on millions of people, all with their own lives, energies, joys, griefs, and suffering--all with things they had to give up, and separate struggles for existence. even though he might be willing to give up all else for the one thing he couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings mattered much in so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a cad. he pictured the people who had nothing--the millions who had given up life in the war, the millions whom the war had left with life and little else; the hungry children he had read of, the shattered men; people in prison, every kind of unfortunate. and--they did not help him much. if one had to miss a meal, what comfort in the knowledge that many others had to miss it too? there was more distraction in the thought of getting away out into this vast world of which he knew nothing yet. he could not go on staying here, walled in and sheltered, with everything so slick and comfortable, and nothing to do but brood and think what might have been. he could not go back to wansdon, and the memories of fleur. if he saw her again he could not trust himself; and if he stayed here or went back there, he would surely see her. while they were within reach of each other that must happen. to go far away and quickly, was the only thing to do. but, however much he loved his mother, he did not want to go away with her. then feeling that was brutal, he made up his mind desperately to propose that they should go to italy. for two hours in that melancholy room he tried to master himself; then dressed solemnly for dinner. his mother had done the same. they ate little, at some length, and talked of his father's catalogue. the show was arranged for october, and beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do. after dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a little, talked a little, till they were standing silent at last beneath the oak-tree. ruled by the thought: 'if i show anything, i show all,' jon put his arm through hers and said quite casually: "mother, let's go to italy." irene pressed his arm, and said as casually: "it would be very nice; but i've been thinking you ought to see and do more than you would if i were with you." "but then you'd be alone." "i was once alone for more than twelve years. besides, i should like to be here for the opening of father's show." jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived. "you couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big." "not here, perhaps. in london, and i might go to paris, after the show opens. you ought to have a year at least, jon, and see the world." "yes, i'd like to see the world and rough it. but i don't want to leave you all alone." "my dear, i owe you that at least. if it's for your good, it'll be for mine. why not start to-morrow? you've got your passport." "yes; if i'm going it had better be at once. only--mother--if--if i wanted to stay out somewhere--america or anywhere, would you mind coming presently?" "wherever and whenever you send for me. but don't send until you really want me." jon drew a deep breath. "i feel england's choky." they stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree--looking out to where the grand stand at epsom was veiled in evening. the branches kept the moonlight from them, so that it only fell everywhere else--over the fields and far away, and on the windows of the creepered house behind, which soon would be to let. x fleur's wedding the october paragraphs describing the wedding of fleur forsyte to michael mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event. in the union of the great-granddaughter of "superior dosset" with the heir of a ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that merger of class in class which buttresses the political stability of a realm. the time had come when the forsytes might resign their natural resentment against a "flummery" not theirs by birth, and accept it as the still more natural due of their possessive instincts. besides, they really had to mount to make room for all those so much more newly rich. in that quiet but tasteful ceremony in hanover square, and afterwards among the furniture in green street, it had been impossible for those not in the know to distinguish the forsyte troop from the mont contingent--so far away was "superior dosset" now. was there, in the crease of his trousers, the expression of his moustache, his accent, or the shine on his top hat, a pin to choose between soames and the ninth baronet himself? was not fleur as self-possessed, quick, glancing, pretty, and hard as the likeliest muskham, mont, or charwell filly present? if anything, the forsytes had it in dress and looks and manners. they had become "upper class" and now their name would be formally recorded in the stud book, their money joined to land. whether this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and money destined for the melting-pot--was still a question so moot that it was not mooted. after all, timothy had said consols were goin' up. timothy, the last, the missing link; timothy in extremis on the bayswater road--so francie had reported. it was whispered, too, that this young mont was a sort of socialist--strangely wise of him, and in the nature of insurance, considering the days they lived in. there was no uneasiness on that score. the landed classes produced that sort of amiable foolishness at times, turned to safe uses and confined to theory. as george remarked to his sister francie: "they'll soon be having puppies--that'll give him pause." the church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of the east window, looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a service calculated to keep the thoughts of all on puppies. forsytes, haymans, tweetymans, sat in the left aisle; monts, charwells, muskhams in the right; while a sprinkling of fleur's fellow-sufferers at school, and of mont's fellow-sufferers in the war, gaped indiscriminately from either side, and three maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from skyward's, brought up the rear, together with two mont retainers and fleur's old nurse. in the unsettled state of the country as full a house as could be expected. mrs. val dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed his hand more than once during the performance. to her, who knew the plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh painful. 'i wonder if jon knows by instinct,' she thought--jon, out in british columbia. she had received a letter from him only that morning which had made her smile and say: "jon's in british columbia, val, because he wants to be in california. he thinks it's too nice there." "oh!" said val, "so he's beginning to see a joke again." "he's bought some land and sent for his mother." "what on earth will she do out there?" "all she cares about is jon. do you still think it a happy release?" val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark lashes. "fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit. she's not bred right." "poor little fleur!" sighed holly. ah! it was strange--this marriage! the young man, mont, had caught her on the rebound, of course, in the reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down. such a plunge could not but be--as val put it--an outside chance. there was little to be told from the back view of her young cousin's veil, and holly's eyes reviewed the general aspect of this christian wedding. she who had made a love-match which had been successful, had a horror of unhappy marriages. this might not be one in the end--but it was clearly a toss-up; and to consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured unction before a crowd of fashionable free-thinkers--for who thought otherwise than freely, or not at all, when they were 'dolled' up--seemed to her as near a sin as one could find in an age which had abolished them. her eyes wandered from the prelate in his robes (a charwell--the forsytes had not as yet produced a prelate) to val, beside her, thinking--she was certain of--the mayfly filly at fifteen to one for the cambridgeshire. they passed on and caught the profile of the ninth baronet, in counterfeitment of the kneeling process. she could just see the neat ruck above his knees where he had pulled his trousers up, and thought: 'val's forgotten to pull up his!' her eyes passed to the pew in front of her, where winifred's substantial form was gowned with passion, and on again to soames and annette kneeling side by side. a little smile came on her lips--prosper profond, back from the south seas of the channel, would be kneeling too, about six rows behind. yes! this was a funny "small" business, however it turned out; still it was in a proper church and would be in the proper papers to-morrow morning. they had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the aisle, singing of the hosts of midian. her little finger touched val's thumb--they were holding the same hymn-book--and a tiny thrill passed through her, preserved from twenty years ago. he stooped and whispered: "i say, d'you remember the rat?" the rat at their wedding in cape colony, which had cleaned its whiskers behind the table at the registrar's! and between her little and third finger she squeezed his thumb hard. the hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse. he told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful conduct of the house of lords in connection with divorce. they were all soldiers--he said--in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the prince of darkness, and must be manful. the purpose of marriage was children, not mere sinful happiness. an imp danced in holly's eyes--val's eyelashes were meeting. whatever happened, he must not snore. her finger and thumb closed on his thigh; till he stirred uneasily. the discourse was over, the danger past. they were signing in the vestry; and general relaxation had set in. a voice behind her said: "will she stay the course?" "who's that?" she whispered. "old george forsyte!" holly demurely scrutinised one of whom she had often heard. fresh from south africa, and ignorant of her kith and kin, she never saw one without an almost childish curiosity. he was very big, and very dapper; his eyes gave her a funny feeling of having no particular clothes. "they're off!" she heard him say. they came, stepping from the chancel. holly looked first in young mont's face. his lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if to face a firing party. he gave holly the feeling that he was spiritually intoxicated. but fleur! ah! that was different. the girl was perfectly composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes and veil over her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her dark hazel eyes. outwardly, she seemed all there. but, inwardly, where was she? as those two passed, fleur raised her eyelids--the restless glint of those clear whites remained on holly's vision as might the flutter of a caged bird's wings. in green street winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed than usual. soames' request for the use of her house had come on her at a deeply psychological moment. under the influence of a remark of prosper profond, she had begun to exchange her empire for expressionistic furniture. there were the most amusing arrangements, with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at mealard's. another month and the change would have been complete. just now, the very "intriguing" recruits she had enlisted did not march too well with the old guard. it was as if her regiment were half in khaki, half in scarlet and bearskins. but her strong and comfortable character made the best of it in a drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more perfectly than she imagined, the semi-bolshevised imperialism of her country. after all, this was a day of merger, and you couldn't have too much of it! her eyes travelled indulgently among her guests. soames had gripped the back of a buhl chair; young mont was behind that "awfully amusing" screen, which no one as yet had been able to explain to her. the ninth baronet had shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid tinder glass with blue australian butterflies' wings, and was clinging to her louis-quinze cabinet; francie forsyte had seized the new mantel-board, finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony ground; george, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue book as if about to enter bets; prosper profond was twiddling the knob of the open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and annette's hands, close by, were grasping her own waist; two muskhams clung to the balcony among the plants, as if feeling ill; lady mont, thin and brave-looking, had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at the central light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta, as if the heavens had opened. everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to something. only fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from all support, flinging her words and glances to left and right. the room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation. nobody could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer. modern conversation seemed to winifred so different from the days of her prime, when a drawl was all the vogue. still it was diverting, which, of course, was all that mattered. even the forsytes were talking with extreme rapidity--fleur and christopher, and imogen, and young nicholas's youngest, patrick. soames, of course, was silent; but george, by the spinet, kept up a running commentary, and francie, by her mantel-shelf. winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet. he seemed to promise a certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a little, his grey moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her smile; "it's rather nice, isn't it?" his reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet: "d'you remember, in frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the waist?" he spoke as fast as anybody! he had dark, lively little eyes, too, all crinkled round like a catholic priest's. winifred felt suddenly he might say things she would regret. "they're always so diverting--weddings," she murmured, and moved on to soames. he was curiously still, and winifred saw at once what was dictating his immobility. to his right was george forsyte, to his left annette and prosper profond. he could not move without either seeing those two together, or the reflection of them in george forsyte's japing eyes. he was quite right not to be taking notice. "they say timothy's sinking," he said glumly. "where will you put him, soames?" "highgate." and counted on his fingers. "it'll make twelve of them there, including wives. how do you think fleur looks?" "remarkably well." soames nodded. he had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not rid himself of the impression that this business was unnatural--remembering still that crushed figure burrowing into the corner of the sofa. from that night to this day he had received from her no confidences. he knew from his chauffeur that she had made one more attempt on robin hill and drawn blank--an empty house, no one at home. he knew that she had received a letter, but not what was in it, except that it had made her hide herself and cry. he had remarked that she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn't noticing, as if she were wondering still what he had done--forsooth--to make those people hate him so. well, there it was! annette had come back, and things had worn on through the summer--very miserable, till suddenly fleur had said she was going to marry young mont. she had shown him a little more affection when she told soames that. and he had yielded--what was the good of opposing it? god knew that he had never wished to thwart her in anything! and the young man seemed quite delirious about her. no doubt she was in a reckless mood, and she was young, absurdly young. but if he opposed her, he didn't know what she would do; for all he could tell she might want to take up a profession, become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. she had no aptitude for painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate occupations of unmarried women, if they must do something in these days. on the whole, she was safer married, for he could see too well how feverish and restless she was at home. annette, too, had been in favour of it--annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was about, if she was about anything. annette had said: "let her marry this young man. he is a nice boy--not so highty-flighty as he seems." where she got her expressions, he didn't know--but her opinion soothed his doubts. his wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost depressing amount of common sense. he had settled fifty thousand on fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't turn out well. could it turn out well? she had not got over that other boy--he knew. they were to go to spain for the honeymoon. he would be even lonelier when she was gone. but later, perhaps, she would forget, and turn to him again! winifred's voice broke on his reverie. "why! of all wonders--june!" there, in a djibbah--what things she wore!--with her hair straying from under a fillet, soames saw his cousin, and fleur going forward to greet her. the two passed from their view out on to the stairway. "really," said winifred, "she does the most impossible things! fancy her coming!" "what made you ask her?" muttered soames. "because i thought she wouldn't accept, of course." winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that fleur was now a "lame duck." on receiving her invitation, june had first thought: 'i wouldn't go near them for the world!' and then, one morning, had awakened from a dream of fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture. and she had changed her mind. when fleur came forward and said to her: "do come up while i'm changing my dress"; she had followed up the stairs. the girl led the way into imogen's old bedroom, set ready for her toilet. june sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the sere and yellow. fleur locked the door. the girl stood before her divested of her wedding-dress. what a pretty thing she was! "i suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when it was to have been jon. but what does it matter? michael wants me, and i don't care. it'll get me away from home." diving her hand into the frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. "jon wrote me this." june read: "lake okanagen, british columbia. i'm not coming back to england. bless you always. jon." "she's made safe, you see," said fleur. june handed back the letter. "that's not fair to irene; she always told jon he could do as he wished." fleur smiled bitterly. "didn't she spoil your life too?" "nobody can spoil a life, my dear. that's nonsense. things happen, but we bob up." then with a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her face in the djibbah, with a strangled sob. "it's all right--all right," june murmured: "don't! there, there!" but the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing. well, well! it had to come. she would feel better afterwards! june stroked the short hair of that shapely head and all the scattered mother-sense in her focussed itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the girl's brain. "don't sit down under it, my dear," she said at last. "we can't control life, but we can fight it. make the best of things. i've had to. i held on, like you; and i cried, as you're crying now. and look at me!" fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked laugh. in truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was looking at, but it had brave eyes. "all right!" she said. "i'm sorry. i shall forget him, i suppose, if i fly fast and far enough." and, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the washstand. june watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. save for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood before the mirror. june got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her hand. to put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found for sympathy. "give me a kiss," she said when fleur was ready, and dug her chin into the girl's warm cheek. "i want a whiff," said fleur; "don't wait." june left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs. in the doorway of the drawing-room stood soames as if unquiet at his daughter's tardiness. june tossed her head and passed down on to the half landing. her cousin francie was standing there. "look!" said june, pointing with her chin at soames. "that man's fatal!" "how do you mean," said francie, "fatal?" june did not answer her. "i shan't wait to see them off," she said. "good-bye!" "good-bye!" and francie's eyes, of a celtic grey, goggled. that old feud! really, it was quite romantic! soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw june go, and drew a breath of satisfaction. but why didn't fleur come? they would miss their train. that train would bear her away from him, yet he could not help fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. and then she did come, running down in her tan-coloured frock and black velvet cap, and passed him into the drawing-room. he saw her kiss her mother, her aunt, val's wife, imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. how would she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? he couldn't hope for much! her lips pressed the middle of his cheek. "daddy!" she said, and was past and gone. daddy! she hadn't called him that for years. he drew a long breath and followed slowly down. there was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go through with, yet. but he would like just to catch her smile, if she leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they didn't take care. young mont's voice said fervently in his ear: "good-bye, sir; and thank you! i'm so fearfully bucked." "good-bye," he said; "don't miss your train." he stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the heads--the silly hats and heads. they were in the car now; and there was that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. a flood of something welled up in soames, and--he didn't know--he couldn't see! xi the last of the forsytes when they came to prepare that terrific symbol timothy forsyte--the one pure individualist left, the only man who hadn't heard of the great war--they found him wonderful--not even death had undermined his soundness. to smither and cook that preparation came like final evidence of what they had never believed possible--the end of the old forsyte family on earth. poor mr. timothy must now take a harp and sing in the company of miss forsyte, mrs. julia, miss hester; with mr. jolyon, mr. swithin, mr. james, mr. roger, and mr. nicholas of the party. whether mrs. hayman would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she had been cremated. secretly cook thought that mr. timothy would be upset--he had always been so set against barrel organs. how many times had she not said: "drat the thing! there it is again! smither, you'd better run up and see what you can do." and in her heart she would so have enjoyed the tunes, if she hadn't known that mr. timothy would ring the bell in a minute and say: "here, take him a halfpenny and tell him to move on." often they had been obliged to add threepence of their own before the man would go--timothy had ever underrated the value of emotion. luckily he had taken the organs for blue-bottles in his last years, which had been a comfort, and they had been able to enjoy the tunes. but a harp! cook wondered. it was a change! and mr. timothy had never liked change. but she did not speak of this to smither, who did so take a line of her own in regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes. she cried while timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry afterwards out of the yearly christmas bottle, which would not be needed now. ah! dear! she had been there five-and-forty years and smither nine-and-thirty! and now they would be going to a tiny house in tooting, to live on their savings and what miss hester had so kindly left them--for to take fresh service after the glorious past--no! but they would like just to see mr. soames again, and mrs. dartie, and miss francie, and miss euphemia. and even if they had to take their own cab, they felt they must go to the funeral. for six years mr. timothy had been their baby, getting younger and younger every day, till at last he had been too young to live. they spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting, in catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle, so as to leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy at the sale. miss ann's work-box; miss juley's (that is mrs. julia's) seaweed album; the fire-screen miss hester had crewelled; and mr. timothy's hair--little golden curls, glued into a black frame. oh! they must have those--only the price of things had gone up so! it fell to soames to issue invitations for the funeral. he had them drawn up by gradman in his office--only blood relations, and no flowers. six carriages were ordered. the will would be read afterwards at the house. he arrived at eleven o'clock to see that all was ready. at a quarter past old gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat. he and soames stood in the drawing-room waiting. at half-past eleven the carriages drew up in a long row. but no one else appeared. gradman said: "it surprises me, mr. soames. i posted them myself." "i don't know," said soames; "he'd lost touch with the family." soames had often noticed in old days how much more neighbourly his family were to the dead than to the living. but, now, the way they had flocked to fleur's wedding and abstained from timothy's funeral, seemed to show some vital change. there might, of course, be another reason; for soames felt that if he had not known the contents of timothy's will, he might have stayed away himself through delicacy. timothy had left a lot of money, with nobody in particular to leave it to. they mightn't like to seem to expect something. at twelve o'clock the procession left the door; timothy alone in the first carriage under glass. then soames alone; then gradman alone; then cook and smither together. they started at a walk, but were soon trotting under a bright sky. at the entrance to highgate cemetery they were delayed by service in the chapel. soames would have liked to stay outside in the sunshine. he didn't believe a word of it; on the other hand, it was a form of insurance which could not safely be neglected, in case there might be something in it after all. they walked up two and two--he and gradman, cook and smither--to the family vault. it was not very distinguished for the funeral of the last old forsyte. he took gradman into his carriage on the way back to the bayswater road with a certain glow in his heart. he had a surprise in pickle for the old chap who had served the forsytes four-and-fifty years--a treat that was entirely his doing. how well he remembered saying to timothy the day after aunt hester's funeral: "well, uncle timothy, there's gradman. he's taken a lot of trouble for the family. what do you say to leaving him five thousand?" and his surprise, seeing the difficulty there had been in getting timothy to leave anything, when timothy had nodded. and now the old chap would be as pleased as punch, for mrs. gradman, he knew, had a weak heart, and their son had lost a leg in the war. it was extraordinarily gratifying to soames to have left him five thousand pounds of timothy's money. they sat down together in the little drawing-room, whose walls--like a vision of heaven--were sky-blue and gold, with every picture-frame unnaturally bright, and every speck of dust removed from every piece of furniture, to read that little masterpiece,--the will of timothy. with his back to the light in aunt hester's chair, soames faced gradman with his face to the light on aunt ann's sofa; and, crossing his legs, began: "this is the last will and testament of me timothy forsyte of the bower bayswater road london i appoint my nephew soames forsyte of the shelter mapledurham and thomas gradman of folly road highgate (hereinafter called my trustees) to be the trustees and executors of this my will. to the said soames forsyte i leave the sum of one thousand pounds free of legacy duty and to the said thomas gradman i leave the sum of five thousand pounds free of legacy duty." soames paused. old gradman was leaning forward, convulsively gripping a stout black knee with each of his thick hands; his mouth had fallen open so that the gold fillings of three teeth gleamed; his eyes were blinking; two tears rolled slowly out of them. soames read hastily on. "all the rest of my property of whatsoever description i bequeath to my trustees upon trust to convert and hold the same upon the following trusts namely. to pay thereout all my debts funeral expenses and outgoings of any kind in connection with my will and to hold the residue thereof in trust for that male lineal descendant of my father jolyon forsyte by his marriage with ann pierce who after the decease of all lineal descendants whether male or female of my said father by his said marriage in being at the time of my death shall last attain the age of twenty-one years absolutely it being my desire that my property shall be nursed to the extreme limit permitted by the laws of england for the benefit of such male lineal descendant as aforesaid." soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing, looked at gradman. the old fellow was wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden festive tinge to the proceedings. "my word, mr. soames!" he said, and it was clear that the lawyer in him had utterly wiped out the man: "my word! why, there are two babies now, and some quite young children--if one of them lives to be eighty--it's not a great age--and add twenty-one--that's a hundred years; and mr. timothy worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound if he's worth a penny. compound interest at five per cent doubles you in fourteen years. in fourteen years three hundred thousand--six hundred thousand in twenty-eight--twelve hundred thousand in forty-two--twenty-four hundred thousand in fifty-six--four million eight hundred thousand in seventy--nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four--why, in a hundred years it'll be twenty million! and we shan't live to see it! it is a will!" soames said dryly: "anything may happen. the state might take the lot; they're capable of anything in these days." "and carry five," said gradman to himself. "i forgot--mr. timothy's in consols; we shan't get more than two per cent with this income tax. to be on the safe side, say seven million. still, that's a pretty penny." soames rose and handed him the will. "you're going into the city. take care of that, and do what's necessary. advertise; but there are no debts. when's the sale?" "tuesday week," said gradman. "life or lives in bein' and twenty-one years afterwards--it's a long way off. but i'm glad he's left it in the family." ... the sale--not at jobson's, in view of the victorian nature of the effects--was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by cook and smither, for soames had taken it on himself to give them their hearts' desires. winifred was present, euphemia, and francie, and eustace had come in his car. the miniatures, barbizons, and j. r. drawings had been bought in by soames; and relics of no marketable value were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who cared to have mementos. these were the only restrictions upon bidding characterised by an almost tragic langour. not one piece of furniture, no picture or porcelain figure appealed to modern taste. the humming-birds had fallen like autumn leaves when taken from where they had not hummed for sixty years. it was painful to soames to see the chairs his aunts had sat on, the little grand piano they had practically never played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at, the china they had dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth-rug which had warmed their feet; above all, the beds they had lain and died in--sold to little dealers, and the housewives of fulham. and yet--what could one do? buy them and stick them in a lumber-room? no; they had to go the way of all flesh and furniture, and be worn out. but when they put up aunt ann's sofa and were going to knock it down for thirty shillings, he cried out, suddenly: "five pounds!" the sensation was considerable, and the sofa his. when that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty october sunshine feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and the board "to let" was up, indeed. revolutions on the horizon; fleur in spain; no comfort in annette; no timothy's on the bayswater road. in the irritable desolation of his soul he went into the goupenor gallery. that chap jolyon's water-colours were on view there. he went in to look down his nose at them--it might give him some faint satisfaction. the news had trickled through from june to val's wife, from her to val, from val to his mother, from her to soames, that the house--the fatal house at robin hill--was for sale, and irene going to join her boy out in british columbia, or some such place. for one wild moment the thought had come to soames: 'why shouldn't i buy it back? i meant it for my--!' no sooner come than gone. too lugubrious a triumph; with two many humiliating memories for himself and fleur. she would never live there after what had happened. no, the place must go its way to some peer or profiteer. it had been a bone of contention from the first, the shell of the feud and with the woman gone, it was an empty shell. "for sale or to let." with his mind's eye he could see that board raised high above the ivied wall which he had built. he passed through the first of the two rooms in the gallery. there was certainly a body of work! and now that the fellow was dead it did not seem so trivial. the drawings were pleasing enough, with quite a sense of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush work. 'his father and my father; he and i; his child and mine!' thought soames. so it had gone on! and all about that woman! softened by the events of the past week, affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, soames came nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth--passing the understanding of a forsyte pure--that the body of beauty has a spiritual essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks not of self. after all, he was near that truth in his devotion to his daughter; perhaps that made him understand a little how he had missed the prize. and there, among the drawings of his kinsman, who had attained to that which he had found beyond his reach, he thought of him and her with a tolerance which surprised him. but he did not buy a drawing. just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air he met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his mind when he went into the gallery--irene, herself, coming in. so she had not gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that fellow's remains! he subdued the little involuntary leap of his subconsciousness, the mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm of this once-owned woman, and passed her with averted eyes. but when he had gone by he could not for the life of him help looking back. this, then, was finality--the heat and stress of his life, the madness and the longing thereof, the long, the only defeat he had known, would be over when she faded from his view this time; even such memories had their own queer aching value. she, too, was looking back. suddenly she lifted her gloved hand, her lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed to speak. it was the turn of soames to make no answer to that smile and that little farewell wave; he went out into the fashionable street quivering from head to foot. he knew what she had meant to say: "now that i am going for ever out of the reach of you and yours--forgive me; i wish you well." that was the meaning; last sign of that terrible reality--passing morality, duty, common sense--her aversion from him who had owned her body but had never touched her spirit or her heart. it hurt; yes--more than if she had kept her mask unmoved, her hand unlifted. three days later, in that fast-yellowing october, soames took a taxi-cab to highgate cemetery and mounted through its white forest to the forsyte vault. close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria, tall, ugly, and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive system. he could remember a discussion wherein swithin had advocated the addition to its face of the pheasant proper. the proposal had been rejected in favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words: "the family vault of jolyon forsyte: ." it was in good order. all trace of the recent interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed reposefully in the sunshine. the whole family lay there now, except old jolyon's wife, who had gone back under a contract to her own family vault in suffolk; old jolyon himself lying at robin hill; and susan hayman, cremated so that none knew where she might be. soames gazed at it with satisfaction--massive, needing little attention; and this was important, for he was well aware that no one would attend to it when he himself was gone, and he would have to be looking out for lodgings soon. he might have twenty years before him, but one never knew. twenty years without an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not know anything, with a daughter gone from home. his mood inclined to melancholy and retrospection. this cemetery was quite full now--of people with extraordinary names, buried in extraordinary taste. still, they had a fine view up here, right over london. annette had once given him a story to read by that frenchman, maupassant--a most lugubrious concern, where all the skeletons emerged from their graves one night, and all the pious inscriptions on the stones were altered to descriptions of their sins. not a true story at all. he didn't know about the french, but there was not much real harm in english people except their teeth and their taste, which were certainly deplorable. "the family vault of jolyon forsyte, ." a lot of people had been buried here since then--a lot of english life crumbled to mould and dust! the boom of an airplane passing under the gold-tinted clouds caused him to lift his eyes. the deuce of a lot of expansion had gone on. but it all came back to a cemetery--to a name and a date on a tomb. and he thought with a curious pride that he and his family had done little or nothing to help this feverish expansion. good solid middlemen, they had gone to work with dignity to manage and possess. "superior dosset," indeed, had built, in a dreadful, and jolyon painted, in a doubtful period, but so far as he remembered not another of them all had soiled his hands by creating anything--unless you counted val dartie and his horse-breeding. collectors, solicitors, barristers, merchants, publishers, accountants, directors, land agents, even soldiers--there they had been! the country had expanded, as it were, in spite of them. they had checked, controlled, defended, and taken advantage of the process--and when you considered how "superior dosset" had begun life with next to nothing, and his lineal descendants already owned what old gradman estimated at between a million and a million and a half, it was not so bad! and yet he sometimes felt as if the family bolt was shot, their possessive instinct dying out. they seemed unable to make money--this fourth generation; they were going into art, literature, farming, or the army; or just living on what was left them--they had no push and no tenacity. they would die out if they didn't take care. soames turned from the vault and faced towards the breeze. the air up here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling that mortality was in it. he gazed restlessly at the crosses and the urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or withering; and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and look at it. a sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. the spot was free from the pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged garden on the far side, arid in front a goldening birch-tree. this oasis in the desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of soames, and he sat down there in the sunshine. through those trembling gold birch leaves he gazed out at london, and yielded to the waves of memory. he thought of irene in montpellier square, when her hair was rusty-golden and her white shoulders his--irene, the prize of his love--passion, resistant to his ownership. he saw bosinney's body lying in that white mortuary, and irene sitting on the sofa looking at her picture with the eyes of a dying bird. again he thought of her by the little green niobe in the bois de boulogne, once more rejecting him. his fancy took him on beside his drifting river on the november day when fleur was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on the green-tinged water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered. and on again to the window opened to the cold starry night above hyde park, with his father lying dead. his fancy darted to that picture of "the future town," to that boy's and fleur's first meeting; to the blueish trail of prosper profond's cigar, and fleur in the window pointing down to where the fellow prowled. to the sight of irene and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the stand at lord's. to her and that boy at robin hill. to the sofa, where fleur lay crushed up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek, and her farewell "daddy." and suddenly he saw again irene's grey-gloved hand waving its last gesture of release. he sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures. "to let"--the forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul, his investments, and his woman, without check or question. and now the state had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and god knew who had his soul. "to let"--that sane and simple creed! the waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. he sat there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on the past--as a man might ride into a wild night with his face to the tail of his galloping horse. athwart the victorian dykes the waters were rolling on property, manners, and morals, on melody and the old forms of art--waters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of blood, lapping to the foot of this highgate hill where victorianism lay buried. and sitting there, high up on its most individual spot, soames--like a figure of investment--refused their restless sounds. instinctively he would not fight them--there was in him too much primeval wisdom, of man the possessive animal. they would quiet down when they had fulfilled their tidal fever of dispossessing and destroying; when the creations and the properties of others were sufficiently broken and dejected--they would lapse and ebb, and fresh forms would rise based on an instinct older than the fever of change--the instinct of home. "je m'en fiche," said prosper profond. soames did not say "je m'en fiche"--it was french, and the fellow was a thorn in his side--but deep down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property. what though the board was up, and cosiness to let?--some one would come along and take it again some day. and only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky. ah! he might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in the world! the end the middle class gentleman (le bourgeois gentilhomme) by moliere (jean-baptiste poquelin, - ) translated by philip dwight jones comedy-ballet presented at chambord, for the entertainment of the king, in the month of october , and to the public in paris for the first time at the palais-royal theater november the cast monsieur jourdain, bourgeois. madame jourdain, his wife. lucile, their daughter. nicole, maid. cleonte, suitor of lucile. covielle, cleonte's valet. dorante, count, suitor of dorimene. dorimene, marchioness. music master. pupil of the music master. dancing master. fencing master. master of philosophy. tailor. tailor's apprentice. two lackeys. many male and female musicians, instrumentalists, dancers, cooks, tailor's apprentices, and others necessary for the interludes. the scene is monsieur jourdain's house in paris. act one scene i (music master, dancing master, musicians, and dancers) (the play opens with a great assembly of instruments, and in the middle of the stage is a pupil of the music master seated at a table composing a melody which monsieur jourdain has ordered for a serenade.) music master: (to musicians) come, come into this room, sit there and wait until he comes. dancing master: (to dancers) and you too, on this side. music master: (to pupil) is it done? pupil: yes. music master: let's see... this is good. dancing master: is it something new? music master: yes, it's a melody for a serenade that i set him to composing here, while waiting for our man to awake. dancing master: may i see it? music master: you'll hear it, with the dialogue, when he comes. he won't be long. dancing master: our work, yours and mine, is not trivial at present. music master: this is true. we've found here such a man as we both need. this is a nice source of income for us--this monsieur jourdain, with the visions of nobility and gallantry that he has gotten into his head. you and i should hope that everyone resembled him. dancing master: not entirely; i could wish that he understood better the things that we give him. music master: it's true that he understands them poorly, but he pays well, and that's what our art needs now more than anything else. dancing master: as for me, i admit, i feed a little on glory. applause touches me; and i hold that, in all the fine arts, it is painful to produce for dolts, to endure the barbarous opinions of a fool about my choreography. it is a pleasure, don't tell me otherwise, to work for people who can appreciate the fine points of an art, who know how to give a sweet reception to the beauties of a work and, by pleasurable approbations, gratify us for our labor. yes, the most agreeable recompense we can receive for the things we do is to see them recognized and flattered by an applause that honors us. there is nothing, in my opinion, that pays us better for all our fatigue; and it is an exquisite delight to receive the praises of the well-informed. music master: i agree, and i enjoy them as you do. there is surely nothing more agreeable than the applause you speak of; but that incense does not provide a living. pure praises do not provide a comfortable existence; it is necessary to add something solid, and the best way to praise is to praise with cash-in-hand. he's a man, it's true, whose insight is very slight, who talks nonsense about everything and applauds only for the wrong reasons but his money makes up for his judgments. he has discernment in his purse. his praises are in cash, and this ignorant bourgeois is worth more to us, as you see, than the educated nobleman who introduced us here. dancing master: there is some truth in what you say; but i find that you lean a little too heavily on money; and material interest is something so base that a man of good taste should never show an attachment to it. music master: you are ready enough to receive the money our man gives you. dancing master: assuredly; but i don't place all my happiness in it, and i could wish that together with his fortune he had some good taste in things. music master: i could wish it too, that's what both of us are working for as much as we can. but, in any case, he gives us the means to make ourselves known in the world; and he will pay others if they will praise him. dancing master: here he comes. scene ii (monsieur jourdain, two lackeys, music master, dancing master, pupil, musicians, and dancers) monsieur jourdain: well gentlemen? what's this? are you going to show me your little skit? dancing master: how? what little skit? monsieur jourdain: well, the... what-do-you-call it? your prologue or dialogue of songs and dances. dancing master: ha, ha! music master: you find us ready for you. monsieur jourdain: i kept you waiting a little, but it's because i'm having myself dressed today like the people of quality, and my tailor sent me some silk stockings that i thought i would never get on. music master: we are here only to wait upon your leisure. monsieur jourdain: i want you both to stay until they have brought me my suit, so that you may see me. dancing master: whatever you would like. monsieur jourdain: you will see me fitted out properly, from head to foot. music master: we have no doubt of it. monsieur jourdain: i had this robe made for me. dancing master: it's very attractive. monsieur jourdain: my tailor told me the people of quality dress like this in the mornings. music master: it's marvelously becoming. monsieur jourdain: hey lackeys! my two lackeys! first lackey: what do you wish, sir? monsieur jourdain: nothing. i just wanted to see if you were paying attention. (to the two masters) what say you of my liveries? dancing master: they're magnificent. monsieur jourdain: (half opening his gown, showing a pair of tight red velvet breeches, and a green velvet vest, that he is wearing) here again is a sort of lounging dress to perform my morning exercises in. music master: it is elegant. monsieur jourdain: lackey! first lackey: sir? monsieur jourdain: the other lackey! second lackey: sir? monsieur jourdain: hold my robe. (to the masters) do you think i look good? dancing master: very well. no one could look better. monsieur jourdain: now let's have a look at your little show. music master: i would like very much for you to listen to a melody he (indicating his student) has just composed for the serenade that you ordered from me. he's one of my pupils who has an admirable talent for these kinds of things. monsieur jourdain: yes, but you should not have had that done by a pupil; you yourself were none too good for that piece of work. music master: you must not let the name of pupil fool you, sir. pupils of this sort know as much as the greatest masters, and the melody is as fine as could be made. just listen. monsieur jourdain: (to lackeys) give me my robe so i can listen better... wait, i believe i would be better without a robe... no, give it back, that will be better. musician: (singing) i languish night and day, my suffering is extreme since to your control your lovely eyes subjected me; if you thus treat, fair iris, those you love, alas, how would you treat an enemy? monsieur jourdain: this song seems to me a little mournful, it lulls to sleep, and i would like it if you could liven it up a little, here and there. music master: it is necessary, sir, that the tune be suited to the words. monsieur jourdain: someone taught me a perfectly pretty one some time ago. listen... now... how does it go? dancing master: by my faith, i don't know. monsieur jourdain: there are sheep in it. dancing master: sheep? monsieur jourdain: yes. ah! (he sings) i thought my jeanneton as beautiful as sweet; i thought my jeanneton far sweeter than a sheep. alas! alas! she is a hundred times, a thousand times, more cruel than tigers in the woods! isn't it pretty? music master: the prettiest in the world. dancing master: and you sing it well. monsieur jourdain: it's without having learned music. music master: you ought to learn it, sir, as you are learning dancing. they are two arts which have a close connection. dancing master: and which open the mind of a man to fine things. monsieur jourdain: and do people of quality learn music, too? music master: yes sir. monsieur jourdain: i'll learn it then. but i don't know when i can find time; for besides the fencing master who's teaching me, i have also engaged a master of philosophy who is to begin this morning. music master: philosophy is something; but music, sir, music... dancing master: music and dancing, music and dancing, that's all that's necessary. music master: there's nothing so useful in a state as music. dancing master: there's nothing so necessary to men as dancing. music master: without music, a state cannot subsist. dancing master: without the dance, a man can do nothing. music master: all the disorders, all the wars one sees in the world happen only from not learning music. dancing master: all the misfortunes of mankind, all the dreadful disasters that fill the history books, the blunders of politicians and the faults of omission of great commanders, all this comes from not knowing how to dance. monsieur jourdain: how is that? music master: does not war result from a lack of agreement between men? monsieur jourdain: that is true. music master: and if all men learned music, wouldn't that be a means of bringing about harmony and of seeing universal peace in the world? monsieur jourdain: you are right. dancing master: when a man has committed a mistake in his conduct, in family affairs, or in affairs of government of a state, or in the command of an army, do we not always say, "he took a bad step in such and such an affair?" monsieur jourdain: yes, that's said. dancing master: and can taking a bad step result from anything but not knowing how to dance? monsieur jourdain: it's true, you are both right. dancing master: it makes you see the excellence and usefulness of music and the dance. monsieur jourdain: i understand that, now. music master: do you wish to see our pieces? monsieur jourdain: yes. music master: i have already told you that this is a little attempt i have made to show the different passions that music can express. monsieur jourdain: very good. music master (to musicians) here, come forward. (to monsieur jourdain) you must imagine that they are dressed as shepherds. monsieur jourdain: why always as shepherds? you see nothing but that everywhere. music master: when we have characters that are to speak in music, it's necessary, for believability, to make them pastoral. singing has always been assigned to shepherds; and it is scarcely natural dialogue for princes or merchants to sing their passions. monsieur jourdain: alright, alright. let's see. dialogue in music: (a woman and two men) all three: a heart, under the domination of love, is always with a thousand cares oppressed. it is said that we gladly languish, gladly sigh; but, despite what can be said, there is nothing so sweet as our liberty! first man: there is nothing so sweet as the loving fires that make two hearts beat as one. one cannot live without amorous desires; take love from life, you take away the pleasures. second man: it would be sweet to submit to love's rule, if one could find faithful love, but, alas! oh cruel rule! no faithful shepherdess is to be seen, and that inconstant sex, much too unworthy, must renounce love eternally. first man: pleasing ardor! woman: happy liberty! second man: deceitful woman! first man: how precious you are to me! woman: how you please my heart! second man: how horrible you are to me! first man: ah, leave, for love, that mortal hate! woman: we can, we can show you a faithful shepherdess! second man: alas! where to find her? woman: in order to defend our reputation, i want to offer you my heart! first man: but, shepherdess, can i believe that it will not be deceitful? woman: we'll see through experience, who of the two loves best. second man: who lacks constancy, may the gods destroy! all three: with ardors so beautiful let us be inflamed! ah, how sweet it is to love, when two hearts are faithful! monsieur jourdain: is that all? music master: yes. monsieur jourdain: i find it well-done, and there are some pretty enough sayings in it. dancing master: here, for my presentation, is a little display of the loveliest movements and the most beautiful attitudes with which a dance can possibly be varied. monsieur jourdain: are these shepherds too? dancing master: they're whatever you please. let's go! (four dancers execute all the different movements and all the kinds of steps that the dancing master commands; and this dance makes the first interlude.) act two scene i (monsieur jourdain, music master, dancing master, lackeys) monsieur jourdain: that's not all that bad, and those people there hop around well. music master: when the dance is combined with the music, it will have even better effect, and you will see something quite good in the little ballet we have prepared for you. monsieur jourdain: that's for later, when the person i ordered all this for is to do me the honor of coming here to dine. dancing master: everything is ready. music master: however, sir, this is not enough. a person like you, who lives magnificently, and who are inclined towards fine things, should have a concert of music here every wednesday or every thursday. monsieur jourdain: is that what people of quality do? music master: yes, sir. monsieur jourdain: then i'll have them. will it be fine? music master: without doubt. you must have three voices--a tenor, a soprano, and a bass, who will be accompanied by a bass-viol, a theorbo, and a clavecin for the chords, with two violins to play the ritournelles. monsieur jourdain: you must also add a trumpet marine. the trumpet marine is an instrument that pleases me and it's harmonious. music master: leave it to us to manage things. monsieur jourdain: at least, don't forget to send the musicians to sing at table. music master: you will have everything you should have. monsieur jourdain: but above all, let the ballet be fine. music master: you will be pleased with it, and, among other things, with certain minuets you will find in it. monsieur jourdain: ah! minuets are my dance, and i would like you to see me dance them. come, my dancing master. dancing master: a hat, sir, if you please. la, la, la, la. la, la, la, la. in cadence please. la, la, la, la. your right leg. la, la, la, la. don't move your shoulders so. la, la, la, la. your arms are wrong. la, la, la, la. raise your head. turn the toe out. la, la, la, la. straighten your body up. monsieur jourdain: how was that? (breathlessly) music master: the best. monsieur jourdain: by the way, teach me how to bow to salute a marchioness; i shall need to know soon. dancing master: how you must bow to salute a marchioness? monsieur jourdain: yes, a marchioness named dorimene. dancing master: give me your hand. monsieur jourdain: no. you only have to do it, i'll remember it well. dancing master: if you want to salute her with a great deal of respect, you must first bow and step back, then bow three times as you walk towards her, and at the last one bow down to her knees. monsieur jourdain: (after the dancing master has illustrated) do it some. good! lackey: sir, your fencing master is here. monsieur jourdain: tell him to come in here for my lesson. i want you to see me perform. scene ii (fencing master, music master, dancing master, monsier jourdain, a lackey) fencing master: (after giving a foil to monsieur jourdain) come, sir, the salute. your body straight. a little inclined upon the left thigh. your legs not so wide apart. your feet both in a line. your wrist opposite your hip. the point of your sword even with your shoulder. the arm not so much extended. the left hand at the level of the eye. the left shoulder more squared. the head up. the expression bold. advance. the body steady. beat carte, and thrust. one, two. recover. again, with the foot firm. leap back. when you make a pass, sir, you must first disengage, and your body must be well turned. one, two. come, beat tierce and thrust. advance. stop there. one, two. recover. repeat. leap back. on guard, sir, on guard. (the fencing master touches him two or three times with the foil while saying, "on guard." ) monsieur jourdain: how was that? (breathlessly) music master: you did marvelously! fencing master: as i have told you, the entire secret of fencing lies in two things: to give and not to receive; and as i demonstrated to you the other day, it is impossible for you to receive, if you know how to turn your opponent's sword from the line of your body. this depends solely on a slight movement of the wrist, either inward or outward. monsieur jourdain: in this way then, a man, without courage, is sure to kill his man and not be killed himself? fencing master: without doubt. didn't you see the demonstration? monsieur jourdain: yes. fencing master: and thus you have seen how men like me should be considered by the state, and how the science of fencing is more important than all the other useless sciences, such as dancing, music,... dancing master: careful there, monsieur swordsman! speak of the dance only with respect. music master: i beg you to speak better of the excellence of music. fencing master: you are amusing fellows, to want to compare your sciences with mine! music master: see the self-importance of the man! fencing master: my little dancing master, i'll make you dance as you ought. and you, my little musician, i'll make you sing in a pretty way. dancing master: monsieur clanger-of-iron, i'll teach you your trade. monsieur jourdain: (to the dancing master) are you crazy to quarrel with him, who knows tierce and quarte, and who can kill a man by demonstration? dancing master: i disdain his demonstrations, and his tierce, and his quarte. monsieur jourdain: careful, i tell you. fencing master: what? you little impertinent! monsieur jourdain: oh! my fencing master. dancing master: what? you big workhorse! monsieur jourdain: oh! my dancing master. fencing master: if i throw myself on you... monsieur jourdain: careful. dancing master: if i get my hands on you... monsieur jourdain: be nice! fencing master: i'll go over you with a curry-comb, in such a way... monsieur jourdain: mercy! dancing master: i'll give you a beating such as... monsieur jourdain: i beg of you! music master: let us teach him a little how to talk! monsieur jourdain: oh lord! stop. scene iii (philosophy master, music master, dancing master, fencing master, monsieur jourdain, lackeys) monsieur jourdain: aha! monsieur philosopher, you come just in time with your philosophy. come, make a little peace among these people. philosophy master: what's happening? what's the matter, gentlemen. monsieur jourdain: they have got into a rage over the superiority of their professions to the point of injurious words and of wanting to come to blows. philosophy master: what! gentlemen, must you act this way? haven't you read the learned treatise that seneca composed on anger? is there anything more base and more shameful than this passion, which turns a man into a savage beast? and shouldn't reason be the mistress of all our activities? dancing master: well! sir, he has just abused both of us by, despising the dance, which i practice, and music, which is his profession. philosophy master: a wise man is above all the insults that can be spoken to him; and the grand reply one should make to such outrages is moderation and patience. fencing master: they both had the audacity of trying to compare their professions with mine. philosophy master: should that disturb you? men should not dispute amongst themselves about vainglory and rank; that which perfectly distinguishes one from the other is wisdom and virtue. dancing master: i insist to him that dance is a science to which one cannot do enough honor. music master: and i, that music is something that all the ages have revered. fencing master: and i insist to them that the science of fencing is the finest and the most necessary of all sciences. philosophy master: and where then will philosophy be? i find you all very impertinent to speak with this arrogance in front of me, and impudently to give the name of science to things that one should not even honor with the name of art, and that cannot be classified except under the name of miserable gladiator, singer, and buffoon! fencing master: get out, you dog of a philosopher! music master: get out, you worthless pedant! dancing master: get out, you ill-mannered cur! philosophy master: what! rascals that you are... (the philosopher flings himself at them, and all three go out fighting). monsieur jourdain: monsieur philosopher! philosophy master: rogues! scoundrels! insolent dogs! monsieur jourdain: monsieur philosopher! fencing master: a pox on the beast! monsieur jourdain: gentlemen! philosophy master: impudent rogues! monsieur jourdain: monsieur philosopher! dancing master: the devil take the jackass! monsieur jourdain: gentlemen! philosophy master: villains! monsieur jourdain: monsieur philosopher! music master: to the devil with the impertinent fellow! monsieur jourdain: gentlemen! philosophy master: rascals! beggars! traitors! impostors! (they leave). monsieur jourdain: monsieur philosopher, gentlemen! monsieur philosopher! gentlemen! monsieur philosopher! oh! fight as much as you like. i don't know what to do, and i'll not spoil my robe to separate you. i would be a fool to go among them and receive some damaging blow. act two scene iv (philosophy master, monsieur jourdain) philosophy master: (straightening the collar that indicates he is a philosopher) now to our lesson. monsieur jourdain: oh! sir, i am distressed by the blows they gave you. philosophy master: it's nothing. a philosopher knows how to take these things and i'll compose a satire against them, in the style of juvenal, which will fix them nicely. let it be. what would you like to learn? monsieur jourdain: everything i can, for i have every desire in the world to be educated, and i'm furious that my father and mother did not make me study all the sciences when i was young. philosophy master: this is a reasonable sentiment. nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago. you understand that, and you doubtless know latin? monsieur jourdain: yes, but act as if i did not know it. tell me what it says. philosophy master: it says that without science life is almost an image of death. monsieur jourdain: that latin is right. philosophy master: don't you know some principles, some basics of the sciences? monsieur jourdain: oh yes! i can read and write. philosophy master: where would it please you for us to begin? would you like me to teach you logic? monsieur jourdain: what is this logic? philosophy master: it is that which teaches the three operations of the mind. monsieur jourdain: what are these three operations of the mind? philosophy master: the first, the second, and the third. the first is to conceive well by means of the universals; the second is to judge well by means of the categories; and the third is to draw well a conclusion by means of figures. barbara, celarent, darii, ferio, baralipton, etc. monsieur jourdain: those words are too ugly. this logic doesn't suit me at all. let's learn something else that's prettier. philosophy master: would you like to learn morality? monsieur jourdain: morality? philosophy master: yes. monsieur jourdain: what does it say, this morality? philosophy master: it treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate their passions, and... monsieur jourdain: no, let's leave that. i'm as choleric as all the devils and there's no morality that sticks, i want to be as full of anger as i want whenever i like. philosophy master: would you like to learn physics? monsieur jourdain: what's it about, this physics? philosophy master: physics explains the principles of natural things and the properties of the material world; it discourses on the nature of the elements, of metals, minerals, of stones, of plants and animals, and teaches the causes of all the meteors, the rainbow, the will o' the wisps, the comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, winds, and whirlwinds. monsieur jourdain: there's too much commotion in it, too much confusion. philosophy master: then what do you want me to teach you? monsieur jourdain: teach me how to spell. philosophy master: very gladly. monsieur jourdain: afterwards, you may teach me the almanack, to know when there is a moon and when not. philosophy master: so be it. following your thought and treating this matter as a philosopher, it is necessary to begin according to the order of things, by an exact knowledge of the nature of letters and the different ways of pronouncing them all. and thereupon i must tell you letters are divided into vowels, called vowels because they express the voice; and into consonants because they sound with the vowels and only mark the diverse articulations of the voice. there are five vowels or voices: a, e, i, o, u. monsieur jourdain: i understand all that. philosophy master: the vowel a is formed by opening the mouth widely: a. its vowels are to be given the sounds used in vocalizing: ah-aye-ee-o-ou. monsieur jourdain: a, a. yes. philosophy master: the vowel e is formed by approaching the lower jaw to the upper: a, e. monsieur jourdain: a, e; a, e. by my faith, yes. ah! how fine! philosophy master: and the vowel i, by bringing the jaws still nearer each other and stretching the two corners of the mouth towards the ears: a, e, i. monsieur jourdain: a, e, i. i. i. i. that's true. long live science! philosophy master: the vowel o is formed by opening the jaws and drawing together the two corners of the lips, upper and lower: o. monsieur jourdain: o, o. there's nothing truer. a, e, i, o,i, o.. that's admirable! i, o, i, o. philosophy master: the opening of the mouth happens to make a little circle which represents an o. monsieur jourdain: o, o, o. you are right! o. ah! what a fine thing it is to know something! philosophy master: the vowel u is formed by bringing the teeth nearly together without completely joining them, and thrusting the two lips outward, also bringing them nearly together without completely joining them: u. monsieur jourdain: u, u. there's nothing truer. u. philosophy master: your two lips thrust out as if you were making a face, whence it results that if you want to make a face at someone and mock him, you have only to say to him "u." monsieur jourdain: u, u. that's true. ah! why didn't i study sooner in order to know all that! philosophy master: tomorrow we shall look at the other letters, which are the consonants. monsieur jourdain: are there things as curious about them as about these? philosophy master: without a doubt. the consonant d, for example, is pronounced by clapping the tongue above the upper teeth: d. monsieur jourdain: d, d, yes. ah! what fine things! fine things! philosophy master: the f, by pressing the upper teeth against the lower lip: f. monsieur jourdain: f, f. that's the truth. ah! my father and my mother, how i wish you ill! philosophy master: and the r, by carrying the tip of the tongue to the top of the palate, so that being grazed by the air that comes out with force, it yields to it and comes back always to the same place, making a kind of trill: r. ar. monsieur jourdain: r, r, ar. r, r, r, r, r, ra. that's true. ah! what a clever man you are! and how i have lost time! r, r, r, ar. philosophy master: i'll explain to you all these strange things to their very depths. monsieur jourdain: please do. but now, i must confide in you. i'm in love with a lady of great quality, and i wish that you would help me write something to her in a little note that i will let fall at her feet. philosophy master: very well. monsieur jourdain: that will be gallant, yes? philosophy master: without doubt. is it verse that you wish to write her? monsieur jourdain: no, no. no verse. philosophy master: do you want only prose? monsieur jourdain: no, i don't want either prose or verse. philosophy master: it must be one or the other. monsieur jourdain: why? philosophy master: because, sir, there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse. monsieur jourdain: there is nothing but prose or verse? philosophy master: no, sir, everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose. monsieur jourdain: and when one speaks, what is that then? philosophy master: prose. monsieur jourdain: what! when i say, "nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my nightcap," that's prose? philosophy master: yes, sir. monsieur jourdain: by my faith! for more than forty years i have been speaking prose without knowing anything about it, and i am much obliged to you for having taught me that. i would like then to put into a note to her: "beautiful marchioness, your lovely eyes make me die of love," but i want that put in a gallant manner and be nicely turned. philosophy master: put it that the fires of her eyes reduce your heart to cinders; that you suffer night and day for her the torments of a... monsieur jourdain: no, no, no. i want none of that; i only want you to say "beautiful marchioness, your lovely eyes make me die of love." philosophy master: the thing requires a little lengthening. monsieur jourdain: no, i tell you, i want only those words in the note, but turned stylishly, well arranged, as is necessary. please tell me, just to see, the diverse ways they could be put. philosophy master: one could put them first of all as you said them: "beautiful marchioness, your lovely eyes make me die of love." or else: "of love to die make me, beautiful marchioness, your beautiful eyes." or else: "your lovely eyes, of love make me, beautiful marchioness, die." or else: "die, your lovely eyes, beautiful marchioness, of love make me." or else: "me make your lovely eyes die, beautiful marchioness, of love." monsieur jourdain: but, of all those ways, which is the best? philosophy master: the way you said it: "beautiful marchioness, your lovely eyes make me die of love." monsieur jourdain: i never studied, and yet i made the whole thing up at the first try. i thank you with all my heart, and i ask you to come tomorrow early. philosophy master: i shall not fail to do so. (he leaves). monsieur jourdain: what? hasn't my suit come yet? the lackey: no, sir. monsieur jourdain: that cursed tailor makes me wait all day when i have so much to do! i'm enraged. may the quartan fever shake that tormentor of a tailor! to the devil with the tailor! may the plague choke the tailor! if i had him here now, that detestable tailor, that dog of a tailor, that traitor of a tailor, i... act two scene v (master tailor, apprentice tailor carrying suit, monsieur jourdain, lackeys) monsieur jourdain: ah! you're here! i was getting into a rage against you. master tailor: i could not come sooner, and i put twenty men to work on your suit. monsieur jourdain: you sent me some silk hose so small that i had all the difficulty in the world putting them on, and already there are two broken stitches. master tailor: they get bigger, too much so. monsieur jourdain: yes, if i always break the stitches. you also had made for me a pair of shoes that pinch furiously. master tailor: not at all, sir. monsieur jourdain: how, not at all! master tailor: no, they don't pinch you at all. monsieur jourdain: i tell you, they pinch me. master tailor: you imagine that. monsieur jourdain: i imagine it because i feel it. that's a good reason for you! master tailor: wait, here is the finest court-suit, and the best matched. it's a masterpiece to have invented a serious suit that is not black. and i give six attempts to the best tailors to equal it. monsieur jourdain: what's this? you've put the flowers upside down. master tailor: you didn't tell me you wanted them right side up. monsieur jourdain: did i have to tell you that? master tailor: yes, surely. all the people of quality wear them this way. monsieur jourdain: the people of quality wear the flowers upside down? master tailor: yes, sir. monsieur jourdain: oh! it's alright then. master tailor: if you like, i'll put them right side up. monsieur jourdain: no, no. master tailor: you have only to say so. monsieur jourdain: no, i tell you. you've made it very well. do you think the suit is going to look good on me? master tailor: what a question! i defy a painter with his brush to do anything that would fit you better. i have a worker in my place who is the greatest genius in the world at mounting a rhinegrave, and another who is the hero of the age at assembling a doublet. monsieur jourdain: the perruque and the plumes: are they correct? master tailor: everything's good. monsieur jourdain: (looking at the tailor's suit) ah! ah! monsieur tailor, here's the material from the last suit you made for me. i know it well. master tailor: you see, the material seemed so fine that i wanted a suit made of it for myself. monsieur jourdain: yes, but you should not have cut it out of mine. master tailor: do you want to put on your suit? monsieur jourdain: yes, give it to me. master tailor: wait. that's not the way it's done. i have brought men to dress you in a cadence; these kinds of suits are put on with ceremony. hey there! come in, you! put this suit on the gentleman the way you do with people of quality. (four apprentice tailors enter, two of them pull off monsieur jourdain's breeches made for his morning exercises, and two others pull off his waistcoat; then they put on his new suit; monsieur jourdain promenades among them and shows them his suit for their approval. all this to the cadence of instrumental music.) apprentice tailor: my dear gentleman, please to give the apprentices a small tip. monsieur jourdain: what did you call me? apprentice tailor: my dear gentleman. monsieur jourdain: my dear gentleman! that's what it is to dress like people of quality! go all your life dressed like a bourgeois and they'll never call you "my dear gentleman." here, take this for the "my dear gentleman." apprentice tailor: my lord, we are very much obliged to you. monsieur jourdain: "my lord!" oh! oh! "my lord!" wait, my friend. "my lord" deserves something, and it's not a little word, this "my lord." take this. that's what "my lord" gives you. apprentice tailor: my lord, we will drink to the health of your grace. monsieur jourdain: "your grace!" oh! oh! oh! wait, don't go. to me, "your grace!" my faith, if he goes as far as "highness," he will have all my purse. wait. that's for "my grace." apprentice tailor: my lord, we thank you very humbly for your liberality. monsieur jourdain: he did well, i was going to give him everything. (the four apprentice tailors celebrate with a dance, which comprises the second interlude.) act three scene i (monsieur jourdain and his two lackeys) monsieur jourdain: follow me, i am going to show off my clothes a little about town. and above all both of you take care to walk close at my heels, so people can see that you are with me. lackeys: yes, sir. monsieur jourdain: call nicole for me, so i can give her some orders. don't bother, there she is. act three scene ii (nicole, monsieur jourdain, two lackeys) monsieur jourdain: nicole! nicole: yes, sir? monsieur jourdain: listen. nicole: he, he, he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: what are you laughing about? nicole: he, he, he, he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: what does the hussy mean by this? nicole: he, he, he! oh, how you are got up! he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: how's that? nicole: ah! ah! oh lord! he, he, he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: what kind of little baggage is this? are you mocking me? nicole: certainly not, sir, i should be very sorry to do so. he, he, he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: i'll give you a smack on the nose if you go on laughing. nicole: sir, i can't help it. he, he, he, he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: you are not going to stop? nicole: sir, i beg pardon. but you are so funny that i couldn't help laughing. he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: what insolence! nicole: you're so funny like that. he, he! monsieur jourdain: i'll... nicole: please excuse me. he, he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: listen. if you go on laughing the least bit, i swear i'll give you the biggest slap ever given. nicole: alright, sir, it's done, i won't laugh any more. monsieur jourdain: take good care not to. presently you must clean... nicole: he, he! monsieur jourdain: you must clean... nicole: he, he! monsieur jourdain: you must, i say, clean the room and... nicole: he, he! monsieur jourdain: again! nicole: (falling down with laughter) then beat me sir, and let me have my laugh out, it will do me more good. he, he, he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: i'm furious. nicole: have mercy, sir! i beg you to let me laugh. he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: if i catch you... nicole: sir! i shall burst... oh! if i don't laugh. he, he, he! monsieur jourdain: but did anyone ever see such a hussy as that, who laughs in my face instead of receiving my, orders? nicole: what would you have me do, sir? monsieur jourdain: that you consider getting my house ready for the company that's coming soon, you hussy. nicole: ah, by my faith, i don't feel like laughing any more. all your guests make such a disorder here that the word "company" is enough to put me in a bad humor. monsieur jourdain: why, should i shut my door to everyone for your sake? nicole: you should at least shut it to some people. act three scene iii (madame jourdain, monsieur jourdain, nicole, lackeys) madame jourdain: ah, ah! here's a new story! what's this, what's this, husband, this outfit you have on there? don't you care what people think of you when you are got up like that? and do you want yourself laughed at everywhere? monsieur jourdain: none but fools and dolts will laugh at me wife. madame jourdain: truly, they haven't waited until now, your antics have long given a laugh to everyone. monsieur jourdain: who's everyone, if you please? madame jourdain: everyone is everyone who is right and who is wiser than you. for my part, i am scandalized at the life you lead. i no longer recognize our house. one would say it's the beginning of carnival here, every day; and beginning early in the morning, so it won't be forgotten, one hears nothing but the racket of fiddles and singers which disturbs the whole neighborhood. nicole: madame speaks well. i'll never be able to get my housework done properly with that gang you have come here. they have feet that hunt for mud in every part of town to bring it here; and poor franoise almost has her teeth on the floor, scrubbing the boards that your fine masters come to dirty up every day. monsieur jourdain: what, our servant nicole, you have quite a tongue for a peasant. madame jourdain: nicole is right, and she has more sense than you. i'd like to know what you think you're going to do with a dancing master, at your age? nicole: and with a hulking fencing master who comes stamping his feet, shaking the whole house and tearing up all the floorboards in our drawing-room. monsieur jourdain: be quiet, both servant and wife! madame jourdain: is it that you're learning to dance for the time when you'll have no legs to dance on? nicole: do you want to kill someone? monsieur jourdain: quiet, i tell you! you are ignorant women, both of you, and you don't know the advantages of all this. madame jourdain: you should instead be thinking of marrying off your daughter, who is of an age to be provided for. monsieur jourdain: i'll think of marrying off my daughter when a suitable match comes along, but i also want to learn about fine things. nicole: i heard said, madame, that today he took a philosophy master to thicken the soup! monsieur jourdain: very well. i have a wish to have wit and to reason about things with decent people. madame jourdain: don't you intend, one of these days, to go to school and have yourself whipped at your age? monsieur jourdain: why not? would to god i were whipped this minute in front of everyone, if i only knew what they learn at school! nicole: yes, my faith! that would get you into better shape. monsieur jourdain: without doubt. madame jourdain: all this is very important to the management of your house. monsieur jourdain: assuredly. you both talk like beasts, and i'm ashamed of your ignorance. for example, do you know what are you speaking just now? madame jourdain: yes, i know that what i'm saying is well said and that you ought to be considering living in another way. monsieur jourdain: i'm not talking about that. i'm asking if you know what the words are that you are saying here? madame jourdain: they are words that are very sensible, and your conduct is scarcely so. monsieur jourdain: i'm not talking about that, i tell you. i'm asking you: what is it that i'm speaking to you this minute, what is it? madame jourdain: nonsense. monsieur jourdain: no, no! that's not it. what is it we are both saying, what language is it that we are speaking right now? madame jourdain: well? monsieur jourdain: what is it called? madame jourdain: it's called whatever you want. monsieur jourdain: it's prose, you ignorant creature. madame jourdain: prose? monsieur jourdain: yes, prose. everything is prose that is not verse; and everything that's not verse is prose. there! this is what it is to study! and you (to nicole), do you know what you must do to say u? nicole: what? monsieur jourdain: say u, in order to see. nicole: oh well, u. monsieur jourdain: what do you do? nicole: i say u. monsieur jourdain: yes, but, when you say u, what do you do? nicole: i do what you tell me to. monsieur jourdain: oh, how strange it is to have to deal with morons! you thrust your lips out and bring your lower jaw to your upper jaw: u, see? u. do you see? i make a pout: u. nicole: yes, that's beautiful. madame jourdain: how admirable. monsieur jourdain: but it's quite another thing, if you have seen o, and d, d, and f, f. madame jourdain: what is all this rigmarole? nicole: what does all this do for us? monsieur jourdain: it enrages me when i see these ignorant women. madame jourdain: go, go, you ought to send all those people packing with their foolishness. nicole: and above all, that great gawk of a fencing master, who ruins all my work with dust. monsieur jourdain: well! this fencing master seems to get under your skin. i'll soon show you how impertinent you are.(he has the foils brought and gives one to nicole). there. demonstration: the line of the body. when your opponent thrusts in quarte, you need only do this, and when they thrust in tierce, you need only do this. that is the way never to be killed, and isn't it fine to be assured of what one does, when fighting against someone? there, thrust at me a little, to see. nicole: well then, what? (nicole thrusts, giving him several hits). monsieur jourdain: easy! wait! oh! gently! devil take the hussy! nicole: you told me to thrust. monsieur jourdain: yes, but you thrust in tierce, before you thrust in quarte, and you didn't have the patience to let me parry. madame jourdain: you are a fool, husband, with all your fantasies, and this has come to you since you took a notion to associate with the nobility. monsieur jourdain: when i associate with the nobility, i show my good judgment; and that's better than associating with your shopkeepers. madame jourdain: oh yes, truly! there's a great deal to gain by consorting with your nobles, and you did so well with your fine count you were so taken with! monsieur jourdain: peace! think what you're saying. you know very well, wife, that you don't know who you're talking about, when you talk about him! he's a more important person than you think: a great lord, respected at court, and who talks to the king just as i talk to you. is it not a thing which does me great honor, that a person of this quality is seen to come so often to my house, who calls me his dear friend and treats me as if i were his equal? he has more regard for me than one would ever imagine; and, in front of everyone, he shows me so much affection that i am embarrassed myself. madame jourdain: yes, he has a kindness for you, and shows his affection, but he borrows your money. monsieur jourdain: so! isn't it an honor for me to lend money to a man of that condition? and can i do less for a lord who calls me his dear friend? madame jourdain: and this lord, what does he do for you? monsieur jourdain: things that would astonish you if you knew them. madame jourdain: like what? monsieur jourdain: blast! i cannot explain myself. it must suffice that if i have lent him money, he'll pay it back fully, and before long. madame jourdain: yes. you are waiting for that. monsieur jourdain: assuredly. didn't he tell me so? madame jourdain: yes, yes, he won't fail to do it. monsieur jourdain: he swore it on the faith of a gentleman. madame jourdain: nonsense! monsieur jourdain: well! you are very obstinate, wife. i tell you he will keep his word, i'm sure of it. madame jourdain: and i'm sure he will not, and that all his show of affection is only to flatter you. monsieur jourdain: be still. here he is. madame jourdain: that's all we needed! he's come again perhaps to borrow something from you. the very sight of him spoils my appetite. monsieur jourdain: be still, i tell you. act three scene iv (count dorante, monsieur jourdain, madame jourdain, nicole) dorante: my dear friend, monsieur jourdain, how do you do? monsieur jourdain: very well, sir, to render you my small services. dorante: and madame jourdain there, how is she? madame jourdain: madame jourdain is as well as she can be. dorante: well! monsieur jourdain, you are excellently well dressed! monsieur jourdain: you see. dorante: you have a fine air in that suit, and we have no young men at court who are better made than you. monsieur jourdain: well! well! madame jourdain: (aside) he scratches him where it itches. dorante: turn around. it's positively elegant. madame jourdain: (aside) yes, as big a fool behind as in front. dorante: my faith, monsieur jourdain, i was strangely impatient to see you. you are the man in the world i esteem most, and i was speaking of you again this morning in the bedchamber of the king. monsieur jourdain: you do me great honor, sir. (to madame jourdain) in the king's bedchamber! dorante: come, put on... monsieur jourdain: sir, i know the respect i owe you. dorante: heavens! put on your hat; i pray you, no ceremony between us. monsieur jourdain: sir... dorante: put it on, i tell you, monsieur jourdain: you are my friend. monsieur jourdain: sir, i am your humble servant. dorante: i won't be covered if you won't. monsieur jourdain: (putting on his hat) i would rather be uncivil than troublesome. dorante: i am in your debt, as you know. madame jourdain: yes, we know it all too well. dorante: you have generously lent me money upon several occasions, and you have obliged me with the best grace in the world, assuredly. monsieur jourdain: sir, you jest with me. dorante: but i know how to repay what is lent me, and to acknowledge the favors rendered me. monsieur jourdain: i have no doubt of it, sir. dorante: i want to settle this matter with you, and i came here to make up our accounts together. monsieur jourdain: there wife! you see your impertinence! dorante: i am a man who likes to repay debts as soon as i can. monsieur jourdain: (aside to madame jourdain) i told you so. dorante: let's see how much do i owe you. monsieur jourdain: (aside to madame jourdain) there you are, with your ridiculous suspicions. dorante: do you remember well all the money you have lent me? monsieur jourdain: i believe so. i made a little note of it. here it is. once you were given two hundred louis d'or. dorante: that's true. monsieur jourdain: another time, six-score. dorante: yes. monsieur jourdain: and another time, a hundred and forty. dorante: you're right. monsieur jourdain: these three items make four hundred and sixty louis d'or, which comes to five thousand sixty livres. dorante: the account is quite right. five thousand sixty livres. monsieur jourdain: one thousand eight hundred thirty-two livres to your plume-maker. dorante: exactly. monsieur jourdain: two thousand seven hundred eighty livres to your tailor. dorante: it's true. monsieur jourdain: four thousand three hundred seventy-nine livres twelve sols eight deniers to your tradesman. dorante: quite right. twelve sols eight deniers. the account is exact. monsieur jourdain: and one thousand seven hundred forty-eight livres seven sols four deniers to your saddler. dorante: all that is true. what does that come to? monsieur jourdain: sum total, fifteen thousand eight hundred livres. dorante: the sum total is exact: fifteen thousand eight hundred livres. to which add two hundred pistoles that you are going to give me, which will make exactly eighteen thousand francs, which i shall pay you at the first opportunity. madame jourdain: (aside) well, didn't i predict it? monsieur jourdain: peace! dorante: will that inconvenience you, to give me the amount i say? monsieur jourdain: oh, no! madame jourdain: (aside) that man is making a milk-cow out of you! monsieur jourdain: be quiet! dorante: if that inconveniences you, i will seek it somewhere else. monsieur jourdain: no, sir. madame jourdain: (aside) he won't be content until he's ruined you. monsieur jourdain: be quiet, i tell you. dorante: you have only to tell me if that embarrasses you. monsieur jourdain: not at all, sir. madame jourdain: (aside) he's a real wheedler! monsieur jourdain: hush. madame jourdain: (aside) he'll drain you to the last sou. monsieur jourdain: will you be quiet? dorante: i have a number of people who would gladly lend it to me; but since you are my best friend, i believed i might do you wrong if i asked someone else for it. monsieur jourdain: it's too great an honor, sir, that you do me. i'll go get it for you. madame jourdain: (aside) what! you're going to give it to him again? monsieur jourdain: what can i do? do you want me to refuse a man of this station, who spoke about me this morning in the king's bedchamber? madame jourdain: (aside) go on, you're a true dupe. act three scene v (dorante, madame jourdain, nicole) dorante: you appear to be very melancholy. what is wrong, madame jourdain? madame jourdain: i have a head bigger than my fist, even if it's not swollen. dorante: mademoiselle, your daughter, where is she that i don't see her? madame jourdain: mademoiselle my daughter is right where she is. dorante: how is she getting on? madame jourdain: she "gets on" on her two legs. dorante: wouldn't you like to come with her one of these days to see the ballet and the comedy they are putting on at court? madame jourdain: yes truly, we have a great desire to laugh, a very great desire to laugh. dorante: i think, madame jourdain, that you must have had many admirers in your youth, beautiful and good humored as you were. madame jourdain: by our lady! sir, is madame jourdain decrepit, and does her head already shake with palsy? dorante: ah! my faith, madame jourdain, i beg pardon. i did not remember that you are young. i am often distracted. pray excuse my impertinence. act three scene vi (monsieur jourdain, madame jourdain, dorante, nicole) monsieur jourdain: there are two hundred louis d'or. dorante: i assure you, monsieur jourdain, that i am completely yours, and that i am eager to render you a service at court. monsieur jourdain: i'm much obliged to you. dorante: if madame jourdain desires to see the royal entertainment, i will have the best places in the ballroom given to her. madame jourdain: madame jourdain kisses your hands [but declines]. dorante: (aside to monsieur jourdain) our beautiful marchioness, as i sent word to you, in my note, will come here soon for the ballet and refreshments; i finally brought her to consent to the entertainment you wish to give her. monsieur jourdain: let us move a little farther away, for a certain reason. dorante: it has been eight days since i saw you, and i have sent you no news regarding the diamond you put into my hands to present to her on your behalf; but it's because i had the greatest difficulty in conquering her scruples, and it's only today that she resolved to accept it. monsieur jourdain: how did she judge it? dorante: marvelous. and i am greatly deceived if the beauty of that diamond does not produce for you an admirable effect on her spirit. monsieur jourdain: would to heaven! madame jourdain: (to nicole) once he's with him he cannot leave him. dorante: i made her value as she should the richness of that present and the grandeur of your love. monsieur jourdain: these are, sir, favors which overwhelm me; and i am in the very greatest confusion at seeing a person of your quality demean himself for me as you do. dorante: are you joking? among friends, does one stop at these sorts of scruples? and wouldn't you do the same thing for me, if the occasion offered? monsieur jourdain: oh! certainly, and with all my heart. madame jourdain: (to nicole) his presence weighs me down! dorante: as for me, i never mind anything when it is necessary to serve a friend; and when you confided in me about the ardent passion you have formed for that delightful marchioness with whom i have contacts, you saw that i volunteered immediately to assist your love. monsieur jourdain: it's true, these are favors that confound me. madame jourdain: (to nicole) will he never go? nicole: they enjoy being together. dorante: you took the right tack to touch her heart. women love above all the expenses we go to for them; and your frequent serenades, your continual bouquets, that superb fireworks for her over the water, the diamond she has received from you, and the entertainment you are preparing for her, all this speaks much better in favor of your love than all the words you might have spoken yourself. monsieur jourdain: there are no expenditures i would not make if by that means i might find the road to her heart. a woman of quality has ravishing charms for me and it's an honor i would purchase at any price. madame jourdain: (to nicole) what can they talk about so much? steal over and listen a little. dorante: soon enough you will enjoy at your ease the pleasure of seeing her, and your eyes will have a long time to satisfy themselves. monsieur jourdain: to be completely free, i have arranged for my wife to go to dinner at her sister's, where she'll spend all the after-dinner hours. dorante: you have done prudently, as your wife might have embarrassed us. i have given the necessary orders to the cook for you, and for the ballet. it is of my own invention; and, provided the execution corresponds to the idea, i am sure it will be found.... monsieur jourdain: (sees that nicole is listening, and gives her a slap) say! you're very impertinent! (to dorante) let's go, if you please. act three scene vii (madame jourdain, nicole) nicole: my faith, madame, curiosity has cost me; but i believe something's afoot, since they were talking of some event where they did not want you to be. madame jourdain: today's not the first time, nicole, that i've had suspicions about my husband. i'm the most mistaken woman in the world, or there's some love-affair in the making. but let us see to my daughter. you know the love cleonte has for her. he's a man who appeals to me, and i want to help his suit and give him lucile, if i can. nicole: truly, madame, i'm the most delighted creature in the world to see that you feel this way, since, if the master appeals to you, his valet appeals to me no less, and i could wish our marriage made under the shadow of theirs. madame jourdain: go speak to cleonte about it for me, and tell him to come to me soon so we can present his request to my husband for my daughter in marriage. nicole: i hasten, madame, with joy, for i could not receive a more agreeable commission. (alone) i shall, i think, make them very happy. act three scene viii (cleonte, covielle, nicole) nicole: ah! i'm glad to have found you. i'm an ambassadress of joy, and i come... cleonte: get out, traitor, and don't come to amuse me with your treacherous words. nicole: is this how you receive me... cleonte: get out, i tell you, and go tell your faithless mistress that she will never again in her life deceive the too trusting cleonte. nicole: what caprice is this? my dear covielle, explain a little what you are trying to say. covielle: your dear covielle, little hussy? go, quickly, out of my sight, villainess, and leave me in peace. nicole: what! you come to me too... covielle: out of my sight, i tell you, and never speak to me again. nicole: my word! what fly has bitten those two? let's go tell this pretty story to my mistress. act three scene ix (cleonte, covielle) cleonte: what! treat a lover in this way? and a lover who is the most faithful and passionate of lovers? covielle: it is a frightful thing that they have done to us both. cleonte: i show a woman all the ardor and tenderness that can be imagined; i love nothing in the world but her, and i have nothing but her in my thoughts; she is all i care for, all my desire, all my joy; i talk of nothing but her, i think of nothing but her, i have no dreams but of her, i breathe only because of her, my heart lives wholly in her; and see how so much love is well repaid! i have been two days without seeing her, which are for me two frightful centuries; i meet her by chance; my heart, at that sight, is completely transported, my joy shines on my face; i fly with ecstasy towards her--and the faithless one averts her eyes and hurries by as if she had never seen me in her life! covielle: i say the same things as you. cleonte: covielle, can one see anything to equal this perfidy of the ungrateful lucile? covielle: and that, monsieur, of the treacherous nicole? cleonte: after so many ardent homages, sighs, and vows that i have made to her charms! covielle: after so many assiduous compliments, cares, and services that i rendered her in the kitchen! cleonte: so many tears i have shed at her knees! covielle: so many buckets of water i have drawn for her! cleonte: so much passion i have shown her in loving her more than myself! covielle: so much heat i have endured in turning the spit for her! cleonte: she flies from me in disdain! covielle: she turns her back on me! cleonte: it is perfidy worthy of the greatest punishments. covielle: it is treachery that merits a thousand slaps. cleonte: don't think, i beg you, of ever speaking in her favor to me. covielle: i, sir? god forbid! cleonte: never come to excuse the action of this faithless woman. covielle: have no fear. cleonte; no, you see, all your speeches in her defense will serve no purpose. covielle: who even thinks of that? cleonte: i want to conserve my resentment against her and end all contact with her. covielle: i agree. cleonte: this count who goes to her house is perhaps pleasant in her view; and her mind, i well see, allows itself to be dazzled by social standing. but it is necessary for me, for my honor, to prevent the scandal of her inconstancy. i want to break off with her first and not leave her all the glory of dumping me. covielle: that's very well said, and i agree, for my part, with all your feelings. cleonte: strengthen my resentment and aid my resolve against all the remains of love that could speak in her behalf. tell me, i order you, all the bad you can of her; make for me a painting of her that will render her despicable; and show well, in order to disgust me, all the faults that you can see in her. covielle: her, sir? there's a pretty fool, a well made flirt for you to give so much love! i see only mediocrity in her, and you will find a hundred women who will be more worthy of you. first of all, she has small eyes. cleonte: that's true, she has small eyes; but they are full of fire, the brightest, the keenest in the world, the most touching eyes that one can see. covielle: she has a big mouth. cleonte: yes; but upon it one sees grace that one never sees on other mouths; and the sight of that mouth, which is the most attractive, the most amorous in the world, inspires desire. covielle: as for her figure, she's not tall. cleonte: no, but she is graceful and well made. covielle: she affects a nonchalance in her speech and in her actions. cleonte: that's true; but she may be forgiven all that, for her manners are so engaging, they have an irresistible charm. covielle: as to her wit... cleonte: ah! she has that, covielle, the finest, the most delicate! covielle: her conversation... cleonte: her conversation is charming. covielle: she is always serious... cleonte; would you have grinning playfulness, constant open merriment? and do you see anything more impertinent than those women who laugh all the time? covielle: but finally she is as capricious as any woman in the world. cleonte: yes, she is capricious, i concede; but everything becomes beautiful ladies well, one suffers everything for beauty. covielle: i see clearly how it goes, you want to go on loving her. cleonte: me, i'd like better to die; and i am going to hate her as much as i loved her. covielle: how, if you find her so perfect? cleonte: that's how my vengeance will be more striking, in that way i'll show better the strength of my heart, by hating her, by quitting her, with all her beauty, all her charms, and as lovable as i find her. here she is. act three scene x (cleonte, lucile, covielle, nicole) nicole: for my part, i was completely shocked at it. lucile: it can only be, nicole, what i told you. but there he is. cleonte: i don't even want to speak to her. covielle: i'll imitate you. lucile: what's the matter cleonte? what's wrong with you? nicole: what's the matter with you, covielle? lucile: what grief possesses you? nicole: what bad humor holds you? lucile: are you mute, cleonte? nicole: have you lost your voice, covielle? cleonte: is this not villainous! covielle: it's a judas! lucile: i clearly see that our recent meeting has troubled you. cleonte: ah! ah! she sees what she's done. nicole: our greeting this morning has annoyed you. covielle: she has guessed the problem. lucile: isn't it true, cleonte, that this is the cause of your resentment? cleonte: yes, perfidious one, it is, since i must speak; and i must tell that you shall not triumph in your faithlessness as you think, i want to be the first to break with you, and you won't have the advantage of driving me away. i will have difficulty in conquering the love i have for you; it will cause me pain; i will suffer for a while. but i'll come through it, and i would rather stab myself through the heart than have the weakness to return to you. covielle: me too. lucile: what an uproar over nothing. i want to tell you, cleonte, what made me avoid joining you this morning. cleonte: no, i don't want to listen to anything... nicole: i want to tell you what made us pass so quickly. covielle: i don't want to hear anything. lucile: (following cleonte) know that this morning... cleonte: no, i tell you. nicole: (following covielle) learn that... covielle: no, traitor. lucile: listen. cleonte: i won't listen. nicole: let me speak. covielle: i'm deaf. lucile: cleonte! cleonte: no. nicole: covielle! covielle: i won't listen. lucile: stop. cleonte: gibberish! nicole: listen to me. covielle: rubbish! lucile: one moment. cleonte: never. nicole: a little patience. covielle: not interested! lucile: two words. cleonte: no, you've had them. nicole: one word. covielle: no more talking. lucile: alright! since you don't want to listen to me, think what you like, and do what you want. nicole: since you act like that, make whatever you like of it all. cleonte: let us know the reason, then, for such a fine reception. lucile: it no longer pleases me to say. covielle: let us know something of your story. nicole: i, myself, no longer want to tell you. cleonte: tell me... lucile: no, i don't want to say anything. covielle: tell it... nicole: no, i'll tell nothing. cleonte: for pity... lucile: no, i say. covielle: have mercy. nicole: it's no use. cleonte: i beg you. lucile: leave me... covielle: i plead with you. nicole: get out of here. cleonte: lucile! lucile: no. covielle: nicole! nicole: never. cleonte: in the name of god!... lucile: i don't want to. covielle: talk to me. nicole: definitely not. cleonte: clear up my doubts. lucile: no, i'll do nothing. covielle: relieve my mind! nicole: no, i don't care to. cleonte: alright! since you are so little concerned to take me out of my pain and to justify yourself for the shameful treatment you gave to my passion, you are seeing me, ingrate, for the last time, and i am going far from you to die of sorrow and love. covielle: and i--i will follow in his steps. lucile: cleonte! nicole: covielle! cleonte: what? covielle: yes? lucile: where are you going? cleonte: where i told you. covielle: we are going to die. lucile: you are going to die, cleonte? cleonte: yes, cruel one, since you wish it. lucile: me! i wish you to die? cleonte: yes, you wish it. lucile: who told you that? cleonte: is it not wishing it when you don't wish to clear up my suspicions? lucile: is it my fault? and, if you had wished to listen to me, would i not have told you that the incident you complain of was caused this morning by the presence of an old aunt who insists that the mere approach of a man dishonors a woman--an aunt who constantly delivers sermons to us on this text, and tells us that all men are like devils we must flee? nicole: there's the key to the entire affair. cleonte: are you sure you're not deceiving me, lucile? covielle: aren't you making this up? lucile: there's nothing more true. nicole: it's the absolute truth. covielle: are we going to give in to this? cleonte: ah! lucile, how with a word from your lips you are able to appease the things in my heart, and how easily one allows himself to be persuaded by the people one loves! covielle: how easily we are manipulated by these blasted minxes! act three scene xi (madame jourdain, cleonte, lucile, covielle, nicole) madame jourdain: i am very glad to see you, cleonte and you are here at just the right time. my husband is coming, seize the opportunity to ask for lucile in marriage. cleonte: ah! madame, how sweet that word is to me, and how it flatters my desires! could i receive an order more charming, a favor more precious? act three scene xii (monsieur jourdain, madame jourdain, cleonte, lucile, covielle, nicole) cleonte: sir, i did not want to use anyone to make a request of you that i have long considered. it affects me enough for me to take charge of it myself; and, without further ado, i will say to you that the honor of being your son-in-law is a glorious favor that i beg you to grant me. monsieur jourdain: before giving you a reply, sir, i beg to ask if you are a gentleman. cleonte: sir, most people don't hesitate much over this question. they use the word carelessly. they take the name without scruple, and the usage of today seems to validate the theft. as for me, i confess to you, i have a little more delicate feelings on this matter. i find all imposture undignified for an honest man, and that there is cowardice in disguising what heaven made us at birth; to present ourselves to the eyes of the world with a stolen title; to wish to give a false impression. i was born of parents who, without doubt, held honorable positions. i have six years of service in the army, and i find myself established well enough to maintain a tolerable rank in the world; but despite all that i certainly have no wish to give myself a name to which others in my place might believe they could pretend, and i will tell you frankly that i am not a gentleman. monsieur jourdain: shake hands, sir! my daughter is not for you. cleonte: what? monsieur jourdain: you are not a gentleman. you will not have my daughter. madame jourdain: what are you trying to say with your talk of gentleman? are we ourselves of the line of st. louis? monsieur jourdain: quiet, wife, i see what you are up to. madame jourdain: aren't we both descended from good bourgeois families? monsieur jourdain: there's that hateful word! madame jourdain: and wasn't your father a merchant just like mine? monsieur jourdain: plague take the woman! she never fails to do this! if your father was a merchant, so much the worse for him! but, as for mine, those who say that are misinformed. all that i have to say to you is, that i want a gentleman for a son-in-law. madame jourdain: it's necessary for your daughter to have a husband who is worthy of her, and it's better for her to have an honest rich man who is well made than an impoverished gentleman who is badly built. nicole: that's true. we have the son of a gentleman in our village who is the most ill formed and the greatest fool i have ever seen. monsieur jourdain: hold your impertinent tongue! you always butt into the conversation. i have enough money for my daughter, i need only honor, and i want to make her a marchioness. madame jourdain: a marchioness? monsieur jourdain: yes, marchioness. madame jourdain: alas! god save me from it! monsieur jourdain: it's a thing i have resolved. madame jourdain: as for me, it's a thing i'll never consent to. marriages above one's station are always subject to great inconveniences. i have absolutely no wish for a son-in-law who can reproach her parents to my daughter, and i don't want her to have children who will be ashamed to call me their grandmother. if she arrives to visit me in the equipage of a great lady and if she fails, by mischance, to greet someone of the neighborhood, they wouldn't fail immediately to say a hundred stupidities. "do you see," they would say, "this madam marchioness who gives herself such glorious airs? it's the daughter of monsieur jourdain, who was all too glad, when she was little, to play house with us; she's not always been so haughty as she now is; and her two grandfathers sold cloth near st. innocent's gate. they amassed wealth for their children, they're paying dearly perhaps for it now in the other world, and one can scarcely get that rich by being honest." i certainly don't want all that gossip, and i want, in a word, a man who will be obliged to me for my daughter and to whom i can say, "sit down there, my son-in-law, and have dinner with me." monsieur jourdain: surely those are the sentiments of a little spirit, to want to remain always in a base condition. don't talk back to me: my daughter will be a marchioness in spite of everyone. and, if you make me angrier, i'll make a duchess of her. madame jourdain: cleonte, don't lose courage yet. follow me, my daughter, and tell your father resolutely that, if you can't have him, you don't want to marry anyone. act three scene xiii (cleonte, covielle) covielle: you've made a fine business, with your pretty sentiments. cleonte: what do you want? i have a scruple about that which precedent cannot conquer. covielle: don't you make a fool of yourself by taking it seriously with a man like that? don't you see that he is a fool? and would it cost you anything to accommodate yourself to his fantasies? cleonte: you're right. but i didn't believe it necessary to prove nobility in order to be monsieur jourdain's son-in-law. covielle: ha, ha, ha! cleonte: what are you laughing at? covielle: at a thought that just occurred to me of how to play our man a trick and help you obtain what you desire. cleonte: how? covielle: the idea is really funny. cleonte: what is it? covielle: a short time ago there was a certain masquerade which fits here better than anything, and that i intend to make part of a prank i want to play on our fool. it all seems a little phony; but, with him, one can try anything, there is hardly any reason to be subtle, and he is the man to play his role marvelously and to swallow easily any fabrication we want to tell him. i have the actors, i have the costumes ready, just leave it to me. cleonte: but tell me... covielle: i am going to instruct you in everything. let's go, there he is, returning. act three scene xiv (monsieur jourdain, lackey) monsieur jourdain: what the devil is this? they have nothing other than the great lords to reproach me with, and as for me, i see nothing so fine as to associate with the great lords; there is only honor and civility among them, and i would have given two fingers of a hand to have been born a count or a marquis. lackey: sir, here's the count, and he has a lady with him. monsieur jourdain: what! my goodness, i have some orders to give. tell them i'll be back here soon. scene xv (dorimene, dorante, lackey) lackey: monsieur says that he'll be here very soon. dorante: that's fine. dorimene: i don't know, dorante; i feel strange allowing you to bring me to this house where i know no one. dorante: then where would you like, madame, for me to express my love with an entertainment, since you will allow neither your house nor mine for fear of scandal? dorimene: but you don't mention that every day i am gradually preparing myself to receive too great proofs of your passion? as good a defense as i have put up, you wear down my resistance, and you have a polite persistence which makes me come gently to whatever you like. the frequent visits began, declarations followed, after them came serenades and amusements in their train, and presents followed them. i withstood all that, but you don't give up at all and step by step you are overcoming my resolve. as for me, i can no longer answer for anything, and i believe that in the end you will bring me to marriage, which i have so far avoided. dorante: my faith! madame, you should already have come to it. you are a widow, and you answer only to yourself. i am my own master and i love you more than my life. why shouldn't you be all my happiness from today onward? dorimene: goodness! dorante, for two people to live happily together both of them need particular qualities; and two of the most reasonable persons in the world often have trouble making a union satisfactory to them both. dorante: you're fooling yourself, madame, to imagine so many difficulties, and the experience you had with one marriage doesn't determine anything for others. dorimene: finally i always come back to this. the expenses that i see you go to for me disturb me for two reasons: one is that they get me more involved than i would like; and the other is that i am sure--meaning no offense--that you cannot do this without financially inconveniencing yourself, and i certainly don't want that. dorante: ah! madame, they are trifles, and it isn't by that... dorimene: i know what i'm talking about; and among other gifts, the diamond you forced me to take is worth... dorante: oh! madame, mercy, don't put any value on a thing that my love finds unworthy of you, and allow... here's the master of the house. act three scene xvi (monsieur jourdain, dorimene, dorante, lackey) monsieur jourdain: (after having made two bows, finding himself too near dorimene) a little farther, madame. dorimene: what? monsieur jourdain: one step, if you please. dorimene: what is it? monsieur jourdain: step back a little for the third. dorante: madame, monsieur jourdain is very knowledgeable. monsieur jourdain: madame, it is a very great honor to me to be fortunate enough to be so happy as to have the joy that you should have had the goodness to accord me the graciousness of doing me the honor of honoring me with the favor of your presence; and, if i also had the merit to merit a merit such as yours, and if heaven... envious of my luck... should have accorded me... the advantage of seeing me worthy... of the... dorante: monsieur jourdain, that is enough. madame doesn't like grand compliments, and she knows that you are a man of wit. (aside to dorimene) as you can see, this good bourgeois is ridiculous enough in all his manners. dorimene: it isn't difficult to see it. dorante: madame, he is the best of my friends. monsieur jourdain: you do me too much honor. dorante: a completely gallant man. dorimene: i have great esteem for him. monsieur jourdain: i have done nothing yet, madame, to merit this favor. dorante: (aside to monsieur jourdain) take care, nonetheless, to say absolutely nothing to her about the diamond that you gave her. monsieur jourdain: can't i even ask her how she likes it? dorante: what? take care that you don't. that would be loutish of you; and, to act as a gallant man, you must act as though it were not you who made her this present. (aloud) monsieur jourdain, madame, says he is delighted to see you in his home. dorimene: he honors me greatly. monsieur jourdain: how obliged i am to you, sir, for speaking thus to her for me! dorante: i have had frightful trouble getting her to come here. monsieur jourdain: i don't know how to thank you enough. dorante: he says, madame, that he finds you the most beautiful woman in the world. dorimene: he does me a great favor. monsieur jourdain: madame, it is you who does the favors, and... dorante: let's consider eating. lackey: everything is ready, sir. dorante: come then let us sit at the table. and bring on the musicians. (six cooks, who have prepared the feast, dance together and make the third interlude; after which, they carry in a table covered with many dishes.) act four scene i (dorimene, monsieur jourdain, dorante, two male musicians, a female musician, lackeys) dorimene: why, dorante, that is really a magnificent repast! monsieur jourdain: you jest, madame; i wish it were worthy of being offered to you. (all sit at the table). dorante: monsieur jourdain is right, madame, to speak so, and he obliges me by making you so welcome. i agree with him that the repast is not worthy of you. since it was i who ordered it, and since i do not have the accomplishments of our friends in this matter, you do not have here a very sophisticated meal, and you will find some incongruities in the combinations and some barbarities of taste. if damis, our friend, had been involved, everything would have been according to the rules; everything would have been elegant and appropriate, and he would not have failed to impress upon you the significance of all the dishes of the repast, and to make you see his expertise when it comes to good food; he would have told you about hearth-baked bread, with its golden brown crust, crunching tenderly between the teeth; of a smooth, full-bodied wine, fortified with a piquancy not too strong, of a loin of mutton improved with parsley, of a cut of specially-raised veal as long as this, white and delicate, and which is like an almond paste between the teeth, of partridges complimented by a surprisingly flavorful sauce, and, for his masterpiece, a soup accompanied by a fat young turkey surrounded by pigeons and crowned with white onions mixed with chicory. but, as for me, i declare my ignorance; and, as monsieur jourdain has said so well, i only wish that the repast were more worthy of being offered to you. dorimene: i reply to this compliment only by eating. monsieur jourdain: ah! what beautiful hands! dorimene: the hands are mediocre, monsieur jourdain; but you wish to speak of the diamond, which is very beautiful. monsieur jourdain: me, madame? god forbid that i should wish to speak of it; that would not be acting gallantly, and the diamond is a very small thing. dorimene: you are very particular. monsieur jourdain: you are too kind... dorante: let's have some wine for monsieur jourdain and for these gentlemen and ladies who are going to favor us with a drinking song. dorimene: it is marvelous to season good food, by mixing it with music, and i see i am being admirably entertained. monsieur jourdain: madame, it isn't.. dorante: monsieur jourdain, let us remain silent for these gentlemen and ladies; what they have for us to hear is of more value than anything we could say. (the male singers and the woman singer take the glasses, sing two drinking songs, and are accompanied by all the instrumental ensemble.) first drinking song drink a little, phyllis, to start the glass round. ah! a glass in your hands is charmingly agreeable! you and the wine arm each other, and i redouble my love for you both let us three--wine, you, and me--swear, my beauty, to an eternal passion. your lips are made yet more attractive by wetting with wine! ah! the one and the other inspire me with desire and both you and it intoxicate me let us three--wine, you, and me-- swear, my beauty, to an eternal passion. second drinking song let us drink, dear friends, let us drink; time that flies beckons us to it! let us profit from life as much as we can. once we pass under the black shadow, goodbye to wine, our loves; let us drink while we can, one cannot drink forever. let fools speculate on the true happiness of life. our philosophy puts it among the wine-pots. possessions, knowledge and glory hardly make us forget troubling cares, and it is only with good drink that one can be happy. come on then, wine for all, pour, boys, pour, pour, keep on pouring, until they say, "enough." dorimene: i don't believe it's possible to sing better, and that is positively beautiful. monsieur jourdain: i see something here, madame, yet more beautiful. dorimene: aha! monsieur jourdain is more gallant than i thought. dorante: what! madame, what did you take monsieur jourdain for? monsieur jourdain: i would like for her to take me at my word. dorimene: again! dorante: you don't know him. monsieur jourdain: she may know me whenever it pleases her. dorimene: oh! i am overwhelmed. dorante: he is a man who is always ready with a repartee. but don't you see that monsieur jourdain, madame, eats all the pieces of food you have touched? dorimene: i am captivated by monsieur jourdain... monsieur jourdain: if i could captivate your heart, i would be... act four scene ii (madame jourdain, monsieur jourdain, dorimene, dorante, musicians, lackeys) madame jourdain: aha! i find good company here, and i see that i was not expected. was it for this pretty affair, monsieur husband, that you were so eager to send me to dinner at my sister's? i just saw stage decorations downstairs, and here i see a banquet fit for a wedding. that is how you spend your money, and this is how you entertain the ladies in my absence, and you give them music and entertainment while sending me on my way. dorante: what are you saying, madame jourdain? and what fantasies are you getting into your head that your husband spends his money, and that it is he who is giving this entertainment to madame? please know that it is i; that he only lends me his house, and that you ought to think more about the things you say. monsieur jourdain: yes, what impertinence. it is the count who presents all this to madame, who is a person of quality. he does me the honor of using my house and of wishing me to be with him. madame jourdain: all that's nonsense. i know what i know. dorante: come madame jourdain, put on better glasses. madame jourdain: i don't need glasses, sir, i see well enough; i have had suspicions for a long time, and i'm not a fool. this is very low of you, of a great lord, to lend a hand as you do to the follies of my husband. and you, madame, for a great lady, it is neither fine nor honest of you to cause dissension in a household and to allow my husband to be in love with you. dorimene: what is she trying to say with all this? goodness dorante! you have outdone yourself by exposing me to the absurd fantasies of this ridiculous woman. dorante: madame, wait! madame, where are you going? monsieur jourdain: madame! monsieur count, make excuses to her and try to bring her back. ah! you impertinent creature, this is a fine way to act! you come and insult me in front of everybody, and you drive from me people of quality. madame jourdain: i laugh at their quality. monsieur jourdain: i don't know who holds me back, evil creature, from breaking your head with the remains of the repast you came to disrupt. (the table is removed). madame jourdain: (leaving) i'm not concerned. these are my rights that i defend, and i'll have all wives on my side. monsieur jourdain: you do well to avoid my rage. she arrived very inopportunely. i was in the mood to say pretty things, and i had never felt so witty. what's that? act four scene iii (covielle, disguised; monsieur jourdain, lackey) covielle: sir, i don't know if i have the honor to be known to you? monsieur jourdain: no, sir. covielle: i saw you when you were no taller than that. monsieur jourdain: me? covielle: yes. you were the most beautiful child in the world, and all the ladies took you in their arms to kiss you. monsieur jourdain: to kiss me? covielle: yes, i was a great friend of your late father. monsieur jourdain: of my late father? covielle: yes. he was a very honorable gentleman. monsieur jourdain: what did you say? covielle: i said that he was a very honorable gentleman. monsieur jourdain: my father? covielle: yes. monsieur jourdain: you knew him very well? covielle: assuredly. monsieur jourdain: and you knew him as a gentleman? covielle: without doubt. monsieur jourdain: then i don't know what is going on! covielle: what? monsieur jourdain: there are some fools who want to tell me that he was a tradesman. covielle: him, a tradesman! it's pure slander, he never was one. all that he did was to be very obliging, very ready to help; and, since he was a connoisseur in cloth, he went all over to choose them, had them brought to his house, and gave them to his friends for money. monsieur jourdain: i'm delighted to know you, so you can testify to the fact that my father was a gentleman. covielle: i'll attest to it before all the world. monsieur jourdain: you'll oblige me. what business brings you here? covielle: since knowing your late father, honorable gentleman, as i told you, i have traveled through all the world. monsieur jourdain: through all the world! covielle: yes. monsieur jourdain: i imagine it's a long way from here to there. covielle: assuredly. i returned from all my long voyages only four days ago; and because of the interest i take in all that concerns you, i come to announce to you the best news in the world. monsieur jourdain: what? covielle: you know that the son of the grand turk is here? monsieur jourdain: me? no. covielle: what! he has a very magnificent retinue; everybody goes to see it, and he has been received in this country as an important lord. monsieur jourdain: by my faith! i didn't know that. covielle: the advantage to you in this is that he is in love with your daughter. monsieur jourdain: the son of the grand turk? covielle: yes. and he wants to be your son-in-law. monsieur jourdain: my son-in-law, the son of the grand turk? covielle: the son of the grand turk your son-in-law. as i went to see him, and as i perfectly understand his language, he conversed with me; and, after some other discourse, he said to me, "acciam croc soler ouch alla moustaph gidelum amanahem varahini oussere carbulath," that is to say, "haven't you seen a beautiful young person who is the daughter of monsieur jourdain, gentleman of paris?" monsieur jourdain: the son of the grand turk said that of me? covielle: yes. inasmuch as i told him in reply that i knew you particularly well and that i had seen your daughter: "ah!" he said to me, "marababa sahem;" which is to say, "ah, how i am enamored of her!" monsieur jourdain: "marababa sahem" means "ah, how i am enamored of her"? covielle: yes. monsieur jourdain: by my faith, you do well to tell me, since, as for me, i would never have believed that "marababa sahem" could have meant to say "oh, how i am enamored of her!" what an admirable language turkish is! covielle: more admirable than one can believe. do you know what cacaracamouchen means? monsieur jourdain: cacaracamouchen? no. covielle: it means: it means, "my dear soul." monsieur jourdain: cacaracamouchen means "my dear soul?" covielle: yes. monsieur jourdain: that's marvelous! cacaracamouchen, my dear soul. who would have thought? i'm dumbfounded. covielle: finally, to complete my assignment, he comes to ask for your daughter in marriage; and in order to have a father-in-law who should be worthy of him, he wants to make you a mamamouchi, which is a certain high rank in his country. monsieur jourdain: mamamouchi?' covielle: yes, mamamouchi; that is to say, in our language, a paladin. paladin is one of those ancient... well, paladin! there is none nobler than that in the world, and you will be equal to the greatest lords of the earth. monsieur jourdain: the son of the grand turk honors me greatly. please take me to him in order to express my thanks. covielle: what! he is going to come here. monsieur jourdain: he's coming here? covielle: yes. and he is bringing everything for the ceremony of bestowing your rank. monsieur jourdain: that seems very quick. covielle: his love can suffer no delay. monsieur jourdain: all that embarrasses me here is that my daughter is a stubborn one who has gotten into her head a certain cleonte, and she swears she'll marry no one but him. covielle: she'll change her mind when she sees the son of the grand turk; and then there is a remarkable coincidence here, it is that the son of the grand turk resembles this cleonte very closely. i just saw him, someone showed him to me; and the love she has for the one can easily pass to the other, and... i hear him coming. there he is. act four scene iv (cleonte, as a turk, with three pages carrying his outer clothes, monsieur jourdain, covielle, disguised.) cleonte: ambousahim oqui boraf, iordina, salamalequi. covielle: that is to say: "monsieur jourdain, may your heart be all the year like a flowering rosebush." this is the way of speaking politely in those countries. monsieur jourdain: i am the most humble servant of his turkish highness. covielle: carigar camboto oustin moraf. cleonte: oustin yoc catamalequi basum base alla moran. covielle: he says: "heaven gives you the strength of lions and the wisdom of serpents." monsieur jourdain: his turkish highness honors me too much, and i wish him all sorts of good fortune. covielle: ossa binamen sadoc babally oracaf ouram. cleonte: bel-men. covielle: he says that you should go with him quickly to prepare yourself for the ceremony; then you can see your daughter and conclude the marriage. monsieur jourdain: so many things in two words? covielle: yes; the turkish language is like that, it says much in few words. go quickly where he wants. act four scene v (dorante, covielle) covielle: ha, ha, ha! my faith, that was hilarious. what a dupe! if he had learned his role by heart, he could not have played it better. ah! ah! excuse me, sir, wouldn't you like to help us here in an affair that is taking place. dorante: ah! ah! covielle, who would have recognized you? how you are made up! covielle: you see, ha, ha! dorante: what are you laughing at? covielle: at a thing, sir, that well deserves it. dorante: what? covielle: i'll give you many chances, sir, to guess the stratagem we are using on monsieur jourdain to get him to give his daughter to my master. dorante: i can't begin to guess the stratagem, but i guess it will not fail in its effect, since you are undertaking it. covielle: i see, sir, that you know me too well. dorante: tell me what it is. covielle: come over here a little to make room for what i see coming. you can see part of the story, while i tell you the rest. (the turkish ceremony for ennobling monsieur jourdain is performed in dance and music, and comprises the fourth interlude.) [the ceremony is a burlesque full of comic gibberish in pseudo-turkish and nonsensical french, in which monsieur jourdain is made to appear ludicrous and during which he is outfitted with an extravagant costume, turban, and sword.] act five scene i (madame jourdaine, monsieur jourdain) madame jourdain: ah, my god! mercy! what is all of this? what a spectacle! are you dressed for a masquerade, and is this a time to go masked? speak then, what is this? who has bundled you up like that? monsieur jourdain: see the impertinent woman, to speak in this way to a mamamouchi! madame jourdain: how's that? monsieur jourdain: yes, you must show me respect now, as i've just been made a mamamouchi. madame jourdain: what are you trying to say with your mamamouchi? monsieur jourdain: mamamouchi, i tell you. i'm a mamamouchi. madame jourdain: what animal is that? monsieur jourdain: mamamouchi, that is to say, in our language, paladin. madame jourdain: baladin! are you of an age to dance in ballets? monsieur jourdain: what an ignorant woman! i said paladin. it's a dignity which has just been bestowed upon me in a ceremony. madame jourdain: what ceremony then? monsieur jourdain: mahometa-per-jordina. madame jourdain: what does that mean? monsieur jourdain: jordina, that is to say, jourdain. madame jourdain: very well, what of jourdain? monsieur jourdain: voler far un paladina de jordina. madame jourdain: what? monsieur jourdain: dar turbanta con galera. madame jourdain: which is to say what? monsieur jourdain: per deffender palestina. madame jourdain: what are you trying to say? monsieur jourdain: dara, dara, bastonnara. madame jourdain: what jargon is this? monsieur jourdain: non tener honta, questa star l'ultima affronta. madame jourdain: what in the world is all that? monsieur jourdain: (dancing and singing). hou la ba, ba la chou, ba la ba, ba la da. madame jourdain: alas! oh lord, my husband has gone mad. monsieur jourdain: (leaving) peace, insolent woman! show respect to the monsieur mamamouchi. madame jourdain: has he lost his mind? i must hurry to stop him from going out. ah! ah! this is the last straw! i see nothing but shame on all sides. (she leaves.) act five scene ii (dorante, dorimene) dorante: yes, madame, you are going to see the most amusing thing imaginable. i don't believe it would be possible to find in all the world another man as crazy as that one is. and then too, madame, we must try to help cleonte's plan by supporting his masquerade. he's a very gallant man and deserves our help. dorimene: i think highly of him and he deserves happiness. dorante: besides that, we have here, madame, another ballet performance that we shouldn't miss, and i want to see if my idea will succeed. dorimene: i saw magnificent preparations, and i can no longer permit this dorante. yes, i finally want to end your extravagances and to stop all these expenses that i see you go to for me, i have decided to marry you right away. this is the truth of it, that all these sorts of things end with marriage, as you know. dorante: ah! madame, is it possible that you should have taken such a sweet decision in my favor? dorimene: it is only to impede you from ruining yourself; without that, i see very well that before long you would not have a penny. dorante: how obliged i am to you, madame, for the care you have to conserve my money! it is entirely yours, as well as my heart, and you may use them in whatever fashion you please. dorimene: i'll make use of them both. but here is your man: his costume is wonderful. act five scene iii (monsieur jourdain, dorante, dorimene) dorante: sir, we come to pay homage, madame and i, to your new dignity, and to rejoice with you at the marriage between your daughter and the son of the grand turk. monsieur jourdain: (after bowing in the turkish way) sir, i wish you the strength of serpents and the wisdom of lions. dorimene: i was very glad, sir, to be among the first to come to congratulate you upon rising to such a high degree of honor. monsieur jourdain: madame, i wish your rosebush to flower all year long; i am infinitely obliged to you for taking part in the honors bestowed upon me; and i am very happy to see you returned here, so i can make very humble excuses for the ridiculous behavior of my wife. dorimene: that's nothing. i excuse her jumping to conclusions: your heart must be precious to her, and it isn't strange that the possession of such a man as you should inspire some jealousy. monsieur jourdain: the possession of my heart is a thing that has been entirely gained by you. dorante: you see, madame, that monsieur jourdain is not one of those men that good fortune blinds, and that he still knows, even in his glory, how to recognize his friends. dorimene: it is the mark of a completely generous soul. dorante: where then is his turkish highness? we want, as your friends, to pay him our respects. monsieur jourdain: there he comes, and i have sent for my daughter in order to give him her hand. act five scene iv (cleonte, covielle, monsieur jourdain, etc.) dorante: sir, we come to bow to your highness as friends of the gentleman who is your father-in-law, and to assure you with respect of our very humble services. monsieur jourdain: where's the interpreter to tell him who you are and to make him understand what you say? you will see that he will reply, and that he speaks turkish marvelously. hey there! where the devil has he gone? (to cleonte). strouf, strif, strof, straf. the gentleman is a grande segnore, grande segnore, grande segnore. and madame is a dama granda dama, granda. ahi! he, monsieur, he french mamamauchi, and madame also french mamamouchie. i can't say it more clearly. good, here's the interpreter. where are you going? we won't know how to say anything without you. tell him, that monsieur and madame are persons of high rank, who have come to pay their respects to him, as my friends, and to assure him of their services. you'll see how he will reply. covielle: alabala crociam acci boram alabamen. cleonte: catalequi tubal ourin soter amalouchan. monsieur jourdain: see? covielle: he says that the rain of prosperity should water the garden of your family in all seasons. monsieur jourdain: i told you that he speaks turkish! dorante: that's wonderful. act five scene v (lucile, monsieur jourdain, dorante, dorimene, etc.) monsieur jourdain: come, my daughter; come here and give your hand to the gentleman who does you the honor of asking for you in marriage. lucile: what! father, look at you! are you playing in a comedy? monsieur jourdain: no, no, this is not a comedy, it's a very serious matter, and as full of honor for you as possible. there is the husband i give you. lucile: to me, father? monsieur jourdain: yes, to you. come, put your hand in his, and give thanks to heaven for your happiness. lucile: i have absolutely no wish to marry. monsieur jourdain: i wish it, i, who am your father. lucille: i'll do nothing of the sort. monsieur jourdain: ah! what a nuisance! come, i tell you. give your hand. lucile: no, my father, i told you, there is no power on earth that can make me take any husband other than cleonte. and i will go to extreme measures rather than... (recognizes cleonte) it is true that you are my father; i owe you complete obedience; and it is for you to dispose of me according to your wishes. monsieur jourdain: ah! i am delighted to see you return so promptly to your duty, and it pleases me to have an obedient daughter. act five scene vi (madame jourdain, monsieur jourdain, cleonte, etc.) madame jourdain: what now? what's this? they say that you want to give your daughter in marriage to a someone in a carnival costume? monsieur jourdain: will you be quiet, impertinent woman? you always throw your absurdities into everything, and there's no teaching you to be reasonable. madame jourdain: it's you that there is no way of making wise, and you go from folly to folly. what is your plan, and what do you want to do with this assemblage of people? monsieur jourdain: i want to marry our daughter to the son of the grand turk. madame jourdain: to the son of the grand turk? monsieur jourdain: yes. greet him through the interpreter there. madame jourdain: i don't need an interpreter; and i'll tell him straight out myself, to his face, that there is no way he will have my daughter. monsieur jourdain: i ask again, will you be quiet? dorante: what! madame jourdain, do you oppose such good fortune as that? you refuse his turkish highness as your son-in-law? madame jourdain: my goodness, sir, mind your own business. dorimene: it's a great glory, which is not to be rejected. madame jourdain: madame, i beg you also not to concern yourself with what does not affect you. dorante: it's the friendship we have for you that makes us involve ourselves in your interest. madame jourdain: i can get along quite well without your friendship. dorante: your daughter here agrees to the wishes of her father. madame jourdain: my daughter consents to marry a turk? dorante: without doubt. madame jourdain: she can forget cleonte? dorante: what wouldn't one do to be a great lady? madame jourdain: i would strangle her with my own hands if she did something like that. monsieur jourdain: that is just so much talk. i tell you, this marriage shall take place. madame jourdain: and i say there is no way that it will happen. monsieur jourdain: oh, what a row! lucile: mother! madame jourdain: go away, you are a hussy. monsieur jourdain: what! you quarrel with her for obeying me? madame jourdain: yes. she is mine as much as yours. covielle: madame! madame jourdain: what do you want to tell me? covielle: a word. madame jourdain: i want nothing to do with your word. covielle: (to monsieur jourdain) sir, if she will hear a word in private, i promise you to make her consent to what you want. madame jourdain: i will never consent to it. covielle: only listen to me. madame jourdain: no. monsieur jourdain: listen to him. madame jourdain: no, i don't want to listen to him. monsieur jourdain: he is going tell you... madame jourdain: i don't want him to tell me anything whatsoever. monsieur jourdain: there is the great stubbornness of a woman! how can it hurt you to listen to him? covielle: just listen to me; after that you can do as you please. madame jourdain: alright! what? covielle: (aside to madame jourdain) for an hour, madame, we've been signaling to you. don't you see that all this is done only to accommodate ourselves to the fantasies of your husband, that we are fooling him under this disguise and that it is cleonte himself who is the son of the grand turk? madame jourdain: ah! ah! covielle: and i, covielle, am the interpreter? madame jourdain: ah! if this is the case then, i surrender. covielle: don't let on. madame jourdain: yes, it's done, i agree to the marriage. monsieur jourdain: ah! now everyone's reasonable. you didn't want to hear it. i knew he would explain to you what it means to be the son of the grand turk. madame jourdain: he explained it to me very well, and i am satisfied. let us send for a notary. dorante: this is very well said. and finally, madame jourdain, in order to relieve your mind completely, and that you may lose today all the jealousy that you may have conceived of your husband, we shall have the same notary marry us, madame and me. madame jourdain: i agree to that also. monsieur jourdain: is this to make her believe our story? dorante: (aside to monsieur jourdain) it is necessary to amuse her with this pretence. monsieur jourdain: good, good! someone go for the notary. dorante: while we wait for him to come and while he draws up the contracts, let us see our ballet, and divert his turkish highness with it. monsieur jourdain: that is very well advised. come, let's take our places. madame jourdain: and nicole? monsieur jourdain: i give her to the interpreter; and my wife to whoever wants her. covielle: sir, i thank you. (aside) if one can find a greater fool, i'll go to rome to tell it. (the comedy ends with a ballet.) none proofreading team. html version by al haines. the grim smile of the five towns arnold bennett to my old and constant friend joseph dawson a student profoundly versed in the human nature of the five towns contents the lion's share baby's bath the silent brothers the nineteenth hat vera's first christmas adventure the murder of the mandarin vera's second christmas adventure the burglary news of the engagement beginning the new year from one generation to another the death of simon fuge in a new bottle the lion's share i in the five towns the following history is related by those who know it as something side-splittingly funny--as one of the best jokes that ever occurred in a district devoted to jokes. and i, too, have hitherto regarded it as such. but upon my soul, now that i come to write it down, it strikes me as being, after all, a pretty grim tragedy. however, you shall judge, and laugh or cry as you please. it began in the little house of mrs carpole, up at bleakridge, on the hill between bursley and hanbridge. mrs carpole was the second mrs carpole, and her husband was dead. she had a stepson, horace, and a son of her own, sidney. horace is the hero, or the villain, of the history. on the day when the unfortunate affair began he was nineteen years old, and a model youth. not only was he getting on in business, not only did he give half his evenings to the study of the chemistry of pottery and the other half to various secretaryships in connection with the wesleyan methodist chapel and sunday-school, not only did he save money, not only was he a comfort to his stepmother and a sort of uncle to sidney, not only was he an early riser, a total abstainer, a non-smoker, and a good listener; but, in addition to the practice of these manifold and rare virtues, he found time, even at that tender age, to pay his tailor's bill promptly and to fold his trousers in the same crease every night--so that he always looked neat and dignified. strange to say, he made no friends. perhaps he was just a thought too perfect for a district like the five towns; a sin or so might have endeared him to the entire neighbourhood. perhaps his loneliness was due to his imperfect sense of humour, or perhaps to the dull, unsmiling heaviness of his somewhat flat features. sidney was quite a different story. sidney, to use his mother's phrase, was a little jockey. his years were then eight. fair-haired and blue-eyed, as most little jockeys are, he had a smile and a scowl that were equally effective in tyrannizing over both his mother and horace, and he was beloved by everybody. women turned to look at him in the street. unhappily, his health was not good. he was afflicted by a slight deafness, which, however, the doctor said he would grow out of; the doctor predicted for him a lusty manhood. in the meantime, he caught every disease that happened to be about, and nearly died of each one. his latest acquisition had been scarlet fever. now one afternoon, after he had 'peeled' and his room had been disinfected, and he was beginning to walk again, horace came home and decided that sidney should be brought downstairs for tea as a treat, to celebrate his convalescence, and that he, horace, would carry him downstairs. mrs carpole was delighted with the idea, and sidney also, except that sidney did not want to be carried downstairs--he wanted to walk down. 'i think it will be better for him to walk, horace dear,' said mrs carpole, in her thin, plaintive voice. 'he can, quite well. and you know how clumsy you are. supposing you were to fall!' horace, nevertheless, in pursuance of his programme of being uncle to sidney, was determined to carry sidney. and carry sidney he did, despite warnings and kickings. at least he carried him as far as the turn in the steep stairs, at which point he fell, just as his stepmother had feared, and sidney with him. the half-brothers arrived on the ground floor in company, but horace, with his eleven stone two, was on top, and the poor suffering little convalescent lay moveless and insensible. it took the doctor forty minutes to bring him to, and all the time the odour of grilled herrings, which formed part of the uneaten tea, made itself felt through the house like a satanic comment on the spectacle of human life. the scene was dreadful at first. the agony then passed. there were no bruises on the boy, not a mark, and in a couple of hours he seemed to be perfectly himself. horace breathed again, and thanked heaven it was no worse. his gratitude to heaven was, however, slightly premature, for in the black middle of the night poor sidney was seized with excruciating pains in the head, and the doctor lost four hours' sleep. these pains returned at intervals of a few days, and naturally the child's convalescence was retarded. then horace said that airs carpole should take sidney to buxton for a fortnight, and he paid all the expenses of the trip out of his savings. he was desolated, utterly stricken; he said he should never forgive himself. sidney improved, slowly. ii after several months, during which horace had given up all his limited spare time to the superintendence of the child's first steps in knowledge, sidney was judged to be sufficiently strong to go to school, and it was arranged that he should attend the endowed school at the wedgwood institution. horace accompanied him thither on the opening day of the term--it was an inclement morning in january--and left the young delicate sprig, apparently joyous and content, to the care of his masters and the mercy of his companions. but sidney came home for dinner weeping--weeping in spite of his new mortar-board cap, his new satchel, his new box of compasses, and his new books. his mother kept him at home in the afternoon, and by the evening another of those terrible attacks had supervened. the doctor and horace and mrs carpole once more lost much precious sleep. the mysterious malady continued. school was out of the question. and when sidney took the air, in charge of his mother, everybody stopped to sympathize with him and to stroke his curls and call him a poor dear, and also to commiserate mrs carpole. as for horace, bursley tried to feel sorry for horace, but it only succeeded in showing horace that it was hiding a sentiment of indignation against him. each friendly face as it passed horace in the street said, without words, 'there goes the youth who probably ruined his young stepbrother's life. and through sheer obstinacy too! he dropped the little darling in spite of warnings and protests, and then fell on the top of him. of course, he didn't do it on purpose, but--' the doctor mentioned greatorex of manchester, the celebrated brain specialist. and horace took sidney to manchester. they had to wait an hour and a quarter to see greatorex, his well-known consulting-rooms in john dalton street being crowded with imperfect brains; but their turn came at last, and they found themselves in greatorex's presence. greatorex was a fat man, with the voice of a thin man, who seemed to spend the whole of his career in the care of his fingernails. 'well, my little fellow,' said greatorex, 'don't cry.' (for sidney was already crying.) and then to horace, in a curt tone: 'what is it?' and horace was obliged to humiliate himself and relate the accident in detail, together with all that had subsequently happened. 'yes, yes, yes, yes!' greatorex would punctuate the recital, and when tired of 'yes' he would say 'hum, hum, hum, hum!' when he had said 'hum' seventy-two times he suddenly remarked that his fee was three guineas, and told horace to strengthen sidney all he could, not to work him too hard, and to bring him back in a year's time. horace paid the money, greatorex emitted a final 'hum', and then the stepbrothers were whisked out by an expeditious footman. the experience cost horace over four pounds and the loss of a day's time. and the worst was that sidney had a violent attack that very night. school being impossible for him, sidney had intermittent instruction from professors of both sexes at home. but he learnt practically nothing except the banjo. horace had to buy him a banjo: it cost the best part of a ten-pound note; still, horace could do no less. sidney's stature grew rapidly; his general health certainly improved, yet not completely; he always had a fragile, interesting air. moreover, his deafness did not disappear: there were occasions when it was extremely pronounced. and he was never quite safe from these attacks in the head. he spent a month or six weeks each year in the expensive bracing atmosphere of some seaside resort, and altogether he was decidedly a heavy drain on horace's resources. people were aware of this, and they said that horace ought to be happy that he was in a position to spend money freely on his poor brother. had not the doctor predicted, before the catastrophe due to horace's culpable negligence, that sidney would grow into a strong man, and that his deafness would leave him? the truth was, one never knew the end of those accidents in infancy! further, was not sidney's sad condition slowly killing his mother? it was whispered about that, since the disaster, sidney had not been quite sound mentally. was not the mere suspicion of this enough to kill any mother? and, as a fact, mrs carpole did die. she died of quinsy, doubtless aggravated by sidney's sad condition. not long afterwards horace came into a small fortune from his maternal grandfather. but poor sidney did not come into any fortune, and people somehow illogically inferred that horace had not behaved quite nicely in coming into a fortune while his suffering invalid brother, whom he had so deeply harmed, came into nothing. even horace had compunctions due to the visitations of a similar idea. and with part of the fortune he bought a house with a large garden up at toft end, the highest hill of the hilly five towns, so that sidney might have the benefit of the air. he also engaged a housekeeper and servants. with the remainder of the fortune he obtained a partnership in the firm of earthenware manufacturers for whom he had been acting as highly-paid manager. sidney reached the age of eighteen, and was most effective to look upon, his bright hair being still curly, and his eyes a wondrous blue, and his form elegant; and the question of sidney's future arose. his health was steadily on the up grade. the deafness had quite disappeared. he had inclinations towards art, and had already amused himself by painting some beautiful vases. so it was settled that he should enter horace's works on the art side, with a view to becoming, ultimately, art director. horace gave him three pounds a week, in order that he might feel perfectly independent, and, to the same end, sidney paid horace seven-and-sixpence a week for board and lodging. but the change of life upset the youth's health again. after only two visits to the works he had a grave recurrence of the head-attacks, and he was solemnly exhorted not to apply himself too closely to business. he therefore took several half-holidays a week, and sometimes a whole one. and even when he put in one of his full days he would arrive at the works three hours after horace, and restore the balance by leaving an hour earlier. the entire town watched over him as a mother watches over a son. the notion that he was not quite right in the pate gradually died away, and everybody was thankful for that, though it was feared an untimely grave might be his portion. iii she was a nice girl: the nicest girl that horace had ever met with, because her charming niceness included a faculty of being really serious about serious things--and yet she could be deliciously gay. in short, she was a revelation to horace. and her name was ella, and she had come one year to spend some weeks with mrs penkethman, the widowed headmistress of the wesleyan day school, who was her cousin. mrs penkethman and ella had been holidaying together in france; their arrival in bursley naturally coincided with the reopening of the school in august for the autumn term. now at this period horace was rather lonely in his large house and garden; for sidney, in pursuit of health, had gone off on a six weeks' cruise round holland, finland, norway, and sweden, in one of those atlantic liners which, translated like enoch without dying, become in their old age 'steam-yachts', with fine names apt to lead to confusion with the private yacht of the tsar of russia. horace had offered him the trip, and horace was also paying his weekly salary as usual. so horace, who had always been friendly with mrs penkethman, grew now more than ever friendly with mrs penkethman. and mrs penkethman and ella were inseparable. the few aristocrats left in bursley in september remarked that horace knew what he was about, as it was notorious that ella had the most solid expectations. but as a matter of fact horace did not know what he was about, and he never once thought of ella's expectations. he was simply, as they say in bursley, knocked silly by ella. he honestly imagined her to be the wonderfullest woman on the earth's surface, with her dark eyes and her expressive sympathetic gestures, and her alterations of seriousness and gaiety. it astounded him that a girl of twenty-one could have thought so deeply upon life as she had. the inexplicable thing was that she looked up to him. she evidently admired him. he wanted to tell her that she was quite wrong about him, much too kind in her estimate of him--that really he was a very ordinary man indeed. but another instinct prevented him from thus undeceiving her. and one saturday afternoon, the season being late september, horace actually got those two women up to tea in his house and garden. he had not dared to dream of such bliss. he had hesitated long before asking them to come, and in asking them he had blushed and stammered: the invitation had seemed to him to savour of audacity. but, bless you! they had accepted with apparent ecstasy. they gave him to think that they had genuinely wanted to come. and they came extra-specially dressed--visions, lilies of the field. and as the day was quite warm, tea was served in the garden, and everybody admired the view; and there was no restraint, no awkwardness. in particular ella talked with an ease and a distinction that enchanted horace, and almost made him talk with ease and distinction too. he said to himself that, seeing he had only known her a month, he was getting on amazingly. he said to himself that his good luck passed belief. then there was a sound of cab-wheels on the other side of the garden-wall, and presently horace heard the housekeeper complimenting sidney on his good looks, and sidney asking the housekeeper to lend him three shillings to pay the cabman. the golden youth had returned without the slightest warning from his cruise. the tea trio, at the lower end of the garden, saw him standing in the porch, tanned, curly, graceful, and young. horace half rose, and then sat down again. ella stared hard. 'that must be your brother,' she said. 'yes, that's sid,' horace answered; and then, calling out loudly: 'come down here, sid, and tell them to bring another cup and saucer.' 'right you are, old man,' sidney shouted. 'you see i'm back. what! mrs penkethman, is that you?' he came down the central path of the garden like a narcissus. 'he does look delicate,' said ella under her breath to horace. tears came to her eyes. naturally ella knew all about sidney. she enjoyed the entire confidence of mrs penkethman, and what mrs penkethman didn't know of the private history of the upper classes in bursley did not amount to very much. these were nearly the last words that ella spoke to horace that afternoon. the introduction was made, and sidney slipped into the party as comfortably as he slipped into everything, like a candle slipping into a socket. but nevertheless ella talked no more. she just stared at sidney, and listened to him. horace was proud that sidney had made such an impression on her; he was glad that she showed no aversion to sidney, because, in the event of horace's marriage, where would sidney live, if not with horace and horace's wife? still, he could have wished that ella would continue to display her conversational powers. presently, sidney lighted a cigarette. he was of those young men whose delicate mouths seem to have been fashioned for the nice conduct of a cigarette. and he had a way of blowing out the smoke that secretly ravished every feminine beholder. horace still held to his boyhood's principles; but he envied sidney a little. at the conclusion of the festivity these two women naturally could not be permitted to walk home alone. and, naturally, also, the four could not walk abreast on the narrow pavements. horace went first with mrs penkethman. he was mad with anxiety to appropriate ella, but he dared not. it would not have been quite correct; it would have been, as they say in bursley, too thick. besides, there was the question of age. horace was over thirty, and mrs penkethman was also--over thirty; whereas sidney was twenty-one, and so was ella. hence sidney walked behind with ella, and the procession started in silence. horace did not look round too often--that would not have been quite proper--but whenever he did look round the other couple had lagged farther and farther behind, and ella seemed perfectly to have recovered her speech. at length he looked round, and lo! they had not turned the last corner; and they arrived at mrs penkethman's cottage at hillport a quarter of an hour after their elders. iv the wedding cost horace a large sum of money. you see, he could not do less than behave handsomely by the bride, owing to his notorious admiration for her; and of course the bridegroom needed setting up. horace practically furnished their home for them out of his own pocket; it was not to be expected that sidney should have resources. further, sidney as a single man, paying seven-and-six a week for board and lodging, could no doubt struggle along upon three pounds weekly. but sidney as a husband, with the nicest girl in the world to take care of, and house-rent to pay, could not possibly perform the same feat. although he did no more work at the manufactory--horace could not have been so unbrotherly as to demand it--horace paid him eight pounds a week instead of three. and the affair cost horace a good deal besides money. but what could horace do? he decidedly would not have wished to wreck the happiness of two young and beautiful lives, even had he possessed the power to do so. and he did not possess the power. those two did not consult horace before falling in love. they merely fell in love, and there was an end of it--and an end of horace too! horace had to suffer. he did suffer. perhaps it was for his highest welfare that other matters came to monopolize his mind. one sorrow drives out another. if you sit on a pin you are apt to forget that you have the toothache. the earthenware manufactory was not going well. plenty of business was being done, but not at the right prices. crushed between the upper and nether millstones of the mckinley tariff and german competition, horace, in company with other manufacturers, was breathing out his life's blood in the shape of capital. the truth was that he had never had enough capital. he had heavily mortgaged the house at toft end in order to purchase his partners' shares in the business and have the whole undertaking to himself, and he profoundly regretted it. he needed every penny that he could collect; the strictest economy was necessary if he meant to survive the struggle. and here he was paying eight pounds a week to a personage purely ornamental, after having squandered hundreds in rendering that personage comfortable! the situation was dreadful. you may ask, why did he not explain the situation to sidney? well, partly because he was too kind, and partly because he was too proud, and partly because sidney would not have understood. horace fought on, keeping up a position in the town and hoping that miracles would occur. then ella's expectations were realized. sidney and she had some twenty thousand pounds to play with. and they played the most agreeable games. but not in bursley. no. they left horace in bursley and went to llandudno for a spell. horace envied them, but he saw them off at the station as an elder brother should, and tipped the porters. certainly he was relieved of the formality of paying eight pounds a week to his brother. but this did not help him much. the sad fact was that 'things' (by which is meant fate, circumstances, credit, and so on) had gone too far. it was no longer a question of eight pounds a week; it was a question of final ruin. surely he might have borrowed money from sidney? sidney had no money; the money was ella's, and horace could not have brought himself to borrow money from a woman--from ella, from a heavenly creature who always had a soothing sympathetic word for him. that would have been to take advantage of ella. no, if you suggest such a thing, you do not know horace. i stated in the beginning that he had no faults. he was therefore absolutely honest. and he called his creditors together while he could yet pay them twenty shillings in the pound. it was a noble act, rare enough in the five towns and in other parts of england. but he received no praise for it. he had only done what every man in his position ought to do. if horace had failed for ten times the sum that his debts actually did amount to, and then paid two shillings in the pound instead of twenty, he would have made a stir in the world and been looked up to as no ordinary man of business. having settled his affairs in this humdrum, idiotic manner, horace took a third-class return to llandudno. sidney and ella were staying at the hydro with the strange welsh name, and he found sidney lolling on the sunshiny beach in front of the hydro discoursing on the banjo to himself. when asked where his wife was, sidney replied that she was lying down, and was obliged to rest as much as possible. horace, ashamed to trouble this domestic idyl, related his misfortunes as airily as he could. and sidney said he was awfully sorry, and had no notion how matters stood, and could he do anything for horace? if so, horace might-- 'no,' said horace. 'i'm all right. i've very fortunately got an excellent place as manager in a big new manufactory in germany.' (this is how we deal with german competition in the five towns.) 'germany?' cried sidney. 'yes,' said horace; 'and i start the day after tomorrow.' 'well,' said sidney, 'at any rate you'll stay the night.' 'thanks,' said horace, 'you're very kind. i will.' so they went into the hydro together, sidney caressing his wonderful new pearl-inlaid banjo; and horace talked in low tones to ella as she lay on the sofa. he convinced ella that his departure to germany was the one thing he had desired all his life, because it was not good that ella should be startled, shocked, or grieved. they dined well. but in the night sidney had a recurrence of his old illness--a bad attack; and horace sat up through the dark hours, fetched the doctor, and bought things at the chemist's. towards morning sidney was better. and horace, standing near the bed, gazed at his stepbrother and tried in his stupid way to read the secrets beneath that curly hair. but he had no success. he caught himself calculating how much sidney had cost him, at periods of his career when he could ill spare money; and, having caught himself, he was angry with himself for such baseness. at eight o'clock he ventured to knock at ella's door and explain to her that sidney had not been quite well. she had passed a peaceful night, for he had, of course, refrained from disturbing her. he was not quite sure whether sidney had meant him to stay at the hydro as his guest, so he demanded a bill, paid it, said good-bye, and left for bonn-on-the-rhine. he was very exhausted and sleepy. happily the third-class carriages on the london & north-western are pretty comfortable. between chester and crewe he had quite a doze, and dreamed that he had married ella after all, and that her twenty thousand pounds had put the earthenware business on a footing of magnificent and splendid security. v a few months later horace's house and garden at toft end were put up to auction by arrangement with his mortgagee and his trade-creditors. and sidney was struck with the idea of buying the place. the impression was that it would go cheap. sidney said it would be a pity to let the abode pass out of the family. ella said that the idea of buying it was a charming one, because in the garden it was that she had first met her sidney. so the place was duly bought, and sidney and ella went to live there. several years elapsed. then one day little horace was informed that his uncle horace, whom he had never seen, was coming to the house on a visit, and that he must be a good boy, and polite to his uncle, and all the usual sort of thing. and in effect horace the elder did arrive in the afternoon. he found no one to meet him at the station, or at the garden gate of the pleasaunce that had once been his, or even at the front door. a pert parlour-maid told him that her master and mistress were upstairs in the nursery, and that he was requested to go up. and he went up, and to be sure sidney met him at the top of the stairs, banjo in hand, cigarette in mouth, smiling, easy and elegant as usual--not a trace of physical weakness in his face or form. and horace was jocularly ushered into the nursery and introduced to his nephew. ella had changed. she was no longer slim, and no longer gay and serious by turns. she narrowly missed being stout, and she was continuously gay, like sidney. the child was also gay. everybody was glad to see horace, but nobody seemed deeply interested in horace's affairs. as a fact he had done rather well in germany, and had now come back to england in order to assume a working partnership in a small potting concern at hanbridge. he was virtually beginning life afresh. but what concerned sidney and ella was themselves and their offspring. they talked incessantly about the infinitesimal details of their daily existence, and the alterations which they had made, or meant to make, in the house and garden. and occasionally sidney thrummed a tune on the banjo to amuse the infant. horace had expected them to be curious about germany and his life in germany. but not a bit! he might have come in from the next street and left them only yesterday, for all the curiosity they exhibited. 'shall we go down to the drawing-room and have tea, eh?' said ella. 'yes, let's go and kill the fatted calf,' said sidney. and strangely enough, inexplicably enough, horace did feel like a prodigal. sidney went off with his precious banjo, and ella picked up sundry belongings without which she never travelled about the house. 'you carry me down-stairs, unky?' the little nephew suggested, with an appealing glance at his new uncle. 'no,' said horace, 'i'm dashed if i do!' baby's bath i mrs blackshaw had a baby. it would be an exaggeration to say that the baby interested the entire town, bursley being an ancient, blase sort of borough of some thirty thousand inhabitants. babies, in fact, arrived in bursley at the rate of more than a thousand every year. nevertheless, a few weeks after the advent of mrs blackshaw's baby, when the medical officer of health reported to the town council that the births for the month amounted to ninety-five, and that the birth-rate of bursley compared favourably with the birth-rates of the sister towns, hanbridge, knype, longshaw, and turnhill--when the medical officer read these memorable words at the monthly meeting of the council, and the staffordshire signal reported them, and mrs blackshaw perused them, a blush of pride spread over mrs blackshaw's face, and she picked up the baby's left foot and gave it a little peck of a kiss. she could not help feeling that the real solid foundation of that formidable and magnificent output of babies was her baby. she could not help feeling that she had done something for the town--had caught the public eye. as for the baby, except that it was decidedly superior to the average infant in external appearance and pleasantness of disposition, it was, in all essential characteristics, a typical baby--that is to say, it was purely sensuous and it lived the life of the senses. it was utterly selfish. it never thought of anyone but itself. it honestly imagined itself to be the centre of the created universe. it was convinced that the rest of the universe had been brought into existence solely for the convenience and pleasure of it--the baby. when it wanted anything it made no secret of the fact, and it was always utterly unscrupulous in trying to get what it wanted. if it could have obtained the moon it would have upset all the astronomers of europe and made whitaker's almanack unsalable without a pang. it had no god but its stomach. it never bothered its head about higher things. it was a bully and a coward, and it treated women as beings of a lower order than men. in a word, it was that ideal creature, sung of the poets, from which we gradually sink and fall away as we grow older. at the age of six months it had quite a lot of hair, and a charming rosy expanse at the back of its neck, caused through lying on its back in contemplation of its own importance. it didn't know the date of the battle of hastings, but it knew with the certainty of absolute knowledge that it was master of the house, and that the activity of the house revolved round it. now, the baby loved its bath. in any case its bath would have been an affair of immense and intricate pomp; but the fact that it loved its bath raised the interest and significance of the bath to the nth power. the bath took place at five o'clock in the evening, and it is not too much to say that the idea of the bath was immanent in the very atmosphere of the house. when you have an appointment with the dentist at five o'clock in the afternoon the idea of the appointment is immanent in your mind from the first moment of your awakening. conceive that an appointment with the dentist implies heavenly joy instead of infernal pain, and you will have a notion of the daily state of mrs blackshaw and emmie (the nurse) with regard to the baby's bath. even at ten in the morning emmie would be keeping an eye on the kitchen fire, lest the cook might let it out. and shortly after noon mrs blackshaw would be keeping an eye on the thermometer in the bedroom where the bath occurred. from four o'clock onwards the clocks in the house were spied on and overlooked like suspected persons; but they were used to that, because the baby had his sterilized milk every two hours. i have at length allowed you to penetrate the secret of his sex. and so at five o'clock precisely the august and exciting ceremony began in the best bedroom. a bright fire was burning (the month being december), and the carefully-shaded electric lights were also burning. a large bath-towel was spread in a convenient place on the floor, and on the towel were two chairs facing each other, and a table. on one chair was the bath, and on the other was mrs blackshaw with her sleeves rolled up, and on mrs blackshaw was another towel, and on that towel was roger (the baby). on the table were zinc ointment, vaseline, scentless eau de cologne, castile soap, and a powder-puff. emmie having pretty nearly filled the bath with a combination of hot and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer into it, and then added more waters until the thermometer indicated the precise temperature proper for a baby's bath. but you are not to imagine that mrs blackshaw trusted a mere thermometer. no. she put her arm in the water up to the elbow. she reckoned the sensitive skin near the elbow was worth forty thermometers. emmie was chiefly an audience. mrs blackshaw had engaged her as a nurse, but she could have taught a nigger-boy to do all that she allowed the nurse to do. during the bath mrs blackshaw and emmie hated and scorned each other, despite their joy. emmie was twice mrs blackshaw's age, besides being twice her weight, and she knew twice as much about babies as mrs blackshaw did. however, mrs blackshaw had the terrific advantage of being the mother of that particular infant, and she could always end an argument when she chose, and in her own favour. it was unjust, and emmie felt it to be unjust; but this is not a world of justice. roger, though not at all precocious, was perfectly aware of the carefully-concealed hostility between his mother and his nurse, and often, with his usual unscrupulousness, he used it for his own ends. he was sitting upon his mother's knees toying with the edge of the bath, already tasting its delights in advance. mrs blackshaw undressed the upper half of him, and then she laid him on the flat of his back and undressed the lower half of him, but keeping some wisp of a garment round his equatorial regions. and then she washed his face with a sponge and the castile soap, very gently, but not half gently enough for emmie, nor half gently enough for roger, for roger looked upon this part of the business as insulting and superfluous. he breathed hard and kicked his feet nearly off. 'yes, it's dreadful having our face washed, isn't it?' said mrs blackshaw, with her sleeves up, and her hair by this time down. 'we don't like it, do we? yes, yes.' emmie grunted, without a sound, and yet mrs blackshaw heard her, and finished that face quickly and turned to the hands. 'potato-gardens every day,' she said. 'evzy day-day. enough of that, colonel!' (for, after all, she had plenty of spirit.) 'fat little creases! fat little creases! there! he likes that! there! feet! feet! feet and legs! then our back. and then whup we shall go into the bath! that's it. kick! kick your mother!' and she turned him over. 'incredible bungler!' said the eyes of the nurse. 'can't she turn him over neater than that?' 'harridan!' said the eyes of mrs blackshaw. 'i wouldn't let you bath him for twenty thousand pounds!' roger continued to breathe hard, as if his mother were a horse and he were rubbing her down. 'now! zoop! whup!' cried his mother, and having deprived him of his final rag, she picked him up and sat him in the bath, and he was divinely happy, and so were the women. he appeared a gross little animal in the bath, all the tints of his flesh shimmering under the electric light. his chest was superb, but the rolled and creased bigness of his inordinate stomach was simply appalling, not to mention his great thighs and calves. the truth was, he had grown so that if he had been only a little bit bigger, he would have burst the bath. he resembled an old man who had been steadily eating too much for about forty years. his two womenfolk now candidly and openly worshipped him, forgetting sectarian differences. and he splashed. oh! he splashed. you see, he had learnt how to splash, and he had certainly got an inkling that to splash was wicked and messy. so he splashed--in his mother's face, in emmie's face, in the fire. he pretty well splashed the fire out. ten minutes before, the bedroom had been tidy, a thing of beauty. it was now naught but a wild welter of towels, socks, binders--peninsulas of clothes nearly surrounded by water. finally his mother seized him again, and, rearing his little legs up out of the water, immersed the whole of his inflated torso beneath the surface. 'hallo!' she exclaimed. 'did the water run over his mouf? did it?' 'angels and ministers of grace defend us! how clumsy she is!' commented the eyes of emmie. 'there! i fink that's about long enough for this kind of wevver,' said the mother. 'i should think it was! there's almost a crust of ice on the water now!' the nurse refrained from saying. and roger, full of regrets, was wrenched out of the bath. he had ceased breathing hard while in the water, but he began again immediately he emerged. 'we don't like our face wiped, do we?' said his mother on his behalf. 'we want to go back into that bath. we like it. it's more fun than anything that happens all day long! eh? that old dandruff's coming up in fine style. it's a-peeling off like anything.' and all the while she wiped him, patted eau de cologne into him with the flat of her hand, and rubbed zinc ointment into him, and massaged him, and powdered him, and turned him over and over and over, till he was thoroughly well basted and cooked. and he kept on breathing hard. then he sneezed, amid general horror! 'i told you so!' the nurse didn't say, and she rushed to the bed where all the idol's beautiful, clean, aired things were lying safe from splashings, and handed a flannel shirt, about two inches in length, to mrs blackshaw. and mrs blackshaw rolled the left sleeve of it into a wad and stuck it over his arm, and his poor little vaccination marks were hidden from view till next morning. roger protested. 'we don't like clothes, do we?' said his mother. 'we want to tumble back into our tub. we aren't much for clothes anyway. we'se a little hottentot, aren't we?' and she gradually covered him with one garment or another until there was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet. and she sat him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things behind. and then it might have been observed that he was no longer breathing hard, but giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a cry, while sucking his thumb and gazing round the room. 'that's our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn't it?' his mother explained to him. and he agreed that it was. and before emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all ready and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle, had monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and bellowing with impatience. he took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother's hand that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into that insatiable gulf of a stomach. but he found time to gaze about the room too. a tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the effort of feeding. 'yes, that's it,' said his mother. 'now look round and see what's happening. curiosity! well, if you will bob your head, i can't help it.' 'of course you can!' the nurse didn't say. then he put his finger into his mouth side by side with the bottle, and gagged himself, and choked, and gave a terrible--excuse the word--hiccough. after which he seemed to lose interest in the milk, and the pumping operations slackened and then ceased. 'goosey!' whispered his mother, 'getting seepy? is the sandman throwing sand in your eyes? old sandman at it? sh--' ... he had gone. emmie took him. the women spoke in whispers. and mrs blackshaw, after a day spent in being a mother, reconstituted herself a wife, and began to beautify herself for her husband. ii yes, there was a mr blackshaw, and with mr blackshaw the tragedy of the bath commences. mr blackshaw was a very important young man. indeed, it is within the mark to say that, next to his son, he was the most important young man in bursley. for mr blackshaw was the manager of the newly opened municipal electricity works. and the municipal electricity had created more excitement and interest than anything since the jubilee, when an ox was roasted whole in the market-place and turned bad in the process. had bursley been a swiss village, or a french country town, or a hamlet in arizona, it would have had its electricity fifteen years ago, but being only a progressive english borough, with an annual value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, it struggled on with gas till well into the twentieth century. its great neighbour hanbridge had become acquainted with electricity in the nineteenth century. all the principal streets and squares, and every decent shop that hanbridge competition had left standing, and many private houses, now lighted themselves by electricity, and the result was splendid and glaring and coldly yellow. mr. blackshaw developed into the hero of the hour. people looked at him in the street as though he had been the discoverer and original maker of electricity. and if the manager of the gasworks had not already committed murder, it was because the manager of the gasworks had a right sense of what was due to his position as vicar's churchwarden at st peter's church. but greatness has its penalties. and the chief penalty of mr blackshaw's greatness was that he could not see roger have his nightly bath. it was impossible for mr blackshaw to quit his arduous and responsible post before seven o'clock in the evening. later on, when things were going more smoothly, he might be able to get away; but then, later on, his son's bath would not be so amusing and agreeable as it then, by all reports, was. the baby was, of course, bathed on saturday nights, but sunday afternoon and evening mr blackshaw was obliged to spend with his invalid mother at longshaw. it was on the sole condition of his weekly presence thus in her house that she had consented not to live with the married pair. and so mr blackshaw could not witness roger's bath. he adored roger. he understood roger. he weighed, nursed, and fed roger. he was 'up' in all the newest theories of infant rearing. in short, roger was his passion, and he knew everything of roger except roger's bath. and when his wife met him at the front door of a night at seven-thirty and launched instantly into a description of the wonders, delights, and excitations of roger's latest bath, mr blackshaw was ready to tear his hair with disappointment and frustration. 'i suppose you couldn't put it off for a couple of hours one night, may?' he suggested at supper on the evening of the particular bath described above. 'sidney!' protested mrs blackshaw, pained. mr blackshaw felt that he had gone too far, and there was a silence. 'well!' said mr blackshaw at length, 'i have just made up my mind. i'm going to see that kid's bath, and, what's more, i'm going to see it tomorrow. i don't care what happens.' 'but how shall you manage to get away, darling?' 'you will telephone me about a quarter of an hour before you're ready to begin, and i'll pretend it's something very urgent, and scoot off.' 'well, that will be lovely, darling!' said mrs blackshaw. 'i would like you to see him in the bath, just once! he looks so--' and so on. the next day, mr blackshaw, that fearsome autocrat of the municipal electricity works, was saying to himself all day that at five o'clock he was going to assist at the spectacle of his wonderful son's bath. the prospect inspired him. so much so that every hand on the place was doing its utmost in fear and trembling, and the whole affair was running with the precision and smoothness of a watch. from four o'clock onwards, mr blackshaw, in the solemn, illuminated privacy of the managerial office, safe behind glass partitions, could no more contain his excitement. he hovered in front of the telephone, waiting for it to ring. then, at a quarter to five, just when he felt he couldn't stand it any longer, and was about to ring up his wife instead of waiting for her to ring him up, he saw a burly shadow behind the glass door, and gave a desolate sigh. that shadow could only be thrown by one person, and that person was his worship the mayor of bursley. his worship entered the private office with mayoral assurance, pulling in his wake a stout old lady whom he introduced as his aunt from wolverhampton. and he calmly proposed that mr blackshaw should show the mayoral aunt over the new electricity works! mr blackshaw was sick of showing people over the works. moreover, he naturally despised the mayor. all permanent officials of municipalities thoroughly despise their mayors (up their sleeves). a mayor is here today and gone tomorrow, whereas a permanent official is permanent. a mayor knows nothing about anything except his chain and the rules of debate, and he is, further, a tedious and meddlesome person--in the opinion of permanent officials. so mr blackshaw's fury at the inept appearance of the mayor and the mayoral aunt at this critical juncture may be imagined. the worst of it was, he didn't know how to refuse the mayor. then the telephone-bell rang. 'excuse me,' said mr blackshaw, with admirably simulated politeness, going to the instrument. 'are you there? who is it?' 'it's me, darling,' came the thin voice of his wife far away at bleakridge. 'the water's just getting hot. we're nearly ready. can you come now?' 'by jove! wait a moment!' exclaimed mr blackshaw, and then turning to his visitors, 'did you hear that?' 'no,' said the mayor. 'all those three new dynamos that they've got at the hanbridge electricity works have just broken down. i knew they would. i told them they would!' 'dear, dear!' said the mayor of bursley, secretly delighted by this disaster to a disdainful rival. 'why! they'll have the town in darkness. what are they going to do?' 'they want me to go over at once. but, of course, i can't. at least, i must give myself the pleasure of showing you and this lady over our works, first.' 'nothing of the kind, mr blackshaw!' said the mayor. 'go at once. go at once. if bursley can be of any assistance to hanbridge in such a crisis, i shall be only too pleased. we will come tomorrow, won't we, auntie?' mr blackshaw addressed the telephone. 'the mayor is here, with a lady, and i was just about to show them over the works, but his worship insists that i come at once.' 'certainly,' the mayor put in pompously. 'wonders will never cease,' came the thin voice of mrs blackshaw through the telephone. 'it's very nice of the old thing! what's his lady friend like?' 'not like anything. unique!' replied mr blackshaw. 'young?' came the voice. 'dates from the thirties,' said mr blackshaw. 'i'm coming.' and rang off. 'i didn't know there was any electric machinery as old as that,' said the mayoral aunt. 'we'll just look about us a bit,' the mayor remarked. 'don't lose a moment, mr blackshaw.' and mr blackshaw hurried off, wondering vaguely how he should explain the lie when it was found out, but not caring much. after all, he could easily ascribe the episode to the trick of some practical joker. iii he arrived at his commodious and electrically lit residence in the very nick of time, and full to overflowing with innocent paternal glee. was he not about to see roger's tub? roger was just ready to be carried upstairs as mr blackshaw's latchkey turned in the door. 'wait a sec!' cried mr blackshaw to his wife, who had the child in her arms, 'i'll carry him up.' and he threw away his hat, stick, and overcoat and grabbed ecstatically at the infant. and he had got perhaps halfway up the stairs, when lo! the electric light went out. every electric light in the house went out. 'great scott!' breathed mr blackshaw, aghast. he pulled aside the blind of the window at the turn of the stairs, and peered forth. the street was as black as your hat, or nearly so. 'great scott!' he repeated. 'may, get candles.' something had evidently gone wrong at the works. just his luck! he had quitted the works for a quarter of an hour, and the current had failed! of course, the entire house was instantly in an uproar, turned upside down, startled out of its life. but a few candles soon calmed its transports. and at length mr blackshaw gained the bedroom in safety, with the offspring of his desires comfortable in a shawl. 'give him to me,' said may shortly. 'i suppose you'll have to go back to the works at once?' mr blackshaw paused, and then nerved himself; but while he was pausing, may, glancing at the two feeble candles, remarked: 'it's very tiresome. i'm sure i shan't be able to see properly.' 'no!' almost shouted mr blackshaw. 'i'll watch this kid have his bath or i'll die for it! i don't care if all the five towns are in darkness. i don't care if the mayor's aunt has got caught in a dynamo and is suffering horrible tortures. i've come to see this bath business, and dashed if i don't see it!' 'well, don't stand between the bath and the fire, dearest,' said may coldly. meanwhile, emmie, having pretty nearly filled the bath with a combination of hot and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer into it, and then added more waters until the thermometer indicated the precise temperature proper for a baby's bath. but you are not to imagine that mrs blackshaw trusted a thermometer-- she did not, however, thrust her bared arm into the water this time. no! roger, who never cried before his bath, was crying, was indubitably crying. and he cried louder and louder. 'stand where he can't see you, dearest. he isn't used to you at bath-time,' said mrs blackshaw still coldly. 'are you, my pet? there! there!' mr blackshaw effaced himself, feeling a fool. but roger continued to cry. he cried himself purple. he cried till the veins stood out on his forehead and his mouth was like a map of australia. he cried himself into a monster of ugliness. neither mother nor nurse could do anything with him at all. 'i think you've upset him, dearest,' said mrs blackshaw even more coldly. 'hadn't you better go?' 'well--' protested the father. 'i think you had better go,' said mrs blackshaw, adding no term of endearment, and visibly controlling herself with difficulty. and mr blackshaw went. he had to go. he went out into the unelectric night. he headed for the works, not because he cared twopence, at that moment, about the accident at the works, whatever it was; but simply because the works was the only place to go to. and even outside in the dark street he could hear the rousing accents of his progeny. people were talking to each other as they groped about in the road, and either making jokes at the expense of the new electricity department, or frankly cursing it with true five towns directness of speech. and as mr blackshaw went down the hill into the town his heart was as black as the street itself with rage and disappointment. he had made his child cry! someone stopped him. 'eh, mester blackshaw!' said a voice, and under the voice a hand struck a match to light a pipe. 'what's th' maning o' this eclipse as you'm treating us to?' mr blackshaw looked right through the inquirer--a way he had when his brain was working hard. and he suddenly smiled by the light of the match. 'that child wasn't crying because i was there,' said mr blackshaw with solemn relief. 'not at all! he was crying because he didn't understand the candles. he isn't used to candles, and they frightened him.' and he began to hurry towards the works. at the same instant the electric light returned to bursley. the current was resumed. 'that's better,' said mr blackshaw, sighing. the silent brothers i john and robert hessian, brothers, bachelors, and dressed in mourning, sat together after supper in the parlour of their house at the bottom of oldcastle street, bursley. maggie, the middle-aged servant, was clearing the table. 'leave the cloth and the coffee,' said john, the elder, 'mr liversage is coming in.' 'yes, mr john,' said maggie. 'slate, maggie,' robert ordered laconically, with a gesture towards the mantelpiece behind him. 'yes, mr robert,' said maggie. she gave him a slate with slate-pencil attached, which hung on a nail near the mantlepiece. robert took the slate and wrote on it: 'what is liversage coming about?' and he pushed the slate across the table to john. whereupon john wrote on the slate: 'don't know. he telephoned me he wanted to see us tonight.' and he pushed back the slate to robert. this singular procedure was not in the least attributable to deafness on the part of the brothers; they were in the prime of life, aged forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, and in complete possession of all their faculties. it was due simply to the fact that they had quarrelled, and would not speak to each other. the history of their quarrel would be incredible were it not full of that ridiculous pathetic quality known as human nature, and did not similar things happen frequently in the manufacturing midlands, where the general temperament is a fearful and strange compound of pride, obstinacy, unconquerableness, romance, and stupidity. yes, stupidity. no single word had passed between the brothers in that house for ten years. on the morning after the historical quarrel robert had not replied when john spoke to him. 'well,' said john's secret heart--and john's secret heart ought to have known better, as it was older than its brother heart--'i'll teach him a lesson. i won't speak until he does.' and robert's secret heart had somehow divined this idiotic resolution, and had said: 'we shall see.' maggie had been the first to notice the stubborn silence. then their friends noticed it, especially mr liversage, the solicitor, their most intimate friend. but you are not to suppose that anybody protested very strongly. for john and robert were not the kind of men with whom liberties may be taken; and, moreover, bursley was slightly amused--at the beginning. it assumed the attitude of a disinterested spectator at a fight. it wondered who would win. of course, it called both the brothers fools, yet in a tone somewhat sympathetic, because such a thing as had occurred to the hessians might well occur to any man gifted with the true bursley spirit. there is this to be said for a bursley man: having made his bed, he will lie on it, and he will not complain. the hessians suffered severely by their self-imposed dumbness, but they suffered like stoics. maggie also suffered, and maggie would not stand it. maggie it was who had invented the slate. indeed, they had heard some plain truths from that stout, bustling woman. they had not yielded, but they had accepted the slate in order to minimize the inconvenience to maggie, and afterwards they deigned to make use of it for their own purposes. as for friends--friends accustomed themselves to the status quo. there came a time when the spectacle of two men chattering to everybody else in a company, and not saying a word to each other, no longer appealed to bursley's sense of humour. the silent scenes at which maggie assisted every day did not, either, appeal to maggie's sense of humour, because she had none. so the famous feud grew into a sort of elemental fact of nature. it was tolerated as the weather is tolerated. the brothers acquired pride in it; even bursley regarded it as an interesting municipal curiosity. the sole imperfection in a lovely and otherwise perfect quarrel was that john and robert, being both employed at roycroft's majolica manufactory, the one as works manager and the other as commercial traveller, were obliged to speak to each other occasionally in the way of business. artistically, this was a pity, though they did speak very sternly and distantly. the partial truce necessitated by roycroft's was confined strictly to roycroft's. and when robert was not on his journeys, these two tall, strong, dark, bearded men might often be seen of a night walking separately and doggedly down oldcastle street from the works, within five yards of each other. and no one suggested the lunatic asylum. such is the force of pride, of rank stupidity, and of habit. the slate-scratching was scarcely over that evening when mr powell liversage appeared. he was a golden-haired man, with a jolly face, lighter and shorter in structure than the two brothers. his friendship with them dated from school-days, and it had survived even the entrance of liversage into a learned profession. liversage, who, being a bachelor like the hessians, had many unoccupied evenings, came to see the brothers regularly every saturday night, and one or other of them dropped in upon him most wednesdays; but this particular night was a thursday. 'how do?' john greeted him succinctly between two puffs of a pipe. 'how do?' replied liversage. 'how do, pow?' robert greeted him in turn, also between two puffs of a pipe. and 'how do, little 'un?' replied liversage. a chair was indicated to him, and he sat down, and robert poured out some coffee into a third cup which maggie had brought. john pushed away the extra special of the staffordshire signal, which he had been reading. 'what's up these days?' john demanded. 'well,' said liversage, and both brothers noticed that he was rather ill at ease, instead of being humorous and lightly caustic as usual, 'the will's turned up.' 'the devil it has!' john exclaimed. 'when?' 'this afternoon.' and then, as there was a pause, liversage added: 'yes, my sons, the will's turned up.' 'but where, you cuckoo, sitting there like that?' asked robert. 'where?' 'it was in that registered letter addressed to your sister that the post office people wouldn't hand over until we'd taken out letters of administration.' 'well, i'm dashed!' muttered john. 'who'd have thought of that? you've got the will, then?' liversage nodded. the hessians had an elder sister, mrs bott, widow of a colour merchant, and mrs bott had died suddenly three months ago, the night after a journey to manchester. (even at the funeral the brothers had scandalized the town by not speaking to each other.) mrs bott had wealth, wit, and wisdom, together with certain peculiarities, of which one was an excessive secrecy. it was known that she had made a will, because she had more than once notified the fact, in a tone suggestive of highly important issues, but the will had refused to be found. so mr liversage had been instructed to take out letters of administration of the estate, which, in the continued absence of the will, would be divided equally between the brothers. and twelve or thirteen thousand pounds may be compared to a financial beef-steak that cuts up very handsomely for two persons. the carving-knife was about to descend on its succulence, when, lo! the will! 'how came the will to be in the post?' asked robert. 'the handwriting on the envelope was your sister's,' said liversage. 'and the package was posted in manchester. very probably she had taken the will to manchester to show it to a lawyer or something of that sort, and then she was afraid of losing it on the journey back, and so she sent it to herself by registered post. but before it arrived, of course, she was dead.' 'that wasn't a bad scheme of poor mary ann's!' john commented. 'it was just like her!' said robert, speaking pointedly to liversage. 'but what an odd thing!' now, both these men were, no doubt excusably, agonized by curiosity to learn the contents of the will. but would either of them be the first to express that curiosity? never in this world! not for the fortune itself! to do so would scarcely have been bursleyish. it would certainly not have been hessianlike. so liversage was obliged at length to say-- 'i reckon i'd better read you the will, eh?' the brothers nodded. 'mind you,' said liversage, 'it's not my will. i've had nothing to do with it; so kindly keep your hair on. as a matter of fact, she must have drawn it up herself. it's not drawn properly at all, but it's witnessed all right, and it'll hold water, just as well as if the blooming lord chancellor had fixed it up for her in person.' he produced the document and read, awkwardly and self-consciously-- '"this is my will. you are both of you extremely foolish, john and robert, and i've often told you so. nobody has ever understood, and nobody ever will understand, why you quarrelled like that over annie emery. you are punishing yourselves, but you are punishing her as well, and it isn't fair her waiting all these years. so i give all my estate, no matter what it is, to whichever of you marries annie. and i hope this will teach you a lesson. you need it more than you need my money. but you must be married within a year of my death. and if the one that marries cares to give five thousand pounds or so to the other, of course there's nothing to prevent him. this is just a hint. and if you don't either of you marry annie within a year, then i just leave everything i have to miss annie emery (spinster), stationer and fancy-goods dealer, duck bank, bursley. she deserves something for her disappointment, and she shall have it. mr liversage, solicitor, must kindly be my executor. and i commit my soul to god, hoping for a blessed resurrection. th january, . signed mary ann bott, widow." as i told you, the witnessing is in order,' liversage finished. 'give it here,' said john shortly, and scanned the sheet of paper. and robert actually walked round the table and looked over his brother's shoulder--ample proof that he was terrifically moved. 'and do you mean to tell me that a will like that is good in law?' exclaimed john. 'of course it's good in law!' liversage replied. 'legal phraseology is a useful thing, and it often saves trouble in the end; but it ain't indispensable, you know.' 'humph!' was robert's comment as he resumed his seat and relighted his pipe. all three men were nervous. each was afraid to speak, afraid even to meet the eyes of the other two. an unmajestic silence followed. 'well, i'll be off, i think,' liversage remarked at length with difficulty. he rose. 'i say,' robert stopped him. 'better not say anything about this to miss--to annie, eh?' 'i will say nothing,' agreed liversage (infamously and unprofessionally concealing the fact that he had already said something). and he departed. the brothers sat in flustered meditation over the past and the future. ten years before, annie emery had been an orphan of twenty-three, bravely starting in business for herself amid the plaudits of the admiring town; and john had fallen in love with her courage and her sense and her feminine charm. but alas, as ovid points out, how difficult it is for a woman to please only one man! robert also had fallen in love with annie. each brother had accused the other of underhand and unbrotherly practices in the pursuit of annie. each was profoundly hurt by the accusations, and each, in the immense fatuity of his pride, had privately sworn to prove his innocence by having nothing more to do with annie. such is life! such is man! such is the terrible egoism of man! and thus it was that, for the sake of wounded pride, john and robert not only did not speak to one another for ten years, but they spoilt at least one of their lives; and they behaved ignobly to annie, who would certainly have married either one or the other of them. at two o'clock in the morning john pulled a coin out of his pocket and made the gesture of tossing. 'who shall go first!' he explained. robert had a queer sensation in his spine as his elder brother spoke to him for the first time in ten years. he wanted to reply vocally. he had a most imperious desire to reply vocally. but he could not. something stronger even than the desire prevented his tongue from moving. john tossed the coin--it was a sovereign--and covered it with his hands. 'tail!' robert murmured, somewhat hoarsely. but it was head. then they went to bed. ii the side door of miss emery's shop was in brick passage, and not in the main street, so that a man, even a man of commanding stature and formidable appearance, might by insinuating himself into brick street, off king street, and then taking the passage from the quieter end, arrive at it without attracting too much attention. this course was adopted by john hessian. from the moment when he quitted his own house that friday evening in june he had been subject to the delusion that the collective eye of bursley was upon him. as a matter of fact, the collective eye of bursley is much too large and important to occupy itself exclusively with a single individual. bursley is not a village, and let no one think it. nevertheless, john was subject to the delusion. the shop was shut, as he knew it would be. but the curtained window of the parlour, between the side-door and the small shuttered side-window of the shop, gave a strange suggestion of interesting virgin spotless domesticity within. john cast a fearful eye on the main thoroughfare. nobody seemed to be passing. the chapel-keeper of the wesleyan chapel on the opposite side of trafalgar road was refreshing the massive corinthian portico of that fane, and paying no regard whatever to the temple of eros which miss emery's shop had suddenly become. so john knocked. 'i am a fool!' his thought ran as he knocked. because he did not know what he was about. he had won the toss, and with it the right to approach annie emery before his brother. but what then? well, he did desire to marry her, quite as much for herself as for his sister's fortune. but what then? how was he going to explain the tepidity, the desertion, the long sin against love of ten years? in short, how was he going to explain the inexplicable? he could decidedly do nothing that evening except make a blundering ass of himself. and how soon would robert have the right to come along and say his say? that point had not been settled. points so extremely delicate cannot be settled on a slate, and he had not dared to broach it viva voce to his younger brother. he had been too afraid of a rebuff. he then hoped that annie's servant would tell him that annie was out. annie, however, took him at a disadvantage by opening the door herself. 'well, mr hessian!' she exclaimed, her face bursting into a swift and welcoming smile. 'i was just passing,' the donkey in him blundered forth. 'and i thought--' however, in fifteen seconds he was on the domestic side of the sitting-room window, and seated in the antimacassared armchair between the fire-place and the piano, and annie had taken his hat and told him that her servant was out for the evening. 'but i'm disturbing your supper, miss emery,' he said. flurried though he was, he could not fail to notice the white embroidered cloth spread diagonally on the table, and the cold meat and the pastry and the glittering cutlery and crystal thereon. 'not at all,' she replied. 'you haven't had supper yet, i expect?' 'no,' he said, not thinking. 'it will be nice of you to help me to eat mine,' said she. 'oh! but really--' but she got plates and things out of the cupboard below the bookcase--and there he was! she would take no refusal. it was wondrous. 'i'm awfully glad i came now,' his thought ran; i'm managing it rather well.' and-- 'poor bob!' his sole discomfort was that he could not invent a sufficiently ingenious explanation of his call. you can't tell a woman you've called to make love to her, and when your previous call happens to have been ten years ago, some kind of an explanation does seem to be demanded. ultimately, as annie was so very pleased to see him, so friendly, so feminine, so equal to the occasion, he decided to let his presence in her abode that night stand as one of those central facts in existence that need no explanation. and they went on talking and eating till the dusk deepened and annie lit the gas and drew the blind. he watched her on the sly as she moved about the room. he decided that she did not appear a day older. there was the same plump, erect figure, the same neatness, the same fair skin and fair hair, the same little nose, the same twinkle in the eye--only perhaps the twinkle in the eye was a trifle less cruel than it used to be. she was not a day older. (in this he was of course utterly mistaken; she was ten years older, she was thirty-three, with ten years of successful commercial experience behind her; she would never be twenty-three again. still she was a most desirable woman, and a woman infinitely beyond his deserts.) her air of general capability impressed him. and with that there was mingled a strange softness, a marvellous hint of a concealed wish to surrender.... well, she made him feel big and masculine--in brief, a man. he regretted the lost ten years. his present way of life seemed intolerable to him. the new heaven opened its gate and gave glimpses of paradise. after all, he felt himself well qualified for that paradise. he felt that he had all along been a woman's man, without knowing it. 'by jove!' his thought ran. 'at this rate i might propose to her in a week or two.' and again-- 'poor old bobbie!' a quarter of an hour later, in some miraculous manner, they were more intimate than they had ever been, much more intimate. he revised his estimate of the time that must elapse before he might propose to her. in another five minutes he was fighting hard against a mad impulse to propose to her on the spot. and then the fight was over, and he had lost. he proposed to her under the rose-coloured shade of the welsbach light. she drew away, as though shot. and with the rapidity of lightning, in the silence which followed, he went back to his original criticism of himself, that he was a fool. naturally she would request him to leave. she would accuse him of effrontery. her lips trembled. he prepared to rise. 'it's so sudden!' she said. bliss! glory! celestial joy! her words were at least equivalent to an absolution of his effrontery! she would accept! she would accept! he jumped up and approached her. but she jumped up too and retreated. he was not to win his prize so easily. 'please sit down,' she murmured. 'i must think it over,' she said, apparently mastering herself. 'shall you be at chapel next sunday morning?' 'yes,' he answered. 'if i am there, and if i am wearing white roses in my hat, it will mean--' she dropped her eyes. 'yes?' he queried. and she nodded. 'and supposing you aren't there?' 'then the sunday after,' she said. he thanked her in his hessian style. 'i prefer that way of telling you,' she smiled demurely. 'it will avoid the necessity for another--so much--you understand?...' 'quite so, quite so!' he agreed. 'i quite understand.' 'and if i do see those roses,' he went on, 'i shall take upon myself to drop in for tea, may i?' she paused. 'in any case, you mustn't speak to me coming out of chapel, please.' as he walked home down oldcastle street he said to himself that the age of miracles was not past; also that, after all, he was not so old as the tale of his years would mathematically indicate. iii her absence from chapel on the next sunday disagreed with him. however, robert was away nearly all the week, and he had the house to himself to dream in. it frequently happened to him to pass by miss emery's shop, but he caught no glimpse of her, and though he really was in serious need of writing-paper and envelopes, he dared not enter. robert returned on the friday. on the morning of the second sunday, john got up early, in order to cope with a new necktie that he had purchased in hanbridge. nevertheless he found robert afoot before him, and robert, by some unlucky chance, was wearing not merely a new necktie, but a new suit of clothes. they breakfasted in their usual august silence, and john gathered from a remark of robert's to maggie when she brought in the boots that robert meant to go to chapel. now, robert, being a commercial traveller and therefore a bit of a caution, did not attend chapel with any remarkable assiduity. and john, in the privacy of his own mind, blamed him for having been so clumsy as to choose that particular morning for breaking the habits of a lifetime. still, the presence of robert in the pew could not prejudicially affect john, and so there was no genuine cause for gloominess. after a time it became apparent that each was waiting for the other to go. john began to get annoyed. at last he made the plunge and went. turning his head halfway up oldcastle street, opposite the mansion which is called 'miss peel's', he perceived robert fifty yards behind. it was a glorious june day. he blushed as he entered chapel. if he was nervous, it may be accorded to him as excuse that the happiness of his life depended on what he should see within the next few minutes. however, he felt pretty sure, though it was exciting all the same. to reach the hessian pew he was obliged to pass miss emery's. and it was empty! robert arrived. the organist finished the voluntary. the leading tenor of the choir put up the number of the first hymn. the minister ascended the staircase of the great mahogany pulpit, and prayed silently, and arranged his papers in the leaves of the hymn-book, and glanced about to see who was there and who was presumably still in bed, and coughed; and then miss annie emery sailed in with that air of false calm which is worn by the experienced traveller who catches a train by the fifth of a second. the service commenced. john looked. she was wearing white roses. there could be no mistake as to that. there were about a hundred and fifty-five white roses in the garden of her hat. what a thrill ran through john's heart! he had won annie, and he had won the fortune. yes, he would give robert the odd five thousand pounds. his state of mind might even lead him to make it guineas. he heard not a word of the sermon, and throughout the service he rose up and sat down several instants after the rest of the congregation, because he was so absent-minded. after service he waited for everybody else to leave, in order not to break his promise to the divine annie. so did robert. this ill-timed rudeness on robert's part somewhat retarded the growth of a young desire in john's heart to make friends with poor bob. then he got up and left, and robert followed. they dined in silence, john deciding that he would begin his overtures of friendship after he had seen annie, and could tell robert that he was formally engaged. the brothers ate little. they both improved their minds during their repast--john with the christian commonwealth, and robert with the saturday cricket edition of the signal (i regret it). then, after pipes, they both went out for a walk, naturally not in the same direction. the magnificence of the weather filled them both with the joy of life. as for john, he went out for a walk simply because he could not contain himself within the house. he could not wait immovable till four-thirty, the hour at which he meant to call on annie for tea and the betrothal kiss. therefore he ascended to hillport and wandered as far as oldcastle, all in a silk hat and a frock-coat. it was precisely half-past four as he turned, unassumingly, from brick street into brick passage, and so approached the side door of annie emery's. and his astonishment and anger were immense when he saw robert, likewise in silk hat and frock-coat, penetrating into brick passage from the other end. they met, and their inflamed spirits collided. 'what's the meaning of this?' john demanded, furious; and, simultaneously, robert demanded: 'what in hades are you doing here?' only sunday and the fine clothes and the proximity to annie prevented actual warfare. 'i'm calling on annie,' said john. 'so am i,' said robert. 'well, you're too late,' said john. 'oh, i'm too late, am i?' said robert, with a disdainful laugh. thanks!' 'i tell you you're too late,' said john. 'you may as well know at once that i've proposed to annie and she's accepted me.' 'i like that! i like that!' said robert. 'don't shout!' said john. 'i'm not shouting,' said robert. 'but you may as well know that you're mistaken, my boy. it's me that's proposed to annie and been accepted. you must be off your chump.' 'when did you propose to her?' said john. 'on friday, if you must know,' said robert. 'and she accepted you at once?' said john. 'no. she said that if she was wearing white roses in her hat this morning at chapel, that would mean she accepted,' said robert. 'liar!' said john. 'i suppose you'll admit she was wearing white roses in her hat?' said robert, controlling himself. 'liar!' said john, and continued breathless: 'that was what she said to me. she must have told you that white roses meant a refusal.' 'oh no, she didn't!' said robert, quailing secretly, but keeping up a formidable show of courage. 'you're an old fool!' he added vindictively. they were both breathing hard, and staring hard at each other. 'come away,' said john. 'come away! we can't talk here. she may look out of the window.' so they went away. they walked very quickly home, and, once in the parlour, they began to have it out. and, before they had done, the reading of cricket news on sunday was as nothing compared to the desecrating iniquity which they committed. the scene was not such as can be decently recounted. but about six o'clock maggie entered, and, at considerable personal risk, brought them back to a sense of what was due to their name, the town, and the day. she then stated that she would not remain in such a house, and she departed. iv 'but whatever made you do it, dearest?' these words were addressed to annie emery on the glorious summer evening which closed that glorious summer day, and they were addressed to her by no other person than powell liversage. the pair were in the garden of the house in trafalgar road occupied by mr liversage and his mother, and they looked westwards over the distant ridge of hillport, where the moon was setting. 'whatever made me do it!' repeated annie, and the twinkle in her eye had that charming cruelty which john had missed. 'did they not deserve it? of course, i can talk to you now with perfect freedom, can't i? well, what do you think of it? here for ten years neither one nor the other does more than recognize me in the street, and then all of a sudden they come down on me like that--simply because there's a question of money. i couldn't have believed men could be so stupid--no, i really couldn't! they're friends of yours, powell, i know, but--however, that's no matter. but it was too ridiculously easy to lead them on! they'd swallow any flattery. i just did it to see what they'd do, and i think i arranged it pretty well. i quite expected they would call about the same time, and then shouldn't i have given them my mind! unfortunately they met outside, and got very hot--i saw them from the bedroom window--and went away.' 'you mustn't forget, my dear girl,' said liversage, 'that it was you they quarrelled about. i don't want to defend 'em for a minute, but it wasn't altogether the money that sent them to you; it was more that the money gave them an excuse for coming!' 'it was a very bad excuse, then!' said annie. 'agreed!' liversage murmured. the moon was extremely lovely and romantic against the distant spire of hillport church, and its effect on the couple was just what might have been anticipated. 'perhaps i'm sorry,' annie admitted at length, with a charming grimace. 'oh! i don't think there's anything to be sorry about,' said liversage. 'but of course they'll think i've had a hand in it. you see, i've never breathed a word to them about--about my feelings towards you.' 'no?' 'no. it would have been rather a delicate subject, you see, with them. and i'm sure they'll be staggered when they know that we got engaged last night. they'll certainly say i've--er--been after you for the--no, they won't. they're decent chaps, really; very decent.' 'anyhow, you may be sure, dear,' said annie stiffly, 'that _i_ shan't rob them of their vile money! nothing would induce me to touch it!' 'of course not, dearest!' said liversage--or, rather the finer part of him said it; the baser part somewhat regretted that vile twelve thousand or so. (i must be truthful.) he took her hand again. at the same moment old mrs liversage came hastening down the garden, and liversage dropped the hand. 'powell,' she said. 'here's john hessian, and he wants to see you!' 'the dickens!' exclaimed liversage, glancing at annie. 'i must go,' said annie. 'i shall go by the fields. good night, dear mrs liversage.' 'wait ten seconds,' liversage pleaded, 'and i'll be with you.' and he ran off. john, haggard and undone, was awaiting him in the drawing-room. 'pow,' said he, 'i've had a fearful row with bob, and i can't possibly sleep in our house tonight. don't talk to me. but let me have one of the beds in your spare room, will you? there's a good chap.' 'why, of course, johnnie,' said liversage. 'of course.' 'and i'll go right to bed now,' said john. an hour later, after powell liversage had seen his affianced to her abode and returned home, and after his mother had gone to bed, there was a knock at the front door, and liversage opened to robert hessian. 'look here, pow,' said robert, whose condition was deplorable, 'i want to sleep here tonight. do you mind? fact is, i've had a devil of a shindy with jack, and maggie's run off, and, anyhow, i couldn't possibly stop in the same house with jack tonight.' 'but what--?' 'see here,' said robert. 'i can't talk. just let me have a bed in your spare room. i'm sure you mother won't mind.' 'why, certainly,' said liversage. he lit a candle, escorted robert upstairs, opened the door of the spare room, gave the candle to robert, pushed him in, said 'good night,' and shut the door. what a night! the nineteenth hat a dramatic moment was about to arrive in the joint career of stephen cheswardine and vera his wife. the motor-car stood by the side of the pavement of the strand, torquay, that resort of southern wealth and fashion. the chauffeur, felix, had gone into the automobile shop to procure petrol. mr cheswardine looking longer than ever in his long coat, was pacing the busy footpath. mrs cheswardine, her beauty obscured behind a flowing brown veil, was lolling in the tonneau, very pleased to be in the tonneau, very pleased to be observed by all torquay in the tonneau, very satisfied with her husband, and with the napier car, and especially with felix, now buying petrol. suddenly mrs cheswardine perceived that next door but one to the automobile shop was a milliner's. she sat up and gazed. according to a card in the window an 'after-season sale' was in progress that june day at the milliner's. there were two rows of hats in the window, each hat plainly ticketed. mrs cheswardine descended from the car, crossed the pavement, and gave to the window the whole of her attention. she sniffed at most of the hats. but one of them, of green straw, with a large curving green wing on either side of the crown, and a few odd bits of fluffiness here and there, pleased her. it was parisian. she had been to paris--once. an 'after-season' sale at a little shop in torquay would not, perhaps, seem the most likely place in the world to obtain a chic hat; it is, moreover, a notorious fact that really chic hats cannot be got for less than three pounds, and this hat was marked ten shillings. nevertheless, hats are most mysterious things. their quality of being chic is more often the fruit of chance than of design, particularly in england. you never know when nor where you may light on a good hat. vera considered that she had lighted on one. 'they're probably duck's feathers dyed,' she said to herself. 'but it's a darling of a hat and it will suit me to a t.' as for the price, when once you have taken the ticket off a hat the secret of its price is gone forever. many a hat less smart than this hat has been marked in bond street at ten guineas instead of ten shillings. hats are like oil-paintings--they are worth what people will give for them. so vera approached her husband, and said, with an enchanting, innocent smile-- 'lend me half-a-sovereign, will you, doggie?' she called him doggie in those days because he was a sort of dog-man, a sort of st bernard, shaggy and big, with faithful eyes; and he enjoyed being called doggie. but on this occasion he was not to be bewitched by the enchanting innocence of the smile nor by the endearing epithet. he refused to relax his features. 'you aren't going to buy another hat, are you?' he asked sternly, challengingly. the smile disappeared from her face, and she pulled her slim young self together. 'yes,' she replied harshly. the battle was definitely engaged. you may inquire why a man financially capable of hiring a - h.p. napier car, with a french chauffeur named felix, for a week or more, should grudge his wife ten shillings for a hat. well, you are to comprehend that it was not a question of ten shillings, it was a question of principle. vera already had eighteen hats, and it had been clearly understood between them that no more money should be spent on attire for quite a long time. vera was entirely in the wrong. she knew it, and he knew it. but she wanted just that hat. and they were on their honeymoon, you know: which enormously intensified the poignancy of the drama. they had been married only six days; in three days more they were to return to the five towns, where stephen was solidly established as an earthenware manufacturer. you who have been through them are aware what ticklish things honeymoons are, and how much depends on the tactfulness of the more tactful of the two parties. stephen, thirteen years older than vera, was the more tactful of the two parties. he had married a beautiful and elegant woman, with vast unexploited capacities for love in her heart. but he had married a capricious woman, and he knew it. so far he had yielded to her caprices, as well became him; but in the depths of his masculine mind he had his own private notion as to the identity of the person who should ultimately be master in their house, and he had decided only the previous night that when the next moment for being firm arrived, firm he would be. and now the moment was upon him. it was their eyes that fought, silently, bitterly. there is a great deal of bitterness in true love. stephen perceived the affair broadly, in all its aspects. he was older and much more experienced than vera, and therefore he was responsible for the domestic peace, and for her happiness, and for his own, and for appearances, and for various other things. he perceived the moral degradation which would be involved in an open quarrel during the honeymoon. he perceived the difficulties of a battle in the street, in such a select and prim street as the strand, torquay, where the very backbone of england's respectability goes shopping. he perceived vera's vast ignorance of life. he perceived her charm, and her naughtiness, and all her defects. and he perceived, further, that, this being the first conflict of their married existence, it was of the highest importance that he should emerge from it the victor. to allow vera to triumph would gravely menace their future tranquillity and multiply the difficulties which her adorable capriciousness would surely cause. he could not afford to let her win. it was his duty, not merely to himself but to her, to conquer. but, on the other hand, he had never fully tested her powers of sheer obstinacy, her willingness to sacrifice everything for the satisfaction of a whim; and he feared these powers. he had a dim suspicion that vera was one of that innumerable class of charming persons who are perfectly delicious and perfectly sweet so long as they have precisely their own way--and no longer. vera perceived only two things. she perceived the hat--although her back was turned towards it--and she perceived the half-sovereign--although it was hidden in stephen's pocket. 'but, my dear,' stephen protested, 'you know--' 'will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' vera repeated, in a glacial tone. the madness of a desired hat had seized her. she was a changed vera. she was not a loving woman, not a duteous young wife, nor a reasoning creature. she was an embodied instinct for hats. 'it was most distinctly agreed,' stephen murmured, restraining his anger. just then felix came out of the shop, followed by a procession of three men bearing cans of petrol. if stephen was napoleon and vera wellington, felix was the blucher of this deplorable altercation. impossible to have a row--yes, a row--with your wife in the presence of your chauffeur, with his french ideas of chivalry. 'will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' vera reiterated, in the same glacial tone, not caring twopence for the presence of felix. and stephen, by means of an interminable silver chain, drew his sovereign-case from the profundity of his hip-pocket; it was like drawing a bucket out of a well. and he gave vera half-a-sovereign; and that was like knotting the rope for his own execution. and while felix and his three men poured gallons and gallons of petrol into a hole under the cushions of the tonneau, stephen swallowed his wrath on the pavement, and vera remained hidden in the shop. and the men were paid and went off, and felix took his seat ready to start. and then vera came out of the hat place, and the new green hat was on her head, and the old one in a bag in her pretty hands. 'what do you think of my new hat, felix?' she smiled to the favoured chauffeur; 'i hope it pleases you.' felix said that it did. in these days, chauffeurs are a great race and a privileged. they have usurped the position formerly held by military officers. women fawn on them, take fancies to them, and spoil them. they can do no wrong in the eyes of the sex. vera had taken a fancy to felix. perhaps it was because he had been in a cavalry regiment; perhaps it was merely the curve of his moustache. who knows? and felix treated her as only a frenchman can treat a pretty woman, with a sort of daring humility, with worship--in short, with true gallic appreciation. vera much enjoyed gallic appreciation. it ravished her to think that she was the light of poor felix's existence, an unattainable star for him. of course, stephen didn't mind. that is to say, he didn't really mind. the car rushed off in the direction of exeter, homewards. that day, by means of felix's expert illegal driving, they got as far as bath; and there were no breakdowns. the domestic atmosphere in the tonneau was slightly disturbed at the beginning of the run, but it soon improved. indeed, after lunch stephen grew positively bright and gay. at tea, which they took just outside bristol, he actually went so far as to praise the hat. he said that it was a very becoming hat, and also that it was well worth the money. in a word, he signified to vera that their first battle had been fought and that vera had won, and that he meant to make the best of it and accept the situation. vera was naturally charmed, and when she was charmed she was charming. she said to herself that she had always known that she could manage a man. the recipe for managing a man was firmness coupled with charm. but there must be no half measures, no hesitations. she had conquered. she saw her future life stretching out before her like a beautiful vista. and stephen was to be her slave, and she would have nothing to do but to give rein to her caprices, and charm stephen when he happened to deserve it. but the next morning the hat had vanished out of the bedroom of the exclusive hotel at bath. vera could not believe that it had vanished; but it had. it was not in the hat-box, nor on the couch, nor under the couch, nor perched on a knob of the bedstead, nor in any of the spots where it ought to have been. when she realized that as a fact it had vanished she was cross, and on inquiring from stephen what trick he had played with her hat, she succeeded in conveying to stephen that she was cross. stephen was still in bed, comatose. the tone of his reply startled her. 'look here, child,' he said, or rather snapped--he had never been snappish before--'since you took the confounded thing off last evening i haven't seen it and i haven't touched it, and i don't know where it is.' 'but you must--' 'i gave in to you about the hat,' stephen continued to snap, 'though i knew i was a fool to do so, and i consider i behaved pretty pleasantly over it too. but i don't want any more scenes. if you've lost it, that's not my fault.' such speeches took vera very much aback. and she, too, in her turn, now saw the dangers of a quarrel, and in this second altercation it was stephen who won. he said he would not even mention the disappearance of the hat to the hotel manager. he was sure it must be in one of vera's trunks. and in the end vera performed that day's trip in another hat. they reached the five towns much earlier than they had anticipated--before lunch on the ninth day, whereas the new servants in their new house at bursley were only expecting them for dinner. so stephen had the agreeable idea of stopping the car in front of the new hotel metropole at hanbridge and lunching there. precisely opposite this new and luxurious caravanserai (as they love to call it in the five towns) is the imposing garage and agency where stephen had hired the napier car. felix said he would lunch hurriedly in order to transact certain business at the garage before taking them on to bursley. after lunch, however, vera caught him transacting business with a chambermaid in a corridor. shocking though the revelation is, it needs to be said that felix was kissing the chambermaid. the blow to mrs cheswardine was severe. she had imagined that felix spent all his time in gazing up to her as an unattainable star. she spoke to stephen about it, in the accents of disillusion. 'what?' cried stephen. 'don't you know? they're engaged to be married. her name is mary callear. she used to be parlourmaid at uncle john's at oldcastle. but hotels pay higher wages.' felix engaged to a parlourmaid! felix, who had always seemed to vera a gentleman in disguise! yes, it was indeed a blow! but balm awaited vera at her new home in bursley. a parcel, obviously containing a cardboard box, had arrived for stephen. he opened it, and the lost hat was inside it. stephen read a note, and explained that the hotel people at bath had found it and forwarded it. he began to praise the hat anew. he made vera put it on instantly, and seemed delighted. so much so that vera went out to the porch to say good-bye to felix in a most forgiving frame of mind. she forgave felix for being engaged to the chambermaid. and there was the chambermaid walking up the drive, quite calmly! felix, also quite calmly, asked vera to excuse him, and told the chambermaid to get into the car and sit beside him. he then informed vera that he had to go with the car immediately to oldcastle, and was taking miss callear with him for the run, this being miss callear's weekly afternoon off. miss callear had come to bursley in the electric tram. vera shook with swift anger; not at felix's information, but the patent fact that mary callear was wearing a hat which was the exact replica of the hat on vera's own head. and mary callear was seated like a duchess in the car, while vera stood on the gravel. and two of vera's new servants were there to see that vera was wearing a hat precisely equivalent to the hat of a chambermaid! she went abruptly into the house and sought for stephen--as with a sword. but stephen was not discoverable. she ran to her elegant new bedroom and shut herself in. she understood the plot. she had plenty of wit. stephen had concerted it with felix. in spite of stephen's allegations of innocence, the hat had been sent somewhere--probably to brunt's at hanbridge--to be copied at express speed, and stephen had presented the copy to felix, in order that felix might present it to mary callear the chambermaid, and the meeting in the front garden had been deliberately arranged by that odious male, stephen. truly, she had not believed stephen capable of such duplicity and cruelty. she removed the hat, gazed at it, and then tore it to pieces and scattered the pieces on the carpet. an hour later stephen crept into the bedroom and beheld the fragments, and smiled. 'stephen,' she exclaimed, 'you're a horrid, cruel brute.' 'i know i am,' said stephen. 'you ought to have found that out long since.' 'i won't love you any more. it's all over,' she sobbed. but he just kissed her. vera's first christmas adventure i five days before christmas, cheswardine came home to his wife from a week's sojourn in london on business. vera, in her quality of the best-dressed woman in bursley, met him on the doorstep (or thereabouts) of their charming but childless home, attired in a teagown that would have ravished a far less impressionable male than her husband; while he, in his quality of a prosaic and flourishing earthenware manufacturer, pretended to take the teagown as a matter of course, and gave her the sober, solid kiss of a man who has been married six years and is getting used to it. still, the teagown had pleased him, and by certain secret symptoms vera knew that it had pleased him. she hoped much from that teagown. she hoped that he had come home in a more pacific temper than he had shown when he left her, and that she would carry her point after all. now, naturally, when a husband in easy circumstances, the possessor of a pretty and pampered wife, spends a week in london and returns five days before christmas, certain things are rightly and properly to be expected from him. it would need an astounding courage, an amazing lack of a sense of the amenity of conjugal existence in such a husband to enable him to disappoint such reasonable expectations. and cheswardine, though capable of pulling the curb very tight on the caprices of his wife, was a highly decent fellow. he had no intention to disappoint; he knew his duty. so that during afternoon tea with the teagown in a cosy corner of the great chippendale drawing-room he began to unfasten a small wooden case which he had brought into the house in his own hand, opened it with considerable precaution, making a fine mess of packing-stuff on the carpet, and gradually drew to light a pair of vases of venetian glass. he put them on the mantlepiece. 'there!' he said, proudly, and with a virtuous air. they were obviously costly antique vases, exquisite in form, exquisite in the graduated tints of their pale blue and rose. 'seventeenth century!' he said. 'they're very nice,' vera agreed, with a show of enthusiasm. 'what are they for?' 'your christmas present,' cheswardine explained, and added 'my dear!' 'oh, stephen!' she murmured. a kiss on these occasions is only just, and cheswardine had one. 'duveens told me they were quite unique,' he said, modestly; 'and i believe 'em.' you might imagine that a pair of venetian vases of the seventeenth century, stated by duveens to be unique, would have satisfied a woman who had a generous dress allowance and lacked absolutely nothing that was essential. but vera was not satisfied. she was, on the contrary, profoundly disappointed. for the presence of those vases proved that she had not carried her point. they deprived her of hope. the unpleasantness before cheswardine went to london had been more or less a propos of a christmas present. vera had seen in bostock's vast emporium in the neighbouring town of hanbridge, a music-stool in the style known as art nouveau, which had enslaved her fancy. she had taken her husband to see it, and it had not enslaved her husband's fancy in the slightest degree. it was made in light woods, and the woods were curved and twisted as though they had recently spent seven years in a purgatory for sinful trees. here and there in the design onyx-stones had been set in the wood. the seat itself was beautifully soft. what captured vera was chiefly the fact that it did not open at the top, as most elaborate music-stools do, but at either side. you pressed a button (onyx) and the panel fell down displaying your music in little compartments ready to hand; and the eastern moiety of the music-stool was for piano pieces, and the western moiety for songs. in short, it was the last word of music-stools; nothing could possibly be newer. but cheswardine did not like it, and did not conceal his opinion. he argued that it would not 'go' with the chippendale furniture, and vera said that all beautiful things 'went' together, and cheswardine admitted that they did, rather dryly. you see, they took the matter seriously because the house was their hobby; they were always changing its interior, which was more than they could have done for a child, even if they had had one; and cheswardine's finer and soberer taste was always fighting against vera's predilection for the novel and the bizarre. apart from clothes, vera had not much more than the taste of a mouse. they did not quarrel in bostock's. indeed, they did not quarrel anywhere; but after vera had suggested that he might at any rate humour her by giving her the music-stool for a christmas present (she seemed to think this would somehow help it to 'go' with the chippendale), and cheswardine had politely but firmly declined, there had been a certain coolness and quite six tears. vera had caused it to be understood that even if cheswardine was not interested in music, even if he did hate music and did call the broadwood ebony grand ugly, that was no reason why she should be deprived of a pretty and original music-stool that would keep her music tidy and that would be hers. as for it not going with the chippendale, that was simply an excuse ... etc. hence it is not surprising that the venetian vases of the seventeenth century left vera cold, and that the domestic prospects for christmas were a little cold. however, vera, with wifely and submissive tact made the best of things; and that evening she began to decorate the hall, dining-room, and drawing-room with holly and mistletoe. before the pair retired to rest, the true christmas feeling, slightly tinged with a tender melancholy, permeated the house, and the servants were growing excited in advance. the servants weren't going to have a dinner-party, with crackers and port and a table-centre unmatched in the five towns; the servants weren't going to invite their friends to an evening's jollity. the servants were merely going to work somewhat harder and have somewhat less sleep; but such is the magical effect of holly and mistletoe twined round picture-cords and hung under chandeliers that the excitement of the servants was entirely pleasurable. and as vera shut the bedroom door, she said, with a delightful, forgiving smile--- 'i saw a lovely cigar-cabinet at bostock's yesterday.' 'oh!' said cheswardine, touched. he had no cigar-cabinet, and he wanted one, and vera knew that he wanted one. and vera slept in the sweet consciousness of her thoughtful wifeliness. the next morning, at breakfast, cheswardine demanded-- 'getting pretty hard up, aren't you, maria?' he called her maria when he wished to be arch. well,' she said, 'as a matter of fact, i am. what with the--' and he gave her a five-pound note. it happened so every year. he provided her with the money to buy him a christmas present. but it is, i hope, unnecessary to say that the connection between her present to him and the money he furnished was never crudely mentioned. she made an opportunity, before he left for the works, to praise the venetian vases, and she insisted that he should wrap up well, because he was showing signs of one of his bad colds. ii in the early afternoon she went to bostock's emporium, at hanbridge, to buy the cigar-cabinet and a few domestic trifles. bostock's is a good shop. i do not say that it has the classic and serene dignity of brunt's, over the way, where one orders one's dining-room suites and one's frocks for the january dances. but it is a good shop, and one of the chief glories of the paris of the five towns. it has frontages in three streets, and it might be called the shop of the hundred windows. you can buy pretty nearly anything at bostock's, from an art nouveau music-stool up to the highest cheese--for there is a provision department. (you can't get cheese at brunt's.) vera made her uninteresting purchases first, in the basement, and then she went up-stairs to the special christmas department, which certainly was wonderful: a blaze and splendour of electric light; a glitter of gilded iridescent toys and knick-knacks; a smiling, excited, pushing multitude of faces, young and old; and the cashiers in their cages gathering in money as fast as they could lay their tired hands on it! a joyous, brilliant scene, calculated to bring soft tears of satisfaction to the board of directors that presided over bostock's. it was a record christmas for bostock's. the electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets of all the five towns to bring customers to bostock's. children dreamt of bostock's. fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm brunt's; but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. people seemed to become intoxicated when they went into bostock's, to close their heads in a frenzy of buying. and there the art nouveau music-stool stood in the corner, where vera had originally seen it! she approached it, not thinking of the terrible danger. the compartments for music lay invitingly open. 'four pounds, nine and six, mrs cheswardine,' said a shop-walker, who knew her. she stopped to finger it. well, of course everybody is acquainted with that peculiar ecstasy that undoubtedly does overtake you in good shops, sometimes, especially at christmas. i prefer to call it ecstasy rather than intoxication, but i have heard it called even drunkenness. it is a magnificent and overwhelming experience, like a good wine. a blind instinct seizes your reason and throws her out of the window of your soul, and then assumes entire control of the volitional machinery. you listen to no arguments, you care for no consequences. you want a thing; you must have it; you do have it. vera was caught unawares by this magnificent and overwhelming experience, just as she stooped to finger the music-stool. a fig for the cigar-cabinet! a fig for her husband's objections! after all she was a grown-up woman (twenty-nine or thirty), and entitled to a certain freedom. she was not and would not be a slave. it would look perfect in the drawing-room. 'i'll take it,' she said. 'yes, mrs cheswardine. a unique thing, quite unique. penkethman!' and vera followed penkethman to a cash desk and received half-a-guinea out of a five-pound note. 'i want it carefully packed,' said vera. 'yes, ma'am. it will be delivered in the morning.' she was just beginning to realize that she had been under the sinister influence of the ecstasy, and that she had not bought the cigar-cabinet, and that she had practically no more money, and that stephen's rule against credit was the strictest of all his rules, when she caught sight of mr charles woodruff buying toys, doubtless for his nephews and nieces. mr woodruff was the bachelor friend of the family. he had loved vera before stephen loved her, and he was still attached to her. stephen and he were chums of the most advanced kind. why! stephen and vera thought nothing of bickering in front of mr woodruff, who rated them both and sided with neither. 'hello!' said woodruff, flushing, and moving his long, clumsy limbs when she touched him on the shoulder. 'i'm just buying a few toys.' she helped him to buy toys, and then he asked her to go and have tea with him at the newly-opened sub rosa tea rooms, in machin street. she agreed, and, in passing the music-stool, gave a small parcel which she was carrying to penkethman, and told him he might as well put it in the music-stool. she was glad to have tea with charlie woodruff. it would distract her, prevent her from thinking. the ecstasy had almost died out, and she had a violent desire not to think. iii a terrible blow fell upon her the next morning. stephen had one of his bad colds, one of his worst. the mere cold she could have supported with fortitude, but he was forced to remain indoors, and his presence in the house she could not support with fortitude. the music-stool would be sure to arrive before lunch, and he would be there to see it arrive. the ecstasy had fully expired now, and she had more leisure to think than she wanted. she could not imagine what mad instinct had compelled her to buy the music-stool. (once out of the shop these instincts always are difficult to imagine.) she knew that stephen would be angry. he might perhaps go to the length of returning the music-stool whence it came. for, though she was a pretty and pampered woman, stephen had a way, in the last resort, of being master of his own house. and she could not even placate him with the gift of a cigar-cabinet. she could not buy a five-guinea cigar-cabinet with ten and six. she had no other money in the world. she never had money, yet money was always running through her fingers. stephen treated her generously, gave her an ample allowance, but he would under no circumstances permit credit, nor would he pay her allowance in advance. she had nothing to expect till the new year. she attended to his cold, and telephoned to the works for a clerk to come up, and she refrained from telling stephen that he must have been very careless while in london, to catch a cold like that. her self-denial in this respect surprised stephen, but he put it down to the beneficent influence of christmas and the venetian vases. bostock's pair-horse van arrived before the garden gate earlier than her worse fears had anticipated, and bostock's men were evidently in a tremendous hurry that morning. in quite an abnormally small number of seconds the wooden case containing the fragile music-stool was lying in the inner hall, waiting to be unpacked. having signed the delivery-book vera stood staring at the accusatory package. stephen was lounging over the dining-room fire, perhaps dozing. she would have the thing swiftly transported up-stairs and hidden in an attic for a time. but just then stephen popped out of the dining-room. stephen's masculine curiosity had been aroused by the advent of bostock's van. he had observed the incoming of the package from the window, and he had ventured to the hall to inspect it. the event had roused him wonderfully from the heavy torpor which a cold induces. he wore a dressing-gown, the pockets of which bulged with handkerchiefs. 'you oughtn't to be out here, stephen,' said his wife. 'nonsense!' he said. 'why, upon my soul, this steam heat is warmer than the dining-room fire.' vera, silenced by the voice of truth, could not reply. stephen bent his great height to inspect the package. it was an appetizing christmas package; straw escaped from between its ribs, and it had an air of being filled with something at once large and delicate. 'oh!' observed stephen, humorously. 'ah! so this is it, is it? ah! oh! very good!' and he walked round it. how on earth had he learnt that she had bought it? she had not mentioned the purchase to mr woodruff. 'yes, stephen,' she said timidly. 'that's it, and i hope--' 'it ought to hold a tidy few cigars, that ought,' remarked stephen complacently. he took it for the cigar-cabinet! she paused, struck. she had to make up her mind in an instant. 'oh yes,' she murmured. 'a thousand?' 'yes, a thousand,' she said. 'i thought so,' murmured stephen. 'i mustn't kiss you, because i've got a cold,' said he. 'but, all the same i'm awfully obliged, vera. suppose we have it opened now, eh? then we could decide where it is to go, and i could put my cigars in it.' 'oh no,' she protested. 'oh no, stephen! that's not fair! it mustn't be opened before christmas morning.' 'but i gave you my vases yesterday.' 'that's different,' she said. 'christmas is christmas.' 'oh, very well,' he yielded. 'that's all right, my dear.' then he began to sniff. 'there's a deuced odd smell from it,' he said. 'perhaps it's the wood!' she faltered. 'i hope it isn't,' he said. 'i expect it's the straw. a deuced odd smell. we'll have the thing put in the side hall, next to the clock. it will be out of the way there. and i can come and gaze at it when i feel depressed. eh, maria?' he was undoubtedly charmed at the prospect of owning so large and precious a cigar-cabinet. considering that the parcel which she had given to penkethman to put in the music-stool comprised a half-a-pound of bostock's very ripest gorgonzola cheese, bought at the cook's special request, the smell which proceeded from the mysterious inwards of the packing-case did not surprise vera at all. but it disconcerted her none the less. and she wondered how she could get the cheese out. for thirty hours the smell from the unopened packing-case waxed in vigour and strength. stephen's cold grew worse and prevented him from appreciating its full beauty, but he savoured enough of it to induce him to compare it facetiously to the effluvium of a dead rat, and he said several times that bostock's really ought to use better straw. he was frequently to be seen in the hall, gloating over his cigar-cabinet. once he urged vera to have it opened and so get rid of the straw, but she refused, and found the nerve to tell him that he was exaggerating the odour. she was at a loss what to do. she could not get up in the middle of the night and unpack the package and hide its guilty secret. indeed, to unpack the package would bring about her ruin instantly; for, the package unpacked, stephen would naturally expect to see the cigar-cabinet. and so the hours crept on to christmas and vera's undoing. she gave herself a headache. it was just thirty hours after the arrival of the package when mr woodruff dropped in for tea. stephen was asleep in the dining-room, which apartment he particularly affected during his colds. woodruff was shown into the drawing-room, where vera was having her headache. vera brightened. in fact, she suddenly grew very bright. and she gave woodruff tea, and took some herself, and woodruff passed an enjoyable twenty minutes. the two venetian vases were on the mantelpiece. vera rose into ecstasies about them, and called upon charlie woodruff to rise too. he got up from his chair to examine the vases, which vera had placed close together side by side at the corner of the mantelpiece nearest to him. vera and woodruff also stood close together side by side. and just as woodruff was about to handle the vases, vera knocked his arm; his arm collided with one vase; that vase collided with the next, and both fell to earth--to the hard, unfeeling, unyielding tiles of the hearth. iv they were smashed to atoms. vera screamed. she screamed twice, and ran out of the room. 'stephen, stephen!' she cried hysterically. 'charlie has broken my vases, both of them. it is too bad of him. he's really too clumsy!' there was a terrific pother. stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal fragments on the hearth. 'but--' began charlie woodruff. and that was all he did say. he and vera and stephen had been friends since infancy, so she had the right not to conceal her feelings before him; stephen had the same right. they both exercised it. 'but--' began charlie again. 'oh, never mind,' stephen stopped him curtly. 'accidents can't be helped.' 'i shall get another pair,' said woodruff. 'no, you won't,' replied stephen. 'you can't. there isn't another pair in the world. see?' the two men simultaneously perceived that vera was weeping. she was very pretty in tears, but that did not prevent the masculine world from feeling awkward and self-conscious. charlie had notions about going out and burying himself. 'come, vera, come,' her husband enjoined, blowing his nose with unnecessary energy, bad as his cold was. 'i--i liked those vases more than anything you've--you've ever given me,' vera blubbered, charmingly, patting her eyes. stephen glanced at woodruff, as who should say: 'well, my boy, you uncorked those tears, i'll leave you to deal with 'em. you see, i'm an invalid in a dressing-gown. i leave you.' and went. 'no-but-look-here-i-say,' charlie woodruff expostulated to vera when he was alone with her--he often started an expostulation with that singular phrase. 'i'm awfully sorry. i don't know how it happened. you must let me give you something else.' vera shook her head. 'no,' she said. 'i wanted stephen awfully to give me that music-stool that i told you about a fortnight ago. but he gave me the vases instead, and i liked them ever so much better.' 'i shall give you the music-stool. if you wanted it a fortnight ago, you want it now. it won't make up for the vases, of course, but--' 'no, no,' said vera, positively. 'why not?' 'i do not wish you to give me anything. it wouldn't be quite nice,' vera insisted. 'but i give you something every christmas.' 'do you?' asked vera, innocently. 'yes, and you and stephen give me something.' 'besides, stephen doesn't quite like the music-stool.' 'what's that got to do with it? you like it. i'm giving it to you, not to him. i shall go over to bostock's tomorrow morning and get it.' 'i forbid you to.' 'i shall.' woodruff departed. within five minutes the cheswardine coachman was driving off in the dogcart to hanbridge, with the packing-case in the back of the cart, and a note. he brought back the cigar-cabinet. stephen had not stirred from the dining-room, afraid to encounter a tearful wife. presently his wife came into the dining-room bearing the vast load of the cigar-cabinet in her delicate arms. 'i thought it might amuse you to fill it with your cigars--just to pass the time,' she said. stephen's thought was: 'well, women take the cake.' it was a thought that occurs frequently to the husbands of veras. there was ripe gorgonzola at dinner. stephen met it as one meets a person whom one fancies one has met somewhere but cannot remember where. the next afternoon the music-stool came, for the second time, into the house. charlie brought it in his dogcart. it was unpacked ostentatiously by the radiant vera. what could stephen say in depreciation of this gift from their oldest and best friend? as a fact he could and did say a great deal. but he said it when he happened to be all alone in the drawing-room, and had observed the appalling way in which the music-stool did not 'go' with the chippendale. 'look at the d--thing!' he exclaimed to himself. 'look at it!' however, the christmas dinner-party was a brilliant success, and after it vera sat on the art nouveau music-stool and twittered songs, and what with her being so attractive and birdlike, and what with the christmas feeling in the air... well, stephen resigned himself to the music-stool. the murder of the mandarin i 'what's that you're saying about murder?' asked mrs cheswardine as she came into the large drawing-room, carrying the supper-tray. 'put it down here,' said her husband, referring to the supper-tray, and pointing to a little table which stood two legs off and two legs on the hearth-rug. 'that apron suits you immensely,' murmured woodruff, the friend of the family, as he stretched his long limbs into the fender towards the fire, farther even than the long limbs of cheswardine. each man occupied an easy-chair on either side of the hearth; each was very tall, and each was forty. mrs cheswardine, with a whisk infinitely graceful, set the tray on the table, took a seat behind it on a chair that looked like a toddling grand-nephew of the arm-chairs, and nervously smoothed out the apron. as a matter of fact, the apron did suit her immensely. it is astounding, delicious, adorable, the effect of a natty little domestic apron suddenly put on over an elaborate and costly frock, especially when you can hear the rustle of a silk petticoat beneath, and more especially when the apron is smoothed out by jewelled fingers. every man knows this. every woman knows it. mrs cheswardine knew it. in such matters mrs cheswardine knew exactly what she was about. she delighted, when her husband brought woodruff in late of a night, as he frequently did after a turn at the club, to prepare with her own hands--the servants being in bed--a little snack of supper for them. tomato sandwiches, for instance, miraculously thin, together with champagne or bass. the men preferred bass, naturally, but if mrs cheswardine had a fancy for a sip of champagne out of her husband's tumbler, bass was not forthcoming. tonight it was champagne. woodruff opened it, as he always did, and involuntarily poured out a libation on the hearth, as he almost always did. good-natured, ungainly, long-suffering men seldom achieve the art of opening champagne. mrs cheswardine tapped her pink-slippered foot impatiently. 'you're all nerves tonight,' woodruff laughed, 'and you've made me nervous,' and at length he got some of the champagne into a tumbler. 'no, i'm not,' mrs cheswardine contradicted him. 'yes, you are, vera,' woodruff insisted calmly. she smiled. the use of that elegant christian name, with its faint suggestion of russian archduchesses, had a strange effect on her, particularly from the lips of woodruff. she was proud of it, and of her surname too--one of the oldest surnames in the five towns. the syllables of 'vera' invariably soothed her, like a charm. woodruff, and cheswardine also, had called her vera during the whole of her life; and she was thirty. they had all three lived in different houses at the top end of trafalgar road, bursley. woodruff fell in love with her first, when she was eighteen, but with no practical result. he was a brown-haired man, personable despite his ungainliness, but he failed to perceive that to worship from afar off is not the best way to capture a young woman with large eyes and an emotional disposition. cheswardine, who had a black beard, simply came along and married the little thing. she fluttered down on to his shoulders like a pigeon. she adored him, feared him, cooed to him, worried him, and knew that there were depths of his mind which she would never plumb. woodruff, after being best man, went on loving, meekly and yet philosophically, and found his chief joy in just these suppers. the arrangement suited vera; and as for the husband and the hopeless admirer, they had always been fast friends. 'i asked you what you were saying about murder,' said vera sharply, 'but it seems--' 'oh! did you?' woodruff apologized. 'i was saying that murder isn't such an impossible thing as it appears. anyone might commit a murder.' 'then you want to defend, harrisford? do you hear what he says, stephen?' the notorious and terrible harrisford murders were agitating the five towns that november. people read, talked, and dreamt murder; for several weeks they took murder to all their meals. 'he doesn't want to defend harrisford at all,' said cheswardine, with a superior masculine air, 'and of course anyone might commit a murder. i might.' 'stephen! how horrid you are!' 'you might, even!' said woodruff, gazing at vera. 'charlie! why, the blood alone--' 'there isn't always blood,' said the oracular husband. 'listen here,' proceeded woodruff, who read variously and enjoyed philosophical speculation. 'supposing that by just taking thought, by just wishing it, an englishman could kill a mandarin in china and make himself rich for life, without anybody knowing anything about it! how many mandarins do you suppose there would be left in china at the end of a week!' 'at the end of twenty-four hours, rather,' said cheswardine grimly. 'not one,' said woodruff. 'but that's absurd,' vera objected, disturbed. when these two men began their philosophical discussions they always succeeded in disturbing her. she hated to see life in a queer light. she hated to think. 'it isn't absurd,' woodruff replied. 'it simply shows that what prevents wholesale murder is not the wickedness of it, but the fear of being found out, and the general mess, and seeing the corpse, and so on.' vera shuddered. 'and i'm not sure,' woodruff proceeded, 'that murder is so very much more wicked than lots of other things.' 'usury, for instance,' cheswardine put in. 'or bigamy,' said woodruff. 'but an englishman couldn't kill a mandarin in china by just wishing it,' said vera, looking up. 'how do we know?' said woodruff, in his patient voice. 'how do we know? you remember what i was telling you about thought-transference last week. it was in borderland.' vera felt as if there was no more solid ground to stand on, and it angered her to be plunging about in a bog. 'i think it's simply silly,' she remarked. 'no, thanks.' she said 'no, thanks' to her husband, when he tendered his glass. he moved the glass still closer to her lips. 'i said "no, thanks,"' she repeated dryly. 'just a mouthful,' he urged. 'i'm not thirsty.' 'then you'd better go to bed,' said he. he had a habit of sending her to bed abruptly. she did not dislike it. but she had various ways of going. tonight it was the way of an archduchess. ii woodruff, in stating that vera was all nerves that evening, was quite right. she was. and neither her husband nor woodruff knew the reason. the reason had to do most intimately with frocks. vera had been married ten years. but no one would have guessed it, to watch her girlish figure and her birdlike ways. you see, she was the only child in the house. she often bitterly regretted the absence of offspring to the name and honour of cheswardine. she envied other wives their babies. she doted on babies. she said continually that in her deliberate opinion the proper mission of women was babies. she was the sort of woman that regards a cathedral as a place built especially to sit in and dream soft domestic dreams; the sort of woman that adores music simply because it makes her dream. and vera's brown studies, which were frequent, consisted chiefly of babies. but as babies amused themselves by coming down the chimneys of all the other houses in bursley, and avoiding her house, she sought comfort in frocks. she made the best of herself. and it was a good best. her figure was as near perfect as a woman's can be, and then there were those fine emotional eyes, and that flutteringness of the pigeon, and an ever-changing charm of gesture. vera had become the best-dressed woman in bursley. and that is saying something. her husband was wealthy, with an increasing income, though, of course, as an earthenware manufacturer, and the son and grandson of an earthenware manufacturer, he joined heartily in the general five towns lamentation that there was no longer any money to be made out of 'pots'. he liked to have a well-dressed woman about the house, and he allowed her an incredible allowance, the amount of which was breathed with awe among vera's friends; a hundred a year, in fact. he paid it to her quarterly, by cheque. such was his method. now a ball was to be given by the members of the ladies' hockey club (or such of them as had not been maimed for life in the pursuit of this noble pastime) on the very night after the conversation about murder. vera belonged to the hockey club (in a purely ornamental sense), and she had procured a frock for the ball which was calculated to crown her reputation as a mirror of elegance. the skirt had--but no (see the columns of the staffordshire signal for the th november, ). the mischief was that the gown lacked, for its final perfection, one particular thing, and that particular thing was separated from vera by the glass front of brunt's celebrated shop at hanbridge. vera could have managed without it. the gown would still have been brilliant without it. but vera had seen it, and she wanted it. its cost was a guinea. well, you will say, what is a guinea to a dainty creature with a hundred a year? let her go and buy the article. the point is that she couldn't, because she had only six and sevenpence left in the wide world. (and six weeks to christmas!) she had squandered--oh, soul above money!--twenty-five pounds, and more than twenty-five pounds, since the th of september. well, you will say, credit, in other words, tick? no, no, no! the giant stephen absolutely and utterly forbade her to procure anything whatever on credit. she was afraid of him. she knew just how far she could go with stephen. he was great and terrible. well, you will say, why couldn't she blandish and cajole stephen for a sovereign or so? impossible! she had a hundred a year on the clear understanding that it was never exceeded nor anticipated. well, you will discreetly hint, there are certain devices known to housewives.... hush! vera had already employed them. six and sevenpence was not merely all that remained to her of her dress allowance; it was all that remained to her of her household allowance till the next monday. hence her nerves. there that poor unfortunate woman lay, with her unconscious tyrant of a husband snoring beside her, desolately wakeful under the night-light in the large, luxurious bedroom--three servants sleeping overhead, champagne in the cellar, furs in the wardrobe, valuable lace round her neck at that very instant, grand piano in the drawing-room, horses in the stable, stuffed bear in the hall--and her life was made a blank for want of fourteen and fivepence! and she had nobody to confide in. how true it is that the human soul is solitary, that content is the only true riches, and that to be happy we must be good! it was at that juncture of despair that she thought of mandarins. or rather--i may as well be frank--she had been thinking of mandarins all the time since retiring to rest. there might be something in charlie's mandarin theory.... according to charlie, so many queer, inexplicable things happened in the world. occult--subliminal--astral--thoughtwaves. these expressions and many more occurred to her as she recollected charlie's disconcerting conversations. there might.... one never knew. suddenly she thought of her husband's pockets, bulging with silver, with gold, and with bank-notes. tantalizing vision! no! she could not steal. besides, he might wake up. and she returned to mandarins. she got herself into a very morbid and two-o'clock-in-the-morning state of mind. suppose it was a dodge that did work. (of course, she was extremely superstitious; we all are.) she began to reflect seriously upon china. she remembered having heard that chinese mandarins were very corrupt; that they ground the faces of the poor, and put innocent victims to the torture; in short, that they were sinful and horrid persons, scoundrels unfit for mercy. then she pondered upon the remotest parts of china, regions where europeans never could penetrate. no doubt there was some unimportant mandarin, somewhere in these regions, to whose district his death would be a decided blessing, to kill whom would indeed be an act of humanity. probably a mandarin without wife or family; a bachelor mandarin whom no relative would regret; or, in the alternative, a mandarin with many wives, whose disgusting polygamy merited severe punishment! an old mandarin already pretty nearly dead; or, in the alternative, a young one just commencing a career of infamy! 'i'm awfully silly,' she whispered to herself. 'but still, if there should be anything in it. and i must, i must, i must have that thing for my dress!' she looked again at the dim forms of her husband's clothes, pitched anyhow on an ottoman. no! she could not stoop to theft! so she murdered a mandarin; lying in bed there; not any particular mandarin, a vague mandarin, the mandarin most convenient and suitable under all the circumstances. she deliberately wished him dead, on the off-chance of acquiring riches, or, more accurately, because she was short of fourteen and fivepence in order to look perfectly splendid at a ball. in the morning when she woke up--her husband had already departed to the works--she thought how foolish she had been in the night. she did not feel sorry for having desired the death of a fellow-creature. not at all. she felt sorry because she was convinced, in the cold light of day, that the charm would not work. charlie's notions were really too ridiculous, too preposterous. no! she must reconcile herself to wearing a ball dress which was less than perfection, and all for the want of fourteen and fivepence. and she had more nerves than ever! she had nerves to such an extent that when she went to unlock the drawer of her own private toilet-table, in which her prudent and fussy husband forced her to lock up her rings and brooches every night, she attacked the wrong drawer--an empty unfastened drawer that she never used. and lo! the empty drawer was not empty. there was a sovereign lying in it! this gave her a start, connecting the discovery, as naturally at the first blush she did, with the mandarin. surely it couldn't be, after all. then she came to her senses. what absurdity! a coincidence, of course, nothing else? besides, a mere sovereign! it wasn't enough. charlie had said 'rich for life'. the sovereign must have lain there for months and months, forgotten. however, it was none the less a sovereign. she picked it up, thanked providence, ordered the dog-cart, and drove straight to brunt's. the particular thing that she acquired was an exceedingly thin, slim, and fetching silver belt--a marvel for the money, and the ideal waist decoration for her wonderful white muslin gown. she bought it, and left the shop. and as she came out of the shop, she saw a street urchin holding out the poster of the early edition of the signal. and she read on the poster, in large letters: 'death of li hung chang.' it is no exaggeration to say that she nearly fainted. only by the exercise of that hard self-control, of which women alone are capable, did she refrain from tumbling against the blue-clad breast of adams, the cheswardine coachman. she purchased the signal with well-feigned calm, opened it and read: 'stop-press news. pekin. li hung chang, the celebrated chinese statesman, died at two o'clock this morning.--reuter.' iii vera reclined on the sofa that afternoon, and the sofa was drawn round in front of the drawing-room fire. and she wore her fluffiest and languidest peignoir. and there was a perfume of eau de cologne in the apartment. vera was having a headache; she was having it in her grand, her official manner. stephen had had to lunch alone. he had been told that in all probability his suffering wife would not be well enough to go to the ball. whereupon he had grunted. as a fact, vera's headache was extremely real, and she was very upset indeed. the death of li hung chang was heavy on her soul. occultism was justified of itself. the affair lay beyond coincidence. she had always known that there was something in occultism, supernaturalism, so-called superstitions, what not. but she had never expected to prove the faith that was in her by such a homicidal act on her own part. it was detestable of charlie to have mentioned the thing at all. he had no right to play with fire. and as for her husband, words could give but the merest rough outline of her resentment against stephen. a pretty state of things that a woman with a position such as she had to keep up should be reduced to six and sevenpence! stephen, no doubt, expected her to visit the pawnshop. it would serve him right if she did so--and he met her coming out under the three brass balls! did she not dress solely and wholly to please him? not in the least to please herself! personally she had a mind set on higher things, impossible aspirations. but he liked fine clothes. and it was her duty to satisfy him. she strove to satisfy him in all matters. she lived for him. she sacrificed herself to him completely. and what did she get in return? nothing! nothing! nothing! all men were selfish. and women were their victims.... stephen, with his silly bullying rules against credit and so forth.... the worst of men was that they had no sense. she put a new dose of eau de cologne on her forehead, and leaned on one elbow. on the mantelpiece lay the tissue parcel containing the slim silver belt, the price of li's death. she wanted to stick it in the fire. and only the fact that it would not burn prevented her savagely doing so. there was something wrong, too, with the occultism. to receive a paltry sovereign for murdering the greatest statesman of the eastern hemisphere was simply grotesque. moreover, she had most distinctly not wanted to deprive china of a distinguished man. she had expressly stipulated for an inferior and insignificant mandarin, one that could be spared and that was unknown to reuter. she supposed she ought to have looked up china at the wedgwood institution and selected a definite mandarin with a definite place of residence. but could she be expected to go about a murder deliberately like that? with regard to the gross inadequacy of the fiscal return for her deed, perhaps that was her own fault. she had not wished for more. her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished only for the belt. but, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth was to come. perhaps something might occur that very night. that would be better. yet would it be better? however rich she might become, stephen would coolly take charge of her riches, and dole them out to her, and make rules for her concerning them. and besides, charlie would suspect her guilt. charlie understood her, and perused her thoughts far better than stephen did. she would never be able to conceal the truth from charlie. the conversation, the death of li within two hours, and then a sudden fortune accruing to her--charlie would inevitably put two and two together and divine her shameful secret. the outlook was thoroughly black anyway. she then fell asleep. when she awoke, some considerable time afterwards, stephen was calling to her. it was his voice, indeed, that had aroused her. the room was dark. 'i say, vera,' he demanded, in a low, slightly inimical tone, 'have you taken a sovereign out of the empty drawer in your toilet-table?' 'no,' she said quickly, without thinking. 'ah!' he observed reflectively, 'i knew i was right.' he paused, and added, coldly, 'if you aren't better you ought to go to bed.' then he left her, shutting the door with a noise that showed a certain lack of sympathy with her headache. she sprang up. her first feeling was one of thankfulness that that brief interview had occurred in darkness. so stephen was aware of the existence of the sovereign! the sovereign was not occult. possibly he had put it there. and what did he know he was 'right' about? she lighted the gas, and gazed at herself in the glass, realizing that she no longer had a headache, and endeavouring to arrange her ideas. 'what's this?' said another voice at the door. she glanced round hastily, guiltily. it was charlie. 'steve telephoned me you were too ill to go to the dance,' explained charlie, 'so i thought i'd come and make inquiries. i quite expected to find you in bed with a nurse and a doctor or two at least. what is it?' he smiled. 'nothing,' she replied. 'only a headache. it's gone now.' she stood against the mantelpiece, so that he should not see the white parcel. 'that's good,' said charlie. there was a pause. 'strange, li hung chang dying last night, just after we had been talking about killing mandarins,' she said. she could not keep off the subject. it attracted her like a snake, and she approached it in spite of the fact that she fervently wished not to approach it. 'yes,' said charlie. 'but li wasn't a mandarin, you know. and he didn't die after we had been talking about mandarins. he died before.' 'oh! i thought it said in the paper he died at two o'clock this morning.' 'two a.m. in pekin,' charlie answered. 'you must remember that pekin time is many hours earlier than our time. it lies so far eastward.' 'oh!' she said again. stephen hurried in, with a worried air. 'ah! it's you, charlie!' 'she isn't absolutely dying, i find,' said charlie, turning to vera: 'you are going to the dance after all--aren't you?' 'i say, vera,' stephen interrupted, 'either you or i must have a scene with martha. i've always suspected that confounded housemaid. so i put a marked sovereign in a drawer this morning, and it was gone at lunch-time. she'd better hook it instantly. of course i shan't prosecute.' 'martha!' cried vera. 'stephen, what on earth are you thinking of? i wish you would leave the servants to me. if you think you can manage this house in your spare time from the works, you are welcome to try. but don't blame me for the consequences.' glances of triumph flashed in her eyes. 'but i tell you--' 'nonsense,' said vera. 'i took the sovereign. i saw it there and i took it, and just to punish you, i've spent it. it's not at all nice to lay traps for servants like that.' 'then why did you tell me just now you hadn't taken it?' stephen demanded crossly. 'i didn't feel well enough to argue with you then,' vera replied. 'you've recovered precious quick,' retorted stephen with grimness. 'of course, if you want to make a scene before strangers,' vera whimpered (poor charlie a stranger!), 'i'll go to bed.' stephen knew when he was beaten. she went to the hockey dance, though. she and stephen and charlie and his young sister, aged seventeen, all descended together to the town hall in a brougham. the young girl admired vera's belt excessively, and looked forward to the moment when she too should be a bewitching and captivating wife like vera, in short, a woman of the world, worshipped by grave, bearded men. and both the men were under the spell of vera's incurable charm, capricious, surprising, exasperating, indefinable, indispensable to their lives. 'stupid superstitions!' reflected vera. 'but of course i never believed it really.' and she cast down her eyes to gloat over the belt. vera's second christmas adventure i curious and strange things had a way of happening to vera--perhaps because she was an extremely feminine woman. but of all the curious and strange things that ever did happen to vera, this was certainly the strangest and the most curious. it makes a somewhat exasperating narrative, because the affair ended--or, rather, vera caused it to end--on a note of interrogation. the reader may, however, draw consolation from the fact that, if he is tormented by an unanswerable query, vera herself was much more tormented by precisely the same query. two days before christmas, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, just when it was getting dusk and the distant smokepall of the five towns was merging in the general greyness of the northern sky, vera was sitting in the bow-window of the drawing-room of stephen cheswardine's newly-acquired house at sneyd; sneyd being the fashionable suburb of the five towns, graced by the near presence of a countess. and as the slim, thirty-year-old vera sat there, moody (for reasons which will soon appear), in her charming teagown, her husband drove up to the door in the dogcart, and he was not alone. he had with him a man of vigorous and dashing appearance, fair, far from ugly, and with a masterful face, keen eyes, and most magnificent furs round about him. at sight of the visitor vera's heart did not exactly jump, but it nearly jumped. presently, stephen brought his acquaintance into the drawing-room. "my wife," said stephen, rubbing his hands. "vera, this is mr bittenger, of new york. he will give us the pleasure of spending the night here." and now vera's little heart really did jump. she behaved with the delicious wayward grace which she could always command when she chose to command it. no one would have guessed that she had not spoken to stephen for a week. 'i'm most happy--most happy,' said mr bittenger, with a marked accent and a fine complimentary air. and obviously he was most happy. vera had impressed him. there was nothing surprising in that. she was in the fullness of her powers in that direction. it is at this point--at the point of the first jumping of vera's heart--that the tale begins to be uncanny and disturbing. thus runs the explanation. during the year stephen had gradually grown more and more preoccupied with the subject of his own health. the earthenware business was very good, although, of course, manufacturers were complaining just as usual. trade, indeed, flourished to such an extent that stephen had pronounced himself to be suffering from nervous strain and overwork. the symptoms of his malady were chiefly connected with the assimilation of food; to be brief, it was dyspepsia. and as stephen had previously been one of those favoured people who can eat anything at any hour, and arise in the best of health the next day, stephen was troubled. at last--about august, when he was obliged to give up wine--he had suddenly decided that the grimy air of the five towns was bad for him, and that the household should be removed to sneyd. and removed to sneyd it accordingly was. the new house was larger and more splendid even than the cheswardine abode at bursley. but vera did not like the change. vera preferred the town. nevertheless, she could not openly demur, since stephen's health was supposed to be at stake. during the autumn she was tremendously bored at sneyd. she had practically no audience for her pretty dresses, and her friends would not flock over from bursley because of the difficulty of getting home at night. then it was that vera had the beautiful idea of spending christmas in switzerland. someone had told her about a certain hotel called the bear, where, on christmas day, never less than a hundred well-dressed and wealthy english people sat down to an orthodox christmas dinner. the notion enchanted her. she decided, definitely, that she and stephen should do their christmassing at the bear, wherever the bear was. and as she was fully aware of the power of her capricious charm over stephen, she regarded the excursion as arranged before she had broached it to him. stephen refused. he remarked bitterly that the very thought of a mince-tart made him ill; and that he hated 'abroad'. vera took her defeat badly. she pouted. she sulked. she announced that, if she was not to be allowed to do her christmassing at the bear, she would not do it anywhere. she indicated that she meant to perish miserably of ennui in the besotted dullness of sneyd, and that no christmas-party of any kind should occur in her house. she ceased to show interest in stephen's health. she would not speak. in fact, she went too far. one day, in reply to her rude silence, stephen said: 'very well, child, if that's your game, i'll play it with you. except when other people are present, not a word do i speak to you until you have first spoken to me.' she knew he would abide by that. he was a monster. she hated him. she loathed him (so she said to herself). that night, in the agony of her distress, she had dreamed a dream. she dreamed that a stranger came to the house. the details were vague, but the stranger had travelled many miles over water. she could not see him distinctly, but she knew that he was quite bald. in spite of his baldness he inspired her with sympathy. he understood her, praised her costumes, and treated a woman as a woman ought to be treated. then, somehow or other, he was making love to her, the monster stephen being absent. she was shocked by his making love to her, and she moved a little farther off him on the sofa (he had sat down by her on a vague sort of sofa in a vague sort of room); but still she was thrilled, and she could not feel as wicked as she felt she ought to feel. then the dream became hazy; it became hazy at the interesting point of her answer to the love-making. a later stage was very clear. something was afoot between the monster stephen and the stranger in the dining-room, and she was locked out of the dining-room. it was christmas night. she knocked frantically at the door, and at last forced it open, and stephen was lying in the middle of the floor; the table had been pushed into a corner. 'i killed him quite by accident,' said the stranger affably. and then he seized her by the hand and ruthlessly dragged her away, away, away; and they travelled in trains and ships and trains, and they came to a very noisy, clanging sort of city--and vera woke up. it had been a highly realistic dream, and it made a deep impression on vera. can one wonder that vera's heart, being a superstitious little heart, like all our hearts, should leap when the very next day stephen turned up with a completely unexpected stranger from new york? of course, dreams are nonsense! of course! still-- she did not know whether to rejoice or mourn over the fact that mr bittenger was not bald. he was decidedly unbald; he had a glorious shock of chestnut hair. that hair of his naturally destroyed any possible connection with the dream. none the less the coincidence was bizarre. ii that evening, before dinner, vera, busy in her chamber beautifying her charms for the ravishment of men from new york, waited with secret anxiety for the arrival of stephen in his dressing-room. and whereas she usually closed the door between the bedroom and the dressing-room, on this occasion she carefully left it wide open. stephen came at last. and she waited, listening to his movements in the dressing-room. not a word! she made brusque movements in the bedroom to attract his attention; she even dropped a brush on the floor. not a word! after a few moments, she actually ventured into the dressing-room. stephen was wiping his face, and he glanced at her momentarily over the towel, which hid his nose and mouth. not a word! and how hard was the monster's glance! she felt that stephen was one of your absurd literal persons. he had said that he would not speak to her until she had first spoken to him--that was to say in private--public performances did not count. and he would stick to his text, no matter how deliciously she behaved. she left the dressing-room in haste. very well! very well! if stephen wished for war, he should have it. her grievance against him grew into something immense. before, it had been nothing but a kind of two-roomed cottage. she now erected it into a town hall, with imposing portals, and many windows and rich statuary, and suite after suite of enormous rooms, and marble staircases, and lifts that went up and down. she wished she had never married him. she wished that mr bittenger had been bald. at dinner everything went with admirable smoothness. mr bittenger sat betwixt them. and utmost politeness reigned. in their quality of well-bred hosts, they both endeavoured to keep mr bittenger at his ease despite their desolating quarrel; and they entirely succeeded. as the champagne disappeared (and it was not stephen that drank it), mr bittenger became more than at his ease. he was buyer for an important firm of earthenware dealers in new york (vera had suspected as much--these hospitalities to american buyers are an essential part of business in the five towns), and he related very drolly the series of chances or mischances that had left him stranded in england at that season so unseasonable for buying. vera reflected upon the series of chances or mischances, and upon her dream of the man from over the long miles of water. of course, dreams are nonsense.... but still-- the conversation passed to the topic of stephen's health, as conversations in stephen's house had a habit of doing. mr bittenger listened with grave interest. 'i know, i know!' said mr bittenger. 'i used to be exactly the same. i guess i understand how you feel--some! don't i?' 'and you are cured?' stephen demanded, eagerly, as he nibbled at dry toast. 'you bet i'm cured!' said mr bittenger. 'you must tell me about that,' said stephen, and added, 'some time tonight.' he did not care to discuss the bewildering internal economy of the human frame at his dinner-table. there were details...and mr bittenger was in a mood that it was no exaggeration to describe as gay. shortly afterwards, there arose a discussion as to their respective ages. they coquetted for a few moments, as men invariably will, each diffident about giving away the secret, each asserting that the other was younger than himself. 'well,' said mr bittenger to vera, at length, 'what age should you give me?' 'i--i should give you five years less than stephen,' vera replied. 'and may i ask just how old you are?' mr bittenger put the question at close range to stephen, and hit him full in the face with it. 'i'm forty,' said stephen. 'so am i!' said mr bittenger. 'well, you don't look it,' said stephen. 'sure!' mr bittenger admitted, pleased. 'my husband's hair is turning grey,' said vera, 'while yours--' 'turning grey!' exclaimed mr bittender. 'i wish mine was. i'd give five thousand dollars today if mine was.' 'but why--?' vera smiled. 'look here, my dear lady,' said mr bittenger, in a peculiar voice, putting down his glass. and with a swift movement he lifted a wig of glorious chestnut hair from his head--just lifted it for an instant, and dropped it. the man was utterly and completely bald. iii vera did nothing foolish. she neither cried, screamed, turned deadly pale, clenched her fragile hands, bit her lips till the blood came, smashed a wine-glass, nor fell with a dull thud senseless to the floor. nevertheless, she was extremely perturbed by this astounding revelation of mr bittenger's. of course, dreams are nonsense. but still--the truth is, one tries to believe that dreams are nonsense, and up to a certain point one may succeed in believing. but it seemed to vera that circumstances had passed that point. she could not but admit, also, that if the dream went on being fulfilled, within forty-eight hours mr bittenger would have made love to her, and would have killed her husband. she was so incensed against stephen that she really could not decide whether she wanted the dream to be fulfilled or not. no one would have imagined that that soft breast could conceal a homicidal thought. yet so it was. that pretty and delightful woman, wandering about in the edifice of her terrific grievance against stephen, could not say positively to herself that she would not care to have stephen killed as a punishment for his sins. after dinner, she found an excuse for retiring. she must think the puzzle out in solitude. matters were really going too far. she allowed it to be understood that she was indisposed. mr bittenger was full of sorrow and sympathy. but did stephen show the slightest concern? stephen did not. she went upstairs, and she meditated, stretched on the sofa at the foot of the bed, a rug over her knees and the fire glinting on her face. yes, it was her duty as a christian, if not as an outraged wife, to warn stephen that the shadow of death was creeping up behind him. he ought at least to be warned. but how could she warn him? clearly she could not warn him in the presence of mr bittenger, the prospective murderer. she would, therefore, have to warn him when they were alone. and that meant that she would have to give way in the great conjugal sulking match. no, never! it was impossible that she should give way there! she frowned desperately at the leaping flames, and did ultimately decide that stephen's death was preferable to her defeat in that contest. of such is human nature. after all, dreams were nonsense. surely stephen would come upstairs to inquire about her health, her indisposition? but no! he came not. and, as he continued not to come, she went downstairs again and proclaimed that she was better. and then she learned that she had been worrying herself to no purpose whatever. mr bittenger was leaving on the morrow, the morrow being christmas eve. stephen would drive him to bursley in the morning. he would go to the five towns hotel to get his baggage, and catch the liverpool express at noon. he had booked a passage on the saxonia, which sailed at threethirty o'clock. thus he would spend his christmas at sea; and, spending his christmas at sea, he could not possibly kill stephen in the village of sneyd on christmas night. relief! and yet a certain vague regret in the superstitious little heart! the little heart went to bed again. and stephen and the stranger stayed up talking very late--doubtless about the famous cure. the leave-taking the next morning increased the vague regret. mr bittenger was the possessor of an attractive individuality, and vera pondered upon its attractiveness far into the afternoon. how nicely mr bittenger had thanked her for her gracious hospitality--with what meaning he had charged the expression of his deep regret at leaving her! after all, dreams were nonsense. she was sitting in the bow-window of the drawing-room, precisely as she had been sitting twenty-four hours previously, when whom should she see, striding masculinely along the drive towards the house, but mr bittenger? this time she was much more perturbed even than she had been by the revelation of mr bittenger's baldness. after all-- she uprose, the blood having rushed to her head, and retreated she knew not whither, blindly, without a purpose. and found herself in a little morning-room which was scarcely ever used, at the end of the hall. she had not shut the door. and mr bittenger, having been admitted by a servant, caught sight of her, and breezily entered her retreat, clad in his magnificent furs. and as he doffed the furs, he gaily told her what had happened. owing to difficulties with the cheswardine mare on the frosty, undulating road between sneyd and bursley, and owing to delays with his baggage at the five towns hotel, he had just missed the liverpool express, and, therefore, the steamer also. he had returned to stephen's manufactory. stephen had insisted that he should spend his christmas with them. and, in brief, there he was. he had walked from bursley. stephen, kept by business, was coming later, and so was some of the baggage. mr bittenger's face radiated joy. the loss of his twenty-guinea passage on the saxonia did not appear to cause him the least regret. and he sat down by the side of vera. and vera suddenly noticed that they were on a sofa--the sofa of her dream--and she fancied she recognized the room. 'you know, my dear lady,' said mr bittenger, looking her straight in the eyes, 'i'm just glad i missed my steamer. it gives me a chance to spend a christmas in england, and in your delightful society--your delightful society--' he gazed at her, without adding to the sentence. if this was not love-making on a sofa, what could be? mr bittenger had certainly missed the liverpool express on purpose. of that vera was convinced. or, if he had not missed it on purpose, he had missed it under the dictates of the mysterious power of the dream. those people who chose to believe that dreams are nonsense were at liberty to do so. iv so that in spite of vera's definite proclamation that there should be no christmassing in her house that year, christmassing there emphatically was. impossible to deny anything to mr bittenger! mr bittenger wanted holly, the gardener supplied it. mr bittenger wanted mistletoe, a bunch of it was brought home by stephen in the dogcart. mr bittenger could not conceive an english christmas without turkey, mince-pies, plum-pudding, and all the usual indigestiveness. vera, speaking in a voice which seemed somehow not to be hers, stated that these necessaries of christmas life would be produced, and stephen did not say that the very thought of a mince-tart made him ill. even the english weather, which, it is notorious, has of late shown a sad disposition to imitate, and even to surpass, in mildness the weather of the riviera at christmas, decided to oblige mr bittenger. at nightfall on christmas eve it began to snow gently, but steadily--fine, frozen snow. and the waits, consisting of boys and girls from the countess of chell's celebrated institute close by, came and sang in the garden in the falling snow, by the light of a lantern. and mr bittenger's heart was as full as it could hold of english christmas. as for vera's heart, it was full of she knew not what. mr bittenger's attitude towards her grew more and more chivalrous. he contrived to indicate that he regarded all the years he had spent before making the acquaintance of vera as so many years absolutely wasted. and stephen did not seem to care. they retired to rest that evening up a staircase whose banisters the industrious hands of mr bittenger had entwined with holly and paper festoons, and bade each other a merry christmas with immense fervour; but in the conjugal chamber stephen maintained his policy of implacable silence. and, naturally, vera maintained hers. could it be expected of her that she should yield? the fault was all stephen's. he ought to have taken her to the bear, switzerland. then there would have been no dream, no mr bittenger, and no danger. but as things were, within twenty-four hours he would be a dead man. and throughout christmas day vera, beneath the gaiety with which she met the vivacious sallies of mr bittenger, waited in horrible suspense for the dream to fulfil itself. stephen alone observed her agitated condition. stephen said to himself: 'the quarrel is getting on her nerves. she'll yield before she's a day older. it will do her good. then i'll make it up to her handsomely. but she must yield first.' he little knew he was standing on the edge of the precipice of death. the christmas dinner succeeded admirably; and stephen, in whom courage was seldom lacking, ate half a mince-pie. the day was almost over. no premature decease had so far occurred. and when both the men said that, if vera permitted, they would come with her at once to the drawing-room and smoke there, vera decided that after all dreams were nonsense. she entered the drawing-room first, and mr bittenger followed her, with stephen behind; but just as stephen was crossing the mat the gardener, holding a parcel in his hands and looking rather strange there in the hall, spoke to him. and stephen stopped and called to mr bittenger. and the drawing-room door was closed upon vera. she waited, solitary, for an incredible space of time, and then, having heard unaccustomed and violent sounds in the distance, she could contain herself no longer, and she rang the bell. 'louisa,' she demanded of the parlourmaid, 'where is your master?' 'oh, ma'am,' replied louisa, giggling--a little licence was surely permissible to the girl on christmas night--'oh, ma'am, there's such a to-do! tinsley has just brought some boxing-gloves, and master and mr bittenger have got their coats off in the dining-room. and they've had the table pushed up by the door, and you never saw such a set-out in all your life ma'am.' vera dismissed louisa. there it was--the dream! they were going to box. mr bittenger was doubtless an expert, and she knew that stephen was not. a chance blow by mr bittenger in some vital part, and stephen would be lying stretched in eternal stillness in the middle of the dining-room floor where the table ought to be! the life of the monster was at stake! the life of the brute was in her hands! the dream was fulfilling itself to the point of tragedy! she jumped up and rushed to the dining-room door. it would not open. again, the dream! 'you can't come in,' cried stephen, laughing. 'wait a bit.' she pushed against the door, working the handle. she was about to insist upon the door being opened, when the idea of the danger of such a proceeding occurred to her. in the dream, when she got the door opened, her husband's death had already happened! frantically she ran to the kitchen. 'louisa,' she ordered. 'go into the garden and tap at the dining-room window, and tell your master that i must speak to him at once in the drawing-room.' and in a pitiable state of excitation, she returned to the drawing-room. after another interminable period of suspense, her ear caught the sound of the opening of doors, and then stephen came into the drawing-room. a singular apparition! he was coatless, as louisa had said, and the extremities of his long arms were bulged out with cream-coloured boxing-gloves. she sprang at him and kissed him. 'steve,' she said, 'are we friends?' 'i should think we were!' he replied, returning her kiss heartily. he had won. 'what are you doing?' she asked him. 'bittenger and i are just going to have a real round with the gloves. it's part of his cure for my indigestion, you know. he says there's nothing like it. i've only just been able to get gloves. tinsley brought them up just now. and so we sort of thought we'd like to have a go at once.' 'why wouldn't you let me into the dining-room?' 'my child, the table was up against the door. and i fancied, perhaps, you wouldn't be exactly charmed, so i--' 'stephen,' she said, in her most persuasive voice, 'will you do something to please me?' 'what is it?' 'will you?' a pause. 'yes, certainly.' 'don't box tonight.' 'oh--well! what will bittenger think?' another pause. 'never mind! you don't want me to box, really?' 'i don't want you to box--not tonight.' 'agreed, my chuck!' and he kissed her again. he could well afford to be magnanimous. mr bittenger ploughed the seas alone to new york. but supposing that vera had not interfered, what would have happened? that is the unanswerable query which torments the superstitious little brain of vera. the burglary i lady dain said: 'jee, if that portrait stays there much longer, you'll just have to take me off to pirehill one of these fine mornings.' pirehill is the seat of the great local hospital; but it is also the seat of the great local lunatic asylum; and when the inhabitants of the five towns say merely 'pirehill', they mean the asylum. 'i do declare i can't fancy my food now-a-days,' said lady dain, 'and it's all that portrait!' she stared plaintively up at the immense oil-painting which faced her as she sat at the breakfast-table in her spacious and opulent dining-room. sir jehoshaphat made no remark. despite lady dain's animadversions upon it, despite the undoubted fact that it was generally disliked in the five towns, the portrait had cost a thousand pounds (some said guineas), and though not yet two years old it was probably worth at least fifteen hundred in the picture market. for it was a cressage; and not only was it a cressage--it was one of the finest cressages in existence. it marked the summit of sir jehoshaphat's career. sir jehoshaphat's career was, perhaps, the most successful and brilliant in the entire social history of the five towns. this famous man was the principal partner in dain brothers. his brother was dead, but two of sir jee's sons were in the firm. dain brothers were the largest manufacturers of cheap earthenware in the district, catering chiefly for the american and colonial buyer. they had an extremely bad reputation for cutting prices. they were hated by every other firm in the five towns, and, to hear rival manufacturers talk, one would gather the impression that sir jee had acquired a tremendous fortune by systematically selling goods under cost. they were also hated by between eighteen and nineteen hundred employees. but such hatred, however virulent, had not marred the progress of sir jee's career. he had meant to make a name and he had made it. the five towns might laugh at his vulgar snobbishness. the five towns might sneer at his calculated philanthropy. but he was, nevertheless, the best-known man in the five towns, and it was precisely his snobbishness and his philanthropy which had carried him to the top. moreover, he had been the first public man in the five towns to gain a knighthood. the five towns could not deny that it was very proud indeed of this knighthood. the means by which he had won this distinction were neither here nor there--he had won it. and was he not the father of his native borough? had he not been three times mayor of his native borough? was not the whole northern half of the county dotted and spangled by his benefactions, his institutions, his endowments? and it could not be denied that he sometimes tickled the five towns as the five towns likes being tickled. there was, for example, the notorious sneyd incident. sneyd hall, belonging to the earl of chell, lies a few miles south of the five towns, and from it the pretty countess of chell exercises that condescending meddlesomeness which so frequently exasperates the five towns. sir jee had got his title by the aid of the countess-'interfering iris', as she is locally dubbed. shortly afterwards he had contrived to quarrel with the countess; and the quarrel was conducted by sir jee as a quarrel between equals, which delighted the district. sir jee's final word in it had been to buy a sizable tract of land near sneyd village, just off the sneyd estate, and to erect thereon a mansion quite as imposing as sneyd hall, and far more up to date, and to call the mansion sneyd castle. a mighty stroke! iris was furious; the earl speechless with fury. but they could do nothing. naturally the five towns was tickled. it was apropos of the house-warming of sneyd castle, also of the completion of his third mayoralty, and of the inauguration of the dain technical institute, that the movement had been started (primarily by a few toadies) for tendering to sir jee a popular gift worthy to express the profound esteem in which he was officially held in the five towns. it having been generally felt that the gift should take the form of a portrait, a local dilettante had suggested cressage, and when the five towns had inquired into cressage and discovered that that genius from the united states was celebrated throughout the civilized world, and regarded as the equal of velazquez (whoever velazquez might be), and that he had painted half the aristocracy, and that his income was regal, the suggestion was accepted and cressage was approached. cressage haughtily consented to paint sir jee's portrait on his usual conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little village in bedfordshire where cressage had his principal studio, and that the painting should be exhibited at the royal academy before being shown anywhere else. (cressage was an r.a., but no one thought of putting r.a. after his name. he was so big, that instead of the royal academy conferring distinction on him, he conferred distinction on the royal academy.) sir jee went to bedfordshire and was rapidly painted, and he came back gloomy. the presentation committee went to bedfordshire later to inspect the portrait, and they, too, came back gloomy. then the academy exhibition opened, and the portrait, showing sir jee in his robe and chain and in a chair, was instantly hailed as possibly the most glorious masterpiece of modern times. all the critics were of one accord. the committee and sir jee were reassured, but only partially, and sir jee rather less so than the committee. for there was something in the enthusiastic criticism which gravely disturbed him. an enlightened generation, thoroughly familiar with the dazzling yearly succession of cressage's portraits, need not be told what this something was. one critic wrote that cressage displayed even more than his 'customary astounding insight into character....' another critic wrote that cressage's observation was, as usual, 'calmly and coldly hostile'. another referred to the 'typical provincial mayor, immortalized for the diversion of future ages.' inhabitants of the five towns went to london to see the work for which they had subscribed, and they saw a mean, little, old man, with thin lips and a straggling grey beard, and shifty eyes, and pushful snob written all over him; ridiculous in his gewgaws of office. when you looked at the picture close to, it was a meaningless mass of coloured smudges, but when you stood fifteen feet away from it the portrait was absolutely lifelike, amazing, miraculous. it was so wondrously lifelike that some of the inhabitants of the five towns burst out laughing. many people felt sorry--not for sir jee--but for lady dain. lady dain was beloved and genuinely respected. she was a simple, homely, sincere woman, her one weakness being that she had never been able to see through sir jee. of course, at the presentation ceremony the portrait had been ecstatically referred to as a possession precious for ever, and the recipient and his wife pretended to be overflowing with pure joy in the ownership of it. it had been hanging in the dining-room of sneyd castle about sixteen months, when lady dain told her husband that it would ultimately drive her into the lunatic asylum. 'don't be silly, wife,' said sir jee. 'i wouldn't part with that portrait for ten times what it cost.' this was, to speak bluntly, a downright lie. sir jee secretly hated the portrait more than anyone hated it. he would have been almost ready to burn down sneyd castle in order to get rid of the thing. but it happened that on the previous evening, in the conversation with the magistrates' clerk, his receptive brain had been visited by a less expensive scheme than burning down the castle. lady dain sighed. 'are you going to town early?' she inquired. 'yes,' he replied. 'i'm on the rota today.' he was chairman of the borough bench of magistrates. as he drove into town he revolved his scheme and thought it wild and dangerous, but still feasible. ii on the bench that morning sir jee shocked mr sherratt, the magistrates' clerk, and he utterly disgusted mr bourne, superintendent of the borough police. (i do not intend to name the name of the borough--whether bursley, hanbridge, knype, longshaw, or turnhill. the inhabitants of the five towns will know without being told; the rest of the world has no right to know.) there had recently occurred a somewhat thrilling series of burglaries in the district, and the burglars (a gang of them was presumed) had escaped the solicitous attentions of the police. but on the previous afternoon an underling of mr bourne's had caught a man who was generally believed to be wholly or partly responsible for the burglaries. the five towns breathed with relief and congratulated mr bourne; and mr bourne was well pleased with himself. the staffordshire signal headed the item of news, 'smart capture of a supposed burglar'. the supposed burglar gave his name as william smith, and otherwise behaved in an extremely suspicious manner. now, sir jee, sitting as chief magistrate in the police-court, actually dismissed the charge against the man! overruling his sole colleague on the bench that morning, alderman easton, he dismissed the charge against william smith, holding that the evidence for the prosecution was insufficient to justify even a remand. no wonder that mr bourne was discouraged, not to say angry. no wonder that that pillar of the law, mr sherratt, was pained and shocked. at the conclusion of the case sir jehoshaphat said that he would be glad to speak with william smith afterwards in the magistrates' room, indicating that he sympathized with william smith, and wished to exercise upon william smith his renowned philanthropy. and so, at about noon, when the court majestically rose, sir jee retired to the magistrates' room, where the humble alderman easton was discreet enough not to follow him, and awaited william smith. and william smith came, guided thither by a policeman, to whom, in parting from him, he made a rude, surreptitious gesture. sir jee, seated in the arm-chair which dominates the other chairs round the elm table in the magistrates' room, emitted a preliminary cough. 'smith,' he said sternly, leaning his elbows on the table, 'you were very fortunate this morning, you know.' and he gazed at smith. smith stood near the door, cap in hand. he did not resemble a burglar, who surely ought to be big, muscular, and masterful. he resembled an undersized clerk who has been out of work for a long time, but who has nevertheless found the means to eat and drink rather plenteously. he was clothed in a very shabby navy-blue suit, frayed at the wrists and ankles, and greasy in front. his linen collar was brown with dirt, his fingers were dirty, his hair was unkempt and long, and a young and lusty black beard was sprouting on his chin. his boots were not at all pleasant. 'yes, governor,' smith replied, lightly, with a manchester accent. 'and what's your game?' sir jee was taken aback. he, the chairman of the borough bench, and the leading philanthropist in the country, to be so spoken to! but what could he do? he himself had legally established smith's innocence. smith was as free as air, and had a perfect right to adopt any tone he chose to any man he chose. and sir jee desired a service from william smith. 'i was hoping i might be of use to you,' said sir jehoshaphat diplomatically. 'well,' said smith, 'that's all right, that is. but none of your philanthropic dodges, you know. i don't want to lead a new life, and i don't want to turn over a new leaf, and i don't want a helpin' hand, nor none o' those things. and, what's more, i don't want a situation. i've got all the situation as i need. but i never refuse money, nor beer neither. never did, and i'm forty years old next month.' 'i suppose burgling doesn't pay very well, does it?' sir jee boldly ventured. william smith laughed coarsely. 'it pays right enough,' said he. 'but i don't put my money on my back, governor, i put it into a bit of public-house property when i get the chance.' 'it may pay,' said sir jee. 'but it is wrong. it is very anti-social.' 'is it, indeed?' smith returned dryly. 'anti-social, is it? well, i've heard it called plenty o' things in my time, but never that. now, i should have called it quite sociablelike, sort of making free with strangers, and so on. however,' he added, 'i come across a cove once as told me crime was nothing but a disease and ought to be treated as such. i asked him for a dozen o' port, but he never sent it.' 'ever been caught before?' sir jee inquired. 'not much!' smith exclaimed. 'and this'll be a lesson to me, i can tell you. now, what are you getting at, governor? because my time's money, my time is.' sir jee coughed once more. 'sit down,' said sir jee. and william smith sat down opposite to him at the table, and put his shiny elbows on the table precisely in the manner of sir jee's elbows. 'well?' he cheerfully encouraged sir jee. 'how would you like to commit a burglary that was not a crime?' said sir jee, his shifty eyes wandering around the room. 'a perfectly lawful burglary?' 'what are you getting at?' william smith was genuinely astonished. 'at my residence, sneyd castle,' sir jee proceeded, 'there's a large portrait of myself in the dining-room that i want to have stolen. you understand?' 'stolen?' 'yes. i want to get rid of it. and i want--er--people to think that it has been stolen.' 'well, why don't you stop up one night and steal it yourself, and then burn it?' william smith suggested. 'that would be deceitful,' said sir jee, gravely. 'i could not tell my friends that the portrait had been stolen if it had not been stolen. the burglary must be entirely genuine.' 'what's the figure?' said smith curtly. 'figure?' 'what are you going to give me for the job?' 'give you for doing the job?' sir jee repeated, his secret and ineradicable meanness aroused. 'give you? why, i'm giving you the opportunity to honestly steal a picture that's worth over a thousand pounds--i dare say it would be worth two thousand pounds in america--and you want to be paid into the bargain! do you know, my man, that people come all the way from manchester, and even london, to see that portrait?' he told smith about the painting. 'then why are you in such a stew to be rid of it?' queried the burglar. 'that's my affair,' said sir jee. 'i don't like it. lady dain doesn't like it. but it's a presentation portrait, and so i can't--you see, mr smith?' 'and how am i going to dispose of it when i've got it?' smith demanded. 'you can't melt a portrait down as if it was silver. by what you say, governor, it's known all over the blessed world. seems to me i might just as well try to sell the nelson column.' 'oh, nonsense!' said sir jee. 'nonsense. you'll sell it in america quite easily. it'll be a fortune to you. keep it for a year first, and then send it to new york.' william smith shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table; and then quite suddenly he brightened and said-- 'all right, governor. i'll take it on, just to oblige you.' 'when can you do it?' asked sir jee, hardly concealing his joy. 'tonight?' 'no,' said smith, mysteriously. 'i'm engaged tonight.' 'well, tomorrow night?' 'nor tomorrow. i'm engaged tomorrow too.' 'you seem to be very much engaged, my man,' sir jee observed. 'what do you expect?' smith retorted. 'business is business. i could do it the night after tomorrow.' 'but that's christmas eve,' sir jee protested. 'what if it is christmas eve?' said smith coldly. 'would you prefer christmas day? i'm engaged on boxing day and the day after.' 'not in the five towns, i trust?' sir jee remarked. 'no,' said smith shortly. 'the five towns is about sucked dry.' the affair was arranged for christmas eve. 'now,' sir jee suggested, 'shall i draw you a plan of the castle, so that you can--' william smith's face expressed terrific scorn. 'do you suppose,' he said, 'as i haven't had plans o' your castle ever since it was built? what do you take me for? i'm not a blooming excursionist, i'm not. i'm a business man--that's what i am.' sir jee was snubbed, and he agreed submissively to all william smith's arrangements for the innocent burglary. he perceived that in william smith he had stumbled on a professional of the highest class, and this good fortune pleased him. 'there's only one thing that riles me,' said smith, in parting, 'and that is that you'll go and say that after you'd done everything you could for me i went and burgled your castle. and you'll talk about the ingratitude of the lower classes. i know you, governor!' iii on the afternoon of the th of december sir jehoshaphat drove home to sneyd castle from the principal of the three dain manufactories, and found lady dain superintending the work of packing up trunks. he and she were to quit the castle that afternoon in order to spend christmas on the other side of the five towns, under the roof of their eldest son, john, who had a new house, a new wife, and a new baby (male). john was a domineering person, and, being rather proud of his house and all that was his, he had obstinately decided to have his own christmas at his own hearth. grandpapa and grandmamma, drawn by the irresistible attraction of that novelty, a grandson (though mrs john had declined to have the little thing named jehoshaphat), had yielded to john's solicitations, and the family gathering, for the first time in history, was not to occur round sir jee's mahogany. sir jee, very characteristically, said nothing to lady dain immediately. he allowed her to proceed with the packing of the trunks, and then tea was served, and as the time was approaching for the carriage to come round to take them to the station, at last he suddenly remarked-- 'i shan't be able to go with you to john's this afternoon.' 'oh, jee!' she exclaimed. 'really, you are tiresome. why couldn't you tell me before?' 'i will come over tomorrow morning--perhaps in time for church,' he proceeded, ignoring her demand for an explanation. he always did ignore her demand for an explanation. indeed, she only asked for explanations in a mechanical and perfunctory manner--she had long since ceased to expect them. sir jee had been born like that--devious, mysterious, incalculable. and lady dain accepted him as he was. she was somewhat surprised, therefore, when he went on-- 'i have some minutes of committee meetings that i really must go carefully through and send off tonight, and you know as well as i do that there'll be no chance of doing that at john's. i've telegraphed to john.' he was obviously nervous and self-conscious. 'there's no food in the house,' sighed lady dain. 'and the servants are all going away except callear, and he can't cook your dinner tonight. i think i'd better stay myself and look after you.' 'you'll do no such thing,' said sir jee, decisively. 'as for my dinner, anything will do for that. the servants have been promised their holiday, to start from this evening, and they must have it. i can manage.' here spoke the philanthropist with his unshakable sense of justice. so lady dain departed, anxious and worried, having previously arranged something cold for sir jee in the dining-room, and instructed callear about boiling the water for sir jee's tea on christmas morning. callear was the under-coachman and a useful odd man. he it was who would drive sir jee to the station on christmas morning, and then guard the castle and the stables thereof during the absence of the family and the other servants. callear slept over the stables. and after sir jee had consumed his cold repast in the dining-room the other servants went, and sir jee was alone in the castle, facing the portrait. he had managed the affair fairly well, he thought. indeed, he had a talent for chicane, and none knew it better than himself. it would have been dangerous if the servants had been left in the castle. they might have suffered from insomnia, and heard william smith, and interfered with the operations of william smith. on the other hand, sir jee had no intention whatever of leaving the castle uninhabited to the mercies of william smith. he felt that he himself must be on the spot to see that everything went right and that nothing went wrong. thus, the previously-arranged scheme for the servants' holiday fitted perfectly into his plans, and all that he had had to do was to refuse to leave the castle till the morrow. it was ideal. nevertheless, he was a little afraid of what he had done, and of what he was going to permit william smith to do. it was certainly dangerous--certainly rather a wild scheme. however, the die was cast. and within twelve hours he would be relieved of the intolerable incubus of the portrait. and when he thought of the humiliations which that portrait had caused him; when he remembered the remarks of his sons concerning it, especially john's remarks; when he recalled phrases about it in london newspapers, he squirmed, and told himself that no scheme for getting rid of it could be too wild and perilous. and, after all, the burglary dodge was the only dodge, absolutely the only conceivable practical method of disposing of the portrait--except burning down the castle. and surely it was preferable to a conflagration, to arson! moreover, in case of fire at the castle some blundering fool would be sure to cry; 'the portrait! the portrait must be saved!' and the portrait would be saved. he gazed at the repulsive, hateful thing. in the centre of the lower part of the massive gold frame was the legend: 'presented to sir jehoshaphat dain, knight, as a mark of public esteem and gratitude,' etc. he wondered if william smith would steal the frame. it was to be hoped that he would not steal the frame. in fact, william smith would find it very difficult to steal that frame unless he had an accomplice or so. 'this is the last time i shall see you!' said sir jee to the portrait. then he unfastened the catch of one of the windows in the dining-room (as per contract with william smith), turned out the electric light, and went to bed in the deserted castle. he went to bed, but not to sleep. it was no part of sir jee's programme to sleep. he intended to listen, and he did listen. and about two o'clock, precisely the hour which william smith had indicated, he fancied he heard muffled and discreet noises. then he was sure that he heard them. william smith had kept his word. then the noises ceased for a period, and then they recommenced. sir jee restrained his curiosity as long as he could, and when he could restrain it no more he rose and silently opened his bedroom window and put his head out into the nipping night air of christmas. and by good fortune he saw the vast oblong of the picture, carefully enveloped in sheets, being passed by a couple of dark figures through the dining-room window to the garden outside. william smith had a colleague, then, and he was taking the frame as well as the canvas. sir jee watched the men disappear down the avenue, and they did not reappear. sir jee returned to bed. yes, he felt himself equal to facing it out with his family and friends. he felt himself equal to pretending that he had no knowledge of the burglary. having slept a few hours, he got up early and, half-dressed, descended to the dining-room just to see what sort of a mess william smith had made. the canvas of the portrait lay flat on the hearthrug, with the following words written on it in chalk: 'this is no use to me.' it was the massive gold frame that had gone. further, as was later discovered, all the silver had gone. not a spoon was left in the castle. news of the engagement my mother never came to meet me at bursley station when i arrived in the five towns from london; much less did she come as far as knype station, which is the great traffic centre of the district, the point at which one changes from the express into the local train. she had always other things to do; she was 'preparing' for me. so i had the little journey from knype to bursley, and then the walk up trafalgar road, amid the familiar high chimneys and the smoke and the clayey mud and the football posts and the midland accent, all by myself. and there was leisure to consider anew how i should break to my mother the tremendous news i had for her. i had been considering that question ever since getting into the train at euston, where i had said goodbye to agnes; but in the atmosphere of the five towns it seemed just slightly more difficult; though, of course, it wasn't difficult, really. you see, i wrote to my mother regularly every week, telling her most of my doings. she knew all my friends by name. i dare say she formed in her mind notions of what sort of people they were. thus i had frequently mentioned agnes and her family in my letters. but you can't write even to your mother and say in cold blood: 'i think i am beginning to fall in love with agnes,' 'i think agnes likes me,' 'i am mad on her,' 'i feel certain she likes me,' 'i shall propose to her on such a day.' you can't do that. at least i couldn't. hence it had come about that on the th of december i had proposed to agnes and been accepted by agnes, and my mother had no suspicion that my happiness was so near. and on the nd, by a previous and unalterable arrangement, i had come to spend christmas with my mother. i was the only son of a widow; i was all that my mother had. and lo! i had gone and engaged myself to a girl she had never seen, and i had kept her in the dark! she would certainly be extremely surprised, and she might be a little bit hurt--just at first. anyhow, the situation was the least in the world delicate. i walked up the whitened front steps of my mother's little house, just opposite where the electric cars stop, but before i could put my hand on the bell my little plump mother, in her black silk and her gold brooch and her auburn hair, opened to me, having doubtless watched me down the road from the bay-window, as usual, and she said, as usual kissing me-- 'well, philip! how are you?' and i said-- 'oh! i'm all right, mother. how are you?' i perceived instantly that she was more excited than my arrival ordinarily made her. there were tears in her smiling eyes, and she was as nervous as a young girl. she did indeed look remarkably young for a woman of forty-five, with twenty-five years of widowhood and a brief but too tempestuous married life behind her. the thought flashed across my mind: 'by some means or other she has got wind of my engagement. but how?' but i said nothing. i, too, was naturally rather nervous. mothers are kittle cattle. 'i'll tell her at supper,' i decided. and she hovered round me, like a sea-gull round a steamer, as i went upstairs. there was a ring at the door. she flew, instead of letting the servant go. it was a porter with my bag. just as i was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at the door. and my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but i was beforehand with her, and with a laugh i insisted on opening the front door myself this time. a young woman stood on the step. 'please, mrs dawson wants to know if mrs durance can kindly lend her half-a-dozen knives and forks?' 'eh, with pleasure,' said my mother, behind me. 'just wait a minute, lucy. come inside on the mat.' i followed my mother into the drawing-room, where she kept her silver in a cabinet. 'that's mrs dawson's new servant,' my mother whispered. 'but she needn't think i'm going to lend her my best, because i'm not.' 'i shouldn't, if i were you,' i supported her. and she went out with some second-best in tissue paper, and beamed on mrs dawson's servant with an assumed benevolence. 'there!' she exclaimed. 'and the compliments of the season to your mistress, lucy.' after that my mother disappeared into the kitchen to worry an entirely capable servant. and i roamed about, feeling happily excited, examining the drawing-room, in which nothing was changed except the incandescent light and the picture postcards on the mantelpiece. then i wandered into the dining-room, a small room at the back of the house, and here an immense surprise awaited me. supper was set for three! 'well,' i reflected. 'here's a nice state of affairs! supper for three, and she hasn't breathed a word!' my mother was so clever in social matters, and especially in the planning of delicious surprises, that i believed her capable even of miracles. in some way or other she must have discovered the state of my desires towards agnes. she had written, or something. she and agnes had been plotting together by letter to startle me, and perhaps telegraphing. agnes had fibbed in telling me that she could not possibly come to bursley for christmas; she had delightfully fibbed. and my mother had got her concealed somewhere in the house, or was momentarily expecting her. that explained the tears, the nervousness, the rushes to the door. i crept out of the dining-room, determined not to let my mother know that i had secretly viewed the supper-table. and as i was crossing the lobby to the drawing-room there was a third ring at the door, and a third time my mother rushed out of the kitchen. 'by jove!' i thought. 'suppose it's agnes. what a scene!' and trembling with expectation i opened the door. it was mr nixon. now, mr nixon was an old friend of the family's, a man of forty-nine or fifty, with a reputation for shrewdness and increasing wealth. he owned a hundred and seventy-five cottages in the town, having bought them gradually in half-dozens, and in rows; he collected the rents himself, and attended to the repairs himself, and was celebrated as a good landlord, and as being almost the only man in bursley who had made cottage property pay. he lived alone in commerce street, and, though not talkative, was usually jolly, with one or two good stories tucked away in the corners of his memory. he was my mother's trustee, and had morally aided her in the troublous times before my father's early death. 'well, young man,' cried he. 'so you're back in owd bosley!' it amused him to speak the dialect a little occasionally. and he brought his burly, powerful form into the lobby. i greeted him as jovially as i could, and then he shook hands with my mother, neither of them speaking. 'mr nixon is come for supper, philip,' said my mother. i liked mr nixon, but i was not too well pleased by this information, for i wanted to talk confidentially to my mother. i had a task before me with my mother, and here mr nixon was plunging into the supper. i could not break it gently to my mother that i was engaged to a strange young woman in the presence of mr nixon. mr nixon had been in to supper several times during previous visits of mine, but never on the first night. however, i had to make the best of it. and we sat down and began on the ham, the sausages, the eggs, the crumpets, the toast, the jams, the mince-tarts, the stilton, and the celery. but we none of us ate very much, despite my little plump mother's protestations. my suspicion was that perhaps something had gone slightly wrong with my mother's affairs, and that mr nixon was taking the first opportunity to explain things to me. but such a possibility did not interest me, for i could easily afford to keep my mother and a wife too. i was still preoccupied in my engagement--and surely there is nothing astonishing in that--and i began to compose the words in which, immediately on the departure of mr nixon after supper, i would tackle my mother on the subject. when we had reached the stilton and celery, i intimated that i must walk down to the post-office, as i had to dispatch a letter. 'won't it do tomorrow, my pet?' asked my mother. 'it will not,' i said. imagine leaving agnes two days without news of my safe arrival and without assurances of my love! i had started writing the letter in the train, near willesden, and i finished it in the drawing-room. 'a lady in the case?' mr nixon called out gaily. 'yes,' i replied with firmness. i went forth, bought a picture postcard showing st luke's square, bursley, most untruthfully picturesque, and posted the card and the letter to my darling agnes. i hoped that mr nixon would have departed ere my return; he had made no reference at all during supper to my mother's affairs. but he had not departed. i found him solitary in the drawing-room, smoking a very fine cigar. 'where's the mater?' i demanded. 'she's just gone out of the room,' he said. 'come and sit down. have a weed. i want a bit of a chat with you, philip.' i obeyed, taking one of the very fine cigars. 'well, uncle nixon,' i encouraged him, wishing to get the chat over because my mind was full of agnes. i sometimes called him uncle for fun. 'well, my boy,' he began. 'it's no use me beating about the bush. what do you think of me as a stepfather?' i was struck, as they say down there, all of a heap. 'what?' i stammered. 'you don't mean to say--you and mother--?' he nodded. 'yes, i do, lad. yesterday she promised as she'd marry my unworthy self. it's been coming along for some time. but i don't expect she's given you any hint in her letters. in fact, i know she hasn't. it would have been rather difficult, wouldn't it? she couldn't well have written, "my dear philip, an old friend, mr nixon, is falling in love with me and i believe i'm falling in love with him. one of these days he'll be proposing to me." she couldn't have written like that, could she?' i laughed. i could not help it. 'shake hands,' i said warmly. 'i'm delighted.' and soon afterwards my mother sidled in, shyly. 'the lad's delighted, sarah,' said mr nixon shortly. i said nothing about my own engagement that night. i had never thought of my mother as a woman with a future, i had never realized that she was desirable, and that a man might desire her, and that her lonely existence in that house was not all that she had the right to demand from life. and i was ashamed of my characteristic filial selfish egoism. so i decided that i would not intrude my joys on hers until the next morning. we live and learn. beginning the new year i we are a stolid and a taciturn race, we of the five towns. it may be because we are geographically so self contained; or it may be because we work in clay and iron; or it may merely be because it is our nature to be stolid and taciturn. but stolid and taciturn we are; and some of the instances of our stolidity and our taciturnity are enough to astound. they do not, of course, astound us natives; we laugh at them, we think they are an immense joke, and what the outer world may think does not trouble our deep conceit of ourselves. i have often wondered what would be the effect, other than an effect of astonishment, on the outer world, of one of these narratives illustrating our five towns peculiarities of deportment. and i intend for the first time in history to make such a narrative public property. i have purposely not chosen an extreme example; just an average example. you will see how it strikes you. toby hall, once a burgess of turnhill, the northernmost and smallest of the five towns, was passing, last new year's eve, through the district by train on his way from crewe to derby. he lived at derby, and he was returning from the funeral of a brother member of the ancient order of foresters at crewe. he got out of the train at knype, the great railway centre of the five towns, to have a glass of beer in the second-class refreshment-room. it being new year's eve, the traffic was heavy and disorganized, especially in the refreshment-room, and when toby hall emerged on to the platform again the train was already on the move. toby was neither young nor active. his years were fifty, and on account of the funeral he wore broadcloth and a silk hat, and his overcoat was new and encumbering. impossible to take a flying leap into the train! he missed the train. and then he reflectively stroked his short grey beard (he had no moustache, and his upper lip was very long), and then he smoothed down his new overcoat over his rotund form. 'young man,' he asked a porter. 'when's next train derby way?' 'ain't none afore tomorrow.' toby went and had another glass of beer. 'd--d if i don't go to turnhill,' he said to himself, slowly and calmly, as he paid for the second glass of beer. he crossed the station by the subway and waited for the loop-line train to turnhill. he had not set foot in the five towns for three-and-twenty years, having indeed carefully and continuously avoided it, as a man will avoid the street where his creditor lives. but he discovered no change in knype railway-station. and he had a sort of pleasure in the fact that he knew his way about it, knew where the loop-line trains started from and other interesting little details. even the special form of the loop-line time-table, pasted here and there on the walls of the station, had not varied since his youth. (we return radicals to parliament, but we are proud of a railway which for fine old english conservatism brooks no rival.) toby gazed around, half challengingly and half nervously--it was conceivable that he might be recognized, or might recognize. but no! not a soul in the vast, swaying, preoccupied, luggage-laden crowds gave him a glance. as for him, although he fully recognized nobody, yet nearly every face seemed to be half-familiar. he climbed into a second-class compartment when the train drew up, and ten other people, all with third-class tickets, followed his example; three persons were already seated therein. the compartment was illuminated by one lamp, and in the bleakridge tunnel this lamp expired. everything reminded him of his youth. in twenty minutes he was leaving turnhill station and entering the town. it was about nine o'clock, and colder than winters of the period usually are. the first thing he saw was an electric tram, and the second thing he saw was another electric tram. in toby's time there were no trams at turnhill, and the then recently-introduced steam-trams between bursley and longshaw, long since superseded, were regarded as the final marvel of science as applied to traction. and now there were electric trams at turnhill! the railway renewed his youth, but this darting electricity showed him how old he was. the town hall, which was brand-new when he left turnhill, had the look of a mediaeval hotel de ville as he examined it in the glamour of the corporation's incandescent gas. and it was no more the sole impressive pile in the borough. the high street and its precincts abounded in impressive piles. he did not know precisely what they were, but they had the appearance of being markets, libraries, baths, and similar haunts of luxury; one was a bank. he thought that turnhill high street compared very well with derby. he would have preferred it to be less changed. if the high street was thus changed, everything would be changed, including child row. the sole phenomenon that recalled his youth (except the town hall) was the peculiar smell of oranges and apples floating out on the frosty air from holly-decorated greengrocers' shops. he passed through the market square, noting that sinister freak, the jubilee tower, and came to child row. the first building on your right as you enter child row from the square is the primitive methodist chapel. yes, it was still there; primitive methodism had not failed in turnhill because toby hall had deserted the cause three-and-twenty years ago! but something serious had happened to the structure. gradually toby realized that its old face had been taken out and a new one put in, the classic pillars had vanished, and a series of gothic arches had been substituted by way of portico; a pretty idea, but not to toby's liking. it was another change, another change! he crossed the street and proceeded downwards in the obscurity, and at length halted and peered with his little blue eyes at a small house (one of twins) on the other side from where he stood. that house, at any rate, was unchanged. it was a two-storeyed house, with a semicircular fanlight over a warped door of grained panelling. the blind of the window to the left of the door was irradiated from within, proving habitation. 'i wonder--' ran toby's thought. and he unhesitatingly crossed the street again, towards it, feeling first for the depth of the kerbstone with his umbrella. he had a particular and special interest in that house (no. it was--and is), for, four-and-twenty years ago he had married it. ii four-and-twenty years ago toby hall (i need not say that his proper christian name was tobias) had married miss priscilla bratt, then a calm and self-reliant young woman of twenty-three, and priscilla had the house, together with a certain income, under the will of her father. the marriage was not the result of burning passion on either side. it was a union of two respectabilities, and it might have succeeded as well as such unions generally do succeed, if priscilla had not too frequently mentioned the fact that the house they lived in was hers. he knew that the house was hers. the whole world was perfectly aware of the ownership of the house, and her references to the matter amounted to a lack of tact. several times toby had indicated as much. but priscilla took no heed. she had the hide of an alligator herself (though a personable girl), and she assumed that her husband's hide was of similar stuff. this assumption was justifiable, except that in just one spot the skin of toby was tender. he really did not care to be reminded that he was living under his wife's roof. the reiteration settled on his nerves like a malady. and before a year had elapsed priscilla had contrived to remind him once too often. and one day he put some things in a carpet-bag, and a hat on his head, and made for the door. the house was antique, and the front-parlour gave directly on to the street. 'where be going?' priscilla asked him. he hesitated a second, and said-- 'merica.' and he was. in the five towns we are apt to end our marriages in that laconic manner. toby did not complain too much; he simply and unaffectedly went. it might be imagined that the situation was a trying one for priscilla. not so! priscilla had experienced marriage with toby and had found it wanting. she was content to be relieved of toby. she had her house and her money and her self-esteem, and also tranquillity. she accepted the solution, and devoted her days to the cleanliness of the house. toby drew all the money he had out of the bursley and turnhill permanent fifty pounds benefit building society (four shares, nearly paid up) and set sail--in the adriatic, which was then the leading greyhound of the atlantic--for new york. from new york he went to trenton (new jersey), which is the five towns of america. a man of his skill in handling clay on a wheel had no difficulty whatever in wresting a good livelihood from trenton. when he had tarried there a year he caused a letter to be written to his wife informing her that he was dead. he wished to be quite free; and also (we have our feeling for justice) he wished his wife to be quite free. it did not occur to him that he had done anything extraordinary, either in deserting his wife or in forwarding false news of his death. he had done the simple thing, the casual thing, the blunt thing, the thing that necessitated the minimum of talking. he did not intend to return to england. however, after a few years, he did return to england. the cause of his return is irrelevant to the history, but i may say that it sprang from a conflict between the five towns temperament and the trenton union of earthenware operatives. such is the power of unions in the united states that toby, if he wished to remain under the federal flag, had either to yield or to starve. he would not yield. he changed his name and came to england; strolled calmly into the crown porcelain works at derby one day, and there recommenced his career as an artificer of earthenware. he did well. he could easily earn four pounds a week, and had no desires, save in the direction of fly-fishing--not an expensive diversion. he knew better than to marry. he existed quietly; and one year trod on the heels of another, and carried him from thirty to forty and forty to fifty, and no one found out his identity, though there are several direct trains daily between derby and knype. and now, owing to the death of a friend and a glass of beer, he was in child row, crossing the street towards the house whose ownership had caused him to quit it. he knocked on the door with the handle of his umbrella. there was no knocker; there never had been a knocker. iii the door opened cautiously, as such doors in the five towns do, after a shooting of bolts and a loosing of chains; it opened to the extent of about nine inches, and toby hall saw the face of a middle-aged woman eyeing him. 'is this mrs hall's?' he asked sternly. 'no. it ain't mrs hall's. it's mrs tansley's.' 'i thowt--' the door opened a little wider. 'that's not you, tobias?' said the woman unmoved. 'i reckon it is, though,' replied toby, with a difficult smile. 'bless us!' exclaimed the woman. the door oscillated slightly under her hand. 'bless us!' she repeated. and then suddenly, 'you'd happen better come in, tobias.' 'aye!' said tobias. and he entered. 'sit ye down, do,' said his wife. 'i thowt as you were dead. they wrote and told me so.' 'aye!' said tobias. 'but i am na'.' he sat down in an arm-chair near the old-fashioned grate, with its hobs at either side. he was acquainted with that chair, and it had not appreciably altered since his departure. the lastingness of furniture under fair treatment is astonishing. this chair was uncomfortably in exactly the same spot where it had always been uncomfortable; and the same anti-macassar was draped over its uncompromising back. toby put his hat on the table, and leaned his umbrella against the chimney-piece. his overcoat he retained. same table; same chimney-piece; same clock and ornaments on the chimney-piece! but a different carpet on the floor, and different curtains before the window. priscilla bolted and chained the door, and then she too sat down. her gown was black, with a small black silk apron. and she was stout, and she wore felt slippers and moved with the same gingerly care as toby himself did. she looked fully her years. her thin lips were firmer than ever. it was indeed priscilla. 'well, well!' she murmured. but her capacity for wonder was nearly exhausted. 'aye!' said toby, with an air that was meant to be quasi-humorous. he warmed his hands at the fire, and then rubbed them over the front of his calves, leaning forward. 'so ye've come back?' said priscilla. 'aye!' concurred toby. there was a pause. 'cold weather we're having,' he muttered. 'it's seasonable,' priscilla pointed out. her glance rested on a sprig of holly that was tied under the gas-chandelier, unique relic of christmas in the apartment. another pause. it would be hazardous to guess what their feelings were; perhaps their feelings were scarcely anything at all. 'and what be the news?' toby inquired, with what passes in the five towns for geniality. 'news?' she repeated, as if not immediately grasping the significance of the question. 'i don't know as there's any news, nothing partic'ler, that is.' hung on the wall near the chimney-piece was a photograph of a girl. it was an excellent likeness to priscilla, as she was in toby's pre-trenton days. how young and fresh the creature looked; so simple, so inexperienced! it startled toby. 'i don't remember that,' he said. 'what?' 'that!' and he jerked his elbow towards the photograph. 'oh! that! that's my daughter,' said priscilla. 'bless us!' said toby in turn. 'i married job tansley,' priscilla continued. 'he died four years ago last knype wakes monday. her's married'--indicating the photograph--'her married young gibson last september.' 'well, well!' murmured toby. another pause. there was a shuffling on the pavement outside, and some children began to sing about shepherds and flocks. 'oh, bother them childer,' said priscilla. 'i must send 'em off.' she got up. 'here! give 'em a penny,' toby suggested, holding out a penny. 'yes, and then they'll tell others, and i shan't have a moment's peace all night!' priscilla grumbled. however, she bestowed the penny, cutting the song off abruptly in the middle. and she bolted and chained the door and sat down again. another pause. 'well, well!' said priscilla. 'aye!' toby agreed. 'good coal that!' 'fourteen shilling a ton!' another pause, and a longer. 'is ned walklate still at th' rose and crown?' toby asked. 'for aught i know he is,' said priscilla. 'i'll just step round there,' said toby, picking up his hat and rising. as he was manoeuvring the door-chain, priscilla said-- 'you're forgetting your umbrella, tobias.' 'no,' he answered. 'i hanna' forgotten it. i'm coming back.' their eyes met, charged with meaning. 'that'll be all right,' she said. 'well, well!' 'aye!' and he stepped round to ned walklate's. from one generation to another i it is the greatest mistake in the world to imagine that, because the five towns is an industrial district, devoted to the manufacture of cups and saucers, marbles and door-knobs, therefore there is no luxury in it. a writer, not yet deceased, who spent two nights there, and wrote four hundred pages about it, has committed herself to the assertion that there are no private carriages in its streets--only perambulators and tramcars. that writer's reputation is ruined in the five towns. for the five towns, although continually complaining of bad times, is immensely wealthy, as well as immensely poor--a country of contrasts, indeed--and private carriages, if they do not abound, exist at any rate in sufficient numbers. nay, more, automobiles of the most expensive french and english makes fly dashingly along its hilly roads and scatter in profusion the rich black mud thereof. on a saturday afternoon in last spring, such an automobile stood outside the garden entrance of bleakridge house, just halfway between hanbridge and bursley. it belonged to young harold etches, of etches, limited, the great porcelain manufacturers. it was a h.p. panhard, and was worth over a thousand pounds as it stood there, throbbing, and harold was proud of it. he was also proud of his young wife, maud, who, clad in several hundred pounds' worth of furs, had taken her seat next to the steering-wheel, and was waiting for harold to mount by her side. the united ages of this handsome and gay couple came to less than forty-five. and they owned the motor-car, and bleakridge house with its ten bedrooms, and another house at llandudno, and a controlling interest in etches, limited, that brought them in seven or eight thousand a year. they were a pretty tidy example of what the five towns can do when it tries to be wealthy. at that moment, when harold was climbing into the car, a shabby old man who was walking down the road, followed by a boy carrying a carpet-bag, stopped suddenly and touched harold on the shoulder. 'bless us!' exclaimed the old man. and the boy and the carpet-bag halted behind him. 'what? uncle dan?' said harold. 'uncle dan!' cried maud, springing up with an enchanting smile. 'why, it's ages since--' 'and what d'ye reckon ye'n gotten here?' demanded the old man. 'it's my new car,' harold explained. 'and ca'st drive it, lad?' asked the old man. 'i should think i could!' said harold confidently. 'h'm!' commented the old man, and then he shook hands, and thoroughly scrutinized maud. now, this is the sort of thing that can only be seen and appreciated in a district like the five towns, where families spring into splendour out of nothing in the course of a couple of generations, and as often as not sink back again into nothing in the course of two generations more. the etches family is among the best known and the widest spread in the five towns. it originated in three brothers, of whom daniel was the youngest. daniel never married; the other two did. daniel was not very fond of money; the other two were, and they founded the glorious firm of etches. harold was the grandson of one brother, and maud was the granddaughter of the other. consequently, they both stood in the same relation to dan, who was their great-uncle--addressed as uncle 'for short'. there is a good deal of snobbery in the five towns, but it does not exist between relatives. the relatives in danger of suffering by it would never stand it. besides, although dan's income did not exceed two hundred a year, he was really richer than his grandnephew, since dan lived on half his income, whereas harold, aided by maud, lived on all of his. consequently, despite the vast difference in their stations, clothes, and manners, daniel and his young relatives met as equals. it would have been amusing to see anyone--even the countess of chell, who patronized the entire district--attempt to patronize dan. in his time he had been the greatest pigeon-fancier in the country. 'so you're paying a visit to bursley, uncle?' said maud. 'aye!' dan replied. 'i'm back i' owd bosley. sarah--my housekeeper, thou know'st--' 'not dead?' 'no. her inna' dead; but her sister's dead, and i've give her a week's play [holiday], and come away. rat edge'll see nowt o' me this side easter.' rat edge was the name of the village, five miles off, which dan had honoured in his declining years. 'and where are you going to now?' asked harold. 'i'm going to owd sam shawn's, by th' owd church, to beg a bed.' 'but you'll stop with us, of course?' said harold. 'nay, lad,' said dan. 'oh yes, uncle,' maud insisted. 'nay, lass,' said dan. 'indeed, you will, uncle,' said maud positively. 'if you don't, i'll never speak to you again.' she had a charming fire in her eyes, had maud. daniel, the old bachelor, yielded at once, but in his own style. 'i'll try it for a night, lass,' said he. thus it occurred that the carpet-bag was carried into bleakridge house, and that after some delay harold and maud carried off uncle dan with them in the car. he sat in the luxurious tonneau behind, and maud had quitted her husband in order to join him. possibly she liked the humorous wrinkles round his grey eyes. or it may have been the eyes themselves. and yet dan was nearer seventy than sixty. the car passed everything on the road; it seemed to be overtaking electric trams all the time. 'so ye'n been married a year?' said uncle dan, smiling at maud. 'oh yes; a year and three days. we're quite used to it.' 'us'n be in h-ll in a minute, wench!' exclaimed dan, calmly changing the topic, as harold swung the car within an inch of a brewer's dray, and skidded slightly in the process. no anti-skidding device would operate in that generous, oozy mud. and, as a matter of fact, they were in hanbridge the next minute--hanbridge, the centre of the religions, the pleasures, and the vices of the five towns. 'bless us!' said the old man. 'it's fifteen year and more since i were here.' 'harold,' said maud, 'let's stop at the piccadilly cafe and have some tea.' 'cafe?' asked dan. 'what be that?' 'it's a kind of a pub.' harold threw the explanation over his shoulder as he brought the car up with swift dexterity in front of the misses callear's newly opened afternoon tea-rooms. 'oh, well, if it's a pub,' said uncle dan, 'i dunna' object.' he frankly admitted, on entering, that he had never before seen a pub full of little tables and white cloths, and flowers, and young women, and silver teapots, and cake-stands. and though he did pour his tea into his saucer, he was sufficiently at home there to address the younger miss callear as 'young woman', and to inform her that her beverage was lacking in orange pekoe. and the misses callear, who conferred a favour on their customers in serving them, didn't like it. he became reminiscent. 'aye!' he said, 'when i left th' five towns fifty-two years sin' to go weaving i' derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a pun'. us had it when us were sick--which wasna' often. we worked too hard for be sick. hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night, and then saturday afternoon walk ten mile to glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again wi' th' brass. 'they've lost th' habit of work now-a-days, seemingly,' he went on, as the car moved off once more, but slowly, because of the vast crowds emerging from the knype football ground. 'it's football, saturday; bands of a sunday; football, monday; ill i' bed and getting round, tuesday; do a bit o' work wednesday; football, thursday; draw wages friday night; and football, saturday. and wages higher than ever. it's that as beats me--wages higher than ever-- 'ye canna' smoke with any comfort i' these cars,' he added, when harold had got clear of the crowds and was letting out. he regretfully put his pipe in his pocket. harold skirted the whole length of the five towns from south to north, at an average rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour; and quite soon the party found itself on the outer side of turnhill, and descending the terrible clough bank, three miles long, and of a steepness resembling the steepness of the side of a house. the car had warmed to its business, and harold took them down that declivity in a manner which startled even maud, who long ago had resigned herself to the fact that she was tied for life to a young man for whom the word 'danger' had no meaning. at the bottom they had a swerve skid; but as there was plenty of room for eccentricities, nothing happened except that the car tried to climb the hill again. 'well, if i'd known,' observed uncle dan, 'if i'd guessed as you were reservin' this treat for th' owd uncle, i'd ha' walked.' the etches blood in him was pretty cool, but his nerve had had a shaking. then harold could not restart the car. the engine had stopped of its own accord, and, though harold lavished much physical force on the magic handle in front, nothing would budge. maud and the old man got down, the latter with relief. 'stuck, eh?' said dan. 'no steam?' 'that's it!' harold cried, slapping his leg. 'what an ass i am! she wants petrol, that's all. maud, pass a couple of cans. they're under the seat there, behind. no; on the left, child.' however, there was no petrol on the car. 'that's that cursed durand' (durand being the new chauffeur--french, to match the car). 'i told him not to forget. last thing i said to the fool! maud, i shall chuck that chap!' 'can't we do anything?' asked maud stiffly, putting her lips together. 'we can walk back to turnhill and buy some petrol, some of us!' snapped harold. 'that's what we can do!' 'sithee,' said uncle dan. 'there's the plume o' feathers half-a-mile back. th' landlord's a friend o' mine. i can borrow his mare and trap, and drive to turnhill and fetch some o' thy petrol, as thou calls it.' 'it's awfully good of you, uncle.' 'nay, lad, i'm doing it for please mysen. but maud mun come wi' me. give us th' money for th' petrol, as thou calls it.' 'then i must stay here alone?' harold complained. 'seemingly,' the old man agreed. after a few words on pigeons, and a glass of beer, dan had no difficulty whatever in borrowing his friend's white mare and black trap. he himself helped in the harnessing. just as he was driving triumphantly away, with that delicious vision maud on his left hand and a stable-boy behind, he reined the mare in. 'give us a couple o' penny smokes, matey,' he said to the landlord, and lit one. the mare could go, and dan could make her go, and she did go. and the whole turn-out looked extremely dashing when, ultimately, it dashed into the glare of the acetylene lamps which the deserted harold had lighted on his car. the red end of a penny smoke in the gloom of twilight looks exactly as well as the red end of an havana. moreover, the mare caracolled ornamentally in the rays of the acetylene, and the stable-boy had to skip down quick and hold her head. 'how much didst say this traction-engine had cost thee?' dan asked, while harold was pouring the indispensable fluid into the tank. 'not far off twelve hundred,' answered harold lightly. 'keep that cigar away from here.' 'fifteen pun' ud buy this mare,' dan announced to the road. 'now, all aboard!' harold commanded at length. 'how much shall i give to the boy for the horse and trap, uncle?' 'nothing,' said dan. 'i havena' finished wi' that mare yet. didst think i was going to trust mysen i' that thing o' yours again? i'll meet thee at bleakridge, lad.' 'and i think i'll go with uncle too, harold,' said maud. whereupon they both got into the trap. harold stared at them, astounded. 'but i say--' he protested, beginning to be angry. uncle dan drove away like the wind, and the stable-boy had all he could do to clamber up behind. ii now, at dinner-time that night, in the dining-room of the commodious and well-appointed mansion of the youngest and richest of the etches, uncle dan stood waiting and waiting for his host and hostess to appear. he was wearing a turkish tasselled smoking-cap to cover his baldness, and he had taken off his jacket and put on his light, loose overcoat instead of it, since that was a comfortable habit of his. he sent one of the two parlourmaids upstairs for his carpet slippers out of the carpet-bag, and he passed part of the time in changing his boots for his slippers in front of the fire. then at length, just as a maid was staggering out under the load of those enormous boots, harold appeared, very correct, but alone. 'awfully sorry to keep you waiting, uncle,' said harold, 'but maud isn't well. she isn't coming down tonight.' 'what's up wi' maud?' 'oh, goodness knows!' responded harold gloomily. 'she's not well--that's all.' 'h'm!' said dan. 'well, let's peck a bit.' so they sat down and began to peck a bit, aided by the two maids. dan pecked with prodigious enthusiasm, but harold was not in good pecking form. and as the dinner progressed, and harold sent dish after dish up to his wife, and his wife returned dish after dish untouched, harold's gloom communicated itself to the house in general. one felt that if one had penetrated to the farthest corner of the farthest attic, a little parcel of spiritual gloom would have already arrived there. the sense of disaster was in the abode. the cook was prophesying like anything in the kitchen. durand in the garage was meditating upon such of his master's pithy remarks as he had been able to understand. when the dinner was over, and the coffee and liqueurs and cigars had been served, and the two maids had left the dining-room, dan turned to his grandnephew and said-- 'there's things as has changed since my time, lad, but human nature inna' one on em.' 'what do you mean, uncle?' harold asked awkwardly, self-consciously. 'i mean as thou'rt a dashed foo'!' 'why?' 'but thou'lt get better o' that,' said dan. harold smiled sheepishly. 'i don't know what you're driving at, uncle,' said he. 'yes, thou dost, lad. thou'st been and quarrelled wi' maud. and i say thou'rt a dashed foo'!' 'as a matter of fact--' harold stammered. 'and ye've never quarrelled afore. this is th' fust time. and so thou'st under th' impression that th' world's come to an end. well, th' fust quarrel were bound to come sooner or later.' 'it isn't really a quarrel--it's about nothing--' 'i know--i know,' dan broke in. 'they always are. as for it not being a quarrel, lad, call it a picnic if thou'st a mind. but heir's sulking upstairs, and thou'rt sulking down here.' 'she was cross about the petrol,' said harold, glad to relieve his mind. 'i hadn't a notion she was cross till i went up into the bedroom. not a notion! i explained to her it wasn't my fault. i argued it out with her very calmly. i did my best to reason with her--' 'listen here, young 'un,' dan interrupted him. 'how old art?' 'twenty-three.' 'thou may'st live another fifty years. if thou'st a mind to spend 'em i' peace, thoud'st better give up reasoning wi' women. give it up right now! it's worse nor drink, as a habit. kiss 'em, cuddle 'em, beat 'em. but dunna' reason wi' 'em.' 'what should you have done in my place?' harold asked. 'i should ha' told maud her was quite right.' 'but she wasn't.' 'then i should ha' winked at mysen i' th' glass,' continued dan, 'and kissed her.' 'that's all very well--' 'naturally,' said dan, 'her wanted to show off that car i' front o' me. that was but natural. and her was vexed when it went wrong.' 'but i told her--i explained to her.' 'her's a handsome little wench,' dan proceeded. 'and a good heart. but thou'st got ten times her brains, lad, and thou ought'st to ha' given in.' 'but i can't always be--' 'it's allus them as gives in as has their own way. i remember her grandfather--he was th' eldest o' us--he quarrelled wi' his wife afore they'd been married a week, and she raced him all over th' town wi' a besom--' 'with a besom, uncle?' exclaimed harold, shocked at these family disclosures. 'wi' a besom,' said dan. that come o' reasoning wi' a woman. it taught him a lesson, i can tell thee. and afterwards he always said as nowt was worth a quarrel--nowt! and it isna'.' 'i don't think maud will race me all over the town with a besom,' harold remarked reflectively. 'there's worse things nor that,' said dan. 'look thee here, get out o' th' house for a' 'our. go to th' conservative club, and then come back. dost understand?' 'but what--' 'hook it, lad!' said dan curtly. and just as harold was leaving the room, like a school-boy, he called him in again. 'i havena' told thee, harold, as i'm subject to attacks. i'm getting up in years. i go off like. it isna' fits, but i go off. and if it should happen while i'm here, dunna' be alarmed.' 'what are we to do?' 'do nothing. i come round in a minute or two. whatever ye do, dunna' give me brandy. it might kill me--so th' doctor says. i'm only telling thee in case.' 'well, i hope you won't have an attack,' said harold. 'it's a hundred to one i dunna',' said dan. and harold departed. soon afterwards uncle dan wandered into a kitchen full of servants. 'show me th' missis's bedroom, one on ye,' he said to the crowd. and presently he was knocking at maud's door. 'maudie!' 'who is it?' came a voice. 'it's thy owd uncle. can'st spare a minute?' maud appeared at the door, smiling, and arrayed in a peignoir. 'he's gone out,' said dan, implying scorn of the person who had gone out. 'wilt come down-stairs?' 'where's he gone to?' maud demanded. she didn't even pretend she was ill. 'th' club,' said dan. and in about a hundred seconds or so he had her in the drawing-room, and she was actually pouring out gin for him. she looked ravishing in that peignoir, especially as she was munching an apple, and balancing herself on the arm of a chair. 'so he's been quarrelling with ye, maud?' dan began. 'no; not quarrelling, uncle.' 'well, call it what ye'n a mind,' said dan. 'call it a prayer-meeting. i didn't notice as ye came down for supper--dinner, as ye call it.' 'it was like this, uncle,' she said. 'poor harry was very angry with himself about that petrol. of course, he wanted the car to go well while you were in it; and he came up-stairs and grumbled at me for leaving him all alone and driving home with you.' 'oh, did he?' exclaimed dan. 'yes. i explained to him that of course i couldn't leave you all alone. then he got hot. i kept quite calm. i reasoned it out with him as quietly as i could--' 'maudie, maudie,' protested the old man, 'thou'rt th' prettiest wench i' this town, though i am thy great-uncle, and thou'st got plenty o' brains--a sight more than that husband o' thine.' 'do you think so, uncle?' 'aye, but thou hasna' made use o' 'em tonight. thou'rt a foolish wench, wench. at thy time o' life, and after a year o' th' married state, thou ought'st to know better than reason wi' a man in a temper.' 'but, really, uncle, it was so absurd of harold, wasn't it?' 'aye!' said dan. 'but why didst-na' give in and kiss him, and smack his face for him?' 'there was nothing to give in about, uncle.' 'there never is,' said dan. 'there never is. that's the point. still, thou'rt nigh crying, wench.' 'i'm not, uncle,' she contradicted, the tears falling on to the apple. 'and harold's using bad language all up trafalgar road, i lay,' dan added. 'it was all harold's fault,' said maud. 'why, in course it were harold's fault. but nowt's worth a quarrel, my dear--nowt. i remember harold's grandfeyther--he were th' second of us, your grandfeyther were the eldest, and i were the youngest--i remember harold's grandfeyther chasing his wife all over th' town wi' a besom a week after they were married.' 'with a besom!' murmured maud, pained and forgetting to cry. 'harold's grandfather, not mine?' 'wi' a besom,' dan repeated, nodding. 'they never quarrelled again--ne'er again. th' old woman allus said after that as quarrels were for fools. and her was right.' 'i don't see harold chasing me across bursley with a besom,' said maud primly. 'but what you say is quite right, you dear old uncle. men are queer--i mean husbands. you can't argue with them. you'd much better give in--' 'and have your own way after all.' 'and perhaps harold was--' harold's step could be heard in the hall. 'oh, dear!' cried maud. 'what shall i do?' 'i'm not feeling very well,' whispered uncle dan weakly. 'i have these 'ere attacks sometimes. there's only one thing as'll do me any good--brandy.' and his head fell over one side of the chair, and he looked precisely like a corpse. 'maud, what are you doing?' almost shouted harold, when he came into the room. she was putting a liqueur-glass to uncle dan's lips. 'oh, harold,' she cried, 'uncle's had an attack of some sort. i'm giving him some brandy.' 'but you mustn't give him brandy,' said harold authoritatively to her. 'but i must give him brandy,' said maud. 'he told me that brandy was the only thing to save him.' 'nonsense, child!' harold persisted. 'uncle told me all about these attacks. they're perfectly harmless so long as he doesn't have brandy. the doctors have warned him that brandy will be fatal.' 'harold, you are absolutely mistaken. don't you understand that uncle has only this minute told me that he must have brandy?' and she again approached the glass to the pale lips of the old man. his tasselled turkish smoking-cap had fallen to the floor, and the hemisphere of his bald head glittered under the gas. 'maud, i forbid you!' and harold put a hand on the glass. 'it's a matter of life and death. you must have misunderstood uncle.' 'it was you who misunderstood uncle,' said maud. 'of course, if you mean to prevent me by brute force--' they both paused and glanced at daniel, and then at each other. 'perhaps you are right, dearest,' said harold, in a new tone. 'no, dearest,' said maud, also in a new tone. 'i expect you are right. i must have misunderstood.' 'no, no, maud. give him the brandy by all means. i've no doubt you're right.' 'but if you think i'd better not give it him--' 'but i would prefer you to give it him, dearest. it isn't likely you would be mistaken in a thing like that.' 'i would prefer to be guided by you, dearest,' said maud. so they went on for several minutes, each giving way to the other in the most angelic manner. 'and meantime i'm supposed to be dying, am i?' roared uncle dan, suddenly sitting up. 'you'd let th' old uncle peg out while you practise his precepts! a nice pair you make! i thought for see which on ye' ud' give way to th' other, but i didna' anticipate as both on ye 'ud be ready to sacrifice my life for th' sake o' domestic peace.' 'but, uncle,' they both said later, amid the universal and yet rather shamefaced peace rejoicings, 'you said nothing was worth a quarrel.' 'and i was right,' answered dan; 'i was right. th' divorce court is full o' fools as have begun married life by trying to convince the other fool, instead o' humouring him--or her. kiss us, maud.' the death of simon fuge i it was in the train that i learnt of his death. although a very greedy eater of literature, i can only enjoy reading when i have little time for reading. give me three hours of absolute leisure, with nothing to do but read, and i instantly become almost incapable of the act. so it is always on railway journeys, and so it was that evening. i was in the middle of wordsworth's excursion; i positively gloated over it, wondering why i should have allowed a mere rumour that it was dull to prevent me from consuming it earlier in my life. but do you suppose i could continue with wordsworth in the train? i could not. i stared out of the windows; i calculated the speed of the train by my watch; i thought of my future and my past; i drew forth my hopes, examined them, polished them, and put them back again; i forgave myself for my sins; and i dreamed of the exciting conquest of a beautiful and brilliant woman that i should one day achieve. in short, i did everything that men habitually do under such circumstances. the gazette was lying folded on the seat beside me: one of the two london evening papers that a man of taste may peruse without humiliating himself. how appetizing a morsel, this sheet new and smooth from the press, this sheet written by an ironic, understanding, small band of men for just a few thousand persons like me, ruthlessly scornful of the big circulations and the idols of the people! if the gazette and its sole rival ceased to appear, i do believe that my existence and many similar existences would wear a different colour. could one dine alone in jermyn street or panton street without this fine piquant evening commentary on the gross newspapers of the morning? (now you perceive what sort of a man i am, and you guess, rightly, that my age is between thirty and forty.) but the train had stopped at rugby and started again, and more than half of my journey was accomplished, ere at length i picked up the gazette, and opened it with the false calm of a drunkard who has sworn that he will not wet his lips before a certain hour. for, well knowing from experience that i should suffer acute ennui in the train, i had, when buying the gazette at euston, taken oath that i would not even glance at it till after rugby; it is always the final hour of these railway journeys that is the nethermost hell. the second thing that i saw in the gazette (the first was of course the 'entremets' column of wit, humour, and parody, very uneven in its excellence) was the death of simon fuge. there was nearly a column about it, signed with initials, and the subheading of the article ran, 'sudden death of a great painter'. that was characteristic of the gazette. that simon fuge was indeed a great painter is now admitted by most dilettantes, though denied by a few. but to the great public he was not one of the few great names. to the great public he was just a medium name. ten to one that in speaking of him to a plain person you would feel compelled to add: 'the painter, you know,' and the plain person would respond: 'oh yes,' falsely pretending that he was perfectly familiar with the name. simon fuge had many friends on the press, and it was solely owing to the loyalty of these friends in the matter of obituary notices that the great public heard more of simon fuge in the week after his death than it had heard of him during the thirty-five years of his life. it may be asked: why, if he had so many and such loyal friends on the press, these friends did not take measures to establish his reputation before he died? the answer is that editors will not allow journalists to praise a living artist much in excess of the esteem in which the public holds him; they are timid. but when a misunderstood artist is dead the editors will put no limit on laudation. i am not on the press, but it happens that i know the world. of all the obituary notices of simon fuge, the gazette's was the first. somehow the gazette had obtained exclusive news of the little event, and some one high up on the gazette's staff had a very exalted notion indeed of fuge, and must have known him personally. fuge received his deserts as a painter in that column of print. he was compared to sorolla y bastida for vitality; the morbidezza of his flesh-tints was stated to be unrivalled even by--i forget the name, painting is not my speciality. the writer blandly inquired why examples of fuge's work were to be seen in the luxembourg, at vienna, at florence, at dresden; and not, for instance, at the tate gallery, or in the chantrey collection. the writer also inquired, with equal blandness, why a painter who had been on the hanging committee of the societe nationale des beaux arts at paris should not have been found worthy to be even an a.r.a. in london. in brief, old england 'caught it', as occurred somewhere or other most nights in the columns of the gazette. fuge also received his deserts as a man. and the gazette did not conceal that he had not been a man after the heart of the british public. he had been too romantically and intensely alive for that. the writer gave a little penportrait of him. it was very good, recalling his tricks of manner, his unforgettable eyes, and his amazing skill in talking about himself and really interesting everybody in himself. there was a special reference to one of fuge's most dramatic recitals--a narration of a night spent in a boat on ham lake with two beautiful girls, sisters, natives of the five towns, where fuge was born. said the obituarist: 'those two wonderful creatures who played so large a part in simon fuge's life.' this death was a shock to me. it took away my ennui for the rest of the journey. i too had known simon fuge. that is to say, i had met him once, at a soiree, and on that single occasion, as luck had it, he had favoured the company with the very narration to which the gazette contributor referred. i remembered well the burning brilliance of his blue-black eyes, his touching assurance that all of us were necessarily interested in his adventures, and the extremely graphic and convincing way in which he reconstituted for us the nocturnal scene on ham lake--the two sisters, the boat, the rustle of trees, the lights on shore, and his own difficulty in managing the oars, one of which he lost for half-an-hour and found again. it was by such details as that about the oar that, with a tint of humour, he added realism to the romantic quality of his tales. he seemed to have no reticences concerning himself. decidedly he allowed things to be understood...! yes, his was a romantic figure, the figure of one to whom every day, and every hour of the day, was coloured by the violence of his passion for existence. his pictures had often an unearthly beauty, but for him they were nothing but faithful renderings of what he saw. my mind dwelt on those two beautiful sisters. those two beautiful sisters appealed to me more than anything else in the gazette's obituary. surely--simon fuge had obviously been a man whose emotional susceptibility and virile impulsiveness must have opened the door for him to multifarious amours--but surely he had not made himself indispensable to both sisters simultaneously. surely even he had not so far forgotten that ham lake was in the middle of a country called england, and not the ornamental water in the bois de boulogne! and yet.... the delicious possibility of ineffable indiscretions on the part of simon fuge monopolized my mind till the train stopped at knype, and i descended. nevertheless, i think i am a serious and fairly insular englishman. it is truly astonishing how a serious person can be obsessed by trifles that, to speak mildly, do not merit sustained attention. i wondered where ham lake was. i knew merely that it lay somewhere in the environs of the five towns. what put fuel on the fire of my interest in the private affairs of the dead painter was the slightly curious coincidence that on the evening of the news of his death i should be travelling to the five towns--and for the first time in my life. here i was at knype, which, as i had gathered from bradshaw, and from my acquaintance brindley, was the traffic centre of the five towns. ii my knowledge of industrial districts amounted to nothing. born in devonshire, educated at cambridge, and fulfilling my destiny as curator of a certain department of antiquities at the british museum, i had never been brought into contact with the vast constructive material activities of lancashire, yorkshire, and staffordshire. i had but passed through them occasionally on my way to scotland, scorning their necessary grime with the perhaps too facile disdain of the clean-faced southerner, who is apt to forget that coal cannot walk up unaided out of the mine, and that the basin in which he washes his beautiful purity can only be manufactured amid conditions highly repellent. well, my impressions of the platform of knype station were unfavourable. there was dirt in the air; i could feel it at once on my skin. and the scene was shabby, undignified, and rude. i use the word 'rude' in all its senses. what i saw was a pushing, exclamatory, ill-dressed, determined crowd, each member of which was bent on the realization of his own desires by the least ceremonious means. if an item of this throng wished to get past me, he made me instantly aware of his wish by abruptly changing my position in infinite space; it was not possible to misconstrue his meaning. so much crude force and naked will-to-live i had not before set eyes on. in truth, i felt myself to be a very brittle, delicate bit of intellectual machinery in the midst of all these physical manifestations. yet i am a tallish man, and these potters appeared to me to be undersized, and somewhat thin too! but what elbows! what glaring egoistic eyes! what terrible decisiveness in action! 'now then, get in if ye're going!' said a red-haired porter to me curtly. 'i'm not going. i've just got out,' i replied. 'well, then, why dunna' ye stand out o' th' wee and let them get in as wants to?' unable to offer a coherent answer to this crushing demand, i stood out of the way. in the light of further knowledge i now surmise that that porter was a very friendly and sociable porter. but at the moment i really believed that, taking me for the least admirable and necessary of god's creatures, he meant to convey his opinion to me for my own good. i glanced up at the lighted windows of the train, and saw the composed, careless faces of haughty persons who were going direct from london to manchester, and to whom the five towns was nothing but a delay. i envied them. i wanted to return to the shelter of the train. when it left, i fancied that my last link with civilization was broken. then another train puffed in, and it was simply taken by assault in a fraction of time, to an incomprehensible bawling of friendly sociable porters. season-ticket holders at finsbury park think they know how to possess themselves of a train; they are deceived. so this is where simon fuge came from (i reflected)! the devil it is (i reflected)! i tried to conceive what the invaders of the train would exclaim if confronted by one of simon fuge's pictures. i could imagine only one word, and that a monosyllable, that would meet the case of their sentiments. and his dalliance, his tangential nocturnal deviations in gondolas with exquisite twin odalisques! there did not seem to be much room for amorous elegance in the lives of these invaders. and his death! what would they say of his death? upon my soul, as i stood on that dirty platform, in a milieu of advertisements of soap, boots, and aperients, i began to believe that simon fuge never had lived, that he was a mere illusion of his friends and his small public. all that i saw around me was a violent negation of simon fuge, that entity of rare, fine, exotic sensibilities, that perfectly mad gourmet of sensations, that exotic seer of beauty. i caught sight of my acquaintance and host, mr robert brindley, coming towards me on the platform. hitherto i had only met him in london, when, as chairman of the committee of management of the wedgwood institution and school of art at bursley, he had called on me at the british museum for advice as to loan exhibits. he was then dressed like a self-respecting tourist. now, although an architect by profession, he appeared to be anxious to be mistaken for a sporting squire. he wore very baggy knickerbockers, and leggings, and a cap. this raiment was apparently the agreed uniform of the easy classes in the five towns; for in the crowd i had noticed several such consciously superior figures among the artisans. mr brindley, like most of the people in the station, had a slightly pinched and chilled air, as though that morning he had by inadvertence omitted to don those garments which are not seen. he also, like most of the people there, but not to the same extent, had a somewhat suspicious and narrowly shrewd regard, as who should say: 'if any person thinks he can get the better of me by a trick, let him try--that's all.' but the moment his eye encountered mine, this expression vanished from his face, and he gave me a candid smile. 'i hope you're well,' he said gravely, squeezing my hand in a sort of vice that he carried at the end of his right arm. i reassured him. 'oh, i'm all right,' he said, in response to the expression of my hopes. it was a relief to me to see him. he took charge of me. i felt, as it were, safe in his arms. i perceived that, unaided and unprotected, i should never have succeeded in reaching bursley from knype. a whistle sounded. 'better get in,' he suggested; and then in a tone of absolute command: 'give me your bag.' i obeyed. he opened the door of a first-class carriage. 'i'm travelling second,' i explained. 'never mind. get in.' in his tones was a kindly exasperation. i got in; he followed. the train moved. 'ah!' breathed mr brindley, blowing out much air and falling like a sack of coal into a corner seat. he was a thin man, aged about thirty, with brown eyes, and a short blonde beard. conversation was at first difficult. personally i am not a bubbling fount of gay nothings when i find myself alone with a comparative stranger. my drawbridge goes up as if by magic, my postern is closed, and i peer cautiously through the narrow slits of my turret to estimate the chances of peril. nor was mr brindley offensively affable. however, we struggled into a kind of chatter. i had come to the five towns, on behalf of the british museum, to inspect and appraise, with a view to purchase by the nation, some huge slip-decorated dishes, excessively curious according to photographs, which had been discovered in the cellars of the conservative club at bursley. having shared in the negotiations for my visit, mr brindley had invited me to spend the night at his house. we were able to talk about all this. and when we had talked about all this we were able to talk about the singular scenery of coal dust, potsherds, flame and steam, through which the train wound its way. it was squalid ugliness, but it was squalid ugliness on a scale so vast and overpowering that it became sublime. great furnaces gleamed red in the twilight, and their fires were reflected in horrible black canals; processions of heavy vapour drifted in all directions across the sky, over what acres of mean and miserable brown architecture! the air was alive with the most extraordinary, weird, gigantic sounds. i do not think the five towns will ever be described: dante lived too soon. as for the erratic and exquisite genius, simon fuge, and his odalisques reclining on silken cushions on the enchanted bosom of a lake--i could no longer conjure them up even faintly in my mind. 'i suppose you know simon fuge is dead?' i remarked, in a pause. 'no! is he?' said mr brindley, with interest. 'is it in the paper?' he did not seem to be quite sure that it would be in the paper. 'here it is,' said i, and i passed him the gazette. 'ha!' he exclaimed explosively. this 'ha!' was entirely different from his 'ah!' something shot across his eyes, something incredibly rapid--too rapid for a wink; yet it could only be called a wink. it was the most subtle transmission of the beyond-speech that i have ever known any man accomplish, and it endeared mr brindley to me. but i knew not its significance. 'what do they think of fuge down here?' i asked. 'i don't expect they think of him,' said my host. he pulled a pouch and a packet of cigarette papers from his pocket. 'have one of mine,' i suggested, hastily producing my case. he did not even glance at its contents. 'no, thanks,' he said curtly. i named my brand. 'my dear sir,' he said, with a return to his kindly exasperation, 'no cigarette that is not fresh made can be called a cigarette.' i stood corrected. 'you may pay as much as you like, but you can never buy cigarettes as good as i can make out of an ounce of fresh b.d.v. tobacco. can you roll one?' i had to admit that i could not, i who in bloomsbury was accepted as an authority on cigarettes as well as on porcelain. 'i'll roll you one, and you shall try it.' he did so. i gathered from his solemnity that cigarettes counted in the life of mr brindley. he could not take cigarettes other than seriously. the worst of it was that he was quite right. the cigarette which he constructed for me out of his wretched b.d.v. tobacco was adorable, and i have made my own cigarettes ever since. you will find b.d.v. tobacco all over the haunts frequented by us of the museum now-a-days, solely owing to the expertise of mr brindley. a terribly capable and positive man! he knew, and he knew that he knew. he said nothing further as to simon fuge. apparently he had forgotten the decease. 'do you often see the gazette?' i asked, perhaps in the hope of attracting him back to fuge. 'no,' he said; 'the musical criticism is too rotten.' involuntarily i bridled. it was startling, and it was not agreeable, to have one's favourite organ so abruptly condemned by a provincial architect in knickerbockers and a cap, in the midst of all that industrial ugliness. what could the five towns know about art? yet here was this fellow condemning the gazette on artistic grounds. i offered no defence, because he was right--again. but i did not like it. 'do you ever see the manchester guardian?' he questioned, carrying the war into my camp. 'no,' i said. 'pity!' he ejaculated. 'i've often heard that it's a very good paper,' i said politely. 'it isn't a very good paper,' he laid me low. 'it's the best paper in the world. try it for a month--it gets to euston at half-past eight--and then tell me what you think.' i saw that i must pull myself together. i had glided into the five towns in a mood of gentle, wise condescension. i saw that it would be as well, for my own honour and safety, to put on another mood as quickly as possible, otherwise i might be left for dead on the field. certainly the fellow was provincial, curt, even brutal in his despisal of diplomacy. certainly he exaggerated the importance of cigarettes in the great secular scheme of evolution. but he was a man; he was a very tonic dose. i thought it would be safer to assume that he knew everything, and that the british museum knew very little. yet at the british museum he had been quite different, quite deferential and rather timid. still, i liked him. i liked his eyes. the train stopped at an incredible station situated in the centre of a rolling desert whose surface consisted of broken pots and cinders. i expect no one to believe this. 'here we are,' said he blithely. 'no, give me the bag. porter!' his summons to the solitary porter was like a clap of thunder. iii he lived in a low, blackish-crimson heavy-browed house at the corner of a street along which electric cars were continually thundering. there was a thin cream of mud on the pavements and about two inches of mud in the roadway, rich, nourishing mud like indian ink half-mixed. the prospect of carrying a pound or so of that unique mud into a civilized house affrighted me, but mr brindley opened his door with his latchkey and entered the abode as unconcernedly as if some fair repentent had cleansed his feet with her tresses. 'don't worry too much about the dirt,' he said. 'you're in bursley.' the house seemed much larger inside than out. a gas-jet burnt in the hall, and sombre portieres gave large mysterious hints of rooms. i could hear, in the distance, the noise of frizzling over a fire, and of a child crying. then a tall, straight, wellmade, energetic woman appeared like a conjuring trick from behind a portiere. 'how do you do, mr loring?' she greeted me, smiling. 'so glad to meet you.' 'my wife,' mr brindley explained gravely. 'now, i may as well tell you now, bob,' said she, still smiling at me. 'bobbie's got a sore throat and it may be mumps; the chimney's been on fire and we're going to be summoned; and you owe me sixpence.' 'why do i owe you sixpence?' 'because annie's had her baby and it's a girl.' 'that's all right. supper ready?' 'supper is waiting for you.' she laughed. 'whenever i have anything to tell my husband, i always tell him at once!' she said. 'no matter who's there.' she pronounced 'once' with a wholehearted enthusiasm for its vowel sound that i have never heard equalled elsewhere, and also with a very magnified 'w' at the beginning of it. often when i hear the word 'once' pronounced in less downright parts of the world, i remember how they pronounce it in the five towns, and there rises up before me a complete picture of the district, its atmosphere, its spirit. mr brindley led me to a large bathroom that had a faint odour of warm linen. in addition to a lot of assorted white babyclothes there were millions of towels in that bathroom. he turned on a tap and the place was instantly full of steam from a jet of boiling water. 'now, then,' he said, 'you can start.' as he showed no intention of leaving me, i did start. 'mind you don't scald yourself,' he warned me, 'that water's hot.' while i was washing, he prepared to wash. i suddenly felt as if i had been intimate with him and his wife for about ten years. 'so this is bursley!' i murmured, taking my mouth out of a towel. 'bosley, we call it,' he said. 'do you know the limerick--"there was a young woman of bosley"?' 'no.' he intoned the local limerick. it was excellently good; not meet for a mixed company, but a genuine delight to the true amateur. one good limerick deserves another. it happened that i knew a number of the unprinted rossetti limericks, precious things, not at all easy to get at. i detailed them to mr brindley, and i do not exaggerate when i say that i impressed him. i recovered all the ground i had lost upon cigarettes and newspapers. he appreciated those limericks with a juster taste than i should have expected. so, afterwards, did his friends. my belief is that i am to this day known and revered in bursley, not as loring the porcelain expert from the british museum, but as the man who first, as it were, brought the good news of the rossetti limericks from ghent to aix. 'now, bob,' an amicable voice shrieked femininely up from the ground-floor, 'am i to send the soup to the bathroom or are you coming down?' a limerick will make a man forget even his dinner. mr brindley performed once more with his eyes that something that was, not a wink, but a wink unutterably refined and spiritualized. this time i comprehended its import. its import was to the effect that women are women. we descended, mr brindley still in his knickerbockers. 'this way,' he said, drawing aside a portiere. mrs brindley, as we entered the room, was trotting a male infant round and round a table charged with everything digestible and indigestible. she handed the child, who was in its nightdress, to a maid. 'say good night to father.' 'good ni', faver,' the interesting creature piped. 'by-bye, sonny,' said the father, stooping to tickle. 'i suppose,' he added, when maid and infant had gone, 'if one's going to have mumps, they may as well all have it together.' 'oh, of course,' the mother agreed cheerfully. 'i shall stick them all into a room.' 'how many children have you?' i inquired with polite curiosity. 'three,' she said; 'that's the eldest that you've seen.' what chiefly struck me about mrs brindley was her serene air of capableness, of having a self-confidence which experience had richly justified. i could see that she must be an extremely sensible mother. and yet she had quite another aspect too--how shall i explain it?--as though she had only had children in her spare time. we sat down. the room was lighted by four candles, on the table. i am rather short-sighted, and so i did not immediately notice that there were low book-cases all round the walls. why the presence of these book-cases should have caused me a certain astonishment i do not know, but it did. i thought of knype station, and the scenery, and then the other little station, and the desert of pots and cinders, and the mud in the road and on the pavement and in the hall, and the baby-linen in the bathroom, and three children all down with mumps, and mr brindley's cap and knickerbockers and cigarettes; and somehow the books--i soon saw there were at least a thousand of them, and not circulating-library books, either, but books--well, they administered a little shock to me. to mr brindley's right hand was a bottle of bass and a corkscrew. 'beer!' he exclaimed, with solemn ecstasy, with an ecstasy gross and luscious. and, drawing the cork, he poured out a glass, with fine skill in the management of froth, and pushed it towards me. 'no, thanks,' i said. 'no beer!' he murmured, with benevolent, puzzled disdain. 'whisky?' 'no, thanks,' i said. 'water.' '_i_ know what mr loring would like,' said mrs brindley, jumping up. 'i know what mr loring would like.' she opened a cupboard and came back to the table with a bottle, which she planted in front of me. 'wouldn't you, mr loring?' it was a bottle of mercurey, a wine which has given me many dreadful dawns, but which i have never known how to refuse. 'i should,' i admitted; 'but it's very bad for me.' 'nonsense!' said she. she looked at her husband in triumph. 'beer!' repeated mr brindley with undiminished ecstasy, and drank about two-thirds of a glass at one try. then he wiped the froth from his moustache. 'ah!' he breathed low and soft. 'beer!' they called the meal supper. the term is inadequate. no term that i can think of would be adequate. of its kind the thing was perfect. mrs brindley knew that it was perfect. mr brindley also knew that it was perfect. there were prawns in aspic. i don't know why i should single out that dish, except that it seemed strange to me to have crossed the desert of pots and cinders in order to encounter prawns in aspic. mr brindley ate more cold roast beef than i had ever seen any man eat before, and more pickled walnuts. it is true that the cold roast beef transcended all the cold roast beef of my experience. mrs brindley regaled herself largely on trifle, which mr brindley would not approach, preferring a most glorious stilton cheese. i lost touch, temporarily, with the intellectual life. it was mr brindley who recalled me to it. 'jane,' he said. (this was at the beef and pickles stage.) no answer. 'jane!' mrs brindley turned to me. 'my name is not jane,' she said, laughing, and making a moue simultaneously. 'he only calls me that to annoy me. i told him i wouldn't answer to it, and i won't. he thinks i shall give in because we've got "company"! but i won't treat you as "company", mr loring, and i shall expect you to take my side. what dreadful weather we're having, aren't we?' 'dreadful!' i joined in the game. 'jane!' 'did you have a comfortable journey down?' 'yes, thank you.' 'well, then, mary!' mr brindley yielded. 'thank you very much, mr loring, for your kind assistance,' said his wife. 'yes, dearest?' mr brindley glanced at me over his second glass of beer. 'if those confounded kids are going to have mumps,' he addressed his words apparently into the interior of the glass, 'it probably means the doctor, and the doctor means money, and i shan't be able to afford the hortulus animoe.' i opened my ears. 'my husband goes stark staring mad sometimes,' said mrs brindley to me. 'it lasts for a week or so, and pretty nearly lands us in the workhouse. this time it's the hortulus animoe. do you know what it is? i don't.' 'no,' i said, and the prestige of the british museum trembled. then i had a vague recollection. 'there's an illuminated manuscript of that name in the imperial library of vienna, isn't there?' 'you've got it in one,' said mr brindley. 'wife, pass those walnuts.' 'you aren't by any chance buying it?' i laughed. 'no,' he said. 'a johnny at utrecht is issuing a facsimile of it, with all the hundred odd miniatures in colour. it will be the finest thing in reproduction ever done. only seventy-five copies for england.' 'how much?' i asked. 'well,' said he, with a preliminary look at his wife,'thirty-three pounds.' 'thirty-three pounds!' she screamed. 'you never told me.' 'my wife never will understand,' said mr brindley, 'that complete confidence between two human beings is impossible.' 'i shall go out as a milliner, that's all,' mrs brindley returned. 'remember, the dictionary of national biography isn't paid for yet.' 'i'm glad i forgot that, otherwise i shouldn't have ordered the hortulus.' 'you've not ordered it?' 'yes, i have. it'll be here tomorrow--at least the first part will.' mrs brindley affected to fall back dying in her chair. 'quite mad!' she complained to me. 'quite mad. it's a hopeless case.' but obviously she was very proud of the incurable lunatic. 'but you're a book-collector!' i exclaimed, so struck by these feats of extravagance in a modest house that i did not conceal my amazement. 'did you think i collected postage-stamps?' the husband retorted. 'no, _i_'m not a book-collector, but our doctor is. he has a few books, if you like. still, i wouldn't swop him; he's much too fond of fashionable novels.' 'you know you're always up his place,' said the wife; 'and i wonder what _i_ should do if it wasn't for the doctor's novels!' the doctor was evidently a favourite of hers. 'i'm not always up at his place,' the husband contradicted. 'you know perfectly well i never go there before midnight. and he knows perfectly well that i only go because he has the best whisky in the town. by the way, i wonder whether he knows that simon fuge is dead. he's got one of his etchings. i'll go up.' 'who's simon fuge?' asked mrs brindley. 'don't you remember old fuge that kept the blue bell at cauldon?' 'what? simple simon?' 'yes. well, his son.' 'oh! i remember. he ran away from home once, didn't he, and his mother had a port-wine stain on her left cheek? oh, of course. i remember him perfectly. he came down to the five towns some years ago for his aunt's funeral. so he's dead. who told you?' 'mr loring.' 'did you know him?' she glanced at me. 'i scarcely knew him,' said i. 'i saw it in the paper.' 'what, the signal?' 'the signal's the local rag,' mr brindley interpolated. 'no. it's in the gazette.' 'the birmingham gazette?' 'no, bright creature--the gazette,' said mr brindley. 'oh!' she seemed puzzled. 'didn't you know he was a painter?' the husband condescendingly catechized. 'i knew he used to teach at the hanbridge school of art,' said mrs brindley stoutly. 'mother wouldn't let me go there because of that. then he got the sack.' 'poor defenceless thing! how old were you?' 'seventeen, i expect.' 'i'm much obliged to your mother.' 'where did he die?' mrs brindley demanded. 'at san remo,' i answered. 'seems queer him dying at san remo in september, doesn't it?' 'why?' 'san remo is a winter place. no one ever goes there before december.' 'oh, is it?' the lady murmured negligently. 'then that would be just like simon fuge. _i_ was never afraid of him,' she added, in a defiant tone, and with a delicious inconsequence that choked her husband in the midst of a draught of beer. 'you can laugh,' she said sturdily. at that moment there was heard a series of loud explosive sounds in the street. they continued for a few seconds apparently just outside the dining-room window. then they stopped, and the noise of the bumping electric cars resumed its sway over the ear. 'that's oliver!' said mr brindley, looking at his watch. 'he must have come from manchester in an hour and a half. he's a terror.' 'glass! quick!' mrs brindley exclaimed. she sprang to the sideboard, and seized a tumbler, which mr brindley filled from a second bottle of bass. when the door of the room opened she was standing close to it, laughing, with the full, frothing glass in her hand. a tall, thin man, rather younger than mr brindley and his wife, entered. he wore a long dust-coat and leggings, and he carried a motorist's cap in a great hand. no one spoke; but little puffs of laughter escaped all mrs brindley's efforts to imprison her mirth. then the visitor took the glass with a magnificent broad smile, and said, in a rich and heavy midland voice-- 'here's to moy wife's husband!' and drained the nectar. 'feel better now, don't you?' mrs brindley inquired. 'aye, mrs bob, i do!' was the reply. 'how do, bob?' 'how do?' responded my host laconically. and then with gravity: 'mr loring--mr oliver colclough--thinks he knows something about music.' 'glad to meet you, sir,' said mr colclough, shaking hands with me. he had a most attractively candid smile, but he was so long and lanky that he seemed to pervade the room like an omnipresence. 'sit down and have a bit of cheese, oliver,' said mrs brindley, as she herself sat down. 'no, thanks, mrs bob. i must be getting towards home.' he leaned on her chair. 'trifle, then?' 'no, thanks.' 'machine going all right?' 'like oil. never stopped th' engine once.' 'did you get the sinfonia domestica, ol?' mr brindley inquired. 'didn't i say as i should get it, bob?' 'you said you would.' 'well, i've got it.' 'in manchester?' 'of course.' mr brindley's face shone with desire and mr oliver colclough's face shone with triumph. 'where is it?' 'in the hall.' 'my hall?' 'aye!' 'we'll play it, ol.' 'no, really, bob! i can't stop now. i promised the wife--' 'we'll play it, ol! you'd no business to make promises. besides, suppose you'd had a puncture!' 'i expect you've heard strauss's sinfonia domestica, mr loring, up in the village?' mr colclough addressed me. he had surrendered to the stronger will. 'in london?' i said. 'no. but i've heard of it.' 'bob and i heard it in manchester last week, and we thought it 'ud be a bit of a lark to buy the arrangement for pianoforte duet.' 'come and listen to it,' said mr brindley. 'that is, if nobody wants any more beer.' iv the drawing-room was about twice as large as the dining-room, and it contained about four times as much furniture. once again there were books all round the walls. a grand piano, covered with music, stood in a corner, and behind was a cabinet full of bound music. mr brindley, seated on one corner of the bench in front of the piano, cut the leaves of the sinfonia domestica. 'it's the devil!' he observed. 'aye, lad!' agreed mr colclough, standing over him. 'it's difficult.' 'come on,' said mr. brindley, when he had finished cutting. 'better take your dust-coat off, hadn't you?' mrs brindley suggested to the friend. she and i were side by side on a sofa at the other end of the room. 'i may as well,' mr colclough admitted, and threw the long garment on to a chair. 'look here, bob, my hands are stiff with steering.' 'don't find fault with your tools,' said mr brindley; 'and sit down. no, my boy, i'm going to play the top part. shove along.' 'i want to play the top part because it's easiest,' mr colclough grumbled. 'how often have i told you the top part is never easiest? who do you suppose is going to keep this symphony together--you or me?' 'sorry i spoke.' they arranged themselves on the bench, and mr brindley turned up the lower corners of every alternate leaf of the music. 'now,' said he. 'ready?' 'let her zip,' said mr colclough. they began to play. and then the door opened, and a servant, whose white apron was starched as stiff as cardboard, came in carrying a tray of coffee and unholy liqueurs, which she deposited with a rattle on a small table near the hostess. 'curse!' muttered mr brindley, and stopped. 'life's very complex, ain't it, bob?' mr colclough murmured. 'aye, lad.' the host glanced round to make sure that the rattling servant had entirely gone. 'now start again.' 'wait a minute, wait a minute!' cried mrs brindley excitedly. 'i'm just pouring out mr loring's coffee. there!' as she handed me the cup she whispered, 'we daren't talk. it's more than our place is worth.' the performance of the symphony proceeded. to me, who am not a performer, it sounded excessively brilliant and incomprehensible. mr colclough stretched his right hand to turn over the page, and fumbled it. another stoppage. 'damn you, ol!' mr brindley exploded. 'i wish you wouldn't make yourself so confoundedly busy. leave the turning to me. it takes a great artist to turn over, and you're only a blooming chauffeur. we'll begin again.' 'sackcloth!' mr colclough whispered. i could not estimate the length of the symphony; but my impression was one of extreme length. halfway through it the players both took their coats off. there was no other surcease. 'what dost think of it, bob?' asked mr colclough in the weird silence that reigned after they had finished. they were standing up and putting on their coats and wiping their faces. 'i think what i thought before,' said mr brindley. 'it's childish.' 'it isn't childish,' the other protested. 'it's ugly, but it isn't childish.' 'it's childishly clever,' mr brindley modified his description. he did not ask my opinion. 'coffee's cold,' said mrs brindley. 'i don't want any coffee. give me some chartreuse, please. have a drop o' green, ol?' 'a split soda 'ud be more in my line. besides, i'm just going to have my supper. never mind, i'll have a drop, missis, and chance it. i've never tried chartreuse as an appetizer.' at this point commenced a sanguinary conflict of wills to settle whether or not i also should indulge in green chartreuse. i was defeated. besides the chartreuse, i accepted a cigar. never before or since have i been such a buck. 'i must hook it,' said mr colclough, picking up his dust-coat. 'not yet you don't,' said mr brindley. 'i've got to get the taste of that infernal strauss out of my mouth. we'll play the first movement of the g minor? la-la-la--la-la-la--la-la-la-ta.' he whistled a phrase. mr colclough obediently sat down again to the piano. the mozart was like an idyll after a farcical melodrama. they played it with an astounding delicacy. through the latter half of the movement i could hear mr brindley breathing regularly and heavily through his nose, exactly as though he were being hypnotized. i had a tickling sensation in the small of my back, a sure sign of emotion in me. the atmosphere was changed. 'what a heavenly thing!' i exclaimed enthusiastically, when they had finished. mr brindley looked at me sharply, and just nodded in silence. well, good night, ol.' 'i say,' said mr colclough; 'if you've nothing doing later on, bring mr loring round to my place. will you come, mr loring? do! us'll have a drink.' these five towns people certainly had a simple, sincere way of offering hospitality that was quite irresistible. one could see that hospitality was among their chief and keenest pleasures. we all went to the front door to see mr colclough depart homewards in his automobile. the two great acetylene head-lights sent long glaring shafts of light down the side street. mr colclough, throwing the score of the sinfonia domestica into the tonneau of the immense car, put on a pair of gloves and began to circulate round the machine, tapping here, screwing there, as chauffeurs will. then he bent down in front to start the engine. 'by the way, ol,' mr brindley shouted from the doorway, 'it seems simon fuge is dead.' we could see the man's stooping form between the two head-lights. he turned his head towards the house. 'who the dagger is simon fuge?' he inquired. 'there's about five thousand fuges in th' five towns.' 'oh! i thought you knew him.' 'i might, and i mightn't. it's not one o' them fuge brothers saggar-makers at longshaw, is it?' 'no, it's--' mr colclough had succeeded in starting his engine, and the air was rent with gun-shots. he jumped lightly into the driver's seat. 'well, see you later,' he cried, and was off, persuading the enormous beast under him to describe a semicircle in the narrow street backing, forcing forward, and backing again, to the accompaniment of the continuous fusillade. at length he got away, drew up within two feet of an electric tram that slid bumping down the main street, and vanished round the corner. a little ragged boy passed, crying, 'signal, extra,' and mr brindley hailed him. 'what is mr colclough?' i asked in the drawing-room. 'manufacturer--sanitary ware,' said mr brindley. 'he's got one of the best businesses in hanbridge. i wish i'd half his income. never buys a book, you know.' 'he seems to play the piano very well.' 'well, as to that, he doesn't what you may call play, but he's the best sight-reader in this district, bar me. i never met his equal. when you come across any one who can read a thing like the domestic symphony right off and never miss his place, you might send me a telegram. colclough's got a steinway. wish i had.' mrs brindley had been looking through the signal. 'i don't see anything about simon fuge here,' said she. 'oh, nonsense!' said her husband. 'buchanan's sure to have got something in about it. let's look.' he received the paper from his wife, but failed to discover in it a word concerning the death of simon fuge. 'dashed if i don't ring buchanan up and ask him what he means! here's a paper with an absolute monopoly in the district, and brings in about five thousand a year clear to somebody, and it doesn't give the news! there never is anything but advertisements and sporting results in the blessed thing.' he rushed to his telephone, which was in the hall. or rather, he did not rush; he went extremely quickly, with aggressive footsteps that seemed to symbolize just retribution. we could hear him at the telephone. 'hello! no. yes. is that you, buchanan? well, i want mr buchanan. is that you, buchanan? yes, i'm all right. what in thunder do you mean by having nothing in tonight about simon fuge's death? eh? yes, the gazette. well, i suppose you aren't scotch for nothing. why the devil couldn't you stop in scotland and edit papers there?' then a laugh. 'i see. yes. what did you think of those cigars? oh! see you at the dinner. ta-ta.' a final ring. 'the real truth is, he wanted some advice as to the tone of his obituary notice,' said mr brindley, coming back into the drawing-room. 'he's got it, seemingly. he says he's writing it now, for tomorrow. he didn't put in the mere news of the death, because it was exclusive to the gazette, and he's been having some difficulty with the gazette lately. as he says, tomorrow afternoon will be quite soon enough for the five towns. it isn't as if simon fuge was a cricket match. so now you see how the wheels go round, mr loring.' he sat down to the piano and began to play softly the castle motive from the nibelung's ring. he kept repeating it in different keys. 'what about the mumps, wife?' he asked mrs brindley, who had been out of the room and now returned. 'oh! i don't think it is mumps,' she replied. 'they're all asleep.' 'good!' he murmured, still playing the castle motive. 'talking of simon fuge,' i said determined to satisfy my curiosity, 'who were the two sisters?' 'what two sisters?' 'that he spent the night in the boat with, on ilam lake.' 'was that in the gazette? i didn't read all the article.' he changed abruptly into the sword motive, which he gave with a violent flourish, and then he left the piano. 'i do beg you not to wake my children,' said his wife. 'your children must get used to my piano,' said he. 'now, then, what about these two sisters?' i pulled the gazette from my pocket and handed it to him. he read aloud the passage describing the magic night on the lake. '_i_ don't know who they were,' he said. 'probably something tasty from the hanbridge empire.' we both observed a faint, amused smile on the face of mrs brindley, the smile of a woman who has suddenly discovered in her brain a piece of knowledge rare and piquant. 'i can guess who they were,' she said. 'in fact, i'm sure.' 'who?' 'annie brett and--you know who.' 'what, down at the tiger?' 'certainly. hush!' mrs brindley ran to the door and, opening it, listened. the faint, fretful cry of a child reached us. 'there! you've done it! i told you you would!' she disappeared. mr brindley whistled. 'and who is annie brett?' i inquired. 'look here,' said he, with a peculiar inflection. 'would you like to see her?' 'i should,' i said with decision. 'well, come on, then. we'll go down to the tiger and have a drop of something.' 'and the other sister?' i asked. 'the other sister is mrs oliver colclough,' he answered. 'curious, ain't it?' again there was that swift, scarcely perceptible phenomenon in his eyes. v we stood at the corner of the side-street and the main road, and down the main road a vast, white rectangular cube of bright light came plunging--its head rising and dipping--at express speed, and with a formidable roar. mr brindley imperiously raised his stick; the extraordinary box of light stopped as if by a miracle, and we jumped into it, having splashed through mud, and it plunged off again--bump, bump, bump--into the town of bursley. as mr brindley passed into the interior of the car, he said laconically to two men who were smoking on the platform-- 'how do, jim? how do, jo?' and they responded laconically-- 'how do, bob?' 'how do, bob?' we sat down. mr brindley pointed to the condition of the floor. 'cheerful, isn't it?' he observed to me, shouting above the din of vibrating glass. our fellow-passengers were few and unromantic, perhaps half-a-dozen altogether on the long, shiny, yellow seats of the car, each apparently lost in gloomy reverie. 'it's the advertisements and notices in these cars that are the joy of the super-man like you and me,' shouted mr brindley. 'look there, "passengers are requested not to spit on the floor." simply an encouragement to lie on the seats and spit on the ceiling, isn't it? "wear only noble's wonderful boots." suppose we did! unless they came well up above the waist we should be prosecuted. but there's no sense of humour in this district.' greengrocers' shops and public-houses were now flying past the windows of the car. it began to climb a hill, and then halted. 'here we are!' ejaculated mr brindley. and he was out of the car almost before i had risen. we strolled along a quiet street, and came to a large building with many large lighted windows, evidently some result of public effort. 'what's that place?' i demanded. 'that's the wedgwood institution.' 'oh! so that's the wedgwood institution, is it?' 'yes. commonly called the wedgwood. museum, reading-room, public library--dirtiest books in the world, i mean physically--art school, science school. i've never explained to you why i'm chairman of the management committee, have i? well, it's because the institution is meant to foster the arts, and i happen to know nothing about 'em. i needn't tell you that architecture, literature, and music are not arts within the meaning of the act. not much! like to come in and see the museum for a minute? you'll have to see it in your official capacity tomorrow.' we crossed the road, and entered an imposing portico. just as we did so a thick stream of slouching men began to descend the steps, like a waterfall of treacle. mr brindley they appeared to see, but evidently i made no impression on their retinas. they bore down the steps, hands deep in pockets, sweeping over me like fate. even when i bounced off one of them to a lower step, he showed by no sign that the fact of my existence had reached his consciousness--simply bore irresistibly downwards. the crowd was absolutely silent. at last i gained the entrance hall. 'it's closing-time for the reading room,' said mr brindley. 'i'm glad i survived it,' i said. 'the truth is,' said he, 'that people who can't look after themselves don't flourish in these latitudes. but you'll be acclimatized by tomorrow. see that?' he pointed to an alabaster tablet on which was engraved a record of the historical certainty that mr gladstone opened the institution in , also an extract from the speech which he delivered on that occasion. 'what do you think of gladstone down here?' i demanded. 'in my official capacity i think that these deathless words are the last utterance of wisdom on the subject of the influence of the liberal arts on life. and i should advise you, in your official capacity, to think the same, unless you happen to have a fancy for having your teeth knocked down your throat.' 'i see,' i said, not sure how to take him. 'lest you should go away with the idea that you have been visiting a rude and barbaric people, i'd better explain that that was a joke. as a matter of fact, we're rather enlightened here. the only man who stands a chance of getting his teeth knocked down his throat here is the ingenious person who started the celebrated legend of the man-and-dog fight at hanbridge. it's a long time ago, a very long time ago; but his grey hairs won't save him from horrible tortures if we catch him. we don't mind being called immoral, we're above a bit flattered when london newspapers come out with shocking details of debauchery in the five towns, but we pride ourselves on our manners. i say, aked!' his voice rose commandingly, threateningly, to an old bent, spectacled man who was ascending a broad white staircase in front of us. 'sir!' the man turned. 'don't turn the lights out yet in the museum.' 'no, sir! are you coming up?' the accents were slow and tremulous. 'yes. i have a gentleman here from the british museum who wants to look round.' the oldish man came deliberately down the steps, and approached us. then his gaze, beginning at my waist, gradually rose to my hat. 'from the british museum?' he drawled. 'i'm sure i'm very glad to meet you, sir. i'm sure it's a very great honour.' he held out a wrinkled hand, which i shook. 'mr aked,' said mr brindley, by way of introduction. 'been caretaker here for pretty near forty years.' 'ever since it opened, sir,' said aked. we went up the white stone stairway, rather a grandiose construction for a little industrial town. it divided itself into doubling curving flights at the first landing, and its walls were covered with pictures and designs. the museum itself, a series of three communicating rooms, was about as large as a pocket-handkerchief. 'quite small,' i said. i gave my impression candidly, because i had already judged mr brindley to be the rare and precious individual who is worthy of the high honour of frankness. 'do you think so?' he demanded quickly. i had shocked him, that was clear. his tone was unmistakable; it indicated an instinctive, involuntary protest. but he recovered himself in a flash. 'that's jealousy,' he laughed. 'all you british museum people are the same.' then he added, with an unsuccessful attempt to convince me that he meant what he was saying: 'of course it is small. it's nothing, simply nothing.' yes, i had unwittingly found the joint in the armour of this extraordinary midland personage. with all his irony, with all his violent humour, with all his just and unprejudiced perceptions, he had a tenderness for the institution of which he was the dictator. he loved it. he could laugh like a god at everything in the five towns except this one thing. he would try to force himself to regard even this with the same lofty detachment, but he could not do it naturally. i stopped at a case of wedgwood ware, marked 'perkins collection.' 'by jove!' i exclaimed, pointing to a vase. 'what a body!' he was enchanted by my enthusiasm. 'funny you should have hit on that,' said he. 'old daddy perkins always called it his ewe-lamb.' thus spoken, the name of the greatest authority on wedgwood ware that europe has ever known curiously impressed me. 'i suppose you knew him?' i questioned. 'considering that i was one of the pall-bearers at his funeral, and caught the champion cold of my life!' 'what sort of a man was he?' 'outside wedgwood ware he wasn't any sort of a man. he was that scourge of society, a philanthropist,' said mr brindley. 'he was an upright citizen, and two thousand people followed him to his grave. i'm an upright citizen, but i have no hope that two thousand people will follow me to my grave.' 'you never know what may happen,' i observed, smiling. 'no.' he shook his head. 'if you undermine the moral character of your fellow-citizens by a long course of unbridled miscellaneous philanthropy, you can have a funeral procession as long as you like, at the rate of about forty shillings a foot. but you'll never touch the great heart of the enlightened public of these boroughs in any other way. do you imagine anyone cared a twopenny damn for perkins's wedgwood ware?' 'it's like that everywhere,' i said. 'i suppose it is,' he assented unwillingly. who can tell what was passing in the breast of mr brindley? i could not. at least i could not tell with any precision. i could only gather, vaguely, that what he considered the wrong-headedness, the blindness, the lack of true perception, of his public was beginning to produce in his individuality a faint trace of permanent soreness. i regretted it. and i showed my sympathy with him by asking questions about the design and construction of the museum (a late addition to the institution), of which i happened to know that he had been the architect. he at once became interested and interesting. although he perhaps insisted a little too much on the difficulties which occur when original talent encounters stupidity, he did, as he walked me up and down, contrive to convey to me a notion of the creative processes of the architect in a way that was in my experience entirely novel. he was impressing me anew, and i was wondering whether he was unique of his kind or whether there existed regiments of him in this strange parcel of england. 'now, you see this girder,' he said, looking upwards. that's surely something of fuge's, isn't it?' i asked, indicating a small picture in a corner, after he had finished his explanation of the functions of the girder. as on the walls of the staircase and corridors, so on the walls here, there were many paintings, drawings, and engravings. and of course the best were here in the museum. the least uninteresting items of the collection were, speaking generally, reproductions in monotint of celebrated works, and a few second--or third-rate loan pictures from south kensington. aside from such matters i had noticed nothing but the usual local trivialities, gifts from one citizen or another, travel-jottings of some art-master, careful daubs of apt students without a sense of humour. the aspect of the place was exactly the customary aspect of the small provincial museum, as i have seen it in half-a-hundred towns that are not among 'the great towns'. it had the terrible trite 'museum' aspect, the aspect that brings woe and desolation to the heart of the stoutest visitor, and which seems to form part of the purgatorio of bank-holidays, wide mouths, and stiff clothes. the movement for opening museums on sundays is the most natural movement that could be conceived. for if ever a resort was invented and fore-ordained to chime with the true spirit of the british sabbath, that resort is the average museum. i ought to know. i do know. but there was the incomparable wedgwood ware, and there was the little picture by simon fuge. i am not going to lose my sense of perspective concerning simon fuge. he was not the greatest painter that ever lived, or even of his time. he had, i am ready to believe, very grave limitations. but he was a painter by himself, as all fine painters are. he had his own vision. he was unique. he was exclusively preoccupied with the beauty and the romance of the authentic. the little picture showed all this. it was a painting, unfinished, of a girl standing at a door and evidently hesitating whether to open the door or not: a very young girl, very thin, with long legs in black stockings, and short, white, untidy frock; thin bare arms; the head thrown on one side, and the hands raised, and one foot raised, in a wonderful childish gesture--the gesture of an undecided fox-terrier. the face was an infant's face, utterly innocent; and yet simon fuge had somehow caught in that face a glimpse of all the future of the woman that the girl was to be, he had displayed with exquisite insolence the essential naughtiness of his vision of things. the thing was not much more than a sketch; it was a happy accident, perhaps, in some day's work of simon fuge's. but it was genius. when once you had yielded to it, there was no other picture in the room. it killed everything else. but, wherever it had found itself, nothing could have killed it. its success was undeniable, indestructible. and it glowed sombrely there on the wall, a few splashes of colour on a morsel of canvas, and it was simon fuge's unconscious, proud challenge to the five towns. it was simon fuge, at any rate all of simon fuge that was worth having, masterful, imperishable. and not merely was it his challenge, it was his scorn, his aristocratic disdain, his positive assurance that in the battle between them he had annihilated the five towns. it hung there in the very midst thereof, calmly and contemptuously waiting for the acknowledgement of his victory. 'which?' said mr brindley. that one.' 'yes, i fancy it is,' he negligently agreed. 'yes, it is.' 'it's not signed,' i remarked. 'it ought to be,' said mr brindley; then laughed, 'too late now!' 'how did it get here?' 'don't know. oh! i think mr perkins won it in a raffle at a bazaar, and then hung it here. he did as he liked here, you know.' i was just going to become vocal in its praise, when mr brindley said-- 'that thing under it is a photograph of a drinking-cup for which one of our pupils won a national scholarship last year!' mr aked appeared in the distance. 'i fancy the old boy wants to be off to bed,' mr brindley whispered kindly. so we left the wedgwood institution. i began to talk to mr brindley about music. the barbaric attitude of the five towns towards great music was the theme of some very lively animadversions on his part. vi the tiger was very conveniently close to the wedgwood institution. the tiger had a 'yard', one of those long, shapeless expanses of the planet, partly paved with uneven cobbles and partly unsophisticated planet, without which no provincial hotel can call itself respectable. we came into it from the hinterland through a wooden doorway in a brick wall. far off i could see one light burning. we were in the centre of bursley, the gold angel of its town hall rose handsomely over the roof of the hotel in the diffused moonlight, but we might have been in the purlieus of some dubious establishment on the confines of a great seaport, where anything may happen. the yard was so deserted, so mysterious, so shut in, so silent, that, really, infamous characters ought to have rushed out at us from the obscurity of shadows, and felled us to the earth with no other attendant phenomenon than a low groan. there are places where one seems to feel how thin and brittle is the crust of law and order. why one should be conscious of this in the precincts of such a house as the tiger, which i was given to understand is as respectable as the parish church, i do not know. but i have experienced a similar feeling in the yards of other provincial hotels that were also as correct as parish churches. we passed a dim fly, with its shafts slanting forlornly to the ground, and a wheelbarrow. both looked as though they had been abandoned for ever. then we came to the lamp, which illuminated a door, and on the door was a notice: 'private bar. billiards.' i am not a frequenter of convivial haunts. i should not dare to penetrate alone into a private bar; when i do enter a private bar it is invariably under the august protection of an habitue, and it is invariably with the idea that at last i am going to see life. often has this illusion been shattered, but each time it perfectly renewed itself. so i followed the bold mr brindley into the private bar of the tiger. it was a small and low room. i instinctively stooped, though there was no necessity for me to stoop. the bar had no peculiarity. it can be described in a breath: three perpendicular planes. back plane, bottles arranged exactly like books on bookshelves; middle plane, the upper halves of two women dressed in tight black; front plane, a counter, dotted with glasses, and having strange areas of zinc. reckon all that as the stage, and the rest of the room as auditorium. but the stage of a private bar is more mysterious than the stage of a theatre. you are closer to it, and yet it is far less approachable. the edge of the counter is more sacred than the footlights. impossible to imagine yourself leaping over it. impossible to imagine yourself in that cloistered place behind it. impossible to imagine how the priestesses got themselves into that place, or that they ever leave it. they are always there; they are always the same. you may go into a theatre when it is empty and dark; but did you ever go into a private bar that was empty and dark? a private bar is as eternal as the hills, as changeless as the monomania of a madman, as mysterious as sorcery. always the same order of bottles, the same tinkling, the same popping, the same time-tables, and the same realistic pictures of frothing champagne on the walls, the same advertisements on the same ash-trays on the counter, the same odour that wipes your face like a towel the instant you enter; and the same smiles, the same gestures, the same black fabric stretched to tension over the same impressive mammiferous phenomena of the same inexplicable creatures who apparently never eat and never sleep, imprisoned for life in the hallowed and mystic hollow between the bottles and the zinc. in a tone almost inaudible in its discretion, mr brindley let fall to me as he went in-- this is she.' she was not quite the ordinary barmaid. nor, as i learnt afterwards, was she considered to be the ordinary barmaid. she was something midway in importance between the wife of the new proprietor and the younger woman who stood beside her in the cloister talking to a being that resembled a commercial traveller. it was the younger woman who was the ordinary barmaid; she had bright hair, and the bright vacant stupidity which, in my narrow experience, barmaids so often catch like an infectious disease from their clients. but annie brett was different. i can best explain how she impressed me by saying that she had the mien of a handsome married woman of forty with a coquettish and superficially emotional past, but also with a daughter who is just going into long skirts. i have known one or two such women. they have been beautiful; they are still handsome at a distance of twelve feet. they are rather effusive; they think they know life, when as a fact their instinctive repugnance for any form of truth has prevented them from acquiring even the rudiments of the knowledge of life. they are secretly preoccupied by the burning question of obesity. they flatter, and they will pay any price for flattery. they are never sincere, not even with themselves; they never, during the whole of their existence, utter a sincere word, even in anger they coldly exaggerate. they are always frothing at the mouth with ecstasy. they adore everything, including god; go to church carrying a prayer-book and hymn-book in separate volumes, and absolutely fawn on the daughter. they are stylish--and impenetrable. but there is something about them very wistful and tragic. in another social stratum, miss annie brett might have been such a woman. without doubt nature had intended her for the role. she was just a little ample, with broad shoulders and a large head and a lot of dark chestnut hair; a large mouth, and large teeth. she had earrings, a brooch, and several rings; also a neat originality of cuffs that would not have been permitted to an ordinary barmaid. as for her face, there were crow's-feet, and a mole (which had selected with infinite skill a site on her chin), and a general degeneracy of complexion; but it was an effective face. the little thing of twenty-three or so by her side had all the cruel advantages of youth and was not ugly; but she was 'killed' by annie brett. miss brett had a maternal bust. indeed, something of the maternal resided in all of her that was visible above the zinc. she must have been about forty; that is to say, apparently older than the late simon fuge. nevertheless, i could conceive her, even now, speciously picturesque in a boat at midnight on a moonstruck water. had she been on the stage she would have been looking forward to ingenue parts for another five years yet--such was her durable sort of effectiveness. yes, she indubitably belonged to the ornamental half of the universe. 'so this is one of them!' i said to myself. i tried to be philosophical; but at heart i was profoundly disappointed. i did not know what i had expected; but i had not expected that. i was well aware that a thing written always takes on a quality which does not justly appertain to it. i had not expected, therefore, to see an odalisque, a houri, an ideal toy or the remains of an ideal toy; i had not expected any kind of obvious brilliancy, nor a subtle charm that would haunt my memory for evermore. on the other hand, i had not expected the banal, the perfectly commonplace. and i think that miss annie brett was the most banal person that it has pleased fate to send into my life. i knew that instantly. she was a condemnation of simon fuge. she, one of the 'wonderful creatures who had played so large a part' in the career of simon fuge! sapristi! still, she was one of the wonderful creatures, etc. she had floated o'er the bosom of the lake with a great artist. she had received his homage. she had stirred his feelings. she had shared with him the magic of the night. i might decry her as i would; she had known how to cast a spell over him--she and the other one! something there in her which had captured him and, seemingly, held him captive. 'good-evening, mr brindley,' she expanded. 'you're quite a stranger.' and she embraced me also in the largeness of her welcome. 'it just happens,' said mr brindley, 'that i was here last night. but you weren't.' 'were you now!' she exclaimed, as though learning a novel fact of the most passionate interest. the truth is, i had to leave the bar to miss slaney last night. mrs moorcroft was ill--and the baby only six weeks old, you know--and i wouldn't leave her. no, i wouldn't.' it was plain that in miss annie brett's opinion there was only one really capable intelligence in the tiger. this glimpse of her capability, this out-leaping of the latent maternal in her, completely destroyed for the moment my vision of her afloat on the bosom of the lake. 'i see,' said mr brindley kindly. then he turned to me with characteristic abruptness. 'well, give it a name, mr loring.' such is my simplicity that i did not immediately comprehend his meaning. for a fraction of a second i thought of the baby. then i perceived that he was merely employing one of the sacred phrases, sanctified by centuries of usage, of the private bar. i had already drunk mercurey, green chartreuse, and coffee. i had a violent desire not to drink anything more. i knew my deplorable tomorrows. still, i would have drunk hot milk, cold water, soda water, or tea. why should i not have had what i did not object to having? herein lies another mystery of the private bar. one could surely order tea or milk or soda water from a woman who left everything to tend a mother with a six-weeks-old baby! but no. one could not. as miss annie brett smiled at me pointedly, and rubbed her ringed hands, and kept on smiling with her terrific mechanical effusiveness, i lost all my self control; i would have resigned myself to a hundred horrible tomorrows under the omnipotent, inexplicable influence of the private bar. i ejaculated, as though to the manner born-- 'irish.' it proved to have been rather clever of me, showing as it did a due regard for convention combined with a pretty idiosyncrasy. mr brindley was clearly taken aback. the idea struck him as a new one. he reflected, and then enthusiastically exclaimed-- 'dashed if i don't have irish too!' and miss brett, delighted by this unexpected note of irish in the long, long symphony of scotch, charged our glasses with gusto. i sipped, death in my heart, and rakishness in my face and gesture. mr brindley raised his glass respectfully to miss annie brett, and i did the same. those two were evidently good friends. she led the conversation with hard, accustomed ease. when i say 'hard' i do not in the least mean unsympathetic. but her sympathetic quality was toughened by excessive usage, like the hand of a charwoman. she spoke of the vagaries of the town hall clock, the health of mr brindley's children, the price of coal, the incidence of the annual wakes, the bankruptcy of the draper next door, and her own sciatica, all in the same tone of metallic tender solicitude. mr brindley adopted an entirely serious attitude towards her. if i had met him there and nowhere else i should have taken him for a dignified mediocrity, little better than a fool, but with just enough discretion not to give himself away. i said nothing. i was shy. i always am shy in a bar. out of her cold, cold roving eye miss brett watched me, trying to add me up and not succeeding. she must have perceived, however, that i was not like a fish in water. there was a pause in the talk, due, i think, to miss annie brett's preoccupation with what was going on between miss slaney, the ordinary barmaid, and her commercial traveller. the commercial traveller, if he was one, was reading something from a newspaper to miss slaney in an indistinct murmur, and with laughter in his voice. 'by the way,' said mr brindley, 'you used to know simon fuge, didn't you?' 'old simon fuge!' said miss brett. 'yes; after the brewery company took the blue bell at cauldon over from him, i used to be there. he would come in sometimes. such a nice queer old man!' 'i mean the son,' said mr brindley. 'oh yes,' she answered. 'i knew young mr simon too.' a slight hesitation, and then: 'of course!' another hesitation. 'why?' 'nothing,' said mr brindley. 'only he's dead.' 'you don't mean to say he's dead?' she exclaimed. 'day before yesterday, in italy,' said mr brindley ruthlessly. miss annie brett's manner certainly changed. it seemed almost to become natural and unecstatic. 'i suppose it will be in the papers?' she ventured. 'it's in the london paper.' 'well i never!' she muttered. 'a long time, i should think, since he was in this part of the world,' said mr brindley. 'when did you last see him?' he was exceedingly skilful, i considered. she put the back of her hand over her mouth, and bending her head slightly and lowering her eyelids, gazed reflectively at the counter. 'it was once when a lot of us went to ilam,' she answered quietly. 'the st luke's lot, you know.' 'oh!' cried mr brindley, apparently startled. 'the st luke's lot?' 'yes.' 'how came he to go with you?' 'he didn't go with us. he was there--stopping there, i suppose.' 'why, i believe i remember hearing something about that,' said mr brindley cunningly. 'didn't he take you out in a boat?' a very faint dark crimson spread over the face of miss annie brett. it could not be called a blush, but it was as like a blush as was possible to her. the phenomenon, as i could see from his eyes, gave mr brindley another shock. 'yes,' she replied. 'sally was there as well.' then a silence, during which the commercial traveller could be heard reading from the newspaper. 'when was that?' gently asked mr brindley. 'don't ask me when it was, mr brindley,' she answered nervously. 'it's ever so long ago. what did he die of?' 'don't know.' miss annie brett opened her mouth to speak, and did not speak. there were tears in her reddened eyes. i felt very awkward, and i think that mr brindley also felt awkward. but i was glad. those moist eyes caused me a thrill. there was after all some humanity in miss annie brett. yes, she had after all floated on the bosom of the lake with simon fuge. the least romantic of persons, she had yet felt romance. if she had touched simon fuge, simon fuge had touched her. she had memories. once she had lived. i pictured her younger. i sought in her face the soft remains of youthfulness. i invented languishing poses for her in the boat. my imagination was equal to the task of seeing her as simon fuge saw her. i did so see her. i recalled simon fuge's excited description of the long night in the boat, and i could reconstitute the night from end to end. and there the identical creature stood before me, the creature who had set fire to simon fuge, one of the 'wonderful creatures' of the gazette, ageing, hardened, banal, but momentarily restored to the empire of romance by those unshed, glittering tears. as an experience it was worth having. she could not speak, and we did not. i heard the commercial traveller reading: '"the motion was therefore carried by twenty-five votes to nineteen, and the countess of chell promised that the whole question of the employment of barmaids should be raised at the next meeting of the b.w.t.s." there! what do you think of that?' miss annie brett moved quickly towards the commercial traveller. til tell you what _i_ think of it,' she said, with ecstatic resentment. 'i think it's just shameful! why should the countess of chell want to rob a lot of respectable young ladies of their living? i can tell you they're just as respectable as the countess of chell is--yes, and perhaps more, by all accounts. i think people do well to call her "interfering iris". when she's robbed them of their living, what does she expect them to do? is she going to keep them? then what does she expect them to do?' the commercial traveller was inept enough to offer a jocular reply, and then he found himself involved in the morass of 'the whole question'. he, and we also, were obliged to hear in immense detail miss annie brett's complete notions of the movement for the abolition of barmaids. the subject was heavy on her mind, and she lifted it off. simon fuge was relinquished; he dropped like a stone into the pool of forgetfulness. and yet, strange as it seems, she was assuredly not sincere in the expression of her views on the question of barmaids. she held no real views. she merely persuaded herself that she held them. when the commercial traveller, who was devoid of sense, pointed out that it was not proposed to rob anybody of a livelihood, and that existent barmaids would be permitted to continue to grace the counters of their adoption, she grew frostily vicious. the commercial traveller decided to retire and play billiards. mr brindley and i in our turn departed. i was extremely disappointed by this sequel. 'ah!' breathed mr brindley when we were outside, in front of the town hall. 'she was quite right about that clock.' after that we turned silently into a long illuminated street which rose gently. the boxes of light were flashing up and down it, but otherwise it seemed to be quite deserted. mr brindley filled a pipe and lit it as he walked. the way in which that man kept the match alight in a fresh breeze made me envious. i could conceive myself rivalling his exploits in cigarette-making, the purchase of rare books, the interpretation of music, even (for a wager) the drinking of beer, but i knew that i should never be able to keep a match alight in a breeze. he threw the match into the mud, and in the mud it continued miraculously to burn with a large flame, as though still under his magic dominion. there are some things that baffle the reasoning faculty. 'well,' i said, 'she must have been a pretty woman once.' '"pretty," by god!' he replied, 'she was beautiful. she was considered the finest piece in hanbridge at one time. and let me tell you we're supposed to have more than our share of good looks in the five towns.' 'what--the women, you mean?' 'yes.' 'and she never married?' 'no.' 'nor--anything?' 'oh no,' he said carelessly. 'but you don't mean to tell me she's never--' i was just going to exclaim, but i did not, i said: 'and it's her sister who is mrs colclough?' 'yes.' he seemed to be either meditative or disinclined to talk. however, my friends have sometimes hinted to me that when my curiosity is really aroused, i am capable of indiscretions. 'so one sister rattles about in an expensive motor-car, and the other serves behind a bar!' i observed. he glanced at me. 'i expect it's a bit difficult for you to understand,' he answered; 'but you must remember you're in a democratic district. you told me once you knew exeter. well, this isn't a cathedral town. it's about a century in front of any cathedral town in the world. why, my good sir, there's practically no such thing as class distinction here. both my grandfathers were working potters. colclough's father was a joiner who finished up as a builder. if colclough makes money and chooses to go to paris and get the best motor-car he can, why in hades shouldn't his wife ride in it? if he is fond of music and can play like the devil, that isn't his sister-in-law's fault, is it? his wife was a dressmaker, at least she was a dressmaker's assistant. if she suits him, what's the matter?' 'but i never suggested--' 'excuse me,' he stopped me, speaking with careful and slightly exaggerated calmness, 'i think you did. if the difference in the situations of the two sisters didn't strike you as very extraordinary, what did you mean?' 'and isn't it extraordinary?' i demanded. 'it wouldn't be considered so in any reasonable society,' he insisted. 'the fact is, my good sir, you haven't yet quite got rid of exeter. i do believe this place will do you good. why, damn it! colclough didn't marry both sisters. you think he might keep the other sister? well, he might. but suppose his wife had half-a-dozen sisters, should he keep them all! i can tell you we're just like the rest of the world, we find no difficulty whatever in spending all the money we make. i dare say colclough would be ready enough to keep his sister-in-law. i've never asked him. but i'm perfectly certain that his sister-in-law wouldn't be kept. not much! you don't know these women down here, my good sir. she's earned her living at one thing or another all her life, and i reckon she'll keep on earning it till she drops. she is, without exception, the most exasperating female i ever came across, and that's saying something; but i will give her that credit: she's mighty independent.' 'how exasperating?' i asked, surprised to hear this from him. '_i_ don't know. but she is. if she was my wife i should kill her one night. don't you know what i mean?' 'yes, i quite agree with you,' i said. 'but you seemed to be awfully good friends with her.' 'no use being anything else. no woman that it ever pleased providence to construct is going to frighten me away from the draught burton that you can get at the tiger. besides, she can't help it. she was born like that.' 'she talks quite ordinarily,' i remarked. 'oh! it isn't what she says, particularly. it's her. either you like her or you don't like her. now colclough thinks she's all right. in fact, he admires her.' 'there's one thing,' i said, 'she jolly nearly cried tonight.' 'purely mechanical!' said mr brindley with cruel curtness. what seemed to me singular was that the relations which had existed between miss annie brett and simon fuge appeared to have no interest whatever for mr brindley. he had not even referred to them. 'you were just beginning to draw her out,' i ventured. 'no,' he replied; 'i thought i'd just see what she'd say. no one ever did draw that woman out.' i had completely lost my vision of her in the boat, but somehow that declaration of his, 'no one ever did draw that woman out', partially restored the vision to me. it seemed to invest her with agreeable mystery. 'and the other sister--mrs colclough?' i questioned. 'i'm taking you to see her as fast as i can,' he answered. his tone implied further: 'i've just humoured one of your whims, now for the other.' 'but tell me something about her.' 'she's the best bridge-player--woman, that is--in bursley. but she will only play every other night for fear the habit should get hold of her. there you've got her.' 'younger than miss brett?' 'younger,' said mr brindley. 'she isn't the same sort of person, is she?' 'she is not,' said mr brindley. and his tone implied: 'thank god for it!' very soon afterwards, at the top of a hill, he drew me into the garden of a large house which stood back from the road. vii it was quite a different sort of house from mr brindley's. one felt that immediately on entering the hall, which was extensive. there was far more money and considerably less taste at large in that house than in the other. i noticed carved furniture that must have been bought with a coarse and a generous hand; and on the walls a diptych by marcus stone portraying the course of true love clingingly draped. it was just like exeter or onslow square. but the middle-aged servant who received us struck at once the same note as had sounded so agreeably at mr brindley's. she seemed positively glad to see us; our arrival seemed to afford her a peculiar and violent pleasure, as though the hospitality which we were about to accept was in some degree hers too. she robbed us of our hats with ecstasy. then mr colclough appeared. 'delighted you've come, mr loring!' he said, shaking my hand again. he said it with fervour. he obviously was delighted. the exercise of hospitality was clearly the chief joy of his life; at least, if he had a greater it must have been something where keenness was excessive beyond the point of pleasure, as some joys are. 'how do, bob? your missis has just come.' he was still in his motoring clothes. mr brindley, observing my gaze transiently on the marcus stones, said: 'i know what you're looking for; you're looking for "saul's soul's awakening". we don't keep it in the window; you'll see it inside.' 'bob's always rotting me about my pictures,' mr colclough smiled indulgently. he seemed big enough to eat his friend, and his rich, heavy voice rolled like thunder about the hall. 'come along in, will you?' 'half-a-second, ol,' mr brindley called in a conspiratorial tone, and, turning to me: tell him the limerick. you know.' 'the one about the hayrick?' mr brindley nodded. there were three heads close together for a space of twenty seconds or so, and then a fearful explosion happened--the unique, tremendous laughter of mr colclough, which went off like a charge of melinite and staggered the furniture. 'now, now!' a feminine voice protested from an unseen interior. i was taken to the drawing-room, an immense apartment with an immense piano black as midnight in it. at the further end two women were seated close together in conversation, and i distinctly heard the name 'fuge'. one of them was mrs brindley, in a hat. the other, a very big and stout woman, in an elaborate crimson garment that resembled a teagown, rose and came to meet me with extended hand. 'my wife--mr loring,' said mr oliver colclough. 'so glad to meet you,' she said, beaming on me with all her husband's pleasure. 'come and sit between mrs brindley and me, near the window, and keep us in order. don't you find it very close? there are at least a hundred cats in the garden.' one instantly perceived that ceremonial stiffness could not exist in the same atmosphere with mrs oliver colclough. during the whole time i spent in her house there was never the slightest pause in the conversation. mrs oliver colclough prevented nobody from talking, but she would gladly use up every odd remnant of time that was not employed by others. no scrap was too small for her. 'so this is the other one!' i said to myself. 'well, give me this one!' certainly there was a resemblance between the two, in the general formation of the face, and the shape of the shoulders; but it is astonishing that two sisters can differ as these did, with a profound and vital difference. in mrs colclough there was no coquetterie, no trace of that more-than-half-suspicious challenge to a man that one feels always in the type to which her sister belonged. the notorious battle of the sexes was assuredly carried on by her in a spirit of frank muscular gaiety--she could, i am sure, do her share of fighting. put her in a boat on the bosom of the lake under starlight, and she would not by a gesture, a tone, a glance, convey mysterious nothings to you, a male. she would not be subtly changed by the sensuous influences of the situation; she would always be the same plump and earthly piece of candour. even if she were in love with you, she would not convey mysterious nothings in such circumstances. if she were in love with you she would most clearly convey unmysterious and solid somethings. i was convinced that the contributing cause to the presence of the late simon fuge in the boat on ilam lake on the historic night was annie the superior barmaid, and not sally of the automobile. but mrs colclough, if not beautiful, was a very agreeable creation. her amplitude gave at first sight an exaggerated impression of her age; but this departed after more careful inspection. she could not have been more than thirty. she was very dark, with plenteous and untidy black hair, thick eyebrows, and a slight moustache. her eyes were very vivacious, and her gestures, despite that bulk, quick and graceful. she was happy; her ideals were satisfied; it was probably happiness that had made her stout. her massiveness was apparently no grief to her; she had fallen into the carelessness which is too often the pitfall of women who, being stout, are content. 'how do, missis?' mr brindley greeted her, and to his wife, 'how do, missis? but, look here, bright star, this gadding about is all very well, but what about those precious kids of yours? none of 'em dead yet, i hope.' 'don't be silly, bob.' 'i've been over to your house,' mrs colclough put in. 'of course it isn't mumps. the child's as right as rain. so i brought mary back with me.' 'well,' said mr brindley, 'for a woman who's never had any children your knowledge of children beggars description. what you aren't sure you know about them isn't knowledge. however--' 'listen,' mrs colclough replied, with a delightful throwingdown of the glove. 'i'll bet you a level sovereign that child hasn't got the mumps. so there! and oliver will guarantee to pay you.' 'aye!' said mr colclough; 'i'll back my wife any day.' 'don't bet, bob,' mrs brindley enjoined her husband excitedly in her high treble. 'i won't,' said mr brindley. 'now let's sit down.' mrs colclough addressed me with particular, confidential grace. we three exactly filled the sofa. i have often sat between two women, but never with such calm, unreserved, unapprehensive comfortableness as i experienced between mrs colclough and mrs brindley. it was just as if i had known them for years. 'you'll make a mess of that, ol,' said mr brindley. the other two men were at some distance, in front of a table, on which were two champagne bottles and five glasses, and a plate of cakes. 'well,' i said to myself, 'i'm not going to have any champagne, anyhow. mercurey! green chartreuse! irish whisky! and then champagne! and a morning's hard work tomorrow! no!' plop! a cork flew up and bounced against the ceiling. mr colclough carefully emptied the bottle into the glasses, of which mr brindley seized two and advanced with one in either hand for the women. it was the host who offered a glass to me. 'no, thanks very much, i really can't,' i said in a very firm tone. my tone was so firm that it startled them. they glanced at each other with alarmed eyes, like simple people confronted by an inexplicable phenomenon. 'but look here, mister!' said mr colclough, pained, 'we've got this out specially for you. you don't suppose this is our usual tipple, do you?' i yielded. i could do no less than sacrifice myself to their enchanting instinctive kindness of heart. 'i shall be dead tomorrow,' i said to myself; 'but i shall have lived tonight.' they were relieved, but i saw that i had given them a shock from which they could not instantaneously recover. therefore i began with a long pull, to reassure them. 'mrs brindley has been telling me that simon fuge is dead,' said mrs colclough brightly, as though mrs brindley had been telling her that the price of mutton had gone down. i perceived that those two had been talking over simon fuge, after their fashion. 'oh yes,' i responded. 'have you got that newspaper in your pocket, mr loring?' asked mrs brindley. i had. 'no,' i said, feeling in my pockets; 'i must have left it at your house.' 'well,' she said, 'that's strange. i looked for it to show it to mrs colclough, but i couldn't see it.' this was not surprising. i did not want mrs colclough to read the journalistic obituary until she had given me her own obituary of fuge. 'it must be somewhere about,' i said; and to mrs colclough: 'i suppose you knew him pretty well?' 'oh, bless you, no! i only met him once.' 'at ilam?' 'yes. what are you going to do, oliver?' her husband was opening the piano. 'bob and i are just going to have another smack at that brahms.' 'you don't expect us to listen, do you?' 'i expect you to do what pleases you, missis,' said he. 'i should be a bigger fool than i am if i expected anything else.' then he smiled at me. 'no! just go on talking. ol and i'll drown you easy enough. quite short! back in five minutes.' the two men placed each his wine-glass on the space on the piano designed for a candlestick, lighted cigars, and sat down to play. 'yes,' mrs colclough resumed, in a lower, more confidential tone, to the accompaniment of the music. 'you see, there was a whole party of us there, and mr fuge was staying at the hotel, and of course he knew several of us.' 'and he took you out in a boat?' 'me and annie? yes. just as it was getting dusk he came up to us and asked us if we'd go for a row. eh, i can hear him asking us now! i asked him if he could row, and he was quite angry. so we went, to quieten him.' she paused, and then laughed. 'sally!' mrs brindley protested. 'you know he's dead!' 'yes.' she admitted the rightness of the protest. 'but i can't help it. i was just thinking how he got his feet wet in pushing the boat off.' she laughed again. 'when we were safely off, someone came down to the shore and shouted to mr fuge to bring the boat back. you know his quick way of talking.' (here she began to imitate fuge.) '"i've quarrelled with the man this boat belongs to. awful feud! fact is, i'm in a hostile country here!" and a lot more like that. it seemed he had quarrelled with everybody in ilam. he wasn't sure if the landlord of the hotel would let him sleep there again. he told us all about all his quarrels, until he dropped one of the oars. i shall never forget how funny he looked in the moonlight when he dropped the oar. "there, that's your fault!" he said. "you make me talk too much about myself, and i get excited." he kept striking matches to look for the oar, and turning the boat round and round with the other oar. "last match!" he said. "we shall never see land tonight." then he found the oar again. he considered we were saved. then he began to tell us about his aunt. "you know i'd no business to be here. i came down from london for my aunt's funeral, and here i am in a boat at night with two pretty girls!" he said the funeral had taught him one thing, and that was that black neckties were the only possible sort of necktie. he said the greatest worry of his life had always been neckties; but he wouldn't have to worry any more, and so his aunt hadn't died for nothing. i assure you he kept on talking about neckties. i assure you, mr loring, i went to sleep--at least i dozed--and when i woke up he was still talking about neckties. but then his feet began to get cold. i suppose it was because they were wet. the way he grumbled about his feet being cold! i remember he turned his coat collar up. he wanted to get on shore and walk, but he'd taken us a long way up the lake by that time, and he saw we were absolutely lost. so he put the oars in the boat and stood up and stamped his feet. it might have upset the boat.' 'how did it end?' i inquired. 'well, annie and i caught the train, but only just. you see it was a special train, so they kept it for us, otherwise we should have been in a nice fix.' 'so you have special trains in these parts?' 'why, of course! it was the annual outing of the teachers of st luke's sunday school and their friends, you see. so we had a special train.' at this point the duettists came to the end of a movement, and mr brindley leaned over to us from his stool, glass in hand. 'the railway company practically owns ilam,' he explained, 'and so they run it for all they're worth. they made the lake, to feed the canals, when they bought the canals from the canal company. it's an artificial lake, and the railway runs alongside it. a very good scheme of the company's. they started out to make ilam a popular resort, and they've made it a popular resort, what with special trains and things. but try to get a special train to any other place on their rotten system, and you'll soon see!' 'how big is the lake?' i asked. 'how long is it, ol?' he demanded of colclough. 'a couple of miles?' 'not it! about a mile. adagio!' they proceeded with brahms. 'he ran with you all the way to the station, didn't he?' mrs brindley suggested to mrs colclough. 'i should just say he did!' mrs colclough concurred. 'he wanted to get warm, and then he was awfully afraid lest we should miss it.' 'i thought you were on the lake practically all night!' i exclaimed. 'all night! well, i don't know what you call all night. but i was back in bursley before eleven o'clock, i'm sure.' i then contrived to discover the gazette in an unsearched pocket, and i gave it to mrs colclough to read. mrs brindley looked over her shoulder. there was no slightest movement of depreciation on mrs colclough's part. she amiably smiled as she perused the gazette's version of fuge's version of the lake episode. here was the attitude of the woman whose soul is like crystal. it seems to me that most women would have blushed, or dissented, or simulated anger, or failed to conceal vanity. but mrs coclough might have been reading a fairy tale, for any emotion she displayed. 'yes,' she said blandly; 'from the things annie used to tell me about him sometimes, i should say that was just how he would talk. they seem to have thought quite a lot of him in london, then?' 'oh, rather!' i said. 'i suppose your sister knew him pretty well?' 'annie? i don't know. she knew him.' i distinctly observed a certain self-consciousness in mrs colclough as she made this reply. mrs brindley had risen and with wifely attentiveness was turning over the music page for her husband. viii soon afterwards, for me, the night began to grow fantastic; it took on the colour of a gigantic adventure. i do not suppose that either mr brindley or mr colclough, or the other person who presently arrived, regarded it as anything but a pleasant conviviality, but to a man of my constitution and habits it was an almost incredible occurrence. the other person was the book-collecting doctor. he arrived with a discreet tap on the window at midnight, to spend the evening. mrs brindley had gone home and mrs colclough had gone to bed. the book-collecting doctor refused champagne; he was, in fact, very rude to champagne in general. he had whisky. and those astonishing individuals, messieurs brindley and colclough, secretly convinced of the justice of the attack on champagne, had whisky too. and that still most astonishing individual, loring of the b.m., joined them. it was the hour of limericks. limericks were demanded for the diversion of the doctor, and i furnished them. we then listened to the tale of the doctor's experiences that day amid the sturdy, natural-minded population of a muling village not far from bursley. seldom have i had such a bath in the pure fluid of human nature. all sense of time was lost. i lived in an eternity. i could not suggest to my host that we should depart. i could, however, decline more whisky. and i could, given the chance, discourse with gay despair concerning the miserable wreck that i should be on the morrow in consequence of this high living. i asked them how i could be expected, in such a state, to judge delicate points of expertise in earthenware. i gave them a brief sketch of my customary evening, and left them to compare it with that evening. the doctor perceived that i was serious. he gazed at me with pity, as if to say: 'poor frail southern organism! it ought to be in bed, with nothing inside it but tea!' what he did actually say was: 'you come round to my place, i'll soon put you right!' 'can you stop me from having a headache tomorrow?' i eagerly asked. 'i think so,' he said with calm northern confidence. at some later hour mr brindley and i 'went round'. mr colclough would not come. he bade me good-bye, as his wife had done, with the most extraordinary kindness, the most genuine sorrow at quitting me, the most genuine pleasure in the hope of seeing me again. 'there are three thousand books in this room!' i said to myself, as i stood in the doctor's electrically lit library. 'what price this for a dog?' mr brindley drew my attention to an aristocratic fox-terrier that lay on the hearth. 'well, titus! is it sleepy? well, well! how many firsts has he won, doctor?' 'six,' said the doctor. 'i'll just fix you up, to begin with,' he turned to me. after i had been duly fixed up ('this'll help you to sleep, and this'll placate your "god",' said the doctor), i saw to my intense surprise that another 'evening' was to be instantly superimposed on the 'evening' at mr colclough's. the doctor and mr brindley carefully and deliberately lighted long cigars, and sank deeply into immense arm-chairs; and so i imitated them as well as i could in my feeble southern way. we talked books. we just simply enumerated books without end, praising or damning them, and arranged authors in neat pews, like cattle in classes at an agricultural show. no pastime is more agreeable to people who have the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the hours, and none is more delightfully futile. ages elapsed, and suddenly, like a gun discharging, mr brindley said-- 'we must go!' of all things that happened this was the most astonishing. we did go. 'by the way, doc.,' said mr brindley, in the doctor's wide porch, 'i forgot to tell you that simon fuge is dead.' 'is he?' said the doctor. 'yes. you've got a couple of his etchings, haven't you?' 'no,' said the doctor. 'i had. but i sold them several months ago.' 'oh!' said mr brindley negligently; 'i didn't know. well, so long!' we had a few hundred yards to walk down the silent, wide street, where the gas-lamps were burning with the strange, endless patience that gas-lamps have. the stillness of a provincial town at night is quite different from that of london; we might have been the only persons alive in england. except for a feeling of unreality, a feeling that the natural order of things had been disturbed by some necromancer, i was perfectly well the same morning at breakfast, as the doctor had predicted i should be. when i expressed to mr brindley my stupefaction at this happy sequel, he showed a polite but careless inability to follow my line of thought. it appeared that he was always well at breakfast, even when he did stay up 'a little later than usual'. it appeared further that he always breakfasted at a quarter to nine, and read the manchester guardian during the meal, to which his wife did or did not descend--according to the moods of the nursery; and that he reached his office at a quarter to ten. that morning the mood of the nursery was apparently unpropitious. he and i were alone. i begged him not to pretermit his guardian, but to examine it and give me the news. he agreed, scarcely unwilling. 'there's a paragraph in the london correspondence about fuge,' he announced from behind the paper. 'what do they say about him?' 'nothing particular.' 'now i want to ask you something,' i said. i had been thinking a good deal about the sisters and simon fuge. and in spite of everything that i had heard--in spite even of the facts that the lake had been dug by a railway company, and that the excursion to the lake had been an excursion of sunday-school teachers and their friends--i was still haunted by certain notions concerning simon fuge and annie brett. annie brett's flush, her unshed tears; and the self-consciousness shown by mrs colclough when i had pointedly mentioned her sister's name in connection with simon fuge's: these were surely indications! and then the doctor's recitals of manners in the immediate neighbourhood of bursley went to support my theory that even in staffordshire life was very much life. 'what?' demanded mr brindley. 'was miss brett ever simon fuge's mistress?' at that moment mrs brindley, miraculously fresh and smiling, entered the room. 'wife,' said mr brindley, without giving her time to greet me, 'what do you think he's just asked me?' '_i_ don't know.' 'he's just asked me if annie brett was ever simon fuge's mistress.' she sank into a chair. 'annie brett?' she began to laugh gently. 'oh! mr loring, you really are too funny!' she yielded to her emotions. it may be said that she laughed as they can laugh in the five towns. she cried. she had to wipe away the tears of laughter. 'what on earth made you think so?' she inquired, after recovery. 'i--had an idea,' i said lamely. 'he always made out that one of those two sisters was so much to him, and i knew it couldn't be mrs colclough.' 'well,' she said, 'ask anybody down here, any-body! and see what they'll say.' 'no,' mr brindley put in, 'don't go about asking any-body. you might get yourself disliked. but you may take it it isn't true.' 'most certainly,' his wife concurred with seriousness. 'we reckon to know something about simon fuge down here,' mr brindley added. 'also about the famous annie.' 'he must have flirted with her a good bit, anyhow,' i said. 'oh, flirt!' ejaculated mr brindley. i had a sudden dazzling vision of the great truth that the people of the five towns have no particular use for half-measures in any department of life. so i accepted the final judgement with meekness. ix i returned to london that evening, my work done, and the municipality happily flattered by my judgement of the slip-decorated dishes. mr brindley had found time to meet me at the midday meal, and he had left his office earlier than usual in order to help me to drink his wife's afternoon tea. about an hour later he picked up my little bag, and said that he should accompany me to the little station in the midst of the desert of cinders and broken crockery, and even see me as far as knype, where i had to take the london express. no, there are no half-measures in the five towns. mrs brindley stood on her doorstep, with her eldest infant on her shoulders, and waved us off. the infant cried, expressing his own and his mother's grief at losing a guest. it seems as if people are born hospitable in the five towns. we had not walked more than a hundred yards up the road when a motor-car thundered down upon us from the opposite direction. it was mr colclough's, and mr colclough was driving it. mr brindley stopped his friend with the authoritative gesture of a policeman. 'where are you going, ol?' 'home, lad. sorry you're leaving us so soon, mr loring.' 'you're mistaken, my boy,' said mr brindley. 'you're just going to run us down to knype station, first.' 'i must look slippy, then,' said mr colclough. 'you can look as slippy as you like,' said mr brindley. in another fifteen seconds we were in the car, and it had turned round, and was speeding towards knype. a feverish journey! we passed electric cars every minute, and for three miles were continually twisting round the tails of ponderous, creaking, and excessively deliberate carts that dropped a trail of small coal, or huge barrels on wheels that dripped something like the finest devonshire cream, or brewer's drays that left nothing behind them save a luscious odour of malt. it was a breathless slither over unctuous black mud through a long winding canon of brown-red houses and shops, with a glimpse here and there of a grey-green park, a canal, or a football field. 'i daredn't hurry,' said mr colclough, setting us down at the station. 'i was afraid of a skid.' he had not spoken during the transit. 'don't put on side, ol,' said mr brindley. 'what time did you get up this morning?' 'eight o'clock, lad. i was at th' works at nine.' he flew off to escape my thanks, and mr brindley and i went into the station. owing to the celerity of the automobile we had half-an-hour to wait. we spent it chiefly at the bookstall. while we were there the extra-special edition of the staffordshire signal, affectionately termed 'the local rag' by its readers, arrived, and we watched a newsboy affix its poster to a board. the poster ran thus-- hanbridge rates lively meeting -- knype f.c. new centre--forward -- all--winners and s.p. now, close by this poster was the poster of the daily telegraph, and among the items offered by the daily telegraph was: 'death of simon fuge'. i could not forbear pointing out to mr brindley the difference between the two posters. a conversation ensued; and amid the rumbling of trains and the rough stir of the platform we got back again to simon fuge, and mr brindley's tone gradually grew, if not acrid, a little impatient. 'after all,' he said, 'rates are rates, especially in hanbridge. and let me tell you that last season knype football club jolly nearly got thrown out of the first league. the constitution of the team for this next season--why, damn it, it's a question of national importance! you don't understand these things. if knype football club was put into the league second division, ten thousand homes would go into mourning. who the devil was simon fuge?' they joke with such extraordinary seriousness in the five towns that one is somehow bound to pretend that they are not joking. so i replied-- 'he was a great artist. and this is his native district. surely you ought to be proud of him!' 'he may have been a great artist,' said mr brindley, 'or he may not. but for us he was simply a man who came of a family that had a bad reputation for talking too much and acting the goat!' 'well,' i said, we shall see--in fifty years.' 'that's just what we shan't,' said he. 'we shall be where simon fuge is--dead! however, perhaps we are proud of him. but you don't expect us to show it, do you? that's not our style.' he performed the quasi-winking phenomenon with his eyes. it was his final exhibition of it to me. 'a strange place!' i reflected, as i ate my dinner in the dining-car, with the pressure of mr brindley's steely clasp still affecting my right hand, and the rich, honest cordiality of his au revoir in my heart. 'a place that is passing strange!' and i thought further: he may have been a boaster, and a chatterer, and a man who suffered from cold feet at the wrong moments! and the five towns may have got the better of him, now. but that portrait of the little girl in the wedgwood institution is waiting there, right in the middle of the five towns. and one day the five towns will have to 'give it best'. they can say what they like! ... what eyes the fellow had, when he was in the right company! in a new bottle commercial travellers are rather like bees; they take the seed of a good story from one district and deposit it in another. thus several localities, imperfectly righteous, have within recent years appropriated this story to their own annals. i once met an old herbalist from wigan-wigan of all places in beautiful england!--who positively asserted that the episode occurred just outside the london and north-western main line station at wigan. this old herbalist was no judge of the value of evidence. an undertaker from hull told me flatly, little knowing who i was and where i came from, that he was the undertaker concerned in the episode. this undertaker was a liar. i use this term because there is no other word in the language which accurately expresses my meaning. of persons who have taken the trouble to come over from the united states in order to inform me that the affair happened at harper's ferry, poughkeepsie, syracuse, allegheny, indianapolis, columbus, charlotte, tabernacle, alliance, wheeling, lynchburg, and chicago it would be unbecoming to speak--they are best left to silence themselves by mutual recrimination. the fact is that the authentic scene of the affair was a third-class railway carriage belonging to the north staffordshire railway company, and rolling on that company's loop-line between longshaw and hanbridge. the undertaker is now dead--it is a disturbing truth that even undertakers die sometimes--and since his widow has given me permission to mention his name, i shall mention his name. it was edward till. of course everybody in the five towns knows who the undertaker was, and if anybody in the five towns should ever chance to come across this book, i offer him my excuses for having brought coals to newcastle. mr till used to be a fairly well-known figure in hanbridge, which is the centre of undertaking, as it is of everything else, in the five towns. he was in a small but a successful way of business, had one leg a trifle shorter than the other (which slightly deteriorated the majesty of his demeanour on solemn occasions), played the fiddle, kept rabbits, and was of a forgetful disposition. it was possibly this forgetful disposition which had prevented him from rising into a large way of business. all admired his personal character and tempered geniality; but there are some things that will not bear forgetting. however, the story touches but lightly that side of his individuality. one morning mr till had to go to longshaw to fetch a baby's coffin which had been ordered under the mistaken impression that a certain baby was dead. this baby, i may mention, was the hero of the celebrated scare of longshaw about the danger of being buried alive. the little thing had apparently passed away; and, what is more, an inquest had been held on it and its parents had been censured by the jury for criminal carelessness in overlaying it; and it was within five minutes of being nailed up, when it opened its eyes! you may imagine the enormous sensation that there was in the five towns. one doctor lost his reputation, naturally. he emigrated to the continent, and now, practising at lucerne in the summer and mentone in the winter, charges fifteen shillings a visit (instead of three and six at longshaw) for informing people who have nothing the matter with them that they must take care of themselves. the parents of the astonished baby moved the heaven and earth of the five towns to force the coroner to withdraw the stigma of the jury's censure; but they did not succeed, not even with the impassioned aid of two london halfpenny dailies. to resume, mr till had to go to longshaw. now, unless you possess a most minute knowledge of your native country, you are probably not aware that in aynsley street, longshaw, there is a provision dealer whose reputation for cheeses would be national and supreme if the whole of england thought as the five towns thinks. 'teddy,' mrs till said, as mr till was starting, 'you might as well bring back with you a pound of gorgonzola.' (be it noted that i had the details of the conversation from the lady herself.) 'yes,' said he enthusiastically, 'i will.' 'don't go and forget it,' she enjoined him. 'no,' he said. 'i'll tie a knot in my handkerchief.' 'a lot of good that'll do!' she observed. 'you'd tied a knot in your handkerchief when you forgot that councillor barker's wife's funeral was altered from tuesday to monday.' 'ah!' he replied. 'but now i've got a bad cold.' 'so you have!' she agreed, reassured. he tied the knot in his handkerchief and went. thanks to his cold he did not pass the cheesemonger's without entering. he adored gorgonzola, and he reckoned that he knew a bit of good gorgonzola when he met with it. moreover, he and the cheesemonger were old friends, he having buried three of the cheesemonger's children. he emerged from the cheesemonger's with a pound of the perfectest gorgonzola that ever greeted the senses. the abode of the censured parents was close by, and also close to the station. he obtained the coffin without parley, and told the mother, who showed him the remarkable child with pride, that under the circumstances he should make no charge at all. it was a ridiculously small coffin. he was quite accustomed to coffins. hence he did the natural thing. he tucked the little coffin under one arm, and, dangling the cheese (neat in brown paper and string) from the other hand, he hastened to the station. with his unmatched legs he must have made a somewhat noticeable figure. a loop-line train was waiting, and he got into it, put the cheese on the rack in a corner, and the coffin next to it, assured himself that he had not mislaid his return ticket, and sat down under his baggage. it was the slackest time of day, and, as the train started at longshaw, there were very few passengers. he had the compartment to himself. he was just giving way to one of those moods of vague and pleasant meditation which are perhaps the chief joy of such a temperament, when he suddenly sprang up as if in fear. and fear had in fact seized him. suppose he forgot those belongings on the rack? suppose, sublimely careless, he descended from the train and left them there? what a calamity! and similar misadventures had happened to him before. it was the cheese that disquieted him. no one would be sufficiently unprincipled to steal the coffin, and he would ultimately recover it at the lost luggage office, babies' coffins not abounding on the north staffordshire railway. but the cheese! he would never see the cheese again! no integrity would be able to withstand the blandishments of that cheese. moreover, his wife would be saddened. and for her he had a sincere and profound affection. his act of precaution was to lift the coffin down from the rack, and place it on the seat beside him, and then to put the parcel of cheese on the coffin. he surveyed the cheese on the coffin; he surveyed it with the critical and experienced eye of an undertaker, and he decided that, if anyone else got into the carriage, it would not look quite decent, quite becoming--in a word, quite nice. a coffin is a coffin, and people's feelings have to be considered. so he whipped off the lid of the coffin, stuck the cheese inside, and popped the lid on again. and he kept his hand on the coffin that he might not forget it. when the train halted at knype, mr till was glad that he had put the cheese inside, for another passenger got into the compartment. and it was a clergyman. he recognized the clergyman, though the clergyman did not recognize him. it was the reverend claud ffolliott, famous throughout the five towns as the man who begins his name with a small letter, doesn't smoke, of course doesn't drink, but goes to football matches, has an average of eighteen at cricket, and makes a very pretty show with the gloves, in spite of his thirty-eight years; celibate, very high, very natty and learned about vestments, terrific at sick couches and funerals. mr till inwardly trembled to think what the reverend claud ffolliott might have said had he seen the cheese reposing in the coffin, though the coffin was empty. the parson, whose mind was apparently occupied, dropped into the nearest corner, which chanced to be the corner farthest away from mr till. he then instantly opened a copy of the church times and began to read it, and the train went forward. the parson sniffed, absently, as if he had been dozing and a fly had tickled his nose. shortly afterwards he sniffed again, but without looking up from his perusals. he sniffed a third time, and glanced over the top edge of the church times at mr till. calmed by the innocuous aspect of mr till, he bent once more to the paper. but after an interval he was sniffing furiously. he glanced at the window; it was open. finally he lowered the church times, as who should say: 'i am a long-suffering man, but really this phenomenon which assaults my nostrils must be seriously inquired into.' then it was that he caught sight of the coffin, with mr till's hand caressing it, and mr till all in black and carrying a funereal expression. he straightened himself, pulled himself together on account of his cloth, and said to mr till in his most majestic and sympathetic graveside voice-- 'ah! my dear friend, i see that you have suffered a sad, sad bereavement.' that rich, resonant voice was positively thrilling when it addressed hopeless grief. mr till did not know what to say, nor where to look. 'you have, however, one thing to be thankful for, very thankful for,' said the parson after a pause, 'you may be sure the poor thing is not in a trance.'