TERMINATIONS 
 
 The Death of the Lion 
 The Coxon Fund 
 The Middle Tears 
 The Altar of the Dead 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 AUTHOR OF "DAISY MILLER" ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 1895 
 
3&; 
 
 
 BY HENRY JAMES. 
 
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NOTE 
 
 o o/ <7iese Ta^s T^ej-e originally published 
 in " TVie Yellow Book," the third in " Scribner^s Magazine, 1 
 The last appears here for the first time. 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 THE DEATH OF THE LION 1 
 
 THE COXON FUND 59 
 
 THE MIDDLE YEARS 151 
 
 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 185 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 I HAD simply, I suppose, a change of heart, and 
 it must have begun when I received my manu 
 script back from Mr. Pinhorn. Mr. Pinhorn was 
 my " chief," as he was called in the office ; he had 
 accepted the high mission of bringing the paper 
 up. This was a weekly periodical, and had been 
 supposed to be almost past redemption when he 
 took hold of it. It was Mr. Deedy who had let it 
 down so dreadfully ; he was never mentioned in 
 the office now save in connection with that mis 
 demeanor. Young as I was I had been in a manner 
 taken over from Mr. Deedy, who had been owner 
 as well as editor ; forming part of a promiscuous 
 lot, mainly plant and office furniture, which poor 
 Mrs. Deedy, in her bereavement and depression, 
 parted with at a rough valuation. I could account 
 for my continuity only on the supposition that I 
 had been cheap. I rather resented the practice of 
 fathering all flatness on my late protector, who was 
 in his unhonored grave ; but as I had my way to 
 make, I found matter enough for complacency in 
 being on a " staff." At the same time I was aware 
 
2 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 that I was exposed to suspicion as a product of the 
 old lowering system. This made me feel that I 
 was doubly bound to have ideas, and had doubtless 
 been at the bottom of my proposing to Mr. Pinhorn 
 that I should lay my lean hands on Neil Paraday. 
 I remember that he looked at me first as if he had 
 never heard of this celebrity, who indeed at that 
 moment was by no means in the centre of the 
 heavens; and even when I had knowingly explained, 
 he expressed but little confidence in the demand 
 for any such matter. When I had reminded him 
 that the great principle on which we were sup 
 posed to work was just to create the demand 
 we required, he considered a moment and then 
 rejoined : " I see ; you want to write him up." 
 
 "Call it that, if you like." 
 
 "And what s your inducement?" 
 
 " Bless my soul my admiration ! " 
 
 Mr. Pinhorn pursed up his mouth. "Is there 
 much to be done with him?" 
 
 " Whatever there is, we should have it all to 
 ourselves, for he hasn t been touched." 
 
 This argument was effective, and Mr. Pinhorn 
 responded : "But where can you do it?" 
 
 " Under the fifth rib!" 
 
 Mr. Pinhorn stared. " Where s that ?" 
 
 "You want me to go down and see him?" I 
 enquired, when I had enjoyed his visible search for 
 this obscure suburb. 
 
 "I don t want 5 anything the proposal s your 
 own. But you must remember that that s the way 
 
THE DEATH OP THE LION 3 
 
 we do things now" said Mr. Pinhorn, with another 
 dig at Mr. Deedy. 
 
 Unregenerate as I was, I could read the queer 
 implications of this speech. The present owner s 
 superior virtue, as well as his deeper craft, spoke 
 in his reference to the late editor as one of that 
 baser sort who deal in false representations. Mr. 
 Deedy would as soon have sent me to call on Neil 
 Faraday as he would have published a " holiday 
 number"; but such scruples presented themselves 
 as mere ignoble thrift to his successor, whose own 
 sincerity took the form of ringing door-bells, and 
 whose definition of genius was the art of finding 
 people at home. It was as if Mr. Deedy had 
 published reports without his young men s having, 
 as Pinhorn would have said, really been there. I 
 was unregenerate, as I have hinted, and I was not 
 concerned to straighten out the journalistic morals 
 of my chief, feeling them indeed to be an abyss 
 over the edge of which it was better not to peer. 
 Really to be there this time, moreover, was a 
 vision that made the idea of writing something 
 subtle about Neil Paraday only the more inspiring. 
 I would be as considerate as even Mr. Deedy could 
 have wished, and yet I should be as present as 
 only Mr. Pinhorn could conceive. My allusion to 
 the sequestered manner in which Mr. Paraday 
 lived (which had formed part of my explanation, 
 though I knew of it only by hearsay) was, I could 
 divine, very much what had made Mr. Pinhorn 
 nibble. It struck him as inconsistent with the 
 
4 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 success of his paper that any one should be so 
 sequestered as that. And, then, was not an imme 
 diate exposure of every thing just what the public 
 wanted ? Mr. Pinhorn effectually called me to 
 order by reminding me of the promptness with 
 which I had met Miss Braby at Liverpool on her 
 return from her fiasco in the States. Hadn t we 
 published, while its freshness and flavor were 
 unimpaired, Miss Braby s own version of that great 
 international episode? I felt somewhat uneasy at 
 this lumping of the actress and the author, and I 
 confess that, after having enlisted Mr. Pinhorn s 
 sympathies, I procrastinated a little. I had suc 
 ceeded better than I wished, and I had, as it hap 
 pened, work nearer at hand. A few days later I 
 called on Lord Crouchley, and carried off in tri 
 umph the most unintelligible statement that had 
 yet appeared of his lordship s reasons for his 
 change of front. I thus set in motion in the daily 
 papers columns of virtuous verbiage. The follow 
 ing week I ran down to Brighton for a chat, as Mr. 
 Pinhorn called it, with Mrs. Bounder, who gave 
 me, on the subject of her divorce, many curious 
 particulars that had not been articulated in court. 
 If ever an article flowed from the primal fount it 
 was that article on Mrs. Bounder. By this time, 
 however, I became aware that Neil Paraday s new 
 book was on the point of appearing, and that its 
 approach had been the ground of my original 
 appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who was now annoyed with 
 me for having lost so many days. He bundled me 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 5 
 
 off we would at least not lose another. I have 
 always thought his sudden alertness a remarkable 
 example of the journalistic instinct. Nothing had 
 occurred, since I first spoke to him, to create a 
 visible urgency, and no enlightenment could pos 
 sibly have reached him. It was a pure case of 
 professional flair he had smelled the coming 
 glory as an animal smells its distant prey. 
 
 II 
 
 I MAY as well say at once that this little record 
 pretends in no degree to be a picture either of 
 my introduction to Mr. Paraday or of certain 
 proximate steps and stages. The scheme of my 
 narrative allows no space for these things, and 
 in any case a prohibitory sentiment would be 
 attached to my recollection of so rare an hour. 
 These meagre notes are essentially private, so that, 
 if they see the light, the insidious forces that, as 
 my story itself shows, make at present for publicity 
 will simply have overmastered my precautions. 
 The curtain fell lately enough on the lamentable 
 drama. My memory of the day I alighted at Mr. 
 Faraday s door is a fresh memory of kindness, 
 hospitality, compassion, and of the wonderful illu 
 minating talk in which the welcome was conveyed. 
 Some voice of the air had taught me the right mo 
 ment, the moment of his life in which an act of un- 
 
6 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 expected young allegiance might most come home. 
 He had recently recovered from a long, grave 
 illness. I had gone to the neighboring inn for the 
 night, but I spent the evening in his company, and 
 he insisted the next day on my sleeping under his 
 roof. I had not an indefinite leave ; Mr. Pinhorn 
 supposed us to put our victims through on the 
 gallop. It was later, in the office, that the dance 
 was set to music. I fortified myself, however, as 
 my training had taught me to do, by the conviction 
 that nothing could be more advantageous for my 
 article than to be written in the very atmosphere. 
 I said nothing to Mr. Paraday about it, but in the 
 morning, after my removal from the inn, while he 
 was occupied in his study, as he had notified me 
 that he should need to be, I committed to paper the 
 quintessence of my impressions. Then thinking to 
 commend myself to Mr. Pinhorn by myjcejerity, I 
 walked out and posted my little packet before 
 luncheon. Once my paper was written I was free 
 to stay on, and if it was designed to divert atten 
 tion from my frivolity in so doing, I could reflect 
 with satisfaction that I had never been so clever. 
 I don t mean to deny of course that I was aware 
 it was much too good for Mr. Pinhorn ; but I was 
 equally conscious that Mr. Pinhorn had the 
 supreme shrewdness of recognizing from time to 
 time the cases in which an article was not too bad 
 only because it was too good. There was nothing 
 he loved so much as to print on the right occasion 
 a thing he hated. I had begun my visit to Mr. 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 7 
 
 Paraday on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his 
 book came out. A copy of it arrived by the first 
 post, and he let me go out into the garden with it 
 immediately after breakfast. I read it from be 
 ginning to end that day, and in the evening he 
 asked me to remain with him the rest of the week 
 and over Sunday. 
 
 That night my manuscript came back from Mr. 
 Pinhorn, accompanied with a letter, of which the 
 gist was the desire to know what I meant by 
 sending him such stuff. That was the meaning 
 of the question, if not exactly its form, and it made 
 my mistake immense to me. Such as this mistake 
 was, I could now only look it in the face and 
 accept it. I knew where I had failed, but it was 
 exactly where I couldn t have succeeded. I had 
 been sent down there to be personal, and in point 
 of fact I hadn t been personal at all ; what I had 
 sent up to London was just a little finicking, 
 feverish study of my author s talent. Any thing 
 less relevant to Mr. Pinhorn s purpose couldn t 
 well be imagined, and he was visibly angry at my 
 having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket) 
 approached the object of our arrangement only to 
 be so deucedly distant. For myself, I knew but 
 too well what had happened, and how a miracle 
 as pretty as some old miracle of legend had been 
 wrought on the spot to save me. There had been 
 a big brush of wings, the flash of an opaline robe, 
 and then, with a great, cool stir of the air, the 
 sense of an angel s having swooped down and 
 
8 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 caught me to his bosom. He held me only till 
 the danger was over, and it all took place in a 
 minute. With my manuscript back on my hands 
 I understood the phenomenon better, and the re 
 flections I made on it are what I meant, at the 
 beginning of this anecdote, by my change of heart. 
 Mr. Pinhorn s note was not only a rebuke decidedly 
 stern, but an invitation immediately to send him 
 (it was the case to say so) the genuine article, 
 the revealing and reverberating sketch to the 
 promise of which and of which alone I owed 
 my squandered privilege. A week or two later I 
 recast my^peccantj paper, and giving it a particular 
 application to Mr. Faraday s new book, obtained 
 for it the hospitality of another journal, where, 
 I must admit, Mr. Pinhorn was so far justified that 
 it attracted not the least attention. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I WAS frankly, at the end of three days, a very 
 prejudiced critic, so that one morning when, in the 
 garden, Neil Paraday had offered to read me some 
 thing I quite held my breath as I listened. It was 
 the written scheme of another book something 
 he had put aside long ago, before his illness, and 
 lately taken out again to reconsider. He had been 
 turning it round when I came down upon him, and 
 it had grown magnificently under this second hand. 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 9 
 
 Loose, liberal, confident, it might have passed for 
 a great, gossiping, eloquent letter the overflow 
 into talk of an artist s amorous plan. The subject 
 I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he 
 had yet treated ; and this familiar statement of 
 it, full too of fine maturities, was really, in sum 
 marized splendor, a mine of gold, a precious, inde 
 pendent work. I remember rather profanely 
 wondering whether the ultimate production could 
 possibly be so happy. His reading of the epistle, 
 at any rate, made me feel as if I were, for the 
 advantage of posterity, in close correspondence 
 with him were the distinguished person to whom 
 it had been affectionately addressed. It was high 
 distinction simply to be told such things. The 
 idea he now communicated had all the freshness, 
 the flushed fairness of the conception untouched 
 and untried ; it was Venus rising from the sea, 
 before the airs had blown upon her. I had never 
 been so throbbingly present at such an unveiling. 
 But when he had tossed the last bright word after 
 the others, as I had seen cashiers in banks, weigh 
 ing mounds of coin, drop a final sovereign into the 
 tray, I became conscious of a sudden prudent alarm. 
 
 " My dear master, how, after all, are you going 
 to do it?" I asked. "It s infinitely noble, but 
 what time it will take, what patience and independ 
 ence, what assured, what perfect conditions it will 
 demand ! Oh, for a lone isle in a tepid sea ! " 
 
 " Isn t this practically a lone isle, and aren t 
 you, as an encircling medium, tepid enough ? " he 
 
10 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 replied, alluding with a laugh to the wonder of 
 my young admiration and the narrow limits of his 
 little provincial home. " Time isn t what I ve 
 lacked hitherto ; the question hasn t been to find 
 it, but to use it. Of course my illness made a 
 great hole, but I dare say there would have been 
 a hole at any rate. The earth we tread has more 
 pockets than a billiard-table. The great thing is 
 now to keep on my feet." 
 
 "That s exactly what I mean." 
 
 Neil Paraday looked at me with eyes such 
 pleasant eyes as he had in which, as I now recall 
 their expression, I seem to have seen a dim imagi 
 nation of his fate. He was fifty years old, and his 
 illness had been cruel, his convalescence slow. " It 
 isn t as if I weren t all right." 
 
 "Oh, if you weren t all right I wouldn t look at 
 you ! " I tenderly said. 
 
 We had both got up, quickened by the full 
 sound of it all, and he had lighted a cigarette. I 
 had taken a fresh one, and, with an intenser smile, 
 by way of answer to my exclamation, he touched 
 it with the flame of his match. "If I weren t 
 better I shouldn t have thought of that!" He 
 flourished his epistle in his hand. 
 
 " I don t want to be discouraging, but that s not 
 true," I returned. " I m sure that during the 
 months you lay here in pain you had visitations 
 sublime. You thought of a thousand things. You 
 think of more and more all the while. That s 
 what makes you, if you will pardon my familiarity, 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 11 
 
 so respectable. At a time when so many people 
 are spent you come into your second wind. But, 
 thank God, all the same, you re better ! Thank 
 God, too, you re not, as you were telling me yester 
 day, successful. If you weren t a failure, what 
 would be the use of trying? That s my one 
 reserve on the subject of your recovery that it 
 makes you score. as the newspapers say. It looks 
 well in the newspapers, and almost any thing that 
 does that is horrible. ( We are happy to announce 
 that Mr. Paraday, the celebrated author, is again 
 in the enjoyment of excellent health. Somehow I 
 shouldn t like to see it." 
 
 " You won t see it. I m not in the least cele 
 brated my obscurity protects me. But couldn t 
 you bear even to see I was dying or dead ? " my 
 companion asked. 
 
 "Dead passe encore; there s nothing so safe. 
 One never knows what a living artist may do one 
 has mourned so many. However, one must make 
 the worst of it ; you must be as dead as you can." 
 
 " Don t I meet that condition in having just 
 published a book ? " 
 
 "Adequately, let us. hope ; for the book is verily 
 a masterpiece." 
 
 At this moment the parlor-maid appeared in the 
 door that opened into the garden. Paraday lived 
 at no great Cost, and the frisk of petticoats, with 
 a timorous " Sherry, sir ? " was about his modest 
 mahogany. He allowed half his income to his 
 wife, from whom he had succeeded in separating 
 
12 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 without redundancy of legend. I had a general 
 faith in his having behaved well, and I had once, 
 in London, taken Mrs. Paraday down to dinner. 
 He now turned to speak to the maid, who offered 
 him, on a tray, some card or note, while agitated, 
 excited, I wandered to the end of the garden. The 
 idea of his security became supremely dear to me, 
 and I asked myself if I were the same young man 
 who had come down a few days before to scatter 
 him to the four winds. When I retraced my steps 
 he had gone into the house and the woman (the 
 second London post had come in) had placed my 
 letters and a newspaper on a bench. I sat down 
 there to the letters, which were a brief business, 
 and then, without heeding the address, took the 
 paper from its envelope. It was the journal of 
 highest renown, The Empire of that morning. It 
 regularly came to Paraday, but I remembered that 
 neither of us had yet looked at the copy already 
 delivered. This one had a great mark on the 
 " editorial " page, and, uncrumpling the wrapper, 
 I saw it to be directed to my host and stamped 
 with the name of his publishers. I instantly 
 divined that The Empire had spoken of him, and 
 I have not forgotten the odd little shock of the 
 circumstance. It checked all eagerness and made 
 me drop the paper, a moment. As I sat there, con 
 scious of a palpitation, I think I had a vision of 
 what was to be. I had also a vision of the letter 
 I would presently address to Mr. Pinhorn, breaking, 
 as it were, with Mr. Pinhorn. Of course, however, 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 13 
 
 the next minute the voice of The Empire was in 
 my ears. 
 
 The article was not, I thanked Heaven, a review ; 
 it was a "leader," the last of three, presenting 
 Neil Paraday to the human race. His new book, 
 the fifth from his hand, had been but a day or two 
 out, and The Empire, already aware of it, fired, as 
 if on the birth of a prince, a salute of a whole 
 column. The guns had been booming these three 
 hours in the house without our suspecting them. 
 The big blundering newspaper had discovered him, 
 and now he was proclaimed and anointed and 
 crowned. His place was assigned him as publicly 
 as if a fat usher with a wand had pointed to the 
 topmost chair ; he was to pass up and still up, 
 higher and higher, between the watching faces 
 and the envious sounds away up to the dais and 
 the throne. The article was a date ; he had taken 
 rank at a bound waked up a national glory. A 
 national glory was needed, and it was an immense 
 convenience he was there. What all this meant 
 rolled over me, and I fear I grew a little faint it 
 meant so much more than I could say " yea " to on 
 the spot. In a flash, somehow, all was different ; 
 the tremendous wave I speak of had swept some 
 thing away. It had knocked down, I suppose, my 
 little customary altar, my twinkling tapers and my 
 flowers, and had reared itself into the likeness of a 
 temple vast and bare. When Neil Paraday should 
 come out of the house he would come out a con 
 temporary. That was what had happened ; the 
 
14 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 poor man was to be squeezed into his horrible age. 
 1 felt as if he had been overtaken on the crest of 
 the hill and brought back to the city. A little 
 more, and he would have dipped down the short 
 cut to posterity and escaped. 
 
 IV 
 
 WHEN he came out it was exactly as if he had 
 been in custody, for beside him walked a stout 
 man with a big black beard, who, save that he 
 wore spectacles, might have been a policeman, and 
 in whom at a second glance I recognized the high 
 est contemporary enterprise. 
 
 " This is Mr. Morrow," said Paraday, looking, I 
 thought, rather white; "he wants to publish 
 Heaven knows what about me." 
 
 I winced as I remembered that this was exactly 
 what I myself had wanted. "Already?" I ex 
 claimed, with a sort of sense that my friend had 
 fled to me for protection. 
 
 Mr. Morrow glared, agreeably, through his 
 glasses ; they suggested the electric headlights 
 of some monstrous modern ship, and I felt as if 
 Paraday and I were tossing, terrified, under his 
 bows. I saw that his momentum was irresistible. 
 " I was confident that I should be the first in the 
 field," he declared. "A great interest is naturally 
 felt in Mr. Paraday s surroundings." 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 15 
 
 " I hadn t the least idea of it," said Paraday, as 
 
 he had been told he had been snoring. 
 
 " I find he has not read the article in The 
 
 if he had been told he had been snoring. 
 Empire" Mr. Morrow remarked to me. " That s 
 
 so very interesting it s something to star| with," 
 he smiled. He had begun to pull off his gloves, J 
 which were violently new, and to look encourag 
 ingly round the little garden. As a " surrounding " 
 I felt that I myself had already been taken in ; I 
 was a little fish in the stomach of a bigger one. 
 " I represent," our visitor continued, " a syndicate 
 of influential journals, no less than thirty-seven, 
 whose public whose publics, I may say are in 
 peculiar sympathy with Mr. Faraday s line of 
 thought. They would greatly appreciate any ex 
 pression of his views on the subject of the art he 
 so brilliantly practises. Besides my connection 
 with the syndicate just mentioned, I hold a particu 
 lar commission from The Tatlcr, whose most 
 prominent department, Smatter and Chatter I 
 dare say you ve often enjoyed it attracts such 
 attention. I was honored only last week, as a 
 representative of The Tatler, with the confidence 
 of Guy Walsingham, the author of * Obsessions. 
 She expressed herself thoroughly pleased with my 
 sketch of her method ; she went so far as to say 
 that I had made her genius more comprehensible 
 even to herself." 
 
 Neil Paraday had dropped upon the garden- 
 bench, and sat there at once detached and con 
 fused ; he looked hard at a bare spot in the lawn, 
 
16 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 as if with an anxiety that had suddenly made him 
 grave. His movement had been interpreted by 
 his visitor as an invitation to sink sympathetically 
 into a wicker chair that stood hard by, and as Mr. 
 Morrow so settled himself I felt that he had taken 
 official possession and that there was no undoing it. 
 One had heard of unfortunate people s having " a 
 man in the house," and this was just what we had. 
 There was a silence of a moment, during which we 
 seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was 
 possible the presence of universal fate ; the sunny 
 stillness took no pity, and my thought, as I was 
 sure Faraday s was doing, performed within the 
 minute a great distant revolution. I saw just 
 how emphatic I should make my rejoinder to Mr. 
 Pinhorn, and that, having come, like Mr. Morrow, 
 to betray, I must remain as long as possible to 
 save. Not because I had brought my mind back, 
 but because our visitor s last words were in my 
 ear, I presently enquired, with gloomy irrelevance, 
 if Guy Walsingham were a woman. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! a mere pseudonym; but convenient, 
 you know, for a lady who goes in for the larger 
 latitude. Obsessions, by Miss So-and-so, would 
 look a little odd, but men are more naturally in 
 delicate. Have you peeped into Obsessions ? " 
 Mr. Morrow continued sociably to our companion. 
 
 Paraday, still absent, remote, made no answer, 
 as if he had not heard the question : a manifestation 
 that appeared to suit the cheerful Mr. Morrow as 
 well as any other. Imperturbably bland, he was 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 17 
 
 a man of resources he only needed to be on 
 the spot. He had pocketed the whole poor place 
 while Paraday and I were wool-gathering, and I 
 could imagine that he had already got his " heads." 
 His system, at any rate, was justified by the inevi 
 tability with which I replied, to save my friend 
 the trouble : " Dear, no ! he hasn t read it. He 
 doesn t read such things ! " I unwarily added. 
 
 " Things that are too far over the fence, eh ? " 
 I was indeed a godsend to Mr. Morrow. It was 
 the psychological moment ; it determined the ap 
 pearance of his notebook, which, however, he at 
 first kept slightly behind him, even as the dentist, 
 approaching his victim, keeps the horrible forceps. 
 " Mr. Paraday holds with the good old proprieties 
 I see ! " And thinking of the thirty-seven in 
 fluential journals, I found myself, as I found poor 
 Paraday, helplessly gazing at the promulgation 
 of this ineptitude. "There s no point on which 
 distinguished views are so acceptable as on this 
 question raised perhaps more strikingly than 
 ever by Guy Walsingham of the permissibility 
 of the larger latitude. I have an appointment pre 
 cisely in connection with it, next week, with Dora 
 Forbes, the author of The Other Way Round, 
 which every-body is talking about. Has Mr. 
 Paraday glanced at The Other Way Round ?" 
 Mr. Morrow now frankly appealed to me. I took 
 upon myself to repudiate the supposition, while 
 our companion, still silent, got up nervously and 
 walked away. His visitor paid no heed to his 
 2 
 
18 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 withdrawal ; he only opened out the notebook 
 with a more motherly pat. "Dora Forbes, I 
 gather, takes the ground, the same as Guy Wal- 
 singham s, that the larger latitude has simply got 
 to come. He holds that it has got to be squarely 
 faced. Of course his sex makes him a less preju 
 diced witness. But an authoritative word from 
 Mr. Paraday from the point of view of his sex, 
 you know, would go right round the globe. He 
 takes the line that we haverft got to face it ? " 
 
 I ,was bewildered : it sounded somehow as if 
 there were three sexes. My interlocutor s pencil 
 was poised, my private responsibility great. I 
 simply sat staring, however, and only found 
 presence of mind to say : " Is this Miss Forbes 
 a gentleman ? " 
 
 Mr. Morrow hesitated an instant, smiling. " It 
 wouldn t be Miss there s a wife ! " 
 
 " I mean is she a man ? " 
 
 "The wife ?" Mr. Morrow, for a moment, was 
 as confused as myself. But, when I explained that 
 I alluded to Dora Forbes in person, he informed 
 me, with visible amusement at my being so out of 
 it, that this was the " pen-name " of an indubi 
 table male he had a big red mustache. "He 
 only assumes a feminine personality because the 
 ladies are such popular favorites. A great deal 
 of interest is felt in this assumption, and there s 
 every prospect of its being widely imitated." Our 
 host at this*moment joined us again, and Mr. Mor 
 row remarked invitingly that he should be happy 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LIOX 19 
 
 to make a note of any observation the movement 
 in question, the bid for success under a lady s 
 name, might suggest to Mr. Paraday. But the 
 poor man, without catching the allusion, excused 
 himself, pleading that, though he was greatly 
 honored by the visitor s interest, he suddenly felt 
 unwell and should have to take leave of him have 
 to go and lie down and keep quiet. His young 
 friend might be trusted to answer for him, but he 
 hoped Mr. Morrow didn t expect great things even 
 of his young friend. His young friend, at this 
 moment, looked at Neil Paraday with an anxious 
 eye, greatly wondering if he were doomed to be 
 ill again ; but Paraday s own kind face met his 
 question reassuringly, seemed to say in a glance 
 intelligible enough : " Oh, I m not ill, but I m 
 scared : get him out of the house as quietly as 
 possible." Getting newspaper-men out of the 
 house was odd business for an emissary of Mr. 
 Pinhorn, and I was so exhilarated by the idea of 
 it that I called after him as he left us : 
 
 " Read the article in The Empire, and you ll soon 
 be all right ! " 
 
 " DELICIOUS, my having come down to tell him 
 of it ! " Mr. Morrow ejaculated. " My cab was at 
 the door twenty minutes after The Empire had 
 been laid upon my breakfast table. Now, what 
 
20 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 have you got for me ? " he continued, dropping 
 again into his chair, from which, however, the 
 next moment he quickly rose. " I was shown 
 into the drawing-room, but there must be more 
 to see his study, his literary sanctum, the little 
 things he has about, or other domestic objects or 
 features. He wouldn t be lying down on his study- 
 table ? There s a great interest always felt in the 
 scene of an author s labors. Sometimes we re 
 favored with very delightful peeps. Dora Forbes 
 showed me all his table-drawers, and almost 
 jammed my hand into one into which I made a 
 dash ! I don t ask that of you, but if we could 
 talk things over right there where he sits I feel as 
 if I should get the key-note." 
 
 I had no wish whatever to be rude to Mr. Mor 
 row, I was much too initiated not to prefer the 
 safety of other ways ; but I had a quick inspira 
 tion, and I entertained an insurmountable, an almost 
 superstitious objection to his crossing the threshold 
 of my friend s little lonely, shabby, consecrated 
 workshop. " No, no we sha n t get at his life that 
 way," I said. " The way to get at his life is to 
 but wait a moment ! " I broke off and went 
 quickly into the house ; then, in three minutes, I 
 reappeared before Mr. Morrow with the two vol 
 umes of Faraday s new book. " His life s here," I 
 went on, " and Fm so full of this admirable thing 
 that I can t talk of any thing else. The artist s 
 life s his work, and this is the place to observe 
 him. What he has to tell us he? tells with this 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 21 
 
 perfection. My dear sir, the best interviewer s the 
 best reader." 
 
 Mr. Morrow good-humoredly protested. "Do 
 you mean to say that no other source of informa 
 tion should be open to us?" 
 
 " None other till this particular one by far the 
 most copious has been quite exhausted. Have 
 you exhausted it, my dear sir ? Had you ex 
 hausted it when you came down here ? It seems 
 to me in our time almost wholly neglected, and 
 something should surely be done to restore its 
 ruined credit. It s the course to which the artist 
 himself at every step, and with such pathetic con 
 fidence, refers us. This last book of Mr. Faraday s 
 is full of revelations." 
 
 " Revelations ? " panted Mr. Morrow, whom I 
 had forced again into his chair. 
 
 " The only kind that count. It tells you with 
 a perfection that seems to me quite final all the 
 author thinks, for instance, about the advent of 
 the f larger latitude. " 
 
 " Where does it do that ? " asked Mr. Morrow, 
 who had picked up the second volume and was 
 insincerely thumbing it. 
 
 "Everywhere in the whole treatment of his 
 case. Extract the opinion, disengage the answer 
 those are the real acts of homage." 
 
 Mr. Morrow, after a minute, tossed the book 
 away. " Ah ! but you mustn t take me for a 
 reviewer." 
 
 " Heaven forbid I should take you for any thing 
 
22 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 so dreadful ! You came down to perform a little 
 act of sympathy, and so, I may confide to you, 
 did I. Let us perform our little act together. 
 These pages overflow with the testimony we want: 
 let us read them and taste them and interpret them. 
 You will of course have perceived for yourself that 
 one scarcely does read Neil Faraday till one reads 
 him aloud; lie gives out to the ear an extraordinary 
 quality, and it s only when you expose it confidently 
 to that test that you really get near his style. Take 
 up your book again and let me listen, while you 
 pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth chapter. If 
 you feel that you can t do it justice, compose 
 yourself to attention while I produce for you I 
 think lean this scarcely less admirable ninth." 
 
 Mr. Morrow gave me a straight glance which 
 was as hard as a blow between the eyes ; he had 
 turned rather red, and a question had formed itself 
 in his mind which reached my sense as distinctly 
 
 as if he had uttered it : " What sort of a d d 
 
 fool are you f " Then he got up, gathering to 
 gether his hat and gloves, buttoning his coat, 
 projecting hungrily all over the place the big trans 
 parency of his mask. It seemed to flare over Fleet 
 Street and somehow made the actual spot distress 
 ingly humble : there was so little for it to feed on 
 unless he counted the blisters of our stucco or saw 
 his way to do something with the roses. Even the 
 poor roses were common kinds. Presently his 
 eyes fell upon the manuscript from which Paraday 
 had been reading to me and which still lay on the 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 23 
 
 bench. As my own followed them I saw that it 
 looked promising, looked pregnant, as if it gently 
 throbbed with the life the reader had given it. 
 Mr. Morrow indulged in a nod toward it and a 
 vague thrust of his umbrella. " What s that ? " 
 
 " Oh, it s a plan a secret." 
 
 " A secret ! " There was an instant s silence, 
 and then Mr. Morrow made another movement. I 
 may have been mistaken, but it affected me as the 
 translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on 
 the manuscript, and this led me to indulge in a 
 quick, anticipatory grab which may very well have 
 seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent, and which 
 at any rate left Mr. Faraday s two admirers very 
 erect, glaring at each other, while one of them held 
 a bundle of papers well behind him. An instant 
 later Mr. Morrow quitted me abruptly, as if he had 
 really carried something off with him. To reassure 
 myself, watching his broad back recede, I only 
 grasped my manuscript the tighter. He went to 
 the back-door of the house, the one he had come 
 out from, but on trying the handle he appeared to 
 find it fastened. So he passed round into the front 
 garden, and by listening intently enough I could 
 presently hear the outer gate close behind him with 
 a bang. I thought again of the thirty-seven 
 influential journals and wondered what would be 
 his revenge. I hasten to add that he was magnani 
 mous ; which was just the most dreadful thing he 
 could have been. The Tatler published a charm 
 ing, chatty, familiar account of Mr. Faraday s 
 
24 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 " Home-life," and on tbe wings of the thirty-seven 
 influential journals it went, to use Mr. Morrow s 
 own expression, right round the globe. 
 
 VI 
 
 A WEEK later, early in May, my glorified friend 
 came up to town, where, it may be veraciously 
 recorded, he was the king of the beasts of the year. 
 No advancement was ever more rapid, no exalta 
 tion more complete, no bewilderment more teach 
 able. His book sold but moderately, though the 
 article in The Empire had done unwonted wonders 
 for it ; but he circulated in person in a manner 
 that the libraries might well have envied. His 
 formula had been found he was a " revelation." 
 His momentary terror had been real, just as mine 
 had been the overclouding of his passionate desire 
 to be left to finish his work. He was far from 
 unsociable, but he had the finest conception of 
 being let alone that I have ever met. For the 
 time, however, he took his profit where it seemed 
 most to crowd upon him, having in his pocket the 
 portable sophistries about the nature of the artist s 
 task. Observation too was a kind of work and 
 experience a kind of success ; London dinners were 
 all material and London ladies were fruitful toil. 
 " No one has the faintest conception of what I m 
 trying for," he said to me, " and not many have 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 25 
 
 read three pages that I ve written ; but I must 
 dine with them first they ll find out why when 
 they ve time." It was rather rude justice, per 
 haps ; but the fatigue had the merit of being a 
 new sort, and the phantasmagoric town was prob 
 ably after all less of a battlefield than the haunted 
 study. He once told me that he had had no per 
 sonal life to speak of since his fortieth year, but 
 had had more than was good for him before. 
 London closed the parenthesis and exhibited him 
 in relations ; one of the most inevitable of these 
 being that in which he found himself to Mrs. 
 Weeks Wimbush, wife of the boundless brewer 
 and proprietress of the universal menagerie. In 
 this establishment, as every-body knows, on occa 
 sions when the crush is great, the animals rub 
 shoulders freely with the spectators and the lions 
 sit down for whole evenings with the lambs. 
 
 It had been ominously clear to me from the first 
 that in Neil Paraday this lady, who, as all the 
 world agreed, was tremendous fun, considered that 
 she had secured a prime attraction, a creature of 
 almost heraldic oddity. Nothing could exceed her 
 enthusiasm over her capture, and nothing could 
 exceed the confused apprehensions it excited in 
 me. I had an instinctive fear of her which I tried 
 without effect to conceal from her victim, but 
 which I let her perceive with perfect impunity. 
 Paraday heeded it, but she never did, for her con 
 science was that of a romping child. She was a 
 blind, violent force, to which I could attach no 
 
26 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 more idea of responsibility than to the creaking of 
 a sign in the wind. It was difficult to say what 
 she conduced to but to circulation. She was con 
 structed of steel and leather, and all I asked of her 
 for our tractable friend was not to do him to 
 death. He had consented for a time to be of 
 india-rubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the 
 day he should resume his shape or at least get back 
 into his box. It was evidently all right, but I 
 should be glad when it was well over. I had a 
 special fear the impression was ineffaceable of the 
 hour when, after Mr. Morrow s departure, I had 
 found him on the sofa in his study. That pretext 
 of indisposition had not in the least been meant as 
 a snub to the envoy of T/ie Tatler he had gone to 
 lie down in very truth. He had felt a pang of his 
 old pain, the result of the agitation wrought in 
 him by this forcing open of a new period. His old 
 programme, his old ideal even had to be changed. 
 Say what one would, success was a complication 
 and recognition had to be reciprocal. The monas 
 tic life, the pious illumination of the missal in the 
 convent cell were things of the gathered past. It 
 didn t engender despair, but it at least required 
 adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion 
 we had passed a bargain, my part of which was 
 that I should make it my business to take care of 
 him. Let whoever would represent the interest in 
 his presence (I had a mystical prevision of Mrs. 
 Weeks Wimbush) I should represent the interest 
 in his work in other words in his absence. These 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 27 
 
 two interests were in their essence opposed ; and 
 I doubt, as youth is fleeting, if I shall ever again 
 know the intensity of joy with which I felt that in 
 so good a cause I was willing to make myself 
 odious. 
 
 One day, in Sloane Street, I found myself ques 
 tioning Faraday s landlord, who had come to the 
 door in answer to my knock. Two vehicles, a 
 barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up be 
 fore the house. 
 
 "In the drawing-room, sir? Mrs. Weeks Wim- 
 bush." 
 
 " And in the dining-room ? " 
 
 " A young lady, sir waiting : I think a for 
 eigner." 
 
 It was three o clock, and on days when Paraday 
 didn t lunch out he attached a value to these sub 
 jugated hours. On which days, however, didn t 
 the dear man lunch out ? Mrs. Wimbush, at such 
 a crisis, would have rushed round immediately 
 after her own repast. I went into the dining-room 
 first, postponing the pleasure of seeing how, up 
 stairs, the lady of the barouche would, on my 
 arrival, point the moral of my sweet solicitude. 
 No one took such an interest as herself in his 
 doing only what was good for him, and she was 
 always on the spot to see that he did it. She 
 made appointments with him to discuss the best 
 means of economizing his time and protecting his 
 privacy. She further made his health her special 
 business, and had so much sympathy with my own 
 
28 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 zeal for it that she was the author of pleasing fic 
 tions on the subject of what my devotion had led 
 me to give up. I gave up nothing (I don t count 
 Mr. Pinhorn) because I had nothing, and all I had 
 as yet achieved was to find myself also in the 
 menagerie. I had dashed in to save my friend, but 
 I had only got domesticated and wedged ; so that 
 I could do nothing for him but exchange with him 
 over people s heads looks of intense but futile 
 intelligence. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE young lady in the dining-room had a brave 
 face, black hair, blue eyes, and in her lap a big 
 volume. " I ve come for his autograph," she said, 
 when I had explained to her that I was under 
 bonds to see people for him when he was occupied. 
 " I ve been waiting half an hour, but I m prepared 
 to wait all day." I don t know whether it was 
 this that told me she was American, for the pro 
 pensity to wait all day is not in general character 
 istic of her race. I was enlightened probably not 
 so much by the spirit of the utterance as by some 
 quality of its sound. At any rate I saw she had 
 an individual patience and a lovely frock, together 
 with an expression that played among her pretty 
 features like a breeze among flowers. Putting her 
 book upon the table, she showed me a massive 
 album, showily bound and full of autographs of 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 29 
 
 price. The collection of faded notes, of still more 
 faded " thoughts," of quotations, platitudes, signa 
 tures, represented a formidable purpose. 
 
 "Most people apply to Mr. Paraday by letter, 
 you know," I said. 
 
 " Yes, but he doesn t answer. I ve written 
 three times." 
 
 "Very true," I reflected; "the sort of letter, 
 you mean goes straight into the fire." 
 
 " How do you know the sort I mean ? " My 
 interlocutress had blushed and smiled, and in a 
 moment she added : " I don t believe he gets 
 many like them ! " 
 
 " I m sure they re beautiful, but he burns with 
 out reading." I didn t add that I had told him he 
 ought to. 
 
 " Isn t he then in danger of burning things of 
 importance ? " 
 
 " He would be, if distinguished men hadn t an 
 infallible nose for nonsense." 
 
 She looked at me a moment her face was sweet 
 and gay. "Do you burn without reading, too?" 
 she asked ; in answer to which I assured her that, 
 if she would trust me with her repository, I would 
 see that Mr. Paraday should write his name in it. 
 
 She considered a little. " That s very well, but 
 it wouldn t make me see him." 
 
 " Do you want very much to see him ? " It 
 seemed ungracious to catechise so charming a 
 creature, but somehow I had never yet taken my 
 duty to the great author so seriously. 
 
30 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 " Enough to have come from America for the 
 purpose." 
 
 I stared. " All alone ? " 
 
 "I don t see that that s exactly your business; 
 but if it will make me more appealing I ll confess 
 that I m quite by myself. I had to come alone or 
 not come at all." 
 
 She was interesting ; I could imagine that she 
 had lost parents, natural protectors could con 
 ceive even that she had inherited money. I was 
 in a phase of my own fortune when keeping han 
 soms at doors seemed to me pure swagger. As a 
 trick of this bold and sensitive girl, however, it 
 became romantic a part of the general romance 
 of her freedom, her errand, her innocence. The 
 confidence of young Americans was notorious, and 
 I speedily arrived at a conviction that no impulse 
 could have been more generous than the impulse 
 that had operated here. I foresaw at that moment 
 that it would make her my peculiar charge, just as 
 circumstances had made Neil Paraday. She would 
 be another person to look after, and one s honor 
 would be concerned in guiding her straight. 
 These things became clearer to me later ; at the 
 instant I had scepticism enough to observe to her, 
 as I turned the pages of her volume, that her net 
 had, all the same, caught many a big fish. She 
 appeared to have had fruitful access to the great 
 ones of the earth ; there were people, moreover, 
 whose signatures she had presumably secured 
 without a personal interview. She couldn t have 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 31 
 
 worried George Washington and Friedrich Schiller 
 and Hannah More. She met this argument, to my 
 surprise, by throwing up the album without a 
 pang. It wasn t even her own ; she was responsi 
 ble for none of its treasures. It belonged to a girl 
 friend in America, a young lady in a Western city. 
 This young lady had insisted on her bringing it, 
 to pick up more autographs ; she thought they 
 might like to see, in Europe, in what company 
 they would be. The " girl-friend," the Western 
 city, the immortal names, the curious errand, the 
 idyllic faith, all made a story as strange to me, and 
 as beguiling, as some tale in the Arabian Nights. 
 Thus it was that my informant had encumbered 
 herself with the ponderous tome ; but she hastened 
 to assure me that this was the first time she had 
 brought it out. For her visit to Mr. Paraday it 
 had simply been a pretext. She didn t really care 
 a straw that he should write his name ; what she 
 did want was to look straight into his face. 
 
 I demurred a little. " And why do you require 
 to do that?" 
 
 " Because I just love him ! " Before I could 
 recover from the agitating effect of this crystal 
 ring my companion had continued : " Hasn t there 
 ever been any face that you ve wanted to look 
 into?" 
 
 How could I tell her so soon how much I appre 
 ciated the opportunity of looking into hers ? I 
 could only assent in general to the proposition that 
 there were certainly for every one such hanker- 
 
32 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 ings, and even such faces ; and I felt that the 
 crisis demanded all my lucidity, all my wisdom. 
 " Oh, yes ! I m a student of physiognomy. Do you 
 mean," I pursued, " that you ve a passion for Mr. 
 Faraday s books ? " 
 
 " They ve been every thing to me, and a little 
 more beside I know them by heart. They ve 
 completely taken hold of me. There s no author 
 about whom I feel as I do about Neil Far 
 aday." 
 
 " Permit me to remark then," I presently re 
 joined, " that you re one of the right sort." 
 
 "One of the enthusiasts? Of course I am!" 
 
 " Ob, there are enthusiasts who are quite of the 
 wrong. I mean you re one of those to whom an 
 appeal can be made." 
 
 " An appeal ? " Her face lighted as if with the 
 chance of some great sacrifice. 
 
 If she was ready for one it was only waiting for 
 her, and in a moment I mentioned it. " Give up 
 this crude purpose of seeing him. Go away with 
 out it. That will be far better." 
 
 She looked mystified ; then she turned visibly 
 pale. " Why, hasn t he any personal charm ? " 
 The girl was terrible and laughable in her bright 
 directness. 
 
 " Ah, that dreadful word personal ! " I ex 
 claimed ; " we re dying of it, and you women bring 
 it out with murderous effect. When you en 
 counter a genius as fine as this idol of ours, let 
 him off the dreary duty of being a personality as 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 33 
 
 well. Know him only by what s best in him, and 
 spare him for the same sweet sake." 
 
 My young lady continued to look at me in con 
 fusion and mistrust, and the result of her reflection 
 on what I had just said was to make her suddenly 
 break out : " Look here, sir what s the matter 
 with him ? " 
 
 " The matter with him is that, if he doesn t look 
 out, people will eat a great hole in his life." 
 
 She considered a moment. " He hasn t any dis 
 figurement ? " 
 
 " Nothing to speak of ! " 
 
 "Do you mean that social engagements inter- 
 fere with his occupations ?" 
 
 " That but feebly expresses it." 
 
 " So that he can t give himself up to his beautiful 
 imagination ? " 
 
 " He s badgered, bothered, overwhelmed, on the 
 pretext of being applauded. People expect him to 
 give them his time, his golden time, who would 
 not themselves give five shillings for one of his 
 books." 
 
 " Five ? I d give five thousand ! " 
 
 " Give your sympathy give your forbearance. 
 Two-thirds of those who approach him only do it 
 to advertise themselves." 
 
 " Why, it s too bad ! " the girl exclaimed, with 
 the face of an angel. " It s the first time I was 
 ever called crude ! " she laughed. 
 
 I followed up my advantage. " There s a lady 
 with him now who s a terrible complication, and 
 3 
 
34 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 who yet hasn t read, I am sure, ten pages that he 
 ever wrote." 
 
 My visitor s wide eyes grew tenderer. " Then 
 how does she talk " 
 
 " Without ceasing. I only mention her as a 
 single case. Do you want to know how to show a 
 superlative consideration ? Simply avoid him." 
 
 " Avoid him ? " she softly wailed. 
 
 " Don t force him to have to take account of 
 you ; admire him in silence, cultivate him at a dis 
 tance and secretly appropriate his message. Do 
 you want to know," I continued, warming to my 
 idea, " how to perform an act of homage really 
 sublime?" Then, as she hung on my words: 
 " Succeed in never seeing him at all ! " 
 
 " Never at all ? " she pathetically gasped. 
 
 " The more you get into his writings the less 
 you ll want to ; and you ll be immensely sustained 
 by the thought of the good you re doing him." 
 
 She looked at me without resentment or spite, 
 and at the truth I had put before her with candor, 
 credulity, pity. I was afterward happy to remem 
 ber that she must have recognized in my face the 
 liveliness of my interest in herself. " I think I see 
 what you mean." 
 
 " Ob, I express it badly; but I should be de 
 lighted if you would let me come to see you to 
 explain it better." 
 
 She made no response to this, and her thoughtful 
 eyes fell on the big album, on which she presently 
 laid her hands as if to take it away. " I did use to 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 35 
 
 say out West that they might write a little less for 
 autographs (to all the great poets, you know) and 
 study the thoughts and style a little more." 
 
 " What do they care for the thoughts and style ? 
 They didn t even understand you. I m not sure," 
 I added, " that I do myself, and I dare say that you 
 by no means make me out." She had got up to 
 go, and though I wanted her to succeed in not see 
 ing Neil Paraday I wanted her also, inconsequently, 
 to remain in the house. I was at any rate far 
 from desiring to hustle her off. As Mrs. Weeks 
 Wimbush, upstairs, was still saving our friend in 
 her own way, I asked my young lady to let me 
 briefly relate, in illustration of my point, the little 
 incident of my having gone down into the country 
 for a profane purpose and been converted on the 
 spot to holiness. Sinking again into her chair to 
 listen, she showed a deep interest in the anecdote. 
 Then, thinking it over gravely, she exclaimed, 
 with her odd intonation : 
 
 " Yes, but you do see him ! " I had to admit 
 that this was the case ; and I was not so prepared 
 with an effective attenuation as I could have 
 wished. She eased the situation off, however, by 
 the charming quaintness with which she finally 
 said : " Well, I wouldn t want him to be lonely ! " 
 This time she rose in earnest, but I persuaded her 
 to let me keep the album to show to Mr. Paraday. 
 I assured her I would bring it back to her myself. 
 " Well, you ll find my address somewhere in it, on 
 a paper ! " she sighed resignedly, at the door. 
 
VIII 
 
 I BLUSH to confess it, but I invited Mr. Paraday 
 that very day to transcribe into the album one of 
 his most characteristic passages. I told him how 
 I had got rid of the strange girl who had brought 
 it her ominous name was Miss Hurter, and she 
 lived at an hotel ; quite agreeing with him, more 
 over, as to the wisdom of getting rid with equal 
 promptitude of the book itself. This was why 
 I carried it to Albemarle Street no later than 
 on the morrow. I failed to find her at home, but 
 she wrote to me and I went again : she wanted 
 so much to hear more about Neil Paraday. I 
 returned repeatedly, I may briefly declare, to 
 supply her with this information. She had been 
 immensely taken, the more she thought of it, with 
 that idea of mine about the act of homage : it had 
 ended by filling her with a generous rapture. She 
 positively desired to do something sublime for 
 him, though indeed I could see that, as this par 
 ticular flight was difficult, she appreciated the fact 
 that my visits kept her up. I had it on my con 
 science to keep her up ; I neglected nothing that 
 would contribute to it, and her conception of 
 our cherished author s independence became at last 
 as fine as his own conception. " Read him, read 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 37 
 
 him," I constantly repeated ; while, seeking him 
 in his works, she represented herself as convinced 
 that, according to my assurance, this was the 
 system that had, as she expressed it, weaned her. 
 We read him together when I could find time, and 
 the generous creature s sacrifice was fed by our 
 conversation. There were twenty selfish women, 
 about whom I told her, who stirred her with a 
 beautiful rage. Immediately after my first visit 
 her sister, Mrs. Milsom, came over from Paris, and 
 the two ladies began to present, as they called it, 
 their letters. I thanked our stars that none had 
 been presented to Mr. Paraday. They received 
 invitations and dined out, and some of these occa 
 sions enabled Fanny Hurter to perform, for con 
 sistency s sake, touching feats of submission. 
 Nothing indeed would now have induced her even 
 to look at the object of her admiration. Once, 
 hearing his name announced at a party, she 
 instantly left the room by another door and then 
 straightway quitted the house. At another time, 
 when I was at the opera with them (Mrs. Milsom 
 had invited me to their box), I attempted to point 
 Mr. Paraday out to her in the stalls. On this she 
 asked her sister to change places with her, and 
 while that lady devoured the great man through a 
 powerful glass, presented, all the rest of the even 
 ing, her inspired back to the house. To torment 
 her tenderly I pressed the glass upon her, telling 
 her how wonderfully near it brought our friend s 
 handsome head. By way of answer she simply 
 
38 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 looked at me in charged silence, letting me see 
 that tears had gathered in her eyes. These tears, 
 I may remark, produced an effect on me of which 
 the end is not yet. There was a moment when I 
 felt it my duty to mention them to Neil Paraday; 
 but I was deterred by the reflection that there were 
 questions more relevant to his happiness. 
 
 These questions, indeed, by the end of the season 
 were reduced to a single one the question of re 
 constituting, so far as might be possible, the con 
 ditions under which he had produced his best work. 
 Such conditions could never all come back, for there 
 was a new one that took up too much place ; but 
 some perhaps were not beyond recall. I wanted 
 above all things to see him sit down to the subject 
 of which, on my making his acquaintance, he had 
 read me that admirable sketch. Something told me 
 there was no security but in his doing so before the 
 new factor, as we used to say at Mr. Pinhorn s, 
 should render the problem incalculable. It only 
 half reassured me that the sketch itself was so 
 copious and so eloquent that even at the worst there 
 would be the making of a small but complete book, 
 a tiny volume which, for the faithful, might well 
 become an object of adoration. There would even 
 not be wanting critics to declare, I foresaw, that the 
 plan was a thing to be more thankful for than the 
 structure to have been reared on it. My impatience 
 for the structure, none the less, grew and grew with 
 the interruptions. He had, on coming up to town, 
 begun to sit for his portrait to a young painter, Mr. 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 39 
 
 Rumble, whose little game, as we also used to say 
 at Mr. Pinhorn s, was to be the first to perch on the 
 shoulders of renown. Mr. Rumble s studio was a 
 circus in which the man of the hour, and still more 
 the woman, leaped through the hoops of his showy 
 frames almost as electrically as they burst into tele 
 grams and " specials." He pranced into the exhibi 
 tions on their back ; he was the reporter on canvas, 
 the Vandyke up to date, and there was one roar 
 ing year in which Mrs. Bounder and Mrs. Braby, 
 Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes, proclaimed in 
 chorus from the same pictured walls that no one 
 had yet got ahead of him. 
 
 Paraday had been promptly caught and saddled, 
 accepting with characteristic good-humor his con 
 fidential hint that to figure in his show was not 
 so much a consequence as a cause of immortality. 
 From Mrs. Wimbush to the last " representative " 
 who called to ascertain his twelve favorite dishes, 
 it was the same ingenuous assumption that he would 
 rejoice in the repercussion. There were moments 
 when I fancied I might have had more patience with 
 them if they had not been so fatally benevolent. I 
 hated, at all events, Mr. Rumble s picture, and had 
 my bottled resentment ready when, later on, I found 
 my distracted friend had been stuffed by Mrs. Wim 
 bush into the mouth of another cannon. A young 
 artist in whom she was intensely interested, and 
 who had no connection with Mr. Rumble, was 
 to show how far he could make him go. Poor 
 Paraday, in return, was naturally to write something 
 
40 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 somewhere about the young artist. She played her 
 victims against each other with admirable ingenuity, 
 and her establishment was a huge machine in which 
 the tiniest and the biggest wheels went round to the 
 same treadle. I had a scene with her in which I 
 tried to express that the function of such a man was 
 to exercise his genius not to serve as a hoarding 
 for pictorial posters. The people I was perhaps 
 angriest with were the editors of magazines who 
 had introduced what they called new features, so 
 aware were they that the newest feature of all would 
 be to make him grind their axes by contributing his 
 views on vital topics and taking part in the periodi 
 cal prattle about the future of fiction. I made sure 
 that before I should have done with him there 
 would scarcely be a current form of words left me 
 to be sick of ; but meanwhile I could make surer 
 still of my animosity to bustling ladies for whom he 
 drew the water that irrigated their social flower 
 beds. 
 
 I had a battle with Mrs. Wimbush over the artist 
 she protected, and another over the question of a 
 certain week, at the end of July, that Mr. Paraday 
 appeared to have contracted to spend with her in the 
 country. I protested against this visit ; I intimated 
 that he was too unwell for hospitality without a 
 nuance, for caresses without imagination ; I begged 
 he might rather take the time in some restorative 
 way. A sultry air of promises, of ponderous parties? 
 hung over his August, and he would greatly profit 
 by the interval of rest. He had not told me he was 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 41 
 
 ill again that he had had a warning ; but I had 
 not needed this, and I found his reticence his worst 
 symptom. The only thing he said to me was that 
 he believed a comfortable attack of something or 
 other would set him up ; it would put out of the 
 question every thing but the exemptions he prized. 
 I am afraid I shall have presented him as a martyr 
 in a very small cause if I fail to explain that he 
 surrendered himself much more liberally than I sur 
 rendered him. He filled his lungs, for the most 
 part, with the comedy of his queer fate ; the tragedy 
 was in the spectacles through which I chose to look. 
 He was conscious of inconvenience, and above all 
 of a great renouncement ; but how could he have 
 heard a mere dirge in the bells of his accession ? 
 The sagacity and the jealousy were mine, and his 
 the impressions and the anecdotes. Of course, as 
 regards Mrs. Wimbush, I was worsted in my en 
 counters, for was not the state of his health the 
 very reason for his coming to her at Prestidge ? 
 Wasn t it precisely at Prestidge that he was to be 
 coddled, and wasn t the dear princess coming to 
 help her to coddle him ? The dear princess, now on 
 a visit to England, was of a famous foreign house, 
 and, in her gilded cage, with her retinue of keepers 
 and feeders, was the most expensive specimen in 
 the good lady s collection. I don t think her august 
 presence had had to do with Paraday s consenting 
 to go, but it is not impossible that he had operated 
 as a bait to the illustrious stranger. The party had 
 been made up for him, Miu Wimbush averred, and 
 
42 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 every one was counting on it, the dear princess 
 most of all. If he was well enough he was to 
 read them something absolutely fresh, and it was 
 on that particular prospect the princess had set her 
 heart. She was so fond of genius in any walk of 
 life, and she was so used to it, and understood it 
 so well ; she was the greatest of Mr. Faraday s ad 
 mirers, she devoured every thing he wrote. And 
 then he read like an angel. Mrs. Wimbush reminded 
 me that he had again and again given her, Mrs. 
 Wimbush, the privilege of listening to him. 
 
 I looked at her a moment. "What has he 
 read to you?" I crudely enquired. 
 
 For a moment too she met my eyes, and for the 
 fraction of a moment she hesitated and colored. 
 " Oh, all sorts of things ! " 
 
 I wondered whether this were an imperfect recol 
 lection or only a perfect fib, and she quite under 
 stood my unuttered comment on her perception of 
 such things. But if she could forget Neil Para- 
 day s beauties she could of course forget my rude 
 ness, and three days later she invited me, by tele 
 graph, to join the party at Prestidge. This time 
 she might indeed have had a story about what I 
 had given up to be near the master. I addressed 
 from that fine residence several communications 
 to a young lady in London, a young lady whom, I 
 confess, I quitted with reluctance, and whom the 
 reminder of what she herself could give up was 
 required to make me quit at all. It adds to the 
 gratitude I owe her on other grounds that she 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 43 
 
 kindly allows me to transcribe from my letters a 
 few of the passages in which that hateful sojourn 
 is candidly commemorated. 
 
 " I SUPPOSE I ought to enjoy the joke of what s 
 going on here," I wrote, " but somehow it doesn t 
 amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary possesses 
 me and cynicism solicits. I positively feel my own 
 flesh sore from the brass nails in Neil Faraday s 
 social harness. The house is full of people who 
 like him, as they mention, awfully, and with whom 
 his talent for talking nonsense has prodigious 
 success. I delight in his nonsense myself ; why is 
 it therefore that I grudge these happy folk their 
 artless satisfaction ? Mystery of the human heart 
 abyss of the critical spirit ! Mrs. Wimbtish thinks 
 she can answer that question, and, as my want of 
 gayety has at last worn out her patience, she has 
 given me a glimpse of her shrewd guess. I am 
 made restless by the selfishness of the insincere 
 friend I want to monopolize Paraday in order 
 that he may push me on. To be intimate with 
 him is a feather in my cap ; it gives me an im 
 portance that I couldn t naturally pretend to, and 
 I seek to deprive him of social refreshment because 
 I fear that meeting more disinterested people may 
 enlighten him as to my real motive. All the dis- 
 
44 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 interested people here are his particular admirers 
 and have been carefully selected as such. There 
 is supposed to be a copy of his last book in the 
 house, and in the hall I come upon ladies, in 
 attitudes, bending gracefully over the first volume. 
 I discreetly avert my eyes, and when I next look 
 round the precarious joy has been superseded by 
 the book of life. There is a sociable circle or a 
 confidential couple, and the relinquished volume 
 lies open on its face, as if it had been dropped 
 under extreme coercion. Somebody else presently 
 finds it and transfers it, with its air of momentary 
 desolation, to another piece of furniture. Every 
 one is asking every one about it all day, and every 
 one is telling every one where they put it last. 
 Pm sure it s rather smudgy about the twentieth 
 page. I have a strong impression too that the 
 second volume is lost has been packed in the bag 
 of some departing guest ; and yet every-body has 
 the impression that somebody else has read to the 
 end. You see therefore that the beautiful book 
 plays a great part in our conversation. Why 
 should I take the occasion of such distinguished 
 honors to say that I begin to see deeper into 
 Gustave Flaubert s doleful refrain about the hatred 
 of literature ? I refer you again to the perverse 
 constitution of man. 
 
 " The princess is a massive lady with the organi 
 zation of an athlete and the confusion of tongues 
 of a valet de place. She contrives to commit her 
 self extraordinarily little in a great many languages, 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 45 
 
 and is entertained and conversed with in detach 
 ments and relays, like an institution which goes on 
 from generation to generation or a big building 
 contracted for under a forfeit. She can t have a 
 personal taste any more than, when her husband 
 succeeds, she can have a personal crown, and her 
 opinion on any matter is rusty and heavy and 
 plain made, in the night of ages, to last and be 
 transmitted. I feel as if I ought to pay some one 
 a fee for my glimpse of it. She has been told 
 every thing in the world and has never perceived 
 anything, and the echoes of her education respond 
 awfully to the rash footfall I mean the casual 
 remark in the cold Valhalla of her memory. 
 Mrs. Wimbush delights in her wit, and says there 
 is nothing so charming as to hear Mr. Paraday 
 draw it out. He is perpetually detailed for this 
 job, and he tells me it has a peculiarly exhausting 
 effeot. Every one is beginning at the end of two 
 days to sidle obsequiously away from her, and 
 Mrs. Wimbush pushes him again and again into 
 the breach. None of the uses I have yet seen him 
 put to irritate me quite so much. He looks very 
 fagged, and has at last confessed to me that his 
 condition makes him uneasy has even promised 
 me that he will go straight home instead of re 
 turning to his final engagements in town. Last 
 night I had some talk with him about going to 
 day, cutting his visit short ; so sure am I that he 
 will be better as soon as he is shut up in his light 
 house. He told me that this is what he would 
 
46 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 like to do ; reminding me, however, that the first 
 lesson of his greatness has been precisely that he 
 can t do what he likes. Mrs. Wimbush would 
 never forgive him if he should leave her before 
 the princess has received the last hand. When I 
 say that a violent rupture with our hostess would 
 be the best thing in the world for him, he gives 
 me to understand that if his reason assents to the 
 proposition his courage hangs wofully back. He 
 makes no secret of being mortally afraid of her, 
 and when I ask what harm she can do him that 
 she hasn t already done he simply repeats: I m 
 afraid, I m afraid ! Don t enquire too closely, he 
 said last night ; only believe that I feel a sort of 
 terror. It s strange, when she s so kind ! At any 
 rate, I would as soon overturn that piece of price 
 less Sevres as tell her that I must go before my 
 date. It sounds dreadfully weak, but he has 
 some reason, and he pays for his imagination, 
 which puts him (I should hate it) in the place of 
 others and makes him feel, even against himself, 
 their feelings, their appetites, their motives. It s 
 indeed inveterately against himself that he makes 
 his imagination act. What a pity he has such a 
 lot of it ! He s too beastly intelligent. Besides, 
 the famous reading is still to come off, and it has 
 been postponed a day, to allow Guy Walsing- 
 ham to arrive. It appears that this eminent 
 lady is staying at a house a few miles off, which 
 means of course that Mrs. Wimbush has forci 
 bly annexed her. She s to come over in a day 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 47 
 
 or two Mrs. Wimbush wants her to hear Mr. 
 Paraday. 
 
 " To-day s wet and cold, and several of the com 
 pany, at the invitation of the duke, have driven 
 over to luncheon at Bigwood. I saw poor Paraday 
 wedge himself, by command, into the little supple 
 mentary seat of a brougham in which the Princess 
 and our hostess were already ensconced. If the 
 front glass isn t open on his dear old back, perhaps 
 he ll survive. Bigwood, I believe, is very grand and 
 frigid, all marble and precedence, and I wish him 
 well out of the adventure. I can t tell you how 
 much more and more your attitude to him, in the 
 midst of all this, shines out by contrast. I never 
 willingly talk to these people about him, but see 
 what a comfort I find it to scribble to you ! I 
 appreciate it it keeps me warm ; there are no 
 fires in the house. Mrs. Wimbush goes by the 
 calendar, the temperature goes by the weather, the 
 weather goes by God knows what, and the princess 
 is easily heated. I have nothing but my acrimony 
 to warm me, and have been out under an umbrella 
 to restore my circulation. Coming in an hour ago, 
 I found Lady Augusta Minch rummaging about 
 the hall. When I asked her what she was looking 
 for, she said she had mislaid something that Mr. 
 Paraday had lent her. I ascertained in a moment 
 that the article in question is a manuscript, and I 
 have a foreboding that it s the noble morsel he 
 read me six weeks ago. When I expressed my 
 surprise that he should have bandied about any 
 
48 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 tiling so precious (I happen to know it s his only 
 copy in the most beautiful hand in all the world) 
 Lady Augusta confessed to me that she had not had 
 it from himself, but from Mrs. Wimbush, who had 
 wished to give her a glimpse of it as a salve for 
 her not being able to stay and hear it read. 
 
 " Is that the piece he s to read, I asked, when 
 Guy Walsingham arrives ? 
 
 " It s not for Guy Walsingham they re waiting 
 now, it s for Dora Forbes, Lady Augusta said. 
 She s coming, I believe, early to-morrow. Mean 
 while, Mrs. Wimbush has found out about him, 
 and is actively wiring to him. She says he also 
 must hear him. 
 
 " You bewilder me a little, I replied ; in the 
 age we live in one gets lost among the genders 
 and the pronouns. The clear thing is that Mrs. 
 Wimbush doesn t guard such a treasure as jealously 
 as she might. 
 
 " Poor dear, she has the princess to guard! 
 Mr. Paraday lent her the manuscript to look over. 
 
 " Did she speak as if it were the morning 
 paper ? 
 
 " Lady Augusta stared my irony was lost upon 
 her. She didn t have time, so she gave me a 
 chance first ; because, unfortunately, I go to-mor 
 row to Bigwood. 
 
 " And your chance has only proved a chance to 
 lose it ? 
 
 " I haven t lost it. I renjember now it was 
 very stupid of me to have forgotten. I told my 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 49 
 
 maid to give it to Lord Dorimont, or at least to 
 his man. 
 
 " And Lord Dorimont went away directly after 
 luncheon. 1 
 
 " Of course he gave it back to my maid, or else 
 his man did, said Lady Augusta. * I dare say it s 
 all right. 
 
 " The conscience of these people is like a.summer 
 sea. They haven t time to look over a priceless 
 composition ; they ve only time to kick it about 
 the house. I suggested that the * man, fired with 
 a noble emulation, had perhaps kept the work for 
 his own perusal ; and her ladyship wanted to 
 know whether, if the thing didn t turn up again 
 in time for the session appointed by our hostess, 
 the author wouldn t have something else to read 
 that would do just as well. Their questions are 
 too delightful ! I declared to Lady Augusta 
 briefly that nothing in the world can ever do so 
 well as the thing that does best, and at this she 
 looked a little confused and scared. But I added 
 that if the manuscript had gone astray, our little 
 circle would have the less of an effort of attention 
 to make. The piece in question was very long ; it 
 would keep them three hours. 
 
 " Three hours ! Oh, the princess will get up ! 
 said Lady Augusta. 
 
 " I thought she was Mr. Faraday s greatest 
 admirer. 
 
 " I dare say she is she s so awfully clever. But 
 
 what s the use of being a princess 
 
 4 
 
50 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 " If you can t dissemble your love ? I asked, 
 as Lady Augusta was vague. She said, at any 
 rate, that she would question her maid ; and I am 
 hoping that when I go down to dinner I shall find 
 the manuscript has been recovered." 
 
 "!T has not been recovered," I wrote early the 
 next day, " and I am moreover much troubled 
 about our friend. He came back from Bigwood 
 with a chill, and, being allowed to have a fire in his 
 room, lay down a while before dinner. I tried to 
 send him to bed, and indeed thought I had put him 
 in the way of it ; but after I had gone to dress 
 Mrs. Wimbush came up to see him, with the in 
 evitable result that when I returned I found him 
 under arms and flushed and feverish, though dec 
 orated with the rare flower she had brought him 
 for his buttonhole. He came down to dinner, but 
 Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him. To 
 day he s in great pain, and the advent of ces dames 
 I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes 
 doesn t at all console me. It does Mrs. Wimbush, 
 however, for she has consented to his remaining in 
 bed, so that he may be all right to-morrow for the 
 listening circle. Guy Walsingham is already on 
 the scene, and the doctor for Paraday also arrived 
 early. I haven t yet seen the author of Obses- 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION. 51 
 
 sions, but of course I ve had a moment by myself 
 with the doctor. I tried to get him to say that 
 our invalid must go straight home I mean to-mor 
 row or next day ; but he quite refuses to talk 
 about the future. Absolute quiet and warmth and 
 the regular administration of an important remedy 
 are the points he mainly insists on. He returns 
 this afternoon, and I m to be back to see the patient 
 at one o clock, when he next takes his medicine. 
 It consoles me a little that he certainly won t be able 
 to read an exertion he was already more than unfit 
 for. Lady Augusta went off after breakfast, assur 
 ing me that her first care would be to follow up the 
 lost manuscript. I can see she thinks me a shock 
 ing busybody and doesn t understand my alarm, 
 but she will do what she can, for she s a good- 
 natured woman. So are they all honorable men. 
 That was precisely what made her give the thing 
 to Lord Dorimont and made Lord Dorimont bag 
 it. What use he has for it, God only knows ! I 
 have the worst forebodings, but somehow I m 
 strangely without passion desperately calm. As 
 I consider the unconscious, the well-meaning rav 
 ages of our appreciative circle, I bow my head in 
 submission to some great natural, some universal 
 accident ; I m rendered almost indifferent, in fact 
 quite gay (ha-ha !) by the sense of immitigable 
 fate. Lady Augusta promises me to trace the 
 precious object and let me have it, through the 
 post, by the time Paraday is well enough to play 
 his part with it. The last evidence is that her 
 
52 THE DEATH OP THE LION 
 
 maid did give it to his lordship s valet. One 
 would think it was some thrilling number of The 
 Family Budget. Mrs. Wimbush, who is aware of 
 the accident, is much less agitated by it than she 
 would doubtless be were she not for the hour 
 inevitably engrossed with Guy Walsingham." 
 
 Later in the day I informed my correspondent, 
 for whom indeed I kept a sort of diary of the sit 
 uation, that I had made the acquaintance of this 
 celebrity, and that she was a pretty little girl who 
 wore her hair in what used to be called a crop. 
 She looked so juvenile and so innocent that if, as 
 Mr. Morrow had announced, she was resigned to 
 the larger latitude, her superiority to prejudice must 
 have come to her early. I spent most of the day 
 hovering about Neil Faraday s room, but it was 
 communicated tome from below that Guy Walsing 
 ham, at Prestidge, was a success. Toward evening 
 I became conscious somehow that her superiority 
 was contagious, and by the time the company 
 separated for the night I was sure that the larger 
 latitude had been generally accepted. I thought 
 of Dora Forbes, and felt that he had no time to 
 lose. Before dinner I received a telegram from 
 Lady Augusta Minch. " Lord Dorimont thinks 
 he must have left bundle in train enquire." How 
 could I enquire if I was to take the word as 
 command ? I was too worried, and now too alarmed 
 about Neil Faraday. The doctor came back, and 
 it was an immense satisfaction to me to feel that 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 53 
 
 he was wise and interested. He was proud of 
 being called to so distinguished a patient, but he 
 admitted to me that night that my friend was 
 gravely ill. It was really a relapse, a recrudes 
 cence of his old malady. There could be no 
 question of moving him : we must at any rate 
 see first, on the spot, what turn his condition would 
 take. Meanwhile, on the morrow, he was to have 
 a nurse. On the morrow the dear man was easier, 
 and my spirits rose to such cheerfulness that I 
 could almost laugh over Lady Augusta s second 
 telegram : " Lord Dorimont s servant been to 
 station nothing found. Push enquiries." I did 
 laugh, I am sure, as I remembered this to be the 
 mystic scroll I had scarcely allowed poor Mr. 
 Morrow to point his umbrella at. Fool that I 
 had been ! The thirty-seven influential journals 
 wouldn t have destroyed it, they would only have 
 printed it. Of course I said nothing to Paraday. 
 
 When the nurse arrived she turned me out of 
 the room, on which I went down stairs. I should 
 premise that at breakfast the news that our brilliant 
 friend was doing well excited universal compla 
 cency, and the princess graciously remarked that 
 he was only to be commiserated for missing the 
 society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush, whose 
 social gift never shone brighter than in the dry 
 decorum with which she accepted this fizzle in her 
 fireworks, mentioned to me that Guy Walsingham 
 had made a very favorable impression on her Im 
 perial Highness. Indeed I think every one did so, 
 
54 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 and that, like the money-market or the national 
 honor, her Imperial Highness was constitutionally 
 sensitive. There was a certain gladness, a per 
 ceptible bustle in the air, however, which I 
 thought slightly anomalous in a house where a 
 great author lay critically ill. " Leroy est mort 
 vive le roy ! " I was reminded that another great 
 author had already stepped into his shoes. When 
 I came down again after the nurse had taken pos 
 session I found a strange gentleman hanging 
 about the hall and pacing to and fro by the closed 
 door of the drawing-room. This personage was 
 florid and bald ; he had a big red mustache and 
 wore showy knickerbockers characteristics all 
 that fitted into my conception of the identity of 
 Dora Forbes. In a moment I saw what had 
 happened : the author of " The Other Way 
 Round" had just alighted at the portals of Pres- 
 tidge, but had suffered a scruple to restrain him 
 from penetrating further. I recognized his 
 scruple when, pausing to listen at his gesture of 
 caution, I heard a shrill voice lifted in a sort of 
 rhythmic, uncanny chant. The famous reading 
 had begun, only it was the author of " Obses 
 sions " who now furnished the sacrifice. The new 
 visitor whispered to me that he judged something 
 was going on that he oughtn t to interrupt. 
 
 " Miss Collop arrived last night," I smiled, " and 
 the princess has a thirst for the inedit." 
 
 Dora Forbes lifted his bushy brows, "Miss 
 Collop?" 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 55 
 
 " Guy Walsingham, your distinguished confrere 
 or shall I say your formidable rival ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " growled Dora Forbes. Then he added : 
 " Shall I spoil it, if I go in?" 
 
 " I should think nothing could spoil it ! " I 
 ambiguously laughed. 
 
 Dora Forbes evidently felt the dilemma ; he 
 gave an irritated crook to his mustache. " Shall 
 I go in ? " he presently asked. 
 
 We looked at each other hard a moment ; then 
 I expressed something bitter that was in me, ex 
 pressed it in an infernal " Do ! " After this I got 
 out into the air, but not so fast as not to hear, 
 when the door of the drawing-room opened, the 
 disconcerted drop of Miss Collop s public manner : 
 she must have been in the midst of the larger lati 
 tude. Producing with extreme rapidity, Guy 
 Walsingham has just published a work in which 
 amiable people who are not initiated have been 
 pained to see the genius of a sister-novelist held 
 up to unmistakable ridicule ; so fresh an exhibi 
 tion does it seem to them of the dreadful way 
 men have always treated women. Dora Forbes, 
 it is true, at the present hour, is immensely 
 pushed by Mrs. Wimbush, and has sat for his por 
 trait to the young artist she protects, sat for it 
 not only in oils, but in monumental alabaster. 
 
 What happened at Prestidge later in the day 
 is of course contemporary history, If the inter 
 ruption I had whimsically sanctioned was almost 
 a scandal, what is to be said of that general dis- 
 
56 THE DEATH OP THE LION 
 
 persal of the company which, under the doctor s 
 rule, began to take place in the evening ! His rule 
 was soothing to behold, small comfort as I was to 
 have at the end. He decreed in the interest of 
 his patient an absolutely soundless house and a 
 consequent break-up of the party. Little country 
 practitioner as he was, he literally packed off 
 the princess. She departed as promptly as if a 
 revolution had broken out, and Guy Walsingham 
 emigrated with her. I was kindly permitted to 
 remain, and this was not denied even to Mrs. 
 Wimbush. The privilege was withheld indeed 
 from Dora Forbes ; so Mrs. Wimbnsh kept her 
 latest capture temporarily concealed. This was so 
 little, however, her usual wa}^ of dealing with her 
 eminent friends that a couple of days of it ex 
 hausted her patience, and she went up to town with 
 him in great publicity. The sudden turn for the 
 worse her afflicted guest had, after a brief improve 
 ment, taken on the third night raised an obstacle 
 to her seeing him before her retreat ; a fortunate 
 circumstance doubtless, for she was fundamen 
 tally disappointed in him. This was not the kind 
 of performance for which she had invited him to 
 Prestidge, or invited the princess. Let me hasten 
 to add that none of the generous acts which have 
 characterized her patronage of intellectual and other 
 merit have done so much for her reputation as her 
 lending Neil Paraday the most beautiful of her 
 numerous homes to die in. He took advantage to 
 the utmost of the singular favor. Day by day I 
 
THE DEATH OF THE LION 57 
 
 saw him sink, and I roamed alone about the empty 
 terraces and gardens. His wife never came near 
 him, but I scarcely noticed it ; as I paced there with 
 rage in my heart I was too full of another wrong. 
 In the event of his death it would fall to me perhaps 
 to bring out in some charming form, with notes, 
 with the tenderest editorial care, that precious 
 heritage of his written project. But where was 
 the precious heritage, and were both the author 
 and the book to be snatched from us ? Lady 
 Augusta wrote me that she had done all she could, 
 and that poor Lord Dorirnont, who had really 
 been worried to death, was extremely sorry. I 
 couldn t have the matter out with Mrs. Wimbush, 
 for I didn t want to be taunted by her with desir 
 ing to aggrandize myself by a public connection 
 with Mr. Faraday s sweepings. She had signified 
 her willingness to meet the expense of all advertis 
 ing, as indeed she was always ready to do. The 
 last night of the horrible series, the night before 
 he died, I put my ear closer to his pillow. 
 
 "That thing I read you that morning, you 
 know." 
 
 " In your garden that dreadful day ? Yes ! " 
 
 " Won t it do as it is ! " 
 
 " It would have been a glorious book." 
 
 " It is a glorious book," Neil Paraday murmured. 
 " Print it as it stands beautifully." 
 
 " Beautifully ! " I passionately promised. 
 
 It may be imagined whether, now that he is 
 gone, the promise seems to me less sacred. I am 
 
58 THE DEATH OF THE LION 
 
 convinced that if such pages had appeared in his 
 life-time the Abbey would hold him to-day. I have 
 kept the advertising in my own hands, but the 
 manuscript has not been recovered. It is impos 
 sible, and at any rate intolerable, to suppose it can 
 have been wantonly destroyed. Perhaps some 
 hazard of a blind hand, some brutal ignorance, has 
 lighted kitchen fires with it. Every stupid and 
 hideous accident haunts my meditations. My un- 
 discourageable search for the lost treasure would 
 make a long chapter. Fortunately, I have a devoted 
 associate in the person of a young lady who has 
 every day a fresh indignation and a fresh idea, 
 and who maintains with intensity that the prize 
 will still turn up. Sometimes I believe her, but I 
 have quite ceased to believe myself. The only 
 thing for us, at all events, is to go on seeking and 
 hoping together ; and we should be closely united 
 by this firm tie even were we not at present by 
 another. 
 
THE COXON FUND 
 
 " THEY VE got him for life 1 " I said to myself 
 that evening on my way back to the station ; but 
 later, alone in the compartment (from Wimbledon 
 to Waterloo, before the glory of the District 
 Railway), I amended this declaration in the light 
 of the sense that my friends would probably after 
 all not enjoy a monopoly of Mr. Saltram. I won t 
 pretend to have taken his vast measure on that 
 first occasion, but I think I had achieved a glimpse 
 of what the privilege of his acquaintance might 
 mean for many persons in the Avay of charges ac 
 cepted. He had been a great experience, and it 
 was this, perhaps, that had put me into the frame 
 of foreseeing how we should all, sooner or later, 
 have the honor of dealing with him as a whole. 
 Whatever impression I then received of the amount 
 of this total, I had a full enough vision of the 
 patience of the Mullvilles. He was staying with 
 them all the winter : Adelaide dropped it in a tone 
 which drew the sting from the temporary. These 
 excellent people might indeed have been content 
 to give the circle of hospitality a diameter of six 
 months ; but if they didn t say that he was stay- 
 
60 THE COXON FUND 
 
 ing for the summer as well, it was only because 
 this was more than they ventured to hope. I re 
 member that at dinner that evening he wore slip 
 pers, new and predominantly purple, of some queer 
 carpet-stuff ; but the Mulvilles were still in the 
 stage of supposing that he might be snatched from 
 them by higher bidders. At a later time they 
 grew, poor dears, to fear no snatching ; but theirs 
 was a fidelity which needed no help from compe 
 tition to make them proud. Wonderful indeed as, 
 when all was said, you inevitably pronounced Frank 
 Saltram, it was not to be overlooked that the Kent 
 Mulvilles were in their way still more extraordi 
 nary : as striking an instance as could easily be 
 encountered of the familiar truth that remarkable 
 men find remarkable conveniences. 
 
 They had sent for me from Wimbledon to come 
 out and dine, and there had been an implication in 
 Adelaide s note (judged by her notes alone she 
 might have been thought silly) that it was a case 
 in which something momentous was to be deter 
 mined or done. I had never known them not to 
 be in a " state " about somebody, and I dare say I 
 tried to be droll on this point in accepting their invi 
 tation. On finding myself in the presence of their 
 latest revelation I had not at first felt irreverence 
 droop ; and, thank Heaven, I have never been abso 
 lutely deprived of that alternative in Mr. Saltram s 
 company. I saw, however (I hasten to declare it), 
 that, compared to this specimen, their other phoe 
 nixes had been birds of inconsiderable feather, and 
 
THE COXON FUND 61 
 
 I afterward took credit to myself for not having, 
 even in primal bewilderments, made a mistake 
 about tbe essence of the man. He had an incom 
 parable gift ; I never was blind to it it dazzles 
 me at present. It dazzles me perhaps even more 
 in remembrance than in fact, for I m not unaware 
 that for a subject so magnificent the imagination 
 goes to some expense, inserting a jewel here and 
 there or giving a twist to a plume. How the art 
 of portraiture would rejoice in this figure if the art 
 of portraiture had only the canvas ! Nature, in 
 truth, had largely rounded it, and if Memory, hov 
 ering about it, sometimes holds her breath, this is 
 because the voice that comes back was really 
 golden. 
 
 Though the great man was an inmate and didn t 
 dress, he kept dinner on this occasion waiting, and 
 the first words he uttered on coming into the room 
 were a triumphant announcement to Mulville that 
 he had found out something. Not catching the 
 allusion, and gaping doubtless a little at his face, I 
 privately asked Adelaide what he had found out. 
 I shall never forget the look she gave me as she 
 replied, " Every thing ! " She really believed it. 
 At that moment, at any rate, he had found out 
 that the mercy of the Mulvilles was infinite. He 
 had previously of course discovered, as I had my 
 self for that matter, that their dinners were soignes. 
 Let me not indeed, in saying this, neglect to 
 declare that I shall falsify my counterfeit if I seem 
 to hint that there was in his nature any ounce of 
 
62 THE COXON FUND 
 
 calculation. He took whatever came, but he never 
 plotted for it, and no man who was so much of an 
 absorbent can ever have been so little of a parasite. 
 He had a system of the universe, but he had no 
 system of sponging that was quite hand-to-mouth. 
 He had fine, gross, easy senses, but it was not his 
 good-natured appetite that wrought confusion. If 
 he had loved us for our dinners we could have 
 paid with our dinners, and it would have been a 
 great economy of finer matter. I make free in 
 these connections with the plural possessive because, 
 if I was never able to do what the Mulvilles did, 
 and people with still bigger houses and simpler 
 charities, I met, first and last, every demand of 
 reflection, of emotion particularly, perhaps, those 
 of gratitude and of resentment. No one, I think, 
 paid the tribute of giving him up so often, and, if 
 it s rendering honor to borrow wisdom, I have a 
 right to talk of my sacrifices. He yielded lessons 
 as the sea yields fish I lived for a while on this 
 diet. Sometimes it almost appeared tome that his 
 massive, monstrous failure if failure, after all, it 
 was had been intended for my private recreation. 
 He fairly pampered my curiosity ; but the history 
 of that experience would take me too far. This is 
 not the large canvas I just now spoke of, and I 
 would not have approached him with my present 
 hand had it been a question of all the features. 
 Frank Saltram s features, for artistic purposes, are 
 verily the anecdotes that are to be gathered. 
 Their name is legion, and this is only one, of which 
 
THE COXON FUND 63 
 
 the interest is that it concerns even more closely 
 several other persons. Such episodes, as one looks 
 back, are the little dramas that made up the 
 innumerable facets of the big drama which is yet 
 to be reported. 
 
 II 
 
 IT is furthermore remarkable that though the 
 two stories are distinct my own, as it were, and 
 this other they equally began, in a manner, the 
 first night of my acquaintance with Frank Saltram, 
 the night I came back from Wimbledon so agitated 
 with a new sense of life that, in London, for the 
 very thrill of it, I could only walk home. Walk 
 ing and swinging my stick, I overtook, at Buck 
 ingham Gate, George Gravener, and George Grave- 
 ner s story may be said to have begun with my 
 making him, as our paths la}^ together, come home 
 with me for a talk. I duly remember, let me 
 parenthesize, that it was still more that of another 
 person, and also that several years were to elapse 
 before it was to extend to a second chapter. I had 
 much to say to him, none the less, about my visit 
 to the Mulvilles, whom he more indifferently knew, 
 and I was at any rate so amusing that, for long 
 afterward, he never encountered me without asking 
 for news of the old man of the sea. I hadn t said 
 Mr. Saltram was old, and it was to be seen that he 
 was of an age to outweather George Gravener. I 
 
64 THE COXON FUND 
 
 had at that time a lodging in Ebury Street, and 
 Gravener was staying at his brother s empty house 
 in Eaton Square. At Cambridge, five years before, 
 even in our devastating set, his intellectual power 
 had seemed to me almost awful. Some one had 
 once asked me privately, with blanched cheeks, 
 what it was then that, after all, such a mind as that 
 left standing. " It leaves itself ! " I could recol 
 lect devoutly replying. I could smile at present at 
 this reminiscence, for even before we got to Ebury 
 Street I was struck with the fact that, save in the 
 sense of being well set up on his legs, George 
 Gravener had actually ceased to tower. The uni 
 verse he laid low had somehow bloomed again 
 the usual eminences were visible. I wondered 
 whether he had lost his humor, or only, dreadful 
 thought ! had never had any not even when I had 
 fancied him most Aristophanesque. What was the 
 need of appealing to laughter, however, I could 
 enviously enquire, where you might appeal so con 
 fidently to measurement ? Mr. Saltram s queer 
 figure, his thick nose and hanging lip, were fresh 
 to me ; in the light of my old friend s fine cold 
 symmetry they presented mere success in amusing 
 as the refuge of conscious ugliness. Already, at 
 hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and 
 parliamentary as if he were fifty and popular. In 
 my scrap of a residence (he had a worldling s eye 
 for its futile conveniencies, but never a comrade s 
 joke) I sounded Frank Saltram in his ears ,- a cir 
 cumstance I mention in order to note that even 
 
THE COXON FUND 65 
 
 then I was surprised at liis impatience of my 
 enlivenment. As lie had never before heard of the 
 personage, it took indeed the form of impatience 
 of the preposterous Mulvilles, his relation to whom, 
 like mine, had had its origin in an early, a childish 
 intimacy with the young Adelaide, the fruit of 
 multiplied ties in the previous generation. When 
 she married Kent Mulville, who was older than 
 Gravener and I and much more amiable, I gained 
 a friend, but Gravener practically lost one. We 
 were affected in different ways by the form taken 
 by what he called their deplorable social action 
 the form (the term was also his) of nasty, second- 
 rate gush. I may have held in my for interieur 
 that the good people at Wimbledon were beautiful 
 fools, but when he sniffed at them I couldn t help 
 taking the opposite line, for I already felt that, 
 even should we happen to agree, it would alwa} 7 s 
 be for reasons that differed. It came home to me 
 that he was admirably British as, without so much 
 as a sociable sneer at my bookbinder, he turned 
 away from the serried rows of my little French 
 library. 
 
 " Of course I ve never seen the fellow, but it s 
 clear enough he s a humbug." 
 
 " Clear * enough is just what it isn t," I replied ; 
 " if it only were ! " That ejaculation on my part 
 must have been the beginning of what was to be 
 later a long ache for final, frivolous rest. Gravener 
 was profound enough to remark after a moment 
 that in the first place he couldn t be any thing but 
 5 
 
66 THE COXON FUND 
 
 a dissenter, and when I answered that the very note 
 of his fascination was his extraordinary speculative 
 breadth, my friend retorted that there was no cad 
 like your cultivated cad, and that I might depend 
 upon discovering, since I had had the levity not 
 already to have enquired, that my shining light 
 proceeded, a generation back, from a Methodist 
 cheesemonger. I confess I was struck with his 
 insistence, and I said, after reflection : " It may be 
 I admit it may be ; but why on earth are you so 
 sure?" asking the question mainly to lay him 
 the trap of saying that it was because the poor 
 man didn t dress for dinner. He took an instant 
 to circumvent my trap and came blandly out the 
 other side. 
 
 " Because the Kent Mulvilles have invented him. 
 They ve an infallible hand for frauds. All their 
 geese are swans. They were born to be duped, 
 they like it, they cry for it, they don t know any 
 thing from any thing, and they disgust one (luckily 
 perhaps !) with Christian charity." His vehe 
 mence was doubtless an accident, but it might have 
 been a strange foreknowledge. I forget what pro 
 test I dropped ; it was at any rate something 
 which led him to go on after a moment : "I only 
 ask one thing it s perfectly simple. Is a man, in 
 a given case, a real gentleman ? " 
 
 " A real gentleman, my dear fellow that s so 
 soon said ! " 
 
 "Not so soon when he isn t! If they ve got 
 hold of one this time he must be a great rascal ! " 
 
THE COXON FUND 67 
 
 " I might feel injured," I answered, " if I didn t 
 reflect that they don t rave about me." 
 
 "Don t be too sure ! I ll grant that he s a 
 gentleman," Gravener presently added, " if you ll 
 admit that he s a scamp." 
 
 " I don t know which to admire most, your logic 
 or your benevolence." 
 
 My friend colored at this, but he didn t change 
 the subject. " Where did they pick him up ? " 
 
 "I think they were struck with something he 
 had published." 
 
 " I can fancy the dreary thing ! " 
 
 " I believe they found out he had all sorts of 
 worries and difficulties." 
 
 " That, of course, was not to be endured, and 
 they jumped at the privilege of paying his debts ! " 
 
 I replied that I knew nothing about his debts, 
 and I reminded my visitor that though the dear 
 Mulvilles were angels they were neither idiots nor 
 millionnaires. What they mainly aimed at Avas 
 reuniting Mr. Saltram to his wife. 
 
 "I was expecting to hear that he has basely 
 abandoned her," Gravener went on, at this, " and 
 I m too glad 3^011 don t disappoint me." 
 
 I tried to recall exactly what Mrs. Mulville had 
 told me. " He didn t leave her no. It s she who 
 has left him." 
 
 "Left him to us?" Gravener asked. "The 
 monster many thanks ! I decline to take him." 
 
 " You ll hear more about him in spite of your 
 self. I can t, no, I really can t resist the impres- 
 
68 THE COXON FUND 
 
 sion that he s a big man." I was already learning 
 to ray shame perhaps be it said just the tone 
 that my old friend least liked. 
 
 " It s doubtless only a trifle," he returned, " but 
 you haven t happened to mention what his reputa 
 tion s to rest on." 
 
 " Why, on what I began by boring you with 
 his extraordinary mind." 
 
 " As exhibited in his writings ? " 
 
 " Possibly in his writings, but certainly in his 
 talk, which is far and away the richest I ever 
 listened to." 
 
 "And what is it all about ?" 
 
 "My dear fellow, don t ask me! About every 
 thing ! " I pursued, reminding myself of poor 
 Adelaide. "About his ideas of things," I then 
 more charitably added. "You must have heard 
 him to know what I mean it s unlike any thing 
 that ever was heard." I colored, I admit, I over 
 charged a little, for such a picture was an anticipa 
 tion of Saltram s later development and still more 
 of my fuller acquaintance with him. However, I 
 really expressed, a little lyrically perhaps, my 
 actual imagination of him when I proceeded to 
 declare that, in a cloud of tradition, of legend, he 
 might very well go down to posterity as the great 
 est of all great talkers. Before we parted George 
 Gravener demanded why such a row should be 
 made about a chatterbox the more, and why he 
 should be pampered and pensioned. The greater 
 the wind-bag, the greater the calamity. Out of 
 
THE COXOX FUND 69 
 
 proportion to every thing else on earth had come 
 to be this wagging of the tongue. We were 
 drenched with talk our wretched age was dying 
 of it. I differed from him here sincerely, only go 
 ing so far as to concede, and gladly, that we were 
 drenched with sound. It was not, however, the 
 mere speakers who were killing us it was the mere 
 stammerers. Fine talk was as rare as it was re 
 freshing the gift of the gods themselves, the one 
 starry spangle on the ragged cloak of humanity. 
 How many men were there who rose to this privi 
 lege, of how many masters of conversation could 
 he boast the acquaintance? Dying of talk? why, 
 we were dying of the lack of it ! Bad writing 
 wasn t talk, as many people seemed to think, and 
 even good wasn t always to be compared to it. 
 From the best talk, indeed, the best writing had 
 something to learn. I fancifully added that we 
 too should peradventure be gilded by the legend, 
 should be pointed at for having listened, for having 
 actually heard. Gravener, who had glanced at his 
 watch and discovered it was midnight, found to 
 all this a response beautifully characteristic of him. 
 " There is one little fact to be borne in mind in 
 the presence equally of the best talk and of the 
 worst." He looked, in saying this, as if he meant 
 so much that I thought he could only mean once 
 more that neither of them mattered if a man wasn t 
 a real gentleman. Perhaps it was what he did 
 mean ; he deprived me, however, of the exultation 
 of being right by putting the truth in a slightly 
 
70 THE COXON FUND 
 
 different way. " The only thing that really counts 
 for one s estimate of a person is his conduct." He 
 had his watch still in his hand, and I reproached 
 him with unfair play in having ascertained before 
 hand that it was now the hour at which I always 
 gave in. My pleasantry so far failed to mollify 
 him that he promptly added that to the rule he 
 had just enunciated there was absolutely no excep 
 tion. 
 
 "None whatever?" 
 
 " None whatever ! " 
 
 "Trust me, then, to try to be good at any 
 price ! " I laughed as I went with him to the door. 
 " I declare I will be, if I have to be horrible ! " 
 
 III 
 
 IF that first night was one of the liveliest, or at 
 any rate was the freshest, of my exaltations, there 
 was another, four years later, that was one of my 
 great discomposures. Repetition, I well knew by 
 this time, was the secret of Saltram s power to 
 alienate, and of course one would never have seen 
 him at his finest if one hadn t seen him in his 
 remorses. They set in mainly at this season, and 
 were magnificent, orchestral. I was perfectly 
 aware that something of the sort was now due ; 
 but none the less, in our arduous attempt to set 
 him on his feet as a lecturer, it was impossible not 
 
THE COXON FUND 71 
 
 to feel that two failures were a large order, as we 
 said, for a short course of five. This was the 
 second time, and it was past nine o clock ; the 
 audience, a muster unprecedented and really 
 encouraging, had fortunately the attitude of 
 blandness that might have been looked for in per 
 sons whom the promise (if I am not mistaken) of 
 an Analysis of Primary Ideas had drawn to the 
 neighborhood of Upper Baker Street. There 
 was in those days in that region a petty lecture- 
 hall to be secured on terms as moderate as the 
 funds left at our disposal by the irrepressible ques 
 tion of the maintenance of five small Saltrams (I 
 include the mother) and one large one. By the 
 time the Saltrams, of different sizes, were all main 
 tained, we had pretty well pqured out the oil that 
 might have lubricated the machinery for enabling 
 the most original of men to appear to maintain 
 them. 
 
 It was I, the other time, who had been forced 
 into the breach, standing up there for an odious 
 lamplit moment to explain to half a dozen thin 
 benches, where the earnest brows were virtuously 
 void of any thing so cynical as a suspicion, that 
 we couldn t put so much as a finger on Mr. Sal tram. 
 There was nothing to plead but that our scouts 
 had been out from the early hours, and that we 
 were afraid that on one of his walks abroad he 
 took one, for meditation, whenever he was to 
 address such a company some accident had dis 
 abled or delayed him. The meditative walks were 
 
72 THE COXON FUND 
 
 a fiction, for he never, that any one could discover, 
 prepared any tiling but a magnificent prospectus ; 
 so that his circulars and programmes, of which I 
 possess an almost complete collection, are the 
 solemn ghosts of generations never born. I put 
 the case, as it seemed to me, at the best ; but I 
 admit I had been angry, and Kent Mulville was 
 shocked at my want of public optimism. This 
 time, therefore, I left the excuses to his more prac 
 tised patience, only relieving myself in response to 
 a direct appeal from a young lady, next whom, in 
 the hall, I found myself sitting. My position was 
 an accident, but if it had been calculated the 
 reason would scarcely have eluded an observer of 
 the fact that no one else in the room had an 
 approach to an appearance. Our philosopher s 
 "tail" was deplorably limp. This visitor was the 
 only person who looked at her ease, who had come 
 a little in the spirit of adventure. She seemed to 
 carry amusement in her handsome young head, and 
 her presence quite gave me the sense of a sudden 
 extension of Saltram s sphere of influence. He 
 was doing better than we hoped, and he had 
 chosen such an occasion, of all occasions, to suc 
 cumb to Heaven knew which of his infirmities. 
 The young lady produced an impression of auburn 
 hair and black velvet, and had on her other hand 
 a companion of obscurer type, presumably a wait 
 ing-maid. She herself might perhaps have been a 
 foreign countess, and before she spoke to me I had 
 beguiled our sorry interval by thinking that she 
 
THE COXON FUND 73 
 
 brought vaguely back the first page of some novel 
 of Mme. Sand. It didn t make her more fathom 
 able to perceive in a few minutes that she could 
 only be an American ; it simply engendered depres 
 sing reflections as to the possible check to con 
 tributions from Boston. She asked me if, as a 
 person apparently more initiated, I would recom 
 mend further waiting, and I replied that, if she 
 considered I was on my honor, I would privately 
 deprecate it. Perhaps she didn t ; at any rate 
 something passed between us that led us to talk 
 until she became aware that we were almost the 
 only people left. I presently discovered that she 
 knew Mrs. Saltram, and this explained in a manner 
 the miracle. The brotherhood of the friends of 
 the husband was as nothing to the brotherhood, or 
 perhaps I should say the sisterhood, of the friends 
 of the wife. Like the Kent Mulvilles, I belonged 
 to both fraternities, and, even better than they, I 
 think I had sounded the abyss of Mrs. Saltram s 
 wrongs. She bored me to extinction, and I knew 
 but too well how she had bored her husband ; but 
 she had those who stood by her, the most efficient 
 of whom were indeed the handful of poor Saltram s 
 backers. They did her liberal justice, whereas her 
 mere patrons and partisans had nothing but hatred 
 for our philosopher. I am bound to say it was we, 
 however, we of both camps, as it were, who had 
 always done most for her. 
 
 I thought my young lady looked rich I scarcely 
 knew why ; and I hoped she had put her hand in 
 
74 THE COXON FUND 
 
 her pocket. But I soon discovered that she was 
 not a fine fanatic she was only a generous, irre 
 sponsible enquirer. She had come to England to 
 see her aunt, and it was at her aunt s she had met 
 the dreary lady we had all so much on our mind. 
 I saw she would help to pass the time when she 
 observed that it was a pity this lady wasn t intrin 
 sically more interesting. That was refreshing, 
 for it was an article of faith in Mrs. Saltram s 
 circle at least among those who scorned to know 
 her horrid husband that she w r as attractive on 
 her merits. She was really a very common per 
 son, as Saltram himself would have been if he 
 hadn t been a prodigy. The question of vulgarity 
 had no application to him, but it was a measure 
 that his wife kept challenging you to apply. I 
 hasten to add that the consequences of your doing 
 so were no sufficient reason for his having left her 
 to starve. " He doesn t seem to have much force 
 of character," said my young lady ; at which 
 I laughed out so loud that my departing friends 
 looked back at me over their shoulders as if I were 
 making a joke of their discomfiture. My joke 
 probably cost Saltram a subscription or two, but 
 it helped me on with my interlocutress. " She 
 says he drinks like a fish," she sociably continued, 
 " and yet she admits that his mind is wonderfully 
 clear." It was amusing to converse with a pretty 
 girl who could talk of the clearness of Saltram s 
 mind. I expected her next to say that she had 
 been assured he was awfully clever. I tried to tell 
 
THE COXON FUND 75 
 
 her I bad it almost on my conscience what was 
 the proper way to regard him ; an effort attended 
 perhaps more than ever on this occasion with the 
 usual effect of my feeling that I wasn t after all 
 very sure of it. She had come to-night out of 
 high curiosity she had wanted to find out this 
 proper way for herself. She had read some of his 
 papers and hadn t understood them ; but it was at 
 home, at her aunt s, that her curiosity had been 
 kindled kindled mainly by his wife s remarkable 
 stories of his want of virtue. "I suppose they 
 ought to have kept me away," my companion 
 dropped, " and I suppose they would have done so, 
 if I hadn t somehow got an idea that he s fasci 
 nating. In fact Mrs. Saltram herself says he is." 
 
 " So you came to see where the fascination 
 resides ? Well, you ve seen ! " 
 
 My young lady raised her fine eyebrows. " Do 
 you mean in his bad faith ? " 
 
 "In the extraordinary effects of it ; his posses 
 sion, that is, of some quality or other that con 
 demns us in advance to forgive him the humil 
 iation, as I may call it, to which he has sub 
 jected us." 
 
 " The humiliation ? " 
 
 " Why, mine, for instance, as one of his guaran 
 tors, before you as the purchaser of a ticket." 
 
 " You don t look humiliated a bit, and if you did 
 I should let you off, disappointed as I am ; for the 
 mysterious quality you speak of is just the quality 
 I came to see." 
 
76 THE COXON FUND 
 
 " Oh, you can t ( see it ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 " How, then, do you get at it ? " 
 
 " You don t ! You mustn t suppose he s good- 
 looking," I added. 
 
 " Why, his wife says he s lovel} 7 " ! " 
 
 My hilarity may have struck my interlocutress 
 as excessive, but I confess it broke out afresh. 
 Had she acted only in obedience to this singular 
 plea, so characteristic, on Mrs. Saltram s part, of 
 what was irritating in the narrowness of that 
 lady s point of view ? " Mrs. Saltram," I explained, 
 " undervalues him where he is strongest, so that, to 
 make up for it, perhaps, she overpraises him where 
 he s weak. He s not, assuredly, superficially 
 attractive ; he s middle-aged, fat, featureless, save 
 for his great eyes." 
 
 " Yes, his great eyes," said my young lady 
 attentively. She had evidently heard all about his 
 great eyes the beaux yeux for which alone we had 
 really done it all. 
 
 "They re tragic and splendid lights on a dan 
 gerous coast. But he moves badly and dresses 
 worse, and altogether he s any thing but smart." 
 
 My companion appeared to reflect on this, and 
 after a moment she enquired : " Do you call him a 
 real gentleman ? " 
 
 I started slightly at the question, for I had a 
 sense of recognizing it ; George Gravener, years 
 before, that first flushed night, had put me face to 
 face with it. It had embarrassed me then, but it 
 didn t embarrass me now, for I had lived with it 
 
THE COXON FUND 77 
 
 .and overcome it and disposed of it. " A real gen 
 tleman ? Emphatically not ! " 
 
 My promptitude surprised her a little, but I 
 quickly felt that it was not to Gravener I was now 
 talking. " Do you say that because he s what do 
 3 ou call it in England ? of humble extraction ? " 
 
 " Not a bit. His father was a country school 
 master and his mother the widow of a sexton, but 
 that has nothing to do with it. I say it simply 
 because I know him well." 
 
 "But isn t it an awful drawback?" 
 
 " Awful quite awful." 
 
 " I mean isn t it positively fatal ?" 
 
 "Fatal to what? Not to his magnificent 
 vitality." 
 
 Again there was a meditative moment. "And 
 is his magnificent vitality the cause of his vices ?" 
 
 " Your questions are formidable, but I m glad 
 you put them. I was thinking of his noble intellect. 
 His vices, as you say, have been much exaggerated : 
 they consist mainly, after all, in one comprehensive 
 defect." 
 
 " A want of will ? " 
 
 "A want of dignity." 
 
 " He doesn t recognize his obligations ? " 
 
 " On the contrary, he recognizes them with 
 effusion, especially in public ; he smiles and bows 
 and beckons across the street to them. But when 
 they pass over he turns away, and he speedily loses 
 them in the crowd. The recognition is purely 
 spiritual it isn t in the least social. So he leaves 
 
78 THE COXON FUND 
 
 all his belongings to other people to take care of. 
 He accepts favors, loans, sacrifices, with nothing 
 more deterrent than an agony of shame. Fortu 
 nately we re a little faithful band, and we do what 
 we can." I held my tongue about the natural 
 children, engendered, to the number of three, in the 
 wantonness of his youth. I only remarked that he 
 did make efforts often tremendous ones. "But 
 the efforts," I said, " never come to much ; the only 
 things that come to much are the abandonments, 
 the surrenders." 
 
 " And how much do they come to ? " 
 
 "You re right to put it as if we had a big bill to 
 pay, but, as I ve told you before, your questions are 
 rather terrible. They come, these mere exercises of 
 genius, to a great sum total of poetry, of philosophy, 
 a mighty mass of speculation, of notation. The 
 genius is there, you see, to meet the surrender ; but 
 there s no genius to support the defence." 
 
 "But what is there, after all, at his age, to 
 show ? " 
 
 " In the way of achievement recognized and repu 
 tation established?" I interrupted. "To show 
 if you will, there isn t much, for his writing, mostly, 
 isn t as fine, isn t certainly as showy, as his talk. 
 Moreover, two-thirds of his work are merely colossal 
 projects and announcements. Showing Frank 
 Saltram is often a poor business ; w r e endeavored, 
 you will have observed, to show him to-night ! 
 However, if he Atik? lectured, he would have lectured 
 divinely. It would just have been his talk." 
 
THE COXON FUND 79 
 
 " And what would his talk just have been ?" 
 I was conscious of some ineffectiveness as well 
 perhaps as of a little impatience as I replied : " The 
 exhibition of a splendid intellect." My young lady 
 looked not quite satisfied at this, but as I was not 
 prepared for another question I hastily pursued: 
 " The sight of a great suspended, swinging crystal, 
 huge, lucid, lustrous, a block of light, flashing back 
 every impression of life and every possibility of 
 thought ! " This gave her something to think about 
 till we had passed out to the dusky porch of the hall, 
 in front of which the lamps of a quiet brougham 
 were almost the only thing Saltrarn s treachery 
 hadn t extinguished. I went with her to the door 
 of her carriage, out of which she leaned a moment 
 after she had thanked me and had taken her seat. 
 Her smile, even in the darkness, was pretty. "I do 
 want to see that crystal ! " 
 
 " You ve only to come to the next lecture." 
 c: I go abroad in a day or two with my aunt." 
 " Wait over till next week," I suggested. " It s 
 quite worth it." 
 
 She became grave. "Not unless he really 
 cames ! " At which the brougham started off, 
 carrying her away too fast, fortunately for my 
 manners, to allow me to exclaim " Ingratitude ! " 
 
IV 
 
 MES. SALTEAM made a great affair of her right to 
 be informed where her husband had been the sec 
 ond evening he failed to meet his audience. She 
 came to me to ascertain, but I couldn t satisfy her, 
 for in spite of my ingenuity I remained in igno 
 rance. It was not till much later that I found this 
 had not been the case with Kent Mulville, whose 
 hope for the best never twirled his thumbs more 
 placidly than when he happened to know the 
 worst. lie had known it on the occasion I speak 
 of that is, immediately after. He was impene 
 trable then, but he ultimately confessed. What 
 lie confessed was more than I shall venture to con 
 fess to-day. It was of course familiar to me that 
 Saltram was incapable of keeping the engagements 
 which, after their separation, he had entered into 
 with regard to his wife, a deeply wronged, justly 
 resentful, quite irreproachable and insufferable 
 person. She often appeared at my chambers to 
 talk over his lapses ; for if, as she declared, she had 
 washed her hands of him, she had carefully pre 
 served the water of this ablution and she handed 
 it about for inspection. She had arts of her own 
 of exciting one s impatience, the most infallible of 
 which was perhaps her assumption tha we were 
 
THE COXON FUND 81 
 
 kind to her because we liked her. In reality her 
 personal fall had been a sort of social rise, for 
 there had been a moment when, in our little con 
 scientious circle, her desolation almost made her 
 the fashion. Her voice was grating and her chil 
 dren ugly ; moreover she hated the good Mul- 
 villes, whom I more and more loved. They were 
 the people who, by doing most for her husband, 
 had in the long run done most for herself ; and the 
 warm confidence with which he had laid his length 
 upon them was a pressure gentle compared with 
 her stiffer persuadability. I am bound to say he 
 didn t criticise his benefactors, though practically 
 he got tired of them ; she, however, had the 
 highest standards about eleemosynary forms. She 
 offered the odd spectacle of a spirit puffed up by 
 dependence, and indeed it had introduced her to 
 some excellent society. She pitied me for not 
 knowing certain people who aided her, and whom 
 she doubtless patronized in turn for their luck in 
 not knowing me. I dare say I should have got on 
 with her better if she had had a ray of imagina 
 tion if it had occasionally seemed to occur to her 
 to regard Saltram s manifestations in any other 
 manner than as separate subjects of woe. They 
 were all flowers of his nature, pearls strung on an 
 endless thread ; but she had a stubborn little way 
 of challenging them one after the other, as if she 
 never suspected that he had a nature, such as it 
 was, or that deficiencies might be organic ; the 
 irritating effect of a mind incapable of a generali- 
 6 
 
82 THE COXON FUND 
 
 zation. One might doubtless have overdone the 
 idea that there was a general exemption for such 
 a man ; but, if this had happened, it would have 
 been through one s feeling that there could be 
 none for such a woman. 
 
 I recognized her superiority when I asked her 
 about the aunt of the disappointed young lady ; it 
 sounded like a sentence from a phrase-book. She 
 triumphed in what she told me, and she may have 
 triumphed still more in what she withheld. My 
 friend of the other evening, Miss Anvoy, had but 
 lately come to England ; Lady Coxon, the aunt, 
 had been established here for years in consequence 
 of her marriage with the late Sir Gregory of that 
 ilk. She had a house in the Regent s Park, a 
 bath-chair, and a fernery ; and above all she had 
 sympathy. Mrs. Saltram had made her acquaint 
 ance through mutual friends. This vagueness 
 caused me to feel how much I was out of it, and 
 how large an independent circle Mrs. Saltram had 
 at her command. I should have been glad to 
 know more about the disappointed young lady, 
 but I felt that I should know most by not depriv 
 ing her of her advantage, as she might have mys 
 terious means of depriving me of my knowledge. 
 For the present, moreover, this experience was 
 arrested, Lady Coxon having in fact gone abroad, 
 accompanied by her niece. The niece, besides 
 being immensely clever, was an heiress, Mrs. Salt 
 ram said ; the only daughter and the light of the 
 eyes of some great American merchant, a man, 
 
THE COXON FUND 83 
 
 over there, of endless indulgences and dollars. 
 She had pretty clothes and pretty manners, and 
 she had, what was prettier still, the great thing of 
 all. The great thing of all for Mrs. Saltram was 
 always sympathy, and she spoke as if, during the 
 absence of these ladies, she might not know where 
 to turn for it. A few months later indeed, when 
 they had corne back, her tone perceptibly changed; 
 she alluded to them, on my leading her up to it, 
 rather as to persons in her debt for favors received. 
 What had happened I didn t know, but I saw it 
 would take only a little more or a little less to 
 make her speak of them as thankless subjects of 
 social countenance people for whom she had 
 vainly tried to do something. I confess I saw that 
 it would not be in a mere week or two that I 
 should rid myself of the image of Ruth Anvoy, in 
 whose very name, when I learned it, I found some 
 thing secretly to like. I should probably neither 
 see her nor hear of her again ; the knight s widow 
 (he had been mayor of Clockborough) would pass 
 away and the heiress would return to her inherit 
 ance. I gathered with surprise that she had not 
 communicated to his wife the story of her attempt 
 to hear Mr. Saltram, and I founded this reticence 
 on the easy supposition that Mrs. Saltram had 
 fatigued by over-pressure the spring of the sym 
 pathy of which she boasted. The girl at any rate 
 would forget the small adventure, be distracted, 
 take a husband ; besides which she would lack 
 opportunity to repeat her experiment. 
 
84 THE COXON FUND 
 
 We clung to the idea of the brilliant course, de 
 livered without an accident, that, as a lecturer, 
 would still make the paying public aware of our 
 great mind ; but the fact remained that in the 
 case of an inspiration so unequal there was treach 
 ery ; there was fallacy, at least, in the very con 
 ception of a series. In our scrutiny of ways and 
 means we were inevitably subject to the old con 
 vention of the synopsis, the syllabus partly of 
 course not to lose the advantage of his grand free 
 hand in drawing up such things ; but, for myself, 
 I laughed at our playbills, even while I stickled 
 for them. It was indeed amusing work to be 
 scrupulous for Frank Sal tram, who also at 
 moments laughed about it, so far as the comfort of 
 a sigh so unstudied as to be cheerful might pass 
 for such a sound. He admitted with a candor all 
 his own that he was in truth only to be depended 
 on in the Mulvilles drawing-room. " Yes," he 
 suggestively conceded, "it s there, I think, that I 
 am at my best ; quite late, when it gets toward 
 eleven and if I ve not been too much worried." 
 We all knew what too much worry meant ; it 
 meant too enslaved for the hour to the superstition 
 of sobriety. On the Saturdays I used to bring my 
 portmanteau, so as not to have to think of eleven 
 o clock trains. I had a bold theory that as regards 
 this temple of talk and its altars of cushioned 
 chintz, its pictures and its flowers, its large fire 
 side and clear lamplight, we might really arrive at 
 something if the Mulvilles would only charge for 
 
THE COXON FUND 85 
 
 admission. But here it was that the Mulvilles 
 shamelessly broke down ; as there is a flaw in 
 every perfection, this was the inexpugnable refuge 
 of their egotism. They declined to make their 
 saloon a market, so that Saltram s golden words 
 continued to be the only coin that rang there. It 
 can have happened to no man, however, to be paid 
 a greater price than such an enchanted hush as 
 surrounded him on his greatest nights. The most 
 profane, on these occasions, felt a presence ; all 
 minor eloquence grew dumb. Adelaide Mulville, 
 for the pride of her hospitality, anxiously watched 
 the door or stealthily poked the fire. I used to 
 call it the music-room, for we had anticipated 
 Bayreuth. The very gates of the kingdom of 
 light seemed to open, and the horizon of thought 
 to flash with the beauty of a sunrise at sea. 
 
 In the consideration of ways and means, the sit 
 tings of our little board, we were always conscious 
 of the creak of Mrs. Saltram s shoes. She hovered, 
 she interrupted, she almost presided ; the state of 
 affairs being mostly such as to supply her with 
 every incentive for enquiring what was to be done 
 next. It was the pressing pursuit of this knowl 
 edge that, in concatenations of omnibuses and 
 usually in very wet weather, led her so often to 
 my door. She thought us spiritless creatures with 
 editors and publishers ; but she carried matters to 
 no great effect when she personally pushed into 
 back-shops. She wanted all moneys to be paid to 
 herself ; they were otherwise liable to such strange 
 
86 THE COXON FUND 
 
 adventures. They trickled away into the desert, 
 and they were mainly at best, alas ! but a slender 
 stream. The editors and the publishers were the 
 last people to take this remarkable thinker at the 
 valuation that has now pretty well come to be estab 
 lished. The former were half distraught between 
 the desire to "cut" him and the difficulty of finding 
 a crevice for their shears ; and when a volume on 
 this or that portentous subject was proposed to the 
 latter they suggested alternative titles which, as 
 reported to our friend, brought into his face the 
 noble blank melancholy that sometimes made it 
 handsome. The title of an unwritten book didn t 
 after all much matter, but some masterpiece of Salt- 
 ram s may have died in his bosom of the shudder 
 with which it was then convulsed. The ideal solu 
 tion, failing the fee at Kent Mulville s door, would 
 have been some system of subscription to projected 
 treatises with their non-appearance provided for 
 provided for, I mean, by the indulgence of sub 
 scribers. The author s real misfortune was that 
 subscribers were so wretchedly literal. When 
 they tastelessly enquired why publication had not 
 ensued, I was tempted to ask who in the world 
 had ever been so published. Nature herself had 
 brought him out in voluminous form, and the 
 money was simply a deposit on borrowing the 
 work. 
 
I WAS doubtless often a nuisance to my friends 
 in those years ; but there were sacrifices I declined 
 to make, and I never passed the hat to George 
 Gravener. I never forgot our little discussion in 
 Ebury Street, and I think it stuck in my throat to 
 have to make to him the admission I had made so 
 easily to Miss Anvoy. It had cost me nothing to 
 confide to this charming girl, but it would have 
 cost me much to confide to the friend of my youth 
 that the character of the "real gentleman" was 
 not an attribute of the man I took such pains for. 
 Was this because I had already generalized to the 
 point of perceiving that women are really the 
 unfastidious sex? I knew at any rate that Grave 
 ner, already quite in view but still hungry and 
 frugal, had, naturally enough, more ambition than 
 charity. He had sharp aims for stray sovereigns, 
 being in view most from the tall steeple of Clock- 
 borough. His immediate ambition was to wholly 
 occupy the field of vision of that smokily-seeing 
 city, and all his movements and postures were calcu 
 lated for this angle. The movement of the hand to 
 the pocket had thus to alternate gracefully with the 
 posture of the hand on the heart. He talked to 
 Clockborough, in short, only less beguilingly than 
 
88 THE COXON FUND 
 
 Frank Saltram talked to his electors ; with the 
 difference in our favor, however, that we had 
 already voted and that our candidate had no 
 antagonist but himself. He had more than once 
 been at Wimbledon, it was Mrs. Mulville s work, 
 not mine, and, by the time the claret was served, 
 had seen the god descend. He took more pains to 
 swing his censer than I had expected, but on our 
 way back to town he forestalled any little triumph 
 I might have been so artless as to express by the ob 
 servation that such a man was a hundred times ! 
 a man to use and never a man to be used by. I 
 remember that this neat remark humiliated me 
 almost as much as if, virtually, in the fever of 
 broken slumbers, I hadn t often made it myself. 
 The difference was that on Gravener s part a force 
 attached to it that could never attach to it on mine. 
 He was able to use people he had the machinery ; 
 and the irony of Sal tram s being made showy at 
 Clockborough came out to me when lie said, as if 
 he had no memory of our original talk and the 
 idea were quite fresh to him, "I hate his type, 
 you know, but I ll be hanged if I don t put some 
 of those things in. I can find a place for them ; 
 we might even find a place for the fellow himself." 
 I myself should have had some fear, not, I need 
 scarcely say, for the " things " themselves, but for 
 some other things very near them in fine for the 
 rest of my eloquence. 
 
 Later on I could see that the oracle of Wimble 
 don was not in this case so appropriate as he would 
 
THE COXON FUND 89 
 
 have been had the politics of the gods or\\y coin 
 cided more exactly with those of the party. There 
 was a distinct moment when, without saying any 
 thing more definite to me, Gravener entertained 
 the idea of annexing Mr. Saltram. Such a project 
 was delusive, for the discovery of analogies be 
 tween his body of doctrine and that pressed from 
 headquarters upon Clockborough the bottling, in 
 a word, of the air of those lungs for convenient 
 public uncorking in corn-exchanges was an ex 
 periment for which no one had the leisure. The 
 only thing would have been to carry him massively 
 about, paid, caged, clipped ; to turn him on for a 
 particular occasion in a particular channel. Frank 
 Saltram s channel, however, was essentially not 
 calculable, and there was no knowing what disas 
 trous floods might have ensued. For what there 
 would have been to do T/ie Empire, the great news 
 paper, was there to look to; but it was no new mis 
 fortune that there were delicate situations in which 
 The Empire broke down. In fine, there was an 
 instinctive apprehension that a clever young jour 
 nalist commissioned to report upon Mr. Saltram 
 might never come back from the errand. No one 
 knew better than George Gravener that that was a 
 time when prompt returns counted double. If he, 
 therefore, found our friend an exasperating waste 
 of orthodoxy, it was because he was, as he said, up 
 in the clouds, not because he was down in the dust. 
 He would have been a real enough gentleman, if 
 he could have helped to put in a real gentleman. 
 
90 THE COXON FUND 
 
 Gravener s great objection to the actual member 
 was that he was not one. 
 
 Lady Coxon had a fine old house, a house with 
 "grounds," at Clockborough, which she had let; 
 but after she returned from abroad I learned from 
 Mrs. Saltram that the lease had fallen in and that 
 she had gone down to resume possession. I could 
 see the faded red livery, the big square shoulders, 
 the high-walled garden of this decent abode. As 
 the rumble of dissolution grew louder the suitor 
 would have pressed his suit, and I found myself 
 hoping that the politics of the late mayor s widow 
 would not be such as to enjoin upon her to ask him 
 to dinner ; perhaps indeed I went so far as to hope 
 that they would be such as to put all countenance 
 out of the question. I tried to focus the page, in 
 the daily airing, as he perhaps even pushed the 
 bath-chair over somebody s toes. I was destined 
 to hear, however, through Mrs. Saltram (who, I 
 afterward learned, was in correspondence with 
 Lady Coxon s housekeeper) that Gravener was 
 known to have spoken of the habitation I had in 
 my eye as the pleasantest thing at Clockborough. 
 On his part, I was sure, this was the voice not of 
 envy but of experience. The vivid scene was now 
 peopled, and I could see him in the old-time 
 garden with Miss Anvoy, who would be certain, 
 and very justly, to think him good-looking. It 
 would be too much to say that I was troubled by 
 this evocation ; but I seem to remember the relief, 
 singular enough, of feeling it suddenly brushed 
 
THE COXON FUND 91 
 
 away by an annoyance really much greater ; an 
 annoyance the result of its happening to come 
 over me about that time with a rush that I was 
 simply ashamed of Frank Saltram. There were 
 limits after all, and my mark at last had been 
 reached. 
 
 I had had my disgusts, if I may allow myself 
 to-day such an expression ; but this was a supreme 
 revolt. Certain things cleared up in my mind, 
 certain values stood out. It was all very well to 
 have an unfortunate temperament; there was 
 nothing so unfortunate as to have, for practical 
 purposes, nothing else. I avoided George Gravener 
 at this moment, and reflected that at such a time I 
 should do so most effectually by leaving England. 
 I wanted to forget Frank Saltram that was all. 
 I didn t want to do any thing in the world to him 
 but that. Indignation had withered on the stalk, 
 and I felt that one could pity him as much as 
 one ought only by never thinking of him again. 
 It wasn t for any thing he had done to me ; it was 
 for something he had done to the Mulvilles. 
 Adelaide had cried about it for a week, and her 
 husband, profiting by the example so signally given 
 him of the fatal effect of the want of a character, 
 left the letter unanswered. The letter, an incredible 
 one, addressed by Saltram to Wimbledon, during a 
 stay with the Pudneys at Ramsgate, was the cen 
 tral feature of the incident ; which, however, had 
 many features, each more painful than whichever 
 other we compared it with. The Pudneys had 
 
92 THE COXON FUND 
 
 behaved shockingly, but that was no excuse. Base 
 ingratitude, gross indecency one had one s choice 
 only of such formulas as that the more they fitted 
 the less they gave one rest. These are dead aches 
 now, and I am under no obligation, thank Heaven, 
 to be definite about the business. There are things 
 which, if I had had to tell them well, I wouldn t 
 have told my story. 
 
 I went abroad for the general election, and if I 
 don t know how much, on the Continent, I forgot, 
 I at least know how much I missed him. At a 
 distance, in a foreign land, ignoring, abjuring, 
 unlearning him, I discovered what he had done for 
 me. I owed him, oh, unmistakably ! certain noble 
 conceptions. I had lighted my little taper at his 
 smoky lamp, and lo ! it continued to twinkle. But 
 the light it gave me just showed me how much 
 more I wanted. I was pursued of course by letters 
 from Mrs. Saltram, which I didn t scruple not to 
 read, though I was duly conscious that her embar 
 rassments would now be of the gravest. I sacri 
 ficed to propriety by simply putting them away, 
 and this is how, one day as my absence drew to 
 an end, my eye, as I rummaged in my desk for 
 another paper, was caught by a name on a leaf 
 that had detached itself from the packet. The 
 allusion was to Miss Anvoy, who, it appeared, was 
 engaged to be married to Mr. George Gravener ; 
 and the news was two months old. A direct 
 question of Mrs. Saltram s had thus remained 
 unanswered she had enquired of me in a post- 
 
THE COXON FUND 93 
 
 script what sort of man this Mr. Gravener might be. 
 This Mr. Gravener had been triumphantly returned 
 for Clockborough, in the interest of the party that 
 had swept the country, so that I might easily have 
 referred Mrs. Saltram to the journals of the day. 
 But when I at last wrote to her that I was coming 
 home and would discharge my accumulated burden 
 by seeing her, I remarked in regard to her question 
 that she must really put it to Miss Anvoy. 
 
 VI 
 
 I HAD almost avoided the general election, but 
 some of its consequences, on my return, had 
 smartly to be faced. The season, in London, 
 began to breathe again and to flap its folded 
 wings. Confidence, under the new ministry, was 
 understood to be reviving, and one of the symp 
 toms, in the social body, was a recovery of appe 
 tite. People once more fed together, and it 
 happened that, one Saturday night, at somebody s 
 house, I fed with George Gravener. When the 
 ladies left the room I moved up to where he sat 
 and offered him my congratulation. " On my 
 election ? " he asked, after a moment ; whereupon 
 I feigned, jocosely, not to have heard of his elec 
 tion and to be alluding to something much more 
 important, the rumor of his engagement. I dare 
 say I colored, however, for his political victory 
 
94 THE COXON FUND 
 
 had momentarily passed out of my mind. What 
 was present to it was that he was to marry that 
 beautiful girl ; and yet his question made me con 
 scious of some discomposure I had not intended 
 to put that before every thing. He himself indeed 
 ought gracefully to have done so, and I remember 
 thinking the whole man was in this assumption 
 that in expressing my sense of what he had won 
 I had fixed my thoughts on his " seat." We 
 straightened the matter out, and he was so much 
 lighter in hand than I had lately seen him that his 
 spirits might well have been fed from a double 
 source. He was so good as to say that he hoped I 
 should soon make the acquaintance of Miss Anvoy, 
 who, with her aunt, was presently coming up to 
 town. Lad}*- Coxon, in the country, had been 
 seriously unwell, and this had delayed their 
 arrival. I told him I had heard the marriage 
 would be a splendid one ; on which, brightened 
 and humanized by his luck, he laughed and said : 
 " Do you mean for her f " When I had again 
 explained what I meant he went on : " Oh, she s 
 an American, but you d scarcely know it ; unless, 
 perhaps," he added, " by her being used to more 
 money than most girls in England, even the 
 daughters of rich men. That wouldn t in the least 
 do for a fellow like me, you know, if it wasn t for 
 the great liberality of her father. He really has 
 been most kind, and every thing is quite satis 
 factory." He added that his eldest brother had 
 taken a tremendous fancy to her, and that during a 
 
THE COXON FUND 95 
 
 recent visit at Coldfield she had nearly won over 
 Lady Maddock. I gathered from something he 
 dropped later that the free-handed gentleman 
 beyond the seas had not made a settlement, but 
 had given a handsome present, and was apparently 
 to be looked to, across the water, for other favors. 
 People are simplified alike by great contentments 
 and great yearnings, and whether or no it was 
 Gravener s directness that begot my own, I seem 
 to recall that in some turn taken by our talk lie 
 almost imposed it on me as an act of decorum to 
 ask if Miss Anvoy had also, by chance, expecta 
 tions from her aunt. My enquiry drew out that 
 Lady Coxon, who was the oddest of women, 
 would have in any contingency to act under her 
 late husband s will, which was odder still ; saddling 
 her with a mass of queer obligations complicated 
 with queer loopholes. There were several dreary 
 people Coxon cousins, old maids to whom she 
 would have more or less to minister. Gravener 
 laughed, without saying no, when I suggested that 
 the young lady might come in through a loophole ; 
 then suddenly, as if he suspected that I had turned 
 a lantern on him, he exclaimed quite dryly : 
 " That s all rot one is moved by other springs ! " 
 A fortnight later, at Lady Coxon s own house, I 
 understood well enough the springs one was moved 
 by. Gravener had spoken of me there as an old 
 friend, and I received a gracious invitation to dine. 
 The knight s widow was again indisposed she 
 had succumbed at the eleventh hour; so that I 
 
96 THE COXON FUND 
 
 found Miss Anvoy bravely playing hostess, with 
 out even Gravener s help, inasmuch as, to make 
 matters worse, he had just sent up word that the 
 House, the insatiable House, with which he sup 
 posed he had contracted for easier terms, positively 
 declined to release him. I was struck with the 
 courage, the grace, and gayety of the young lady 
 left to deal unaided with the possibilities of the 
 Regent s Park. I did what I could to help her to 
 keep them down, or up, after I had recovered from 
 the confusion of seeing her slightly disconcerted 
 at perceiving in the guest introduced by her in 
 tended the gentleman with whom she had had that 
 talk about Frank Sal tram. I had at that moment 
 my first glimpse of the fact that she was a person 
 who could carry a responsibility; but I leave the 
 reader to judge of my sense of the aggravation, 
 for either of us, of such a burden when I heard the 
 servant announce Mrs. Saltram. From what im 
 mediately passed between the two ladies I gathered 
 that the latter had been sent for post-haste to fill 
 the gap created by the absence of the mistress of 
 the house. " Good ! " I exclaimed, " she will be put 
 by me/" and my apprehension was promptly jus 
 tified. Mrs. Saltram taken in to dinner, and taken 
 in as a consequence of an appeal to her amiability, 
 was Mrs. Saltram with a vengeance. I asked 
 myself what Miss Anvoy meant by doing such 
 things, but the only answer I arrived at was that 
 Gravener was verily fortunate. She had not hap 
 pened to tell him of her visit to Upper Baker 
 
THE COXOX FUND 97 
 
 Street, but she would certainly tell him to-morrow; 
 not indeed that this would make him like any 
 better her having had the simplicity to invite such 
 a person as Mrs. Sal tram on such an occasion. I 
 reflected that I had never seen a young woman put 
 such ignorance into her cleverness, such freedom 
 into her modesty ; this, I think, was when, after 
 dinner, she said to rne frankly, with almost jubilant 
 mirth : " Oh, you don t admire Mrs. Saltram ? " 
 Why should I ? This was truly an innocent 
 maiden. I had briefly to consider before I could 
 reply that my objection to the lady in question was 
 the objection often formulated in regard to persons 
 met at the social board I knew all her stories. 
 Then, as Miss Anvoy remained momentarily vague, 
 I added : 
 
 "About her husband." 
 " Oh, yes, but there are some new ones." 
 " None for me. Oh, novelty would be pleasant! " 
 " Doesn t it appear that of late he has been par 
 ticularly horrid ? " 
 
 " His fluctuations don t matter," I replied, " for 
 at night all cats are gray. You saw the shade of 
 this one the night we waited for him together. 
 What will you have ? He has no dignity." 
 
 Miss Anvoy, who had been introducing with her 
 American distinctness, looked encouragingly round 
 at some of the combinations she had risked. "It s 
 too bad I can t see him." 
 
 " You mean Gravener won t let you ? " 
 "I haven t asked him. He lets me do every thing." 
 7 
 
98 THE COXON FUND 
 
 " But you know lie knows him and wonders what 
 some of us see in him." 
 
 " We haven t happened to talk of him," the girl 
 said. 
 
 " Get him to take you out some day to see the 
 Mulvilles." 
 
 " I thought Mr. Saltram had thrown the Mul 
 villes over." 
 
 " Utterly. But that won t prevent his being 
 planted there again, to bloom like a rose, within a 
 month or two." 
 
 Miss Anvoy thought a moment. Then, " I 
 should like to see them," she said, with her foster 
 ing smile. 
 
 " They re tremendously worth it. You mustn t 
 miss them." 
 
 " I ll make George take me," she went on, as Mrs. 
 Saltram came up to interrupt us. The girl smiled 
 at her as kindly as she had smiled at me, and, 
 addressing the question to her, continued : "But 
 the chance of a lecture one of the wonderful lec 
 tures ? Isn t there another course announced ? " 
 
 " Another ? There are about thirty ! " I ex 
 claimed, turning away and feeling Mrs. Saltram s 
 little eyes in my back. A few days after this I 
 heard that Gravener s marriage was near at hand 
 was settled for Whitsuntide : but as I had re 
 ceived no invitation I doubted it, and presently 
 there came to me in fact the report of a postpone 
 ment. Something was the matter ; what was the 
 matter was supposed to be that Lady Coxon was 
 
THE COXON FUND 99 
 
 now critically ill. I had called on her after my 
 dinner in the Regent s Park, but I had neither seen 
 her nor seen Miss Anvoy. I forget to-day the 
 exact order in which, at this period, certain inci 
 dents occurred and the particular stage at which it 
 suddenly struck me, making me catch my breath 
 a little, that the progression, the acceleration, was 
 for all the world that of a drama. This was 
 probably rather late in the day, and the exact 
 order doesn t matter. What had already occurred 
 was some accident determining a more patient 
 wait. George Gravener, whom I met again, in 
 fact told me as much, but without signs of per 
 turbation. Lady Coxon had to be constantly at 
 tended to, and there were other good reasons as 
 well. Lady Coxon had to be so constantly attended 
 to that, on the occasion of a second attempt in the 
 Regent s Park, I equally failed to obtain a sight of 
 her niece. I judged it discreet under the circum 
 stances not to make a third ; but this didn t matter, 
 for it was through Adelaide Mulville that the side 
 wind of the comedy, though I was at first unwit 
 ting, began to reach me. I went to Wimbledon 
 at times because Saltram was there, and I went at 
 others because he was not. The Pudneys, who 
 had taken him to Birmingham, had already got 
 rid of him, and we had a horrible consciousness 
 of his wandering roofless, in dishonor, about the 
 smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear wan 
 dered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, up 
 stairs, had been lately done up (I could hear the 
 
100 THE COXON FUND 
 
 crackle of the new chintz), and the difference only 
 made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted 
 genius, the more tragic. If lie wasn t barefoot in 
 the mire, he was sure to be unconventionally shod. 
 These were the things Adelaide and I, who were 
 old enough friends to stare at each other in silence, 
 talked about when we didn t speak. When we 
 spoke it was only about the brilliant girl George 
 Gravener was to marry, whom he had brought out 
 the other Sunday. I could see that this presenta 
 tion had been happy, for Mrs. Mulville commem 
 orated it in the only way in which she ever ex 
 pressed her confidence in a new relation. a Slie 
 likes me she likes me": her native humility exulted 
 in that measure of success. We all knew for our 
 selves how she liked those who liked her, and as 
 regards Ruth Anvoy she was more easily won over 
 than Lady Maddock. 
 
 VII 
 
 ONE of the consequences, for the Mulvilles, of 
 the sacrifices they made for Frank Saltram was 
 that they had to give up their carriage. Adelaide 
 drove gently into London in a one-horse greenish 
 thing, an early Victorian landau, hired, near at 
 hand, imaginatively, from a broken-down job 
 master whose wife was in consumption a vehicle 
 that made people turn round all the more when her 
 
THE COXON FUND 101 
 
 pensioner sat beside her in a soft white hat and a 
 shawl, one of her own. This was his position, and 
 I dare say his costume, when on an afternoon in 
 July she went to return Miss Anvoy s visit. The 
 wheel of fate had now revolved, and amid silences 
 deep and exhaustive, compunctions and condona 
 tions alike unutterable, Saltram was reinstated. 
 Was it in pride or in penance that Mrs. Mulville 
 began immediately to drive him about ? If he was 
 ashamed of his ingratitude, she might have been 
 ashamed of her forgiveness ; but she was incor 
 rigibly capable of liking him to be seen strikingly 
 seated in the landau while she was in shops or with 
 her acquaintance. However, if he was in the 
 pillory for twenty minutes in the Regent s Park (I 
 mean at Lady Coxon s door, while her companion 
 paid her call) it was, not for the further humiliation 
 of any one concerned that she presently came out 
 for him in person, not even to show either of them 
 what a fool she was that she drew him in to be 
 introduced to the clever young American. Her 
 account of the introduction I had in its order, but 
 before that, very late in the season, under Grave- 
 ner s auspices, I met Miss Anvoy at tea at the 
 House of Commons. The member for Clock- 
 borough had gathered a group of pretty ladies, and 
 the Mulvilles were not of the party. On the great 
 terrace, as I strolled off a little with her, the guest 
 of honor immediately exclaimed to me ; " I ve seen 
 him, you know I ve seen him ! " She told me 
 about Sal tram s call. 
 
102 THE COXON FUND 
 
 " And how did you find him ? " 
 
 " Oh, so strange ! " 
 
 " You didn t like him ? " 
 
 "I can t tell till I see him again." 
 
 "You want to do that?" 
 
 She was silent a moment. " Immensely ! " 
 
 We stopped ; I fancied she had become aware 
 Gravener was looking at us. She turned back 
 toward the knot of the others, and I said : " Dis 
 like him as much as you will I see you are 
 bitten." 
 
 " Bitten ? " I thought she colored a little. 
 
 " Oh, it doesn t matter ! " I laughed ; " one 
 doesn t die of it." 
 
 " I hope I sha n t die of any thing before I ve 
 seen more of Mrs. Mulville." I rejoiced with her 
 over plain Adelaide, whom she pronounced the 
 loveliest woman she had met in England ; but 
 before \ve separated I remarked to her that it was 
 an act of mere humanity to warn her that, if she 
 should see more of Frank Saltram (which would be 
 likely to follow on any increase of acquaintance 
 with Mrs. Mulville), she might find herself flatten 
 ing her nose against the clear, hard pane of an 
 eternal question that of the relative importance 
 of virtue. She replied that this was surely a sub 
 ject on which one took every thing for granted ; 
 whereupon I admitted that I had perhaps expressed 
 myself ill. What I referred to was what I had 
 referred to the night we met in Upper Baker 
 Street the importance relative (relative to virtue) 
 
THE COXON FUND 103 
 
 of other gifts. She asked me if I called virtue a 
 gift as if it were handed to us in a parcel on our 
 birthday ; and I declared that this very enquiry 
 showed me the problem had already caught her by 
 the skirt. She would have help, however help 
 that I myself had once had, in resisting its tend 
 ency to make one cross. 
 
 " What help do you mean ? " 
 " That of the member for Clockborough." 
 She stared, smiled, then exclaimed ; " Why, my 
 idea has been to help him ! " 
 
 She had helped him I had his own word for 
 it that at Clockborough her bedevilment of the 
 voters had really put him in. She would do so 
 doubtless again and again, but I heard the very 
 next month that this fine faculty had undergone a 
 temporary eclipse. News of the catastrophe first 
 came to me from Mrs. Saltram, and it was after 
 ward confirmed at Wimbledon ; poor Miss Anvoy 
 was in trouble great disasters in America had 
 suddenly summoned her home. Her father, in 
 New York, had had reverses lost so much money 
 that it was really provoking as showing how much 
 he had had. It was Adelaide who told me that 
 she had gone off alone at less than a week s notice. 
 " Alone ? Gravener has permitted that? " 
 "What will you have? The House of Com 
 mons ! " 
 
 I m afraid I cursed the House of Commons ; I 
 was so much interested. Of course he would 
 follow her as soon as he was free to make her his 
 
104 THE COXON FUND 
 
 wife ; only she mightn t now be able to bring him 
 any thing like the marriage-portion of which he 
 had begun by having the virtual promise. Mrs. 
 Mulville let me know what was already said ; she 
 was charming, this American girl, but really these 
 American fathers ! What was a man to do ? Mr. 
 Saltram, according to Mrs. Mulville, was of opinion 
 that a man was never to suffer his relation to 
 money to become a spiritual relation, but was to 
 keep it wholesomely mechanical. " Moi pas com- 
 prendre!" I commented on this; in rejoinder to 
 which Adelaide, with her beautiful sympathy, ex 
 plained that she supposed he simply meant that 
 the thing was to use it, don t you know ? but not 
 to think too much about it. " To take it, but not 
 to thank you for it?" I still more profanely 
 enquired. For a quarter of an hour afterward she 
 wouldn t look at me, but this didn t prevent my 
 asking her what had been the result, that afternoon 
 in the Regent s Park, of her taking our friend to 
 see Miss Anvoy. 
 
 " Oh, so charming ! " she answered, brightening. 
 " He said he recognized in her a nature he could 
 absolutely trust." 
 
 " Yes, but I m speaking of the effect on her 
 self." 
 
 Mrs. Mulville was silent an instant. " It was 
 every thing one could wish." 
 
 Something in her tone made me laugh. " Do 
 you mean she gave him something ? " 
 
 " Well, since you ask me ! " 
 
THE COXON FUND 105 
 
 " Right there on the spot ? " 
 
 Again poor Adelaide faltered. "It was to me 
 of course she gave it." 
 
 I stared ; somehow I couldn t see the scene. 
 " Do you mean a sum of money ? " 
 
 "It was very handsome." Now at last she met 
 my eyes, though I could see it was with an effort. 
 "Thirty pounds." 
 
 " Straight out of her pocket ? " 
 
 " Out of the drawer of a table at which she had 
 been writing. She just slipped the folded notes into 
 my hand. He wasn t looking ; it was while he was 
 going back to the carriage. Oh," said Adelaide re 
 assuringly, " I dole it out ! " The dear practical 
 soul thought my agitation, for I confess I was 
 agitated, had reference to the administration of the 
 money. Her disclosure made me for a moment 
 muse violently, and I dare say that during that 
 moment I wondered if any thing else in the world 
 makes people so indelicate as unselfishness. I 
 uttered, I suppose, some vague synthetic cry, for 
 she went on as if she had had a glimpse of my 
 inward amaze at such episodes. " I assure you, 
 my dear friend, he was in one of his happy 
 hours." 
 
 But I wasn t thinking of that. " Truly, indeed, 
 these Americans ! " I said. " With her father 
 in the very act, as it were, of swindling her 
 betrothed ! " 
 
 Mrs. Mulville stared. " Oh ! I suppose Mr. Anvoy 
 has scarcely failed on purpose. Very likely they 
 
106 THE COXON FUND 
 
 won t be able to keep it up, but there it was, and it 
 was a very beautiful impulse." 
 
 " You say Saltram was very fine ? " 
 
 " Beyond every thing. He surprised even 
 me." 
 
 " And I know what you?ve heard." After a 
 moment I added : " Had he peradventure caught 
 a glimpse of the money in the table-drawer ? " 
 
 At this my companion honestly flushed. " How 
 can you be so cruel when you know how little he 
 calculates ? " 
 
 " Forgive me, I do know it. But you tell me 
 things that act on my nerves. I m sure he hadn t 
 caught a glimpse of any thing but some splendid 
 idea." 
 
 Mrs. Mulville brightly concurred. "And per 
 haps even of her beautiful, listening face." 
 
 " Perhaps even ! And what was it all about? " 
 
 " His talk ? It was d propos of her engagement, 
 which I had told him about ; the idea of marriage, 
 the philosophy, the poetry, the sublimity of it." It 
 was impossible wholly to restrain one s mirth at this, 
 and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused 
 my companion to admonish me. " It sounds a little 
 stale, but you know his freshness." 
 
 " Of illustration ? Indeed I do ! " 
 
 "And how he has always been right on that 
 great question." 
 
 " On what great question, dear lady, hasn t he 
 been right ? " 
 
 " Of what other great men can you equally say 
 
THE COXOX FUND 107 
 
 it? I mean that he has never, but never, had a 
 deviation ? " Mrs. Mulville exultantly demanded. 
 
 I tried to think of some other great man, but 
 I had to give it up. " Didn t Miss Anvoy express 
 her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by 
 her charming present ? " I was reduced to enquiring 
 instead. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! she overflowed to me on the steps while 
 he was getting into the carriage." These words 
 somehow brushed up a picture of Saltram s big 
 shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green 
 landau. " She said she was not disappointed," 
 Adelaide pursued. 
 
 I meditated a moment. " Did he wear his 
 shawl ? " 
 
 " His shawl ?" She had not even noticed. 
 
 " I mean yours." 
 
 " He looked very nice, and you know he s really 
 clean. Miss Anvoy used such a remarkable expres 
 sion she said his mind is like a crystal ! " 
 
 I pricked up my ears. " A crystal ? " 
 
 " Suspended in the moral world swinging and 
 shining and flashing there. She s monstrously 
 clever, you know." 
 
 I reflected again. " Monstrously ! " 
 
VIII 
 
 GEOEGE GKAVENER didn t follow her, for late in 
 September, after the House had risen, I met him 
 in a railway-carriage. He was coming up from 
 Scotland, and I had just quitted the abode of a 
 relation who lived near Durham. The current of 
 travel back to London was not yet strong ; at any 
 rate, on entering the compartment, I found he had 
 had it for some time to himself. We fared in 
 company, and though he had a blue-book in his 
 lap and the open jaws of his bag threatened me 
 with the white teeth of confused papers, we inevi 
 tably, we even at last sociably, conversed. I saw 
 that things were not well Avith him, but I asked 
 no question until something dropped by himself 
 made, as it had made on another occasion, an 
 absence of curiosity invidious. He mentioned that 
 he was worried about his good old friend Lady 
 Coxon, who, with her niece likely to be detained 
 some time in America, lay seriously ill at Clock- 
 borough, much on his mind and on his hands. 
 
 " Ah, Miss Anvoy s in America?" 
 
 " Her father has got into a horrid hole ; lost no 
 end of money." 
 
 I hesitated, after expressing due concern, but I 
 presently said : " I hope that raises no objection 
 to your marriage." 
 
THE COXON FUND 109 
 
 " None whatever ; moreover, it s my trade to 
 meet objections. But it may create tiresome 
 delays, of which there have been too many, from 
 various causes, already. Lady Coxon got very 
 bad, then she got much better. Then Mr. Anvoy 
 suddenly began to totter, and now he seems quite 
 on his back. I m afraid he s really in for some 
 big reverse. Lady Coxon is worse again, awfully 
 upset by the news from America, and she sends 
 me word that she must have Ruth. How can I 
 give her Ruth ? I haven t got Ruth myself ! " 
 
 " Surely you haven t lost her ? " I smiled. 
 
 " She s every thing to her wretched father. She 
 writes me every post telling me to smooth her 
 aunt s pillow. I ve other things to smooth ; but 
 the old lady, save for her servants, is really alone. 
 She won t receive her Coxon relations, because 
 she s angry at so much of her money going to 
 them. Besides, she s hopelessly mad," said Grave- 
 ner, very frankly. 
 
 I don t remember whether it was this, or what 
 it was, that made me ask if she had not such an 
 appreciation of Mrs. Sal tram as might render that 
 active person of some use. 
 
 He gave me a cold glance, asking me what had 
 put Mrs. Saltram into my head, and I replied that 
 she was unfortunately never out of it. I happened 
 to remember the wonderful accounts she had given 
 me of the kindness Lady Coxon had shown her. 
 Gravener declared this to be false ; Lady Coxon, 
 who didn t care for her, hadn t seen her three 
 
110 THE COXON FUND 
 
 times. The only foundation for it was that Miss 
 Anvoy, who used, poor girl, to chuck money about 
 in a manner she must now regret, had for an hour 
 seen in the miserable woman (you could never 
 know what she would see in people) an interesting 
 pretext for the liberality with which her nature 
 overflowed. But even Miss Anvoy was now quite 
 tired of her. Gravener told me more about the 
 crash in New York and the annoyance it had been 
 to him, and we also glanced here and there in 
 other directions ; but by the time we got to Don- 
 caster the principal thing he had communicated 
 was that he was keeping something back. We 
 stopped at that station, and, at the carriage-door, 
 someone made a movement to get in. Gravener 
 uttered a sound of impatience, and I said to myself 
 that but for this I should have had the secret. 
 Then the intruder, for some reason, spared us his 
 company ; we started afresh, and my hope of the 
 secret returned. Gravener remained silent, how 
 ever, and I pretended to go to sleep ; in fact, in 
 discouragement, I really dozed. When I opened 
 my eyes I found he was looking at me with an 
 injured air. He tossed away with some vivacity 
 the remnant of a cigarette and then he said : " If 
 you re not too sleepy I want to put you a case." 
 I answered that I would make every effort to 
 attend, and I felt it was going to be interesting 
 when he went on : " As I told you a while ago, 
 Lady Coxon, poor dear ! is a maniac." His tone 
 had much behind it was full of promise. I in- 
 
THE COXON FUND 111 
 
 quired if her ladyship s misfortune were a feature 
 of her malady or only of her character, and he 
 replied that it was a product of both. The case 
 he wanted to put to me was a matter on which it 
 would interest him to have the impression the 
 judgment, he might also say of another person. 
 " I mean of the average intelligent man," he said ; 
 " but you see I take what I can get." There would 
 be the technical, the strictly legal view ; then 
 there would be the way the question would strike 
 a man of the world. He had lighted another 
 cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was glad 
 to have it to handle when he brought out at last, 
 with a laugh slightly artificial, "In fact it s a sub 
 ject on which Miss Anvoy and I are pulling 
 different ways." 
 
 "And you want me to pronounce between you ? 
 I pronounce in advance for Miss Anvoy." 
 
 "In advance that s quite right. That s how I 
 pronounced when I asked her to marry me. But 
 my story will interest you only so far as your 
 mind is not made up." Gravener puffed his cigar 
 ette a minute and then continued : " Are you 
 familiar with the idea of the Endowment of 
 Research ? " 
 
 " Of Research ? " I was at sea for a moment. 
 
 " I give you Lady Coxon s phrase. She has it 
 on the brain." 
 
 " She wishes to endow " 
 
 " Some earnest and disinterested seeker," Grave 
 ner said. "It was a sketchy design of her late 
 
112 THE COXON FUND 
 
 husband s, and he handed it on to her ; setting 
 apart in his will a sum of money of which she was 
 to enjoy the interest for life, but of which, should 
 she eventually see her opportunity, the matter 
 was left largely to her discretion, she would best 
 honor his memory by determining the exemplary 
 public use. This sum of money, no less than 
 thirteen thousand pounds, was to be called the 
 Coxon Fund ; and poor Sir Gregory evidently 
 proposed to himself that the Coxon Fund should 
 cover his name with glory be universally desired 
 and admired. He left his wife a full declaration of 
 his views, so far at least as that term may be applied 
 to views vitiated by a vagueness really infantine. 
 A little learning is a dangerous thing, and a good 
 citizen who happens to have been an ass is worse 
 for a community than bad sewerage. He s worst 
 of all when he s dead, because then he can t be 
 stopped. However, such as they were, the poor 
 man s aspirations are now in his wife s bosom, or 
 fermenting rather in her foolish brain ; it lies with 
 her to carry them out. But of course she must 
 first catch her hare." 
 
 "Her earnest, disinterested seeker ? " 
 " The flower that blushes unseen for want of 
 the pecuniary independence necessary to cause the 
 light that is in it to shine upon the human race. 
 The individual, in a word, who, having the rest of 
 the machinery, the spiritual, the intellectual, is 
 most hampered in his search." 
 "His search for what?" 
 
THE COXON FUND 113 
 
 "For Moral Truth. That s what Sir Gregory 
 called it." 
 
 I burst out laughing. " Delightful, munificent 
 Sir Gregory! It s a charming idea." 
 
 " So Miss Anvoy thinks." 
 
 " Has she a candidate for the Fund ? " 
 
 " Not that I know of ; and she s perfectly rea 
 sonable about it. But Lady Coxon has put the 
 matter before her, and we ve naturally had a lot of 
 talk." 
 
 "Talk that, as you ve so interestingly intimated, 
 has landed you in a disagreement." 
 
 " She considers there s something in it," Grave- 
 ner said. 
 
 " And you consider there s nothing ? " 
 
 "It seems to me a puerility fraught with con 
 sequences inevitably grotesque and possibly im 
 moral. To begin with, fancy the idea of constitut 
 ing an endowment without establishing a tribunal 
 a bench of competent people, of judges." 
 
 " The sole tribunal is Lady Coxon ? " 
 
 " And any one she chooses to invite." 
 
 "But she has invited you." 
 
 "I m not competent I hate the thing. Be 
 sides, she hasn t. The real history of the matter, 
 I take it, is that the inspiration was originally Lady 
 Coxon s own ; that she infected him with it ; and 
 that the flattering option left her is simply his 
 tribute to her beautiful, her aboriginal enthusiasm. 
 She came to England forty years ago, a thin trans 
 cendental Bostonian, and even her odd happy, 
 8 
 
114 THE COXON FUND 
 
 frumpy Clockborough marriage never really 
 materialized her. She feels indeed that she has 
 become very British as if that, as a process, as 
 a Werden, were conceivable ; but it s precisely 
 what makes her cling to the notion of the ( Fund 
 cling to it as to a link with the ideal." 
 
 "How can she cling, if she s dying ? " 
 
 " Do you mean how can she act in the matter ? " 
 my companion asked. " That s precisely the ques 
 tion. She can t ! As she has never yet caught 
 her hare, spied out her lucky impostor (how should 
 she, with the life she has led ?), her husband s 
 intention has come very near lapsing. His idea, 
 to do him justice, was that it should lapse, if 
 exactly the right person, the perfect mixture of 
 genius and chill penury, should fail to turn up. 
 Ah ! Lady Coxon s very particular she says 
 there must be no mistake." 
 
 I found all this quite thrilling I took it in with 
 avidity. " If she dies without doing any thing, 
 what becomes of the money ? " I demanded. 
 
 " It goes back to his family, if she hasn t made 
 some other disposition of it." 
 
 " She may do that, then she may divert it? " 
 
 " Her hands are not tied. The proof is that 
 three months ago she offered to make it over to 
 her niece." 
 
 " For Miss Anvoy s own use ? " 
 
 " For Miss Anvoy s own use on the occasion of 
 her prospective marriage. She was discouraged 
 the earnest seeker required so earnest a search. 
 
THE COXON FUND 115 
 
 She was afraid of making a mistake ; every one 
 she could think of seemed either not earnest 
 enough or not poor enough. On the receipt of 
 the first bad news about Mr. Anvoy s affairs she 
 proposed to Ruth to make the sacrifice for her. 
 As the situation in New York got worse she 
 repeated her proposal." 
 
 "Which Miss Anvoy declined?" 
 
 " Except as a formal trust." 
 
 " You mean except as committing herself 
 legally to place the money?" 
 
 " On the head of the deserving object, the great 
 man frustrated," said Gravener. " She only con 
 sents to act in the spirit of Sir Gregory s scheme." 
 
 " And you blame her for that ? " I asked, with 
 an excited smile. 
 
 My tone was not harsh, but he colored a little, 
 and there was a queer light in his eyes. "My 
 dear fellow, if I * blamed the young lady I m 
 engaged to, I shouldn t immediately say so even 
 to so old a friend as you." I saw that some deep 
 discomfort, some restless desire to be sided with, 
 reassuringly, approvingly mirrored, had been at 
 the bottom of his drifting so far, and I was gen 
 uinely touched by his confidence. It was incon 
 sistent with his habit ; but being troubled about a 
 woman was not, for him, a habit : that itself was 
 an inconsistency. George Gravener could stand 
 straight enough before any other combination of 
 forces. It amused me to think that the combi 
 nation he had succumbed to had an American 
 
116 THE COXON FUND 
 
 accent, a transcendental aunt, and an insolvent 
 father ; but all my old loyalty to him mustered to 
 meet this unexpected hint that I could help him. 
 I saw that I could from the insincere tone in 
 which he pursued : "I ve criticised her of course, 
 I ve contended with her, and it has been great fun." 
 It clearly couldn t have been such great fun as to 
 make it improper for me presently to ask if Miss 
 Anvoy had nothing at all settled upon herself. To 
 this he replied that she had only a trifle from her 
 mother a mere four hundred a year, which was 
 exactly why it would be convenient to him that 
 she shouldn t decline, in the face of this total 
 change in her prospects, an accession of income 
 which would distinctly help them to many. 
 When I enquired if there were no other way in 
 which so rich and so affectionate an aunt could 
 cause the weight of her benevolence to be felt, he 
 answered that Lady Coxon was affectionate in 
 deed, but was scarcely to be called rich. She could 
 let her project of the Fund lapse for her niece s 
 benefit, but she couldn t do any thing else. She 
 had been accustomed to regard her as tremen 
 dously provided for, and she was up to her eyes in 
 promises to anxious Coxons. She was a woman of 
 an inordinate conscience, and her conscience was 
 now a distress to her ; hovering round her bed in 
 irreconcilable forms of resentful husbands, portion 
 less nieces, and undiscoverable philosophers. 
 
 We were by this time getting into the whir of 
 fleeting platforms, the multiplication of lights. 
 
THE COXON FUND 117 
 
 " I think you ll find," I said, with a laugh, " that 
 your predicament will disappear in the very fact 
 that the philosopher is undiscoverable." 
 
 He began to gather up his papers. "Who can 
 set a limit to the ingenuity of an extravagant 
 woman ? " 
 
 "Yes, after all, who indeed?" I echoed, as I 
 recalled the extravagance commemorated in Mrs. 
 Mulville s anecdote of Miss Anvoy and the thirty 
 pounds. 
 
 IX 
 
 THE thing I had been most sensible of in that 
 talk with George Gravener was the way Saltram s 
 name kept out of it. It seemed to me at the time 
 that we were quite pointedly silent about him ; 
 but afterward it appeared more probable there had 
 been on my companion s part no conscious avoid 
 ance. Later on I was sure of this, and for the best 
 of reasons the simple reason of rny perceiving 
 more completely t licit, for evil as well as for 
 good, he said nothing to Gravener s imagination. 
 Gravener was not afraid of him ; he was too much 
 disgusted with him. No more was I, doubtless, 
 and for very much the same reason. I treated my 
 friend s story as an absolute confidence ; but when 
 before Christmas, by Mrs. Saltram, I was informed 
 of Lady Coxon s death without having had news 
 of Miss Anvoy s return, I found myself taking for 
 
118 THE COXON FUND 
 
 granted that we should hear no more of these 
 nuptials, in which I now recognized an element 
 incongruous from the first. I began to ask myself 
 how people who suited each other so little could 
 please each other so much. The charm was some 
 material charm, some affinity, exquisite doubtless, 
 yet superficial ; some surrender to youth and 
 beauty and passion, to force and grace and fortune, 
 happy accidents and easy contacts. They might 
 dote on each other s persons, but how could they 
 know each other s souls ? How could they have 
 the same prejudices ; how could they have the 
 same horizon ? Such questions, I confess, seemed 
 quenched but not answered, when, one day in 
 February, going out to Wimbledon, I found our 
 young lady in the house. A passion that had 
 brought her back across the wintry ocean was as 
 much of a passion as was necessary. No impulse 
 equally strong, indeed, had drawn George Grave- 
 ner to America ; a circumstance on which, how 
 ever, I reflected only long enough to remind 
 myself that it was none of my business. Ruth 
 Anvoy was distinctly different, and I felt that the 
 difference was not simply that of her being in 
 mourning. Mrs. Mulville told me soon enough 
 what it was ; it was the difference between a hand 
 some girl with large expectations and a handsome 
 girl with only four hundred a year. This explana 
 tion, indeed, did not wholly content me, not even 
 when I learned that her mourning had a double 
 cause learned that poor Mr. Anvoy, giving way 
 
THE COXON FUND 119 
 
 altogether, buried under the ruins of his fortune, 
 and leaving next to nothing, had died a few weeks 
 before. 
 
 " So she has come out to many George Grave- 
 ner?" I demanded. "Wouldn t it have been 
 prettier of him to have saved her the trouble ? " 
 
 "Hasn t the House just met?" said Adelaide. 
 Then she added : " I gather that her having come 
 is exactly a sign that the marriage is a little shaky. 
 If it were certain, a self-respecting girl like Ruth 
 would have waited for him over there." 
 
 I noted that they were already Ruth and Ade 
 laide, but what I said was : " Do you mean that 
 she has returned to make it a certainty?" 
 
 " No, I mean that I figure she has come out for 
 some reason independent of it." Adelaide could 
 only figure as yet, and there was more, as we 
 found, to be revealed. Mrs. Mulville, on hearing 
 of her arrival, had brought the young lady out in 
 the green landau for the Sunday. The Coxons 
 were in possession of the house in Regent s Park, 
 and Miss Anvoy was in dreary lodgings. George 
 Gravener was with her when Adelaide called, but 
 he had assented graciously enough to the little 
 visit at Wimbledon. The carriage, with Mr. Sal- 
 tram in it but not mentioned, had been sent off 
 on some errand from which it was to return 
 and pick the ladies up. Gravener left them to 
 gether, and at the end of an hour, on the Saturday 
 afternoon, the party of three drove out to Wimble 
 don. This was the girl s second glimpse of our 
 
120 THE COXON FUND 
 
 great man, and I was interested in asking Mrs. 
 Mulville if the impression made by the first 
 appeared to have been confirmed. On her reply 
 ing, after consideration, that of course with time 
 and opportunity it couldn t fail to be, but as yet 
 she was disappointed, I was sufficiently struck with 
 her use of this last word to question her further. 
 
 " Do you mean that you re disappointed because 
 you judge that Miss Anvoy is ? " 
 
 "Yes ; I hoped for a greater effect last evening. 
 We had two or three people, but he scarcely 
 opened his mouth." 
 
 " He ll be all the better this evening," I added, 
 after a moment. " What particular importance 
 do you attach to the idea of her being impressed ? " 
 
 Adelaide turned her mild, pale eyes on me as if 
 she were amazed at my levity: " Why, the im 
 portance of her being as happy as we are ! " 
 
 I m afraid that at this my levity increased. 
 " Oh, that s a happiness almost too great to wisli 
 a person ! " I saw she had not yet in her mind 
 what I had in mine, and at any rate the visitor s 
 actual bliss was limited to a walk in the garden 
 with Kent Mulville. Later in the afternoon I also 
 took one, and I saw nothing of Miss Anvoy till 
 dinner, at which we were without the company of 
 Sal tram, who had caused it to be reported that he 
 was indisposed, lying down. This made us, most 
 o f us f O v there were other friends present con 
 vey to each other in silence some of the unutter 
 able things which in those years our eyes had 
 
THE COXON FUND 121 
 
 inevitably acquired the art of expressing. If an 
 American enquirer had not been there we would 
 have expressed them otherwise, and Adelaide 
 would have pretended not to hear. I had seen her, 
 before the very fact, abstract herself nobly; and 
 I knew that more than once, to keep it from the 
 servants, managing, dissimulating cleverly, she 
 had helped her husband to carry him bodily to his 
 room. Just recently he had been so wise and so 
 deep and so high that I had begun to get nervous 
 to wonder if by chance there were something 
 behind it, if he were kept straight for instance by 
 the knowledge that the hated Pudneys would have 
 more to tell us, if they chose. He was lying low, 
 but unfortunately it was common wisdom with us 
 that the biggest splashes took place in the quietest 
 pools. We should have had a merry life indeed if 
 all the splashes had sprinkled us as refreshingly as 
 the waters we were even then to feel about our ears. 
 Kent Mulville had been up to his room, but had 
 come back with a face that told as few tales as I had 
 seen it succeed in telling on the evening I waited 
 in the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy. I said to 
 myself that our friend had gone out, but I was 
 glad that the presence of a comparative stranger 
 deprived us of the dreary duty of suggesting to 
 each other, in respect of his errand, edifying pos 
 sibilities in which we didn t ourselves believe. At 
 ten o clock he came into the drawing-room with 
 Ms waistcoat much awry, but his eyes sending out 
 great signals. It was precisely with his entrance 
 
122 THE COXON FUND 
 
 that I ceased to be vividly conscious of him. I 
 saw that the crystal, as I had called it, had begun 
 to swing, and I had need of my immediate atten 
 tion for Miss Anvoy. 
 
 Even when I was told afterward that he had, as 
 we might have said to-day, broken the record, the 
 manner in which that attention had been rewarded 
 relieved me of a sense of loss. I had of course a 
 perfect general consciousness that something great 
 was going on : it was a little like having been 
 etherized to hear Herr Joachim play. The old 
 music was in the air ; I felt the strong pulse of 
 thought, the sink and swell, the flight, the poise, 
 the plunge ; but I knew something about one of 
 the listeners that nobody else knew, and Saltram s 
 monologue could reach me only through that 
 medium. To this hour I m of no use when, as a 
 witness, I m appealed to (for they still absurdly 
 contend about it) as to whether or no on that 
 historic night he was drunk ; and my position is 
 slightly ridiculous, for I have never cared to tell 
 them what it really was I was taken up with. 
 What I got out of it is the only morsel of the total 
 experience that is quite my own. The others were 
 shared, but this is incommunicable. I feel that 
 now, I m bound to say, in even thus roughly evok 
 ing the occasion, and it takes something from my 
 pride of clearness. However, I shall perhaps be 
 as clear as is absolutely necessary if I remark that 
 she was too much given up to her own intensity of 
 observation to be sensible of mine. It was plainly 
 
THE COXON FUND 123 
 
 not the question of her marriage that had brought 
 her back. I greatly enjoyed this discovery, and 
 was sure that, had that question alone been in 
 volved, she would have remained away. In this 
 case, doubtless, Gravener would, in spite of the 
 House of Commons, have found means to rejoin 
 her. It afterward made me uncomfortable for her 
 that, alone in the lodging Mrs. Mulville had put 
 before me as dreary, she should have in any de 
 gree the air of waiting for her fate ; so that I was 
 presently relieved at hearing of her having gone to 
 stay at Coldfield. If she was in England at all 
 while the engagement stood, the only proper place 
 for her was under Lady Maddock s wing. Now 
 that she was unfortunate and relatively poor, per 
 haps her prospective sister-in-law would be wholly 
 won over. There would be much to say, if I had 
 space, about the way her behavior, as I caught 
 gleams of it, ministered to the image that had 
 taken birth in my mind, to my private amusement, 
 as I listened to George Gravener in the railway- 
 carriage. I watched her in the light of this queer 
 possibility a formidable thing certainly to meet 
 and I was aware that it colored, extravagantly 
 perhaps, my interpretation of her very looks and 
 tones. At Wimbledon, for instance, it had seemed 
 to me that she was literally afraid of Saltram ; in 
 dread of a coercion that she had begun already to 
 feel. I had come up to town with her the next 
 day and had been convinced that, though deeply 
 interested, she was immensely on her guard. She 
 
 A T* 
 
124 THE COXON FUND 
 
 would show as little as possible before she should 
 be ready to show every thing. What this final ex 
 hibition might be, on the part of a girl perceptibly 
 so able to think things out, I found it great sport 
 to forecast. It would have been exciting to be 
 approached by her, appealed to by her for advice ; 
 but I prayed to Heaven I mightn t find myself in 
 such a predicament. If there was really a present 
 rigor in the situation of which Gravener had 
 sketched for me the elements, she would have to 
 get out of her difficulty by herself. It was not I 
 who had launched her. and it was not I who could 
 help her. I didn t fail to ask myself why, since I 
 couldn t help her, I should think so much about 
 her. It was in part my suspense that was respon 
 sible for this ; I waited impatiently to see whether 
 she wouldn t have told Mrs. Mulville a portion at 
 least of what I had learned from Gravener. But 
 I saw Mrs. Mulville was still reduced to wonder 
 what she had come out again for, if she hadn t 
 come as a conciliatory bride. That she had come 
 in some other character was the only thing that 
 fitted all the appearances. Having, for family 
 reasons, to spend sometime that spring in the west 
 of England, I was in a manner out of earshot of the 
 great oceanic rumble (I mean of the continuous hum 
 of Saltram s thought), and my uneasiness tended to 
 keep me quiet. There was something I wanted so 
 little to have to say that my prudence surmounted 
 my curiosity. I only wondered if Ruth Anvoy 
 talked over the idea of the Coxon Fund with Lady 
 
THE COXON FUND 125 
 
 Haddock, and also somewhat why I didn t hear 
 from Wimbledon. I had a reproachful note about 
 something or other from Mrs. Saltram, but it con 
 tained no mention of Lady Coxon s niece, on whom 
 her eyes had been much less fixed since the recent 
 untoward events. 
 
 ADELAIDE S silence was fully explained later ; it 
 was practically explained when in June, returning 
 to London, I was honored by this admirable 
 woman with an early visit. As soon as she 
 appeared I guessed every thing, and as soon as she 
 told me that darling Ruth had been in her house 
 nearly a month I exclaimed : " What in the name 
 of maidenly modesty is she staying in England 
 for ? 
 
 " Because she loves me so ! " cried Adelaide 
 gayly. But she had not come to see me only to 
 tell me Miss Anvoy loved her ; that was now 
 sufficiently established, and what was much more 
 to the point was that Mr. Gravener had now 
 raised an objection to it. That is, he had pro 
 tested against her being at Wimbledon, where 
 in the innocence of his heart he had originally 
 brought her himself ; in short he wanted her to 
 put an end to their engagement in the only proper, 
 the only happy manner. 
 
126 THE COXON FUND 
 
 " And why in the world doesn t she do so ? " I 
 enquired. 
 
 Adelaide hesitated. " She says you know." 
 Then, on my also hesitating, she added : " A con 
 dition he makes." 
 
 " The Coxon fund ? " I cried. 
 
 " He has mentioned to her his having told you 
 about it." 
 
 "Ah, but so little ! Do you mean she has 
 accepted the trust ? " 
 
 " In the most splendid spirit as a duty about 
 which there can be no two opinions." Then said 
 Adelaide after an instant : " Of course she s think 
 ing of Mr. Saltrarn." 
 
 I gave a quick cry at this, which, in its violence, 
 made my visitor turn pale. " How very awful ! " 
 
 "Awful?" 
 
 "Why, to have any thing to do with such an 
 idea one s self." 
 
 " I m sure you needn t ! " Mrs. Mulville gave 
 a slight toss of her head. 
 
 " He isn t good enough ! " I went on ; to which 
 she responded with an ejaculation almost as lively 
 as mine had been. This made me, with genuine, 
 immediate horror, exclaim : " You haven t influ 
 enced her, I hope ! " and my emphasis brought 
 back the blood with a rush to poor Adelaide s 
 face. She declared, while she blushed (for I had 
 frightened her again), that she had never influ 
 enced any body and that the girl had only seen and 
 heard and judged for herself. He had influenced 
 
THE COXOX FUND 127 
 
 her, if I would, as he did every one who had a 
 soul : that word, as we knew, even expressed 
 feebly the power of the things he said to haunt 
 the mind. How could she, Adelaide, help it if 
 Miss Anvoy s mind was haunted? I demanded 
 with a groan what right a pretty girl engaged to 
 a rising M. P. had to have a mind ; but the only 
 explanation my bewildered friend could give me 
 was that she was so clever. She regarded Mi*. 
 Saltram naturally as a tremendous force for good. 
 She was intelligent enough to understand him and 
 generous enough to admire. 
 
 " She s many things enough, but is she, among 
 them, rich enough ? " I demanded. " Rich enough, 
 I mean, to sacrifice such a lot of good money ? " 
 
 "That s for herself to judge. Besides, it s not her 
 own money ^ she doesn t in the least consider it so." 
 
 " And Gravener does, if not his own ; and that s 
 the whole difficulty ?" 
 
 " The difficulty that brought her back, yes ; she 
 had absolutely to see her poor aunt s solicitor. 
 It s clear that by Lady Coxon s will she may have 
 the money, but it s still clearer to her conscience 
 that the original condition definite, intensely im 
 plied on her uncle s part is attached to the use 
 of it. She can only take one view of it. It s for 
 the Endowment, or it s for nothing." 
 
 "The Endowment is a conception superficially 
 sublime, but fundamentally ridiculous." 
 
 "Are you repeating Mr. Gravener s words?" 
 Adelaide asked. 
 
128 THE COXON FUND 
 
 " Possibly, though I ve not seen him for months. 
 It s simply the way it strikes me too. It s an old 
 wife s tale. Gravener made some reference to the 
 legal aspect, but such an absurdly loose arrange 
 ment has no legal aspect." 
 
 "Ruth doesn t insist on that," said Mrs. Mul- 
 ville ; " and it s for her exactly this technical 
 weakness that constitutes the force of the moral 
 obligation." 
 
 " Are you repeating her words ? " I enquired. 
 I forget what else Adelaide said, but she said she 
 was magnificent. I thought of George Gravener 
 confronted with such magnificence as that, and I 
 asked what could have made two such people ever 
 suppose they understood each other. Mrs. Mul- 
 ville assured me the girl loved him as such a 
 woman could love, and that she suffered as such a 
 woman could suffer. Nevertheless she wanted to 
 see me. At this I sprang up with a groan. " Oh, 
 I m so sorry ! when ? " Small though her sense 
 of humor, I think Adelaide laughed at my tone. 
 We discussed the day, the nearest it would be 
 convenient I should come out ; but before she 
 went I asked my visitor how long she had been 
 acquainted with these prodigies. 
 
 " For several weeks, but I was pledged to 
 secrecy." 
 
 " And that s why you didn t write ? " 
 
 " I couldn t very well tell you she was with me 
 without telling you that no time had even yet been 
 fixed for her marriage. And I couldn t very well 
 
THE COXON FUND 129 
 
 tell you as much as that without telling you what 
 I knew of the reason of it. It was not till a day 
 or two ago," Mrs. Mulville went on, " that she 
 asked me to ask you if you wouldn t come and see 
 her. Then at last she said that you knew about 
 the idea of the Endowment." 
 
 I considered a little. " Why on earth does she 
 want to see me ? " 
 
 " To talk with you, naturally, about Mr. Salt- 
 ram." 
 
 " As a subject for the prize ? " This was hugely 
 obvious, and I presently exclaimed : " I think I ll 
 sail to-morrow for Australia." 
 
 " Well, then sail ! " said Mrs. Mulville, getting 
 up. 
 
 " On Thursday at five, we said ? " I frivolously 
 continued. The appointment was made definite, 
 and I enquired how, all this time, the unconscious 
 candidate had carried himself. 
 
 " In perfection, really, by the happiest of 
 chances : he has been a dear. And then, as to 
 what we revere him for, in the most wonderful 
 form. His very highest pure celestial light. 
 You won t do him an ill turn ? " Adelaide pleaded 
 at the door. 
 
 " What danger can equal for him the danger 
 to which he is exposed for himself ? " I asked. 
 " Look out sharp, if he has lately been decorous. 
 He ll presently take a day off ; treat us to some 
 exhibition that will make an Endowment a 
 scandal." 
 9 
 
130 THE COXON FUND 
 
 "A scandal ? " Mrs. Mulville dolorously echoed. 
 
 " Is Miss Anvoy prepared for that ? " 
 
 My visitor for a moment screwed her parasol 
 into my carpet. " He grows bigger every day." 
 
 " So do you ! " I laughed, as she went off. 
 
 That girl at Wimbledon, on the Thursday after 
 noon, more than justified my apprehensions. I 
 recognized fully now the cause of the agitation she 
 had produced in me from the first the faint fore 
 knowledge that there was something very stiff I 
 should have to do for her. I felt more than ever 
 committed to my fate as, standing before her in the 
 big drawing-room where they had tactfully left us 
 to ourselves, I tried with a smile to string together 
 the pearls of lucidity which, from her chair, she 
 successively tossed me. Pale and bright, in her 
 monotonous mourning, she was an image of intel 
 ligent purpose, of the passion of duty; but I asked 
 myself whether any girl had ever had so charming 
 an instinct as that which permitted her to laugh 
 out, as if in the joy of her difficulty, into the prig 
 gish old room. This remarkable young woman 
 could be earnest without being solemn, and at 
 moments when I ought doubtless to have cursed 
 her obstinacy I found myself watching the un 
 studied play of her eyebrows or the recurrence of a 
 singularly intense whiteness produced by the part 
 ing of her lips. These aberrations, I hasten to add, 
 didn t prevent my learning soon enough why she 
 had wished to see me. Her reason for this was as 
 distinct as her beauty : it was to make me explain 
 
THE COXON FUND 131 
 
 what I had meant, on the occasion of our first 
 meeting, by Mr. Saltram s want of dignity. It 
 wasn t that she couldn t imagine, but she desired it 
 there from my lips. What she really desired of 
 course was to know whether there was worse about 
 him than what she had found out for herself. She 
 hadn t been a month in the house with him, that 
 way, without discovering that he wasn t a man of 
 monumental bronze. He was like a jelly without 
 a mould, he had to be embanked ; and that was 
 precisely the source of her interest in him and 
 the ground of her project. She put her proj 
 ect boldly before me : there it stood in its 
 preposterous beauty. She was as willing to take 
 the humorous view of it as I could be : the 
 only difference was that for her the humorous 
 view of a thing was not necessarily prohibitive, 
 was not paralyzing. 
 
 Moreover she professed that she couldn t discuss 
 with me the primary question the moral obli 
 gation : that was in her own breast. There were 
 things she couldn t go into injunctions, impres 
 sions she had received. They were a part of the 
 closest intimacy of her intercourse with her aunt, 
 they were absolutely clear to her ; and on questions 
 of delicacy, the interpretation of a fidelity, of a 
 promise, one had always in the last resort to make 
 up one s mind for one s self. It was the idea of the 
 application to the particular case, such a splendid 
 one at last, that troubled her, and she admitted 
 that it stirred very deep things. She didn t 
 
132 THE COXON FUND 
 
 pretend that such a responsibility was a simple 
 matter ; if it had been, she wouldn t have at 
 tempted to saddle me with any portion of it. The 
 Mulvilles were sympathy itself : but were they 
 absolutely candid ? Could they indeed be, in their 
 position would it even have been to be desired ? 
 Yes, she had sent for me to ask no less than that 
 of me whether there was anything dreadful kept 
 back. She made no allusion whatever to George 
 Gravener I thought her silence the only good 
 taste and her gayety perhaps a part of the very 
 anxiety of that discretion, the effect of a determi 
 nation that people shouldn t know from herself 
 that her relations with the man she was to marry 
 were strained. All the weight, however, that she 
 left me to throw was a sufficient implication of the 
 weight that he had thrown in vain. Oh, she knew 
 the question of character was immense, and that 
 one couldn t entertain any plan for making merit 
 comfortable without running the gauntlet of that 
 terrible procession of interrogation-points which, 
 like a young ladies school out for a walk, hooked 
 their uniform noses at the tail of governess Con 
 duct. But were we absolutely to hold that there 
 was never, never, never an exception, never, never, 
 never an occasion for liberal acceptance ; for clever 
 charity, for suspended pedantry for letting one 
 side, in short, outbalance another ? When Miss 
 Anvoy threw off this enquiry I could have em 
 braced her for so delightfully emphasizing her 
 unlikeness to Mrs. Saltram. " Why not have the 
 
THE COXON FUND 133 
 
 courage of one s forgiveness," she asked, " as well 
 as the enthusiasm of one s adhesion ? " 
 
 " Seeing how wonderfully you have threshed the 
 whole thing out," I evasively replied, "gives me 
 an extraordinary notion of the point your enthu 
 siasm has reached." 
 
 She considered this remark an instant with her 
 eyes on mine, and I divined that it struck her I 
 might possibly intend it as a reference to some 
 personal subjection to our fat philosopher, to some 
 aberration of sensibility, some perversion of taste. 
 At least I couldn t interpret otherwise the sudden 
 flush that came into her face. Such a manifes 
 tation, as the result of any word of mine, em 
 barrassed me ; but while I was thinking how to 
 reassure her the flush passed away in a smile of 
 exquisite good-nature. " Oh, you see, one forgets 
 so wonderfully how one dislikes him ! " she said ; 
 and if her tone simply extinguished his strange 
 figure with the brush of its compassion, it also 
 rings in my ear to-day as the purest of all our 
 praises. But with what quick response of com 
 passion such a relegation of the man himself made 
 me privately sigh, "Ah, poor Saltram ! " She 
 instantly, with this, took the measure of all I didn t 
 believe, and it enabled her to go on : " What can 
 one do when a person has given such a lift to one s 
 interest in life ? " 
 
 " Yes, what can one do ? " If I struck her as 
 a little vague, it was because I was thinking of 
 another person. I indulged in another inarticu- 
 
134 THE COXON FUND 
 
 late murmur " Poor George Graven er ! " What 
 had become of the lift he had given that interest ? 
 Later on I made up my mind that she was sore 
 and stricken at the appearance he presented of 
 wanting the miserable money. This was the hid 
 den reason of her alienation. The probable sin 
 cerity, in spite of the illiberality, of his scruples 
 about the particular use of it under discussion 
 didn t efface the ugliness of his demand that they 
 should buy a good house with it. Then, as for 
 his alienation, he didn t, pardonably enough, grasp 
 the lift Frank Sal tram had given her interest in 
 life. If a mere spectator could ask that last ques 
 tion, with what rage in his heart the man himself 
 might ! He was not, like her, I was to see, too 
 proud to show me why he was disappointed. 
 
 XI 
 
 I WAS unable, this time, to stay to dinner; such, 
 r at any rate, was the plea on which I took leave. 
 I desired in truth to get away from my young 
 lady, for that obviously helped me not to pretend 
 to satisfy her. How could I satisfy her ? I 
 asked myself how could I tell her how much had 
 been kept back ? I didn t even know, and I cer 
 tainly didn t desire to know. My own policy had 
 ever been to learn the least about poor Saltram s 
 weaknesses not to learn the most. A great deal 
 
THE COXON FUND 135 
 
 that I had in fact learned had been forced upon me 
 by his wife. There was something even irritating 
 in Miss Anvoy s crude conscientiousness, and I 
 wondered why, after all, she couldn t have let him 
 alone and been content to entrust George Gravener 
 with the purchase of the good house. I was sure 
 he would have driven a bargain, got something 
 excellent and cheap. I laughed louder even than 
 she, I temporized, I failed her ; 1 told her I must 
 think over her case. I professed a horror of 
 responsibilities and twitted her with her own 
 extravagant passion for them. It was not really 
 that I was afraid of the scandal, of moral dis 
 credit for the Fund ; what troubled me most was 
 a feeling of a different order. Of course, as the 
 beneficiary of the Fund was to enjoy a simple life 
 interest, as it was hoped that new beneficiaries 
 would arise and come up to new standards, it 
 would not be a trifle that the first of these 
 worthies should not have been a striking example 
 of the domestic virtues. The Fund would start 
 badly, as it were; and the laurel would, in some re 
 spects at least, scarcely be greener from the brows 
 of the original wearer. That idea, however, was 
 at that hour, as I have hinted, not the source of 
 anxiety it ought, perhaps, to have been, for I felt 
 less the irregularity of Saltram s getting the 
 money than that of this exalted young woman s 
 giving it up. I wanted her to have it for herself, 
 and I told her so before I went away. She looked 
 graver at this than she had looked at all, saying 
 
136 THE COXON FUND 
 
 she hoped such a preference wouldn t make me 
 dishonest. 
 
 It made me, to begin with, very restless made 
 me, instead of going straight to the station, fidget 
 a little about that many-colored Common which 
 gives Wimbledon horizons. There was a worry 
 for me to work off, or rather keep at a distance, 
 for I declined even to admit to myself that I had, 
 in Miss Anvoy s phrase, been saddled with it. 
 What could have been clearer, indeed, than the 
 attitude of recognizing perfectly what a world of 
 trouble the Goxon Fund would in future save us, 
 and of yet liking better to face a continuance of 
 that trouble than see, and in fact contribute to, a 
 deviation from attainable bliss in the life of two 
 other persons in whom I was deeply interested ? 
 Suddenly, at the end of twenty minutes, there was 
 projected across this clearness the image of a 
 massive, middle-aged man seated on a bench, 
 under a tree, with sad, far-wandering eyes and 
 plump white hands folded on the head of a stick 
 a stick I recognized, a stout gold-headed staff that 
 I had given him in throbbing days. I stopped 
 short as he turned his face to me, and it happened 
 that for some reason or other I took in as I had, 
 perhaps, never done before the beauty of his rich, 
 blank gaze. It was charged with experience as 
 the sky is charged with light ; and I felt on the 
 instant as if we had been overspanned and con 
 joined by the great arch of a bridge or the great 
 dome of a temple. Doubtless I was rendered 
 
THE COXON FUND 137 
 
 peculiarly sensitive to it by something in the way 
 I had been giving him up and sinking him. 
 While I met it I stood there smitten, and I felt 
 myself responding to it with a sort of guilty 
 grimace. This brought back his attention in a 
 smile which expressed for me a cheerful, weary 
 patience ; a bruised, noble gentleness. I had told 
 Miss Anvoy that he had no dignity, but what did 
 he seem to me, all unbuttoned and fatigued as he 
 waited for me to come up, if he didn t seem un 
 concerned with small things, didn t seem, in short, 
 majestic ? There was majesty in his mere uncon 
 sciousness of our little conferences and puzzle 
 ments over his maintenance and his reward. 
 
 After I ha,:* sat by him a few minutes I passed 
 my arm over his big soft shoulder (wherever you 
 touched him you found equally little firmness) and 
 said in a tone of which the suppliance fell oddly 
 on my own ear : " Come back to town with me, 
 old friend come back and spend the evening." I 
 wanted to hold him, I wanted to keep him, and at 
 Waterloo, an hour later, I telegraphed possessively 
 to the Mulvilles. When he objected, as regards 
 staying all night, that he had no things, I asked 
 him if he hadn t every thing of mine. I had 
 abstained from ordering dinner, and it was too 
 late for preliminaries at a club ; so we were re 
 duced to tea and fried fish at my rooms reduced 
 also to the transcendent. Something had come up 
 which made me want him to feel at peace with me, 
 which was all the dear man himself wanted on 
 
138 THE COXON FUND 
 
 any occasion. I bad too often bad to press upon 
 bim considerations, irrelevant, but it gives me 
 pleasure now to tbink tbat on tbat particular 
 evening I didn t even mention Mrs. Saltram and 
 tbe children. Late into tbe nigbt we smoked and 
 talked ; old sbames and old rigors fell away from 
 us ; I only let bim see that I was conscious of what 
 I owed him. He was as mild as contrition and as 
 abundant as faith ; he was never so fine as on a 
 shy return,. and even better at forgiving than at 
 being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter 
 than tbat famous night at Wimbledon, tbe night 
 of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy s 
 initiation ; but I was as much in it on this occasion 
 as I had been out of it then. At about 1.30 be 
 was sublime. 
 
 He never, under any circumstances, rose till all 
 other risings were over, and his breakfasts, at 
 Wimbledon, had always been the principal reason 
 mentioned by departing cooks. Tbe coast was 
 therefore clear for me to receive her when, early 
 the next morning, to my surprise, it was announced 
 to me that bis wife bad called. I hesitated, after 
 she had come up, about telling her Saltram was 
 in tbe bouse, but she herself settled the question, 
 kept me reticent, by drawing forth a sealed letter 
 which, looking at me veiy hard in tbe eyes, she 
 placed, with a pregnant absence of comment, in 
 my hand. For a single moment there glimmered 
 before me the fond hope that Mrs. Saltram had 
 tendered me, as it were, her resignation, and desired 
 
THE COXON FUND 139 
 
 to embody the act in an unsparing form. To 
 bring this about I would have feigned any humili 
 ation ; but after my eyes had caught the super 
 scription I heard myself say with a flatness that 
 betrayed a sense of something very different from 
 relief : " Oh, the Pudneys ! " I knew their envel 
 opes, though they didn t know mine. They always 
 used the kind sold at post-offices with the stamp 
 affixed, and as this letter had not been posted they 
 had wasted a penny on me. I had seen their 
 horrid missives to the Mulvilles, but had not been 
 in direct correspondence with them. 
 
 " They enclosed it to me, to be delivered. They 
 doubtless explain to you that they hadn t your 
 address." 
 
 I turned the thing over without opening it. 
 " Why in the world should they write to me ? " 
 
 " Because they have something to tell you. The 
 worst ! " Mrs. Saltram dryly added. 
 
 It was another chapter, I felt, of the history of 
 their lamentable quarrel with her husband ; the 
 episode in which, vindictively, disingenuously as 
 they themselves had behaved, one had to admit 
 that he had put himself more grossly in the wrong 
 than at any moment of his life. He had begun 
 by insulting the matchless Mulvilles for these 
 more specious protectors, and then, according to 
 his wont, at the end of a few months had dug a 
 still deeper ditch for his aberration than the chasm 
 left yawning behind. The chasm at Wimbledon 
 was now blessedly closed ; but the Pudneys, across 
 
140 THE COXON FUND 
 
 their persistent gulf, kept up the nastiest fire. I 
 never doubted they had a strong case, and I had 
 been from the first for not defending him reason 
 ing, if they were not contradicted they would per 
 haps subside. This was above all what I wanted, 
 and I so far prevailed that I did arrest the corre 
 spondence in time to save our little circle an inflic 
 tion heavier than it perhaps would have borne. I 
 knew, that is, I divined, that their allegations had 
 gone as yet only as far as their courage ; conscious 
 as they were in their own virtue of an exposed 
 place, in which Saltram could have planted a blow. 
 It was a question with them whether a man who 
 had himself so much to cover up would dare his 
 blow ; so that these vessels of rancor were in a 
 manner afraid of each other. I judged that on the 
 day the Pudneys should cease for some reason or 
 other to be afraid they would treat us to some 
 revelation more disconcerting than any of its pred 
 ecessors. As I held Mrs. Saltram s letter in my 
 hand it was distinctly communicated to me that the 
 day had come they had ceased to be afraid. " I 
 don t want to know the worst,"! presently declared. 
 
 " You ll have to open the letter. It also contains 
 an enclosure." 
 
 I felt it it was fat and uncanny. " Wheels 
 within wheels ! " I exclaimed. " There is something 
 for me too to deliver." 
 
 "So they tell me to Miss Anvoy." 
 
 I stared; I felt a certain thrill. "Why don t 
 they send it to her directly ? " 
 
THE COXON FUND 141 
 
 Mrs. Saltram hesitated. " Because she s staying 
 with Mr. and Mrs. Mulville." 
 
 " And why should that prevent ? " 
 
 Again my visitor faltered, and I began to reflect 
 on the grotesque, the unconscious perversity of 
 her action. I was the only person save George 
 Gravener and the Mulvilles who was aware of Sir 
 Gregory Coxon s and of Miss Anvoy s strange 
 bounty. Where could there have been a more 
 signal illustration of the clumsiness of human affairs 
 than her having complacently selected this moment 
 to fly in the face of it? "There s the chance of 
 their seeing her letters. They know Mr. Pudney s 
 hand." 
 
 Still I didn t understand ; then it flashed upon 
 me. " You mean they might intercept it? How 
 can you imply any thing so base ? " I indignantly 
 demanded. 
 
 " It s not I ; it s Mr. Pudney ! " cried Mrs. 
 Saltram, with a flush. "It s his own idea." 
 
 " Then why couldn t he send the letter to you to 
 be delivered?" 
 
 Mrs. Saltram s embarrassment increased ; she 
 gave me another hard look. " You must make 
 that out for yourself." 
 
 I made it out quickly enough. " It s a denuncia 
 tion ? " 
 
 " A real lady doesn t betray her husband ! " this 
 virtuous woman exclaimed. 
 
 I burst out laughing, and I fear my laugh may 
 have had an effect of impertinence. 
 
142 THE COXON FUND 
 
 " Especially to Miss Anvoy, who s so easily 
 shocked? Why do such things concern her? " I 
 asked, much at a loss. 
 
 "Because she s there, exposed to all his craft. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Pudney have been watching this ; 
 they feel she may be taken in." 
 
 " Thank you for all the rest of us ! What differ 
 ence can it make when she has lost her power to 
 contribute ? " 
 
 Again Mrs. Saltram considered ; then very nobty, 
 " There are other things in the world than money," 
 she remarked. This hadn t occurred to her so long 
 as the young lady had any; but she now added, 
 with a glance at my letter, that Mr. and Mrs. 
 Pudney doubtless explained their motives. "It s 
 all in kindness," she continued as she got up. 
 
 " Kindness to Miss Anvoy ? You took, on the 
 whole, another view of kindness before her 
 reverses." 
 
 My companion smiled with some acidity. " Per 
 haps you re no safer than the Mulvilles ! " 
 
 I didn t want her to think that, nor that she 
 should report to the Pudneys that they had not 
 been happy in their agent ; and I well remember 
 that this was the moment at which I began, with 
 considerable emotion, to promise myself to enjoin 
 upon Miss Anvoy never to open any letter that 
 should come to her in one of those penny envelopes. 
 My emotion and I fear I must add my confusion 
 quickly deepened ; I presently should have been 
 as glad to frighten Mrs. Saltram as to think I might 
 
THE COXON FUND 143 
 
 by some diplomacy restore the Pudneys to a quieter 
 vigilance. 
 
 " It s best you should take my view of my safety," 
 I at any rate soon responded. When I saw she 
 didn t know what I meant by this I added : " You 
 may turn out to have done, in bringing me this 
 letter, a thing you will profoundly regret." My 
 tone had a significance which, I could see, did make 
 her uneasy, and there was a moment, after I had 
 made two or three more remarks of studiously 
 bewildering effect, at which her eyes followed so 
 hungrily the little flourish of the letter with which 
 I emphasized them that I instinctively slipped Mr. 
 Pudney s communication into my pocket. She 
 looked, in her embarrassed annoyance, as if she 
 might grab it and send it back to him. I felt, after 
 she had gone, as if I had almost given her my word 
 I wouldn t deliver the enclosure. The passionate 
 movement, at any rate, with which, in solitude, I 
 transferred the whole thing, unopened, from my 
 pocket to a drawer which I double-locked would 
 have amounted for an initiated observer to some 
 such promise. 
 
 XII 
 
 MKS. SALTKAM left me drawing my breath more 
 quickly and, indeed, almost in pain, as if I had just 
 perilously grazed the loss of something precious. 
 I didn t quite know what it was ; it had a shocking 
 
144 THE COXON FUND 
 
 resemblance to my honor. The emotion was the 
 livelier, doubtless, in that my pulses were still 
 shaken with the rejoicing with which, the night 
 before, I had rallied to the rare analyst, the great 
 intellectual adventurer and pathfinder. What had 
 dropped from me like a cumbersome garment, as 
 Saltram appeared before me in the afternoon on 
 the heath, was the disposition to haggle over his 
 value. Hang it, one had to choose ! one had to put 
 that value somewhere ; so I would put it really 
 high and have done with it. Mrs. Mulville drove 
 in for him at a discreet hour the earliest she 
 could suppose him to have got up ; and I learned 
 that Miss Anvoy would also have come had she 
 not been expecting a visit from Mr. Gravener. I 
 was perfectly mindful that I was under bonds to 
 see this young lady, and also that I had a letter to 
 deliver to her ; but I took my time, I waited from 
 day to day. I left Mrs. Saltram to deal, as her 
 apprehensions should prompt, with the Pudneys. 
 I knew at last what I meant I had ceased to 
 wince at my responsibility. I gave this supreme 
 impression of Saltram time to fade, if it would ; 
 but it didn t fade, and, individual^, it has not 
 faded even now. During the month that I thus 
 invited myself to stiffen again, Adelaide Mulville, 
 perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why 
 I was so stiff. At that season of the year I was 
 usually oftener with them. She also wrote that she 
 feared a real estrangement had set in between Mr. 
 Gravener and her sweet young friend a state of 
 
THE COXON FUND 145 
 
 things only partly satisfactory to her so long as 
 the advantage accruing to Mr. Saltram failed to 
 disengage itself from the merely nebulous state, 
 She intimated that her sweet young friend was, if 
 any thing, a trifle too reserved ; she also intimated 
 that there might now be an opening for another 
 clever young ir> in. There never was the slightest 
 opening, I may here parenthesize, and of course 
 the question can t come up to-day. These are old 
 frustrations now. Ruth Anvoy has not married, 
 I hear, and neither have I. During the month, 
 toward the end, I wrote to George Gravener to 
 ask if, on a special errand, I might come to see 
 him, and his answer was to knock the very next 
 day at my door. I saw he had immediately con 
 nected my enquiry with the talk we had had in the 
 railway carriage, and his promptitude showed that 
 the ashes of his eagerness were not yet cold. I 
 told him there was something I thought I ought in 
 candor to let him know ; I recognized the obliga 
 tion his friendly confidence had laid upon me. 
 
 " You mean that Miss Anvoy has talked to you? 
 She has told me so herself," he said. 
 
 " It was not to tell you so that I wanted to see 
 you," I replied ; " for it seemed to me that such a 
 communication would rest wholly with herself. If, 
 however, she did speak to you of our conversation, 
 she probably told you I was discouraging." 
 
 " Discouraging ? " 
 
 "On the subject of a present application of the 
 Coxon Fund." 
 10 
 
146 THE COXON FUND 
 
 " To the case of Mr. Saltram ? My dear fel 
 low, I don t know what you call discouraging ! " 
 Gravener exclaimed. 
 
 "Well, I thought I was, and I thought she 
 thought I was." 
 
 "I believe she did, but such a thing is measured 
 by the effect. She s not discouraged." 
 
 " That s her own affair. The reason I asked you 
 to see me was that it appeared to me. I ought 
 to tell you frankly that decidedly I can t under 
 take to produce that effect. In fact I don t 
 want to ! " 
 
 " It s very good of you, d you ! " my visitor 
 
 laughed, red and really grave. Then he said : 
 " You would like to see that fellow publicly glori 
 fied perched on the pedestal of a great compli 
 mentary fortune ? " 
 
 " Taking one form of public recognition with 
 another, it seemed to me, on the whole, I could 
 bear it. When I see the compliments that are 
 paid right and left, I ask myself why this one 
 shouldn t take its course. This, therefore, is what 
 you re entitled to have looked to me to mention to 
 you. I have some evidence that perhaps would 
 be really dissuasive, but I propose to invite Miss 
 Anvoy to remain in ignorance of it." 
 
 " And to invite me to do the same ? " 
 
 " Oh, you don t require it ; you ve evidence 
 enough. I speak of a sealed letter which I ve been 
 requested to deliver to her." 
 
 " And you don t mean to ? " 
 
THE COXON FUND 147 
 
 "There s only one consideration that would 
 make me." 
 
 Gravener s clear, handsome eyes plunged into 
 mine a minute, but evidently without fishing up 
 a clew to this motive a failure by which I was 
 almost wounded. " What does the letter con 
 tain ? " 
 
 "It s sealed, as I tell you, and I don t know 
 what it contains." 
 
 " Why is it sent through you ? " 
 
 "Rather than you?" I hesitated a moment. 
 " The only explanation I can think of is that the 
 person sending it may have imagined your rela 
 tions with Miss Anvoy to be at an end may have 
 been told this is the case by Mrs. Saltram." 
 
 " My relations with Miss Anvoy are not at an 
 end," poor Gravener stammered. 
 
 Again, for an instant, I deliberated. " The offer 
 I propose to make you gives me the right to 
 put a question remarkably direct. Are you still 
 engaged to Miss Anvoy ? " 
 
 " No, I m not," he slowly brought out. " But 
 we re perfectly good friends." 
 
 " Such good friends that you will again become 
 prospective husband and wife if the obstacle in 
 your path be removed ? " 
 
 " Removed ? " Gravener anxiously repeated. 
 
 " If I give Miss Anvoy the letter I speak of, she 
 may drop her project." 
 
 " Then, for God s sake give it ! " 
 
 " I ll do so if you re ready to assure me that her 
 
148 THE COXON FUND 
 
 dropping it would now presumably bring about 
 your marriage." 
 
 " I d marry her the next day ! " my visitor cried. 
 " Yes, but would she marry you ? What I ask 
 of you, of course, is nothing less than your word of 
 honor as to your conviction of this. If you give 
 it me," I said, " I ll engage to hand her the letter 
 before night." 
 
 Gravener took up his hat; turning it mechanic 
 ally round, he stood looking a moment hard at its 
 unruffled perfection. Then, very angrily, honestly, 
 and gallantly: "Hand it to the devil ! " he broke 
 out ; with which he clapped the hat on his head 
 and left me. 
 
 "Will you read it or not?" I said to Ruth An- 
 voy at Wimbledon, when I had told her the story 
 of Mrs. Saltram s visit. 
 
 She reflected for a period which was probably 
 of the briefest, but which was long enough to make 
 me nervous. "Have you brought it with you?" 
 " No, indeed. It s at home locked up." 
 There was another great silence, and then she 
 said : " Go back and destroy it." 
 
 I went back, but I didn t destroy it till after Salt- 
 ram s death, when I burned it unread. The Pud- 
 neys approached her again pressingly, but, prompt 
 as they were, the Coxon Fund had already become 
 an operative benefit and a general amaze : Mr. 
 Saltram, while we gathered about, as it were, to 
 watch the manna descend, was already drawing the 
 magnificent income. He drew it as he had always 
 
THE COXON FUND 149 
 
 drawn every thing, with a grand, abstracted gesture. 
 Its magnificence, alas, as all the world now knows, 
 quite quenched him ; it was the beginning of his 
 decline. It was also naturally a new grievance for 
 his wife, who began to believe in him as soon as he 
 was blighted, and who at this hour accuses us of 
 having bribed him, on the whim of a meddlesome 
 American, to renounce his glorious office, to become, 
 as she says, like every body else. The very day 
 he found himself able to publish he wholly ceased 
 to produce. This deprived us, as may easily be 
 imagined, of much of our occupation, and especially 
 deprived the Mulvilles, whose want of self-support 
 I never measured till they lost their great inmate. 
 They have no one to live on now. Adelaide s 
 most frequent reference to their destitution is em 
 bodied in the remark that dear far-away Ruth s 
 intentions were doubtless good. She and Kent 
 are even yet looking for another prop, but no one 
 presents a true sphere of" usefulness. They com 
 plain that people are self-sufficing. With Saltram 
 the fine type of the child of adoption was scat 
 tered, the grander, the elder style. They have 
 got their carriage back, but what s an empty 
 carriage ? In short I think we were all happier 
 as well as poorer before ; even including George 
 Gravener, who, by the deaths of his brother and 
 his nephew, has lately become Lord Maddock. 
 His wife, whose fortune clears the property, is 
 criminally dull ; he hates being in the Upper 
 House, and he has not yet had high office. But 
 
150 THE COXON FUND 
 
 what are these accidents, which I should, per 
 haps, apologize for mentioning, in the light of 
 the great eventual boon promised the patient 
 by the rate at which the Coxon Fund must be 
 rolling tip ? 
 
THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 THE April day was soft and bright, and poor 
 Dencombe, happy in the conceit of reasserted 
 strength, stood in the garden of the hotel, com 
 paring, with a deliberation in which, however, 
 there was still something of languor, the attrac 
 tions of easy strolls. He liked the feeling of the 
 south, so far as you could have it in the north, he 
 liked the sandy cliffs and the clustered pines, he 
 liked even the colorless sea. " Bournemouth as a 
 health-resort " had sounded like a mere advertise 
 ment, but now he was reconciled to the prosaic. 
 The sociable country postman, passing through the 
 garden, had just given him a small parcel, which 
 he took out with him, leaving the hotel to the 
 right and creeping to a convenient bench that he 
 knew of, a safe recess in the cliff. It looked to the 
 south, to the tinted walls of the Island, and was 
 protected behind by the sloping shoulder of the 
 down. He was tired enough when he reached it, 
 and for a moment he was disappointed ; he was 
 better, of course, but better, after all, than what ? 
 He should never again, as at one or two great 
 moments of the past, be better than himself. TJie 
 infinite of life had gone, and what was left of the 
 dose was a small glass engraved like a ther- 
 
152 THE MIDDLE YEAES 
 
 mometer by the apothecary. He sat and stared 
 at the sea, which appeared all surface and twinkle, 
 far shallower than the spirit of man. It was the 
 abyss of human illusion that was the real, the 
 tideless deep. He held his packet, which had 
 come by book-post, unopened on his knee, liking, 
 in the lapse of so many joys (his illness had made 
 him feel his age), to know that it was there, but 
 taking for granted there could be no complete 
 renewal of the pleasure, dear to young expe 
 rience, of seeing one s self " just out." Den- 
 combe, who had a reputation, had come out too 
 often and knew too well in advance how he should 
 look. 
 
 His postponement associated itself vaguely, after 
 a little, with a group of three persons, two ladies 
 and a young man, whom, beneath him, straggling 
 and seemingly silent, he could see move slowly 
 together along the sands. The gentleman had 
 his head bent over a book, and was occasionally 
 brought to a stop by the charm of this volume, 
 which, as Dencombe could perceive even at a dis 
 tance, had a cover alluringly red. Then his com 
 panions, going a little further, waited for him to 
 come up, poking their parasols into the beach, look 
 ing around them at the sea and sky, and clearly 
 sensible of the beauty of the day. To these things 
 the young man with the book was still more clearly 
 indifferent ; lingering, credulous, absorbed, he was 
 an object of envy to an observer from whose con 
 nection with literature all such artlessness had 
 
THE MIDDLE YEARS 153 
 
 faded. One of the ladies was large and mature ; 
 the other had the spareness of comparative youth 
 and of a social situation possibly inferior. The 
 large lady carried back Dencombe s imagination to 
 the age of crinoline ; she wore a hat of the shape 
 of a mushroom, decorated with a blue veil, and 
 had the air, in her aggressive amplitude, of cling 
 ing to a vanished fashion or even a lost cause. 
 Presently her companion produced from under the 
 folds of a mantle a limp, portable chair which she 
 stiffened out and of which the large lady took 
 possession. This act, and something in the move 
 ment of either party, instantly characterized the 
 performers they performed for Dencombe s rec 
 reation as opulent matron and humble depend 
 ent. What, moreover, was the use of being an 
 approved novelist if one couldn t establish a rela 
 tion between such figures ; the clever theory, for 
 instance, that the young man was the son of the 
 opulent matron, and that the humble dependent, 
 the daughter of a clerg}^man or an officer, nourished 
 a secret passion for him ? Was that not visible 
 from the way she stole behind her protectress to 
 look back at him ? back to where he had let him 
 self come to a full stop when his mother sat down 
 to rest. His book was a novel ; it had the catch 
 penny cover, and while the romance of life stood 
 neglected at his side he lost himself in that of the 
 circulating library. He moved mechanically to 
 where the sand was softer, and ended by plumping 
 down in it to finish his chapter at his ease. The 
 
154 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 humble dependent, discouraged by his remoteness, 
 wandered, with a martyred droop of the head, in 
 another direction, and the exorbitant lady, watch 
 ing the waves, offered a confused resemblance to a 
 flying-machine that had broken down. 
 
 When his drama began to fail Dencombe remem 
 bered that he had, after all, another pastime. 
 Though such promptitude on the part of the 
 publisher was rare, he was already able to draw 
 from its wrapper his " latest," perhaps his last. 
 The cover of " The Middle Years " was duly meretri 
 cious, the smell of the fresh pages the very odor 
 of sanctity ; but for the moment he w r ent no 
 further he had become conscious of a strange 
 alienation. He had forgotten what his book was 
 about. Had the assault of his old ailment, which 
 he had so fallaciously come to Bournemouth to 
 ward off, interposed utter blankness as to what had 
 preceded it ? He had finished the revision of proof 
 before quitting London, but his subsequent fort 
 night in bed had passed the sponge over color. He 
 couldn t have chanted to himself a single sentence, 
 couldn t have turned with curiosity or confidence 
 to any particular page. His subject had already 
 gone from him, leaving scarcely a superstition 
 behind. He uttered a low moan as he breathed 
 the chill of this dark void, so desperately it seemed 
 to represent the completion of a sinister process. 
 The tears filled his mild eyes ; something precious 
 had passed away. This was the pang that had 
 been sharpest during the last few years the sense 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAKS 155 
 
 of ebbing time, of shrinking opportunity ; and now 
 he felt not so much that his last chance was going 
 as that it was gone indeed. He had done all that 
 he should ever do, and yet he had not done what 
 he wanted. This was the laceration that practi 
 cally his career was over ; it was as violent as a 
 rouo-h hand at his throat. He rose from his seat 
 
 G 
 
 nervously, like a creature hunted by a dread ; then 
 he felt back in his weakness and nervously opened 
 his book. It was a single volume ; he preferred 
 single volumes and aimed at a rare compression. 
 He began to read, and little by little, in this occu 
 pation, he was pacified and reassured. Every thing 
 came back to him, but came back with a wonder, 
 came back, above all, with a high and magnificent 
 beauty. He read his own prose, he turned his own 
 leaves, and had, as he sat there with the spring 
 sunshine on the page, an emotion peculiar and 
 intense. His career was over, no doubt, but it was 
 over, after all, with that. 
 
 He had forgotten during his illness the work of 
 the previous year ; but what he had chiefly for 
 gotten was that it was extraordinarily good. He 
 lived once more into his story and was drawn 
 down, as by a siren s hand, to where, in the dim 
 underworld of fiction, the great glazed tank of art, 
 strange, silent subjects float. He recognized his 
 motive and surrendered to his talent. Never, 
 probably, had that talent, such as it was, been so 
 fine. His difficulties were still there, but what was 
 also there, to his perception, though probably, 
 
156 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 alas ! to nobody s else, was the art that in most 
 cases bad surmounted them. In his surprised 
 enjoyment of this ability he had a glimpse of 
 a possible reprieve. Surely its force was not 
 spent there were life and service in it yet. It 
 had not come to him easily, it had been backward 
 and roundabout. It was the child of time, the 
 nursling of delay; he had struggled and suffered 
 for it, making sacrifices not to be counted, and 
 now that it was really mature was it to cease to 
 yield, to confess itself brutally beaten ? There 
 was an infinite charm for Dencombe in feeling 
 as he had never felt before that diligence vincit 
 omnia. The result produced in his little book was 
 somehow a result beyond his conscious intention : 
 it was as if he had planted his genius, had trusted 
 his method, and they had grown up and flowered 
 with this sweetness. If the achievement had been 
 real, however, the process had been manful 
 enough. What he saw so intensely to-day, what 
 he felt as a nail driven in, was that only now, at 
 the very last, had he come into possession. His 
 development had been abnormally slow, almost 
 grotesquely gradual. He had been hindered and 
 retarded by experience, and for long periods had 
 only groped his way. It had taken too much of 
 his life to produce too little of his art. The 
 art had come, but it had come after every thing 
 else. At such a rate a first existence was too 
 short long enough only to collect material ; so 
 that to fructify, to use the material, one must 
 
THE MIDDLE YEARS 157 
 
 have a second age, an extension. This extension 
 was what poor Dencombe sighed for. As he 
 turned the last leaves of his volume he murmured : 
 "Ah, for another go ! ah, for a better chance ! " 
 
 The three persons he had observed on the sands 
 had vanished and then reappeared ; they had now 
 wandered up a path, an artificial and easy ascent, 
 which led to the top of the cliff. Dencombe s 
 bench was half-way down, on a sheltered ledge, 
 and the large lady, a massive, heterogeneous per 
 son, with bold black eyes and kind red cheeks, now 
 took a few moments to rest. She wore dirty 
 gauntlets and immense diamond ear-rings ; at 
 first she looked vulgar, but she contradicted this 
 announcement in an agreeable off-hand tone. 
 While her companions stood waiting for her she 
 spread her skirts on the end of Dencombe s seat. 
 The young man had gold spectacles, through 
 which, with his finger still in his red-covered book, 
 he glanced at the volume, bound in the same 
 shade of the same color, lying on the lap of the 
 original occupant of the bench. After an instant 
 Dencombe understood that he was struck with a 
 resemblance, had recognized the gilt stamp on the 
 crimson cloth, was reading " The Middle Years," 
 and now perceived that somebody else had kept 
 pace with him. The stranger was startled, pos 
 sibly even a little ruffled, to find that he was not the 
 only person who had been favored with an early 
 copy. The eyes of the two proprietors met for a 
 moment, and Dencombe borrowed amusement from 
 
158 THE MIDDLE YEAES 
 
 the expression of those of his competitor, those, 
 it might even be inferred, of his admirer. They 
 confessed to some resentment they seemed to 
 say : " Hang it, lias he got it already ? Of course 
 he s a brute of a reviewer ! " Dencornbe shuffled 
 his copy out of sight while the opulent matron, 
 rising from her repose, broke out : " I feel already 
 the good of this air ! " 
 
 " I can t say I do," said the angular lady. " I 
 find myself quite let down." 
 
 " I find myself horribly hungry. At what time 
 did you order lunch ? " her protectress pursued. 
 
 The young person put the question by. "Dr. 
 Hugh always orders it." 
 
 " I ordered nothing to-day I m going to make 
 you diet," said their comrade. 
 
 " Then I shall go home and sleep. Qui dort 
 dine ! " 
 
 " Can I trust you to Miss Vernham ? " asked 
 Dr. Hugh of his elder companion. 
 
 " Don t I trust you? " she archly enquired. 
 
 " Not too much ! " Miss Vernham, with her eyes 
 on the ground, permitted herself to declare. " You 
 must come with us at least to the house," she 
 went on, while the personage on whom they 
 appeared to be in attendance began to mount 
 higher. She had got a little out of ear-shot ; 
 nevertheless Miss Vernham became, as far as Den- 
 combe was concerned, less distinctly audible to 
 murmur to the young man : " I don t think you 
 realize all you owe the countess ! " 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAKS 159 
 
 Absently, a moment, Dr. Hugh caused his gold- 
 rimmed spectacles to shine at her. 
 
 " Is that the way I strike you ? I see I see ! " 
 
 "She s awfully good to us," continued Miss 
 Vernham, compelled by her interlocutor s immova 
 bility to stand there in spite of his discussion of 
 private matters. Of what use would it have been 
 that Dencombe should be sensitive to shades had 
 he not detected in that immovability a strange 
 influence from the quiet old convalescent in the 
 great tweed cape ? Miss Vernham appeared sud 
 denly to become aware of some such connection, 
 for she added in a moment : "If you want to sun 
 yourself here you can come back after you ve seen 
 us home." 
 
 Dr. Hugh, at this, hesitated, and Dencombe, 
 in spite of a desire to pass for unconscious, risked 
 a covert glance at him. What his eyes met this 
 time, as it happened, was on the part of the young 
 lady a queer stare, naturally vitreous, which made 
 her aspect remind him of some figure (he couldn t 
 name it) in a play or a novel, some sinister governess 
 or tragic old maid. She seemed to scrutinize him, 
 to challenge him, to say, from general spite : 
 " What have you got to do with us?" At the 
 same instant the rich humor of the countess 
 reached them from above : " Come, come, my little 
 lambs, you should follow your old berg&re! " Miss 
 Vernham turned away at this, pursuing the ascent, 
 and Dr. Hugh, after another mute appeal to Den 
 combe and a moment s evident demur, deposited 
 
160 THE MIDDLE YEAKS 
 
 his book on the bench, as if to keep his place or 
 even as a sign that he would return, and bounded 
 without difficulty up the rougher part of the 
 cliff. 
 
 Equally innocent and infinite are the pleasures 
 of observation and the resources engendered by 
 the habit of analyzing life. It amused poor Den- 
 combe, as he dawdled in his tepid air-bath, to 
 think that he was waiting for a revelation of some 
 thing at the back of a fine young mind. He looked 
 hard at the book on the end of the bench, but he 
 wouldn t have touched it for the world. It served 
 his purpose to have a theory which should not be 
 exposed to refutation. He already felt better of 
 his melancholy ; he had, according to his old 
 formula, put his head at the window. A passing 
 countess could draw off the fancy when, like the 
 elder of the ladies who had just retreated, she was 
 as obvious as the giantess of a caravan. It was 
 indeed general views that were terrible ; short 
 ones, contrary to an opinion sometimes expressed, 
 were the refuge, were the remedy. Dr. Hugh 
 couldn t possibly be any thing but a reviewer who 
 had understandings for early copies with pub 
 lishers or with newspapers. He reappeared in a 
 quarter of an hour, with visible relief at finding 
 Dencombe on the spot, and the gleam of white 
 teeth in an embarrassed but generous smile. He 
 was perceptibly disappointed at the eclipse of the 
 other copy of the book ; it was a pretext the less 
 for speaking to the stranger. But he spoke not- 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAES 161 
 
 withstanding ; he held up his own copy and broke 
 out pleadingly : 
 
 " Do say, if you have occasion to speak of it, 
 that it s the best thing he has done yet ! " 
 
 Dencombe responded with a laugh : " Done yet " 
 was so amusing to him, made such a grand avenue 
 of the future. Better still, the young man took 
 him for a reviewer. He pulled out " The Middle 
 Years " from under his cape, but instinctively con 
 cealed any tell-tale look of fatherhood. This was 
 partly because a person was always a fool for call 
 ing attention to his work. " Is that what you re 
 going to say yourself ? " he enquired of his visitor. 
 
 " I m not quite sure I shall write any thing. I 
 don t as a regular thing I enjoy in peace. But 
 it s awfully fine." 
 
 Dencombe debated a moment. If his interlo 
 cutor had begun to abuse him he would have con 
 fessed on the spot to his identity, but there was no 
 harm in drawing him on a little to praise. He drew 
 him on with such success that in a few moments his 
 new acquaintance, seated by his side, was confess 
 ing candidly that Dencombe s novels were the only 
 ones he could read a second time. He had come 
 the day before from London, where a friend of 
 his, a journalist, had lent him his copy of the 
 last the copy sent to the office of the journal and 
 already the subject of a "notice" which, as was 
 pretended there (but one had to allow for " swag 
 ger "), it had taken a full quarter of an hour to 
 prepare. He intimated that he was ashamed for 
 11 
 
162 THE MIDDLE YEAKS 
 
 his friend, and in the case of a work demanding 
 and repaying study, of such inferior manners ; and, 
 with his fresh appreciation and inexplicable wish 
 to express it, he speedily became for poor Den- 
 combe a remarkable, a delightful apparition. 
 Chance had brought the weary man of letters 
 face to face with the greatest admirer in the new 
 generation whom it was supposable he possessed. 
 The admirer, in truth, was mystifying, so rare a 
 case was it to find a bristling young doctor he 
 looked like a German physiologist enamored of 
 literary form. It was an accident, but happier 
 than most accidents, so that Dencombe, exhilarated 
 as well as confounded, spent half an hour in mak 
 ing his visitor .talk while he kept himself quiet. 
 He explained his premature possession of " The 
 Middle Years" by an allusion to the friendship of 
 the publisher, who, knowing he was at Bourne 
 mouth for his health, had paid him this graceful 
 attention. He admitted that he had been ill, for 
 Dr. Hugh would infallibly have guessed it ; he 
 even went so far as to wonder whether he mightn t 
 look for some hygienic " tip " from a personage 
 combining so bright an enthusiasm with a presum 
 able knowledge of the remedies now in vogue. It 
 would shake his faith a little perhaps to have to 
 take a doctor seriously who could take him so 
 seriously, but he enjoyed this gushing modern 
 youth, and he felt with an acute pang that there 
 would still be work to do in a world in which such 
 odd combinations were presented. It was not true, 
 
THE MIDDLE YEARS 163 
 
 what be had tried for renunciation s sake to believe, 
 that all the combinations were exhausted. They 
 were not, they were not they were infinite ; the 
 exhaustion was in the miserable artist. 
 
 Dr. Hugh was an ardent physiologist, saturated 
 with the spirit of the age in other words he had 
 just taken his degree ; but he was independent and 
 various, he talked like a man who would have pre 
 ferred to love literature best. He would fain have 
 made fine phrases, but nature had denied him the 
 trick. Some of the finest in " The Middle Years" 
 had struck him inordinately, and he took the lib 
 erty of reading them to Dencombe in support of 
 his plea. He grew vivid, in the balmy air, to his 
 companion, for whose deep refreshment he seemed 
 to have been sent ; and was particularly ingenuous 
 in describing how recently he had become ac 
 quainted, and how instantly infatuated, with the 
 only man who had put flesh between the ribs of 
 an art that was starving on superstitions. He had 
 not yet written to him he was deterred by a 
 sentiment of respect. Dencombe at this moment 
 felicitated himself more than ever on having never 
 answered the photographers. His visitor s atti 
 tude promised him a luxury of intercourse, but he 
 surmised that a certain security in it, for Dr. Hugh, 
 would depend not a little on the countess. He 
 learned without delay with what variety of 
 countess they were concerned, as well as the 
 nature of the tie that united the curious trio. The 
 large lady, an Englishwoman by birth and the 
 
164 THE MIDDLE YEAES 
 
 daughter of a celebrated baritone, whose taste, 
 without his talent, she had inherited, was the 
 widow of a French nobleman and mistress of all 
 that remained of the handsome fortune, the fruit 
 of her father s earnings, that had constituted her 
 dower. Miss Vernham, an odd creature but an 
 accomplished pianist, was attached to her person 
 at a salary. The countess was generous, inde 
 pendent, eccentric ; she traveled with her minstrel 
 and her medical man. Ignorant and passionate, 
 she had nevertheless moments in which she Avas 
 almost irresistible. Dencombe saw her sit for her 
 portrait in Dr. Hugh s free sketch, and felt the 
 picture of his young friend s relation to her frame 
 itself in his mind. This young friend, for a rep 
 resentative of the new psychologj^, was himself 
 easily hypnotized, and if he became abnormally 
 communicative it was only a sign of his real sub 
 jection. Dencombe did accordingly what he 
 wanted with him, even without being known as 
 Dencombe. 
 
 Taken ill on a journey in Switzerland the coun 
 tess had picked him up at an hotel, and the acci 
 dent of his happening to please her had made her 
 offer him, with her imperious liberality, terms 
 that couldn t fail to dazzle a practitioner without 
 patients and whose resources had been drained dry 
 by his studies. It was not the way he would have 
 elected to spend his time, but it was time that 
 would pass quickly, and meanwhile she was won 
 derfully kind. She exacted perpetual attention, 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAKS 165 
 
 but it was impossible not to like her. He gave 
 details about his queer patient, a " type " if there 
 ever was one, who had in connection with her 
 flushed obesity and in addition to the morbid strain 
 of a violent and aimless will a grave organic dis 
 order; but he came back to his loved novelist, 
 whom he was so good as to pronounce more essen 
 tially a poet than many of those who went in for 
 verse, with a zeal excited, as all his indiscretion 
 had been excited, by the happy chance of Den- 
 combe s sympathy and the coincidence of their 
 occupation. Dencombe had confessed to a slight 
 personal acquaintance with the author of " The 
 Middle Years," but had not felt himself as ready 
 as he could have wished when his companion, who 
 had never yet encountered a being so privileged, 
 began to be eager for particulars. He even 
 thought that Dr. Hugh s eye at that moment 
 emitted a glimmer of suspicion. But the young 
 man was too inflamed to be shrewd, and repeatedly 
 caught up the book to exclaim : " Did you notice 
 this ? " or " Weren t you immensely struck with 
 that ? " " There s a beautiful passage toward the 
 end," he broke out ; and again he laid his hand 
 upon the volume. As he turned the pages he 
 came upon something else, while Dencombe saw 
 him suddenly change color. He had taken up, as 
 it lay on the bench, Dencombe s copy instead of 
 his own, and his neighbor immediately guessed the 
 reason of his start. Dr. Hugh looked grave an 
 instant ; then he said : " I see you ve been altering 
 
166 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 the text ! " Dencombe was a passionate corrector, 
 a fingerer of style ; the last thing he ever arrived 
 at was a form final for himself. His ideal would 
 have been to publish secretly, and then, on the 
 published text, treat himself to the terrified revise, 
 sacrificing always a first edition and beginning for 
 posterity and even for the collectors, poor dears, 
 with a second. This morning, in "The Middle 
 Years," his pencil had pricked a dozen lights. He 
 was amused at the effect of the young man s 
 reproach; for an instant it made him change color. 
 He stammered, at any rate, ambiguously; then, 
 through a blur of ebbing consciousness, sa\v Dr. 
 Hugh s mystified eyes. He only had time to feel 
 he was about to be ill again that emotion, excite 
 ment, fatigue, the heat of the sun, the solicitation 
 of the air, had combined to play him a trick, 
 before, stretching out a hand to his visitor with a 
 plaintive cry, he lost his senses altogether. 
 
 Later he knew that he had fainted and that Dr. 
 Hugh had got him home in a bath-chair, the con 
 ductor of which, prowling within hail for custom, 
 had happened to remember seeing him in the gar 
 den of the hotel. He had recovered his percep 
 tion in the transit, and had, in bed, that after 
 noon, a vague recollection of Dr. Hugh s young 
 face, as they went together, bent over him in a 
 comforting laugh and expressive of something 
 more than a suspicion of his identity. That 
 identity was ineffaceable now, and all the more 
 that he was disappointed, disgusted. He had been 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAES 167 
 
 rash, been stupid, had gone out too soon, stayed 
 out too long. He oughtn t to have exposed him 
 self to strangers, he ought to have taken his ser 
 vant. He felt as if he had fallen into a hole too 
 deep to descry any little patch of heaven. He 
 was confused about the time that had elapsed he 
 pieced the fragments together. He had seen his 
 doctor, the real one, the one who had treated him 
 from the first and who had again been very kind. 
 His servant was in and out on tiptoe, looking very 
 wise after the fact. He said more than once some 
 thing about the sharp young gentleman. The rest 
 was vagueness, in so far as it wasn t despair. The 
 vagueness, however, justified itself by dreams, 
 dozing anxieties from which he finally emerged to 
 the consciousness of a dark room and a shaded 
 candle. 
 
 " You ll be all right again I know all about you 
 now," said a voice near him that he knew to be 
 young. Then his meeting with Dr. Hugh came 
 back. He was too discouraged to joke about it 
 yet, but he was able to perceive, after a little, that 
 the interest of it was intense for his visitor. " Of 
 course I can t attend you professionally you ve 
 got your own man, with whom I ve talked and 
 who s excellent," Dr. Hugh went on. "But you 
 must let me come to see you as a good friend. I ve 
 just looked in before going to bed. You re doing 
 beautifully, but it s a good job I was with you on 
 the cliff. I shall come in early to-morrow. I want 
 to do something for you. I want to do every thing. 
 
168 THE MIDDLE YEAES 
 
 You ve done a tremendous lot for me." The young 
 man held his hand, hanging over him, and poor 
 Dencombe, weakly aware of this living pressure, 
 simply lay there and accepted his devotion. He 
 couldn t do any thing less he needed help too 
 much. 
 
 The idea of the help he needed was very present 
 to him that night, which he spent in a lucid still 
 ness, an intensity of thought that constituted a 
 reaction from his hours of stupor. He was lost, 
 he was lost he was lost if he couldn t be saved. 
 He was not afraid of suffering, of death ; he was 
 not even in love with life ; but he had had a deep 
 demonstration of desire. It came over him in the 
 long, quiet hours that only with " The Middle 
 Years " had he taken his flight; only on that day, 
 visited by soundless processions, had he recognized 
 his kingdom. He had had a revelation of his 
 range. What he dreaded was the idea that his 
 reputation should stand on the unfinished. It was 
 not with his past but with his future that it should 
 properly be concerned. Illness and age rose before 
 him like spectres with pitiless eyes: how was he to 
 bribe such fates to give him the second chance ? 
 He had had the one chance that all men have he 
 had had the chance of life. He went to sleep again 
 very late, and when he awoke Dr. Hugh was sit 
 ting by his head. There was already, by this time, 
 something beautifully familiar in him. 
 
 "Don t think I ve turned out j^our physician," 
 he said ; " I m acting with his consent. He has 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAKS 169 
 
 been here and seen you. Somehow he seems to 
 trust me. I told him how we happened to come 
 together yesterday, and he recognizes that I ve a 
 peculiar right." 
 
 Dencombe looked at him with a calculating 
 earnestness. " How have you squared the count 
 ess ? " 
 
 The young man blushed a little, but he laughed. 
 " Oh, never mind the countess ! " 
 
 " You told me she was very exacting." 
 
 Dr. Hugh was silent a moment. " So she is." 
 
 " And Miss Vernham s an intrigante" 
 
 " How do you know that ? " 
 
 " I know every thing. One has to, to write 
 decently ! " 
 
 "I think she s mad," said limpid Dr. Hugh. 
 
 " Well, don t quarrel with the countess she s a 
 present help to you." 
 
 " I don t quarrel," Dr. Hugh replied. " But I 
 don t get on with silly women." Presently he 
 added : " You seem very much alone." 
 
 "That often happens at my age. I ve outlived, 
 I ve lost by the way." 
 
 Dr. Hugh hesitated ; then surmounting a soft 
 scruple : " Whom have you lost ? " 
 
 " Every one." 
 
 " Ah, no ! " the young man murmured, laying a 
 hand on his arm. 
 
 " I once had a wife I once had a son. My wife 
 died when my child was born, and my boy, at 
 school, was carried off by typhoid." 
 
170 THE MIDDLE YEAKS 
 
 " I wish I d been there ! " said Dr. Hugh 
 simply. 
 
 " Well if you re here ! " Dencombe answered, 
 with a smile that, in spite of dimness, showed how 
 much he liked to be sure of his companion s 
 whereabouts. 
 
 " You talk strangely of your age. You re not 
 old." 
 
 " Hypocrite so early ! " 
 
 " I speak physiologically." 
 
 " That s the way I ve been speaking for the last 
 five years, and it s exactly what I ve been saying 
 to myself. It isn t till we are old that we begin to 
 tell ourselves we re not ! " 
 
 " Yet I know I myself am young," Dr. Hugh 
 declared. 
 
 " Not so well as I ! " laughed his patient, whose 
 visitor indeed would have established the truth in 
 question by the honesty with which he changed 
 the point of view, remarking that it must be one 
 of the charms of age at any rate in the case of 
 high distinction to feel that one has labored and 
 achieved. Dr. Hugh employed the common 
 phrase about earning one s rest, and it made poor 
 Dencombe, for an instant, almost angry. He 
 recovered himself, however, to explain, lucidly 
 enough, that if he, ungraciously, knew nothing 
 of such a balm, it was doubtless because he had 
 wasted inestimable years. He had followed Litera 
 ture from the first, but he had taken a lifetime to 
 get alongside of her. Only to-day, at last, had he 
 
THE MIDDLE TEAKS 171 
 
 begun to see, so that what he had hitherto done 
 was a movement without a direction. He had 
 ripened too late, and was so clumsily constituted 
 that he had had to teach himself by mistakes. 
 
 " I prefer your flowers, then, to other people s 
 fruit, and your mistakes to other people s suc 
 cesses," said gallant Dr. Hugh. " It s for your 
 mistakes I admire you." 
 
 " You re happy you don t know," Den combe 
 answered. 
 
 Looking at his watch the young man had got 
 up ; he named the hour of the afternoon at which 
 he would return. Dencombe warned him against 
 committing himself too deeply, and expressed 
 again all his dread of making him neglect the 
 countess perhaps incur her displeasure. 
 
 " I want to be like you I want to learn by mis 
 takes ! " Dr. Hugh laughed. 
 
 " Take care you don t make too grave a one ! 
 But do come back," Dencombe added, with the 
 glimmer of a new idea. 
 
 " You should have had more vanity ! " Dr. 
 Hugh spoke as if he knew the exact amount 
 required to make a man of letters normal. 
 
 " No, no I only should have had more time. I 
 want another go." 
 
 " Another go ? " 
 
 "I want an extension." 
 
 " An extension ? " Again Dr. Hugh repeated 
 Dencombe s words, with which he seemed to have 
 been struck. 
 
172 THE MIDDLE YEAES 
 
 " Don t you know ? I want to what they call 
 < live. " 
 
 The young man, for good-by, had taken his 
 hand, which closed with a certain force. They 
 looked at each other hard a moment. " You will 
 live," said Dr. Hugh. 
 
 " Don t be superficial. It s too serious ! " 
 
 " You shall live ! " Dencombe s visitor declared, 
 turning pale. 
 
 " Ah, that s better ! " And as he retired the 
 invalid, with a troubled laugh, sank gratefully 
 back. 
 
 All that day and all the following night he won 
 dered if it mightn t be arranged. His doctor came 
 again, his servant was attentive, but it was to 
 his confident young friend that he found himself 
 mentally appealing. His collapse on the cliff was 
 plausibly explained, and his liberation, on a better 
 basis, promised for the morrow ; meanwhile, how 
 ever, the intensity of his meditations kept him 
 tranquil and made him indifferent. The idea that 
 occupied him was none the less absorbing because 
 it was a morbid fancy. Here was a clever son of 
 the age, ingenious and ardent, who happened to 
 have set him up for connoisseurs to worship. 
 This servant of his altar had all the new learning 
 in science and all the old reverence in faith ; 
 wouldn t he therefore put his knowledge at the 
 disposal of his sympathy, his craft at the disposal 
 of his love ? Couldn t he be trusted to invent a 
 remedy for a poor artist to whose art he had 
 
THE MIDDLE YEARS 173 
 
 paid a tribute ? If he couldn t, the alternative 
 was hard : Dencombe would have to surrender 
 to silence, unvindicated and undivined. The rest 
 of the day and all the next he toyed in secret 
 with this sweet futility. Who would work the 
 miracle for him but the young man who could 
 combine such lucidity with such passion ? He 
 thought of the fairy-tales of science, and charmed 
 himself into forgetting that he looked for a magic 
 that was not of this world. Dr. Hugh was an 
 apparition, and that placed him above the law. 
 He came and went while his patient, who sat up, 
 followed him with supplicating eyes. The interest 
 of knowing the great author had made the young 
 man begin " The Middle Years " afresh, and 
 would help him to find a deeper meaning in its 
 pages. Dencombe had told him what he " tried 
 for"; with all his intelligence, on a first perusal, 
 Dr. Hugh had failed to guess it. The baffled 
 celebrity wondered then who in the world would 
 guess it; he was amused once more at the fine, full 
 way with which an intention could be missed. Yet 
 he wouldn t rail at the general mind to-day consol 
 ing as that ever had been: the revelation of his own 
 slowness had seemed to make all stupidity sacred. 
 Dr. Hugh, after a little, was visibly worried, 
 confessing, on enquiry, to a source of embarass- 
 ment at home. " Stick to the countess don t 
 mind me," Dencombe said repeatedly ; for his 
 companion was frank enough about the large 
 lady s attitude. She was so jealous that she had 
 
174 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 fallen ill she resented such a breach of allegiance. 
 She paid so much for his fidelity that she must 
 have it all ; she refused him the right to other 
 sympathies, charged him with scheming to make 
 her die alone, for it was needless to point out how 
 little Miss Yernham was a resource in trouble. 
 When Dr. Hugh mentioned that the countess 
 would already have left Bournemouth if he hadn t 
 kept her in bed, poor Dencombe held his arm 
 tighter and said with decision : " Take her straight 
 away." They had gone out together, walking 
 back to the sheltered nook in which, the other 
 day, they had met. The young man, who had 
 given his companion a personal support, declared 
 with emphasis that his conscience was clear he 
 could ride two horses at once. Didn t he dream, 
 for his future, of a time when he should have 
 to ride five hundred ? Longing equally for virtue, 
 Dencombe replied that in that golden age no 
 patient would pretend to have contracted with 
 him for his whole attention. On the part of the 
 countess was not such an avidity lawful ? Dr. 
 Hugh denied it, said there was no contract, but only 
 a free understanding, and that a sordid servitude 
 was impossible to a generous spirit ; he liked 
 moreover to talk about art, and that was the sub 
 ject on which, this time, as they sat together on 
 the sunny bench, he tried most to engage the 
 author of " The Middle Years." Dencombe, soar 
 ing again a little on the weak wings of convales 
 cence and still haunted by that happy notion of an 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAKS 175 
 
 organized rescue, found another strain of elo 
 quence to plead the cause of a certain splendid 
 " last manner," the very citadel, as it Avould prove, 
 of his reputation, the stronghold into which his 
 real treasure would be gathered. While his 
 listener gave up the morning and the great still 
 sea appeared to wait, he had a wonderful explana 
 tory hour. Even for himself he was inspired as 
 he told of what his treasure would consist the 
 precious metals he would dig from the mine, the 
 jewels rare, strings of pearls, he would hang 
 between the columns of his temple. He was 
 wonderful for himself, so thick his convictions 
 crowded ; but he was still more wonderful for 
 Dr. Hugh, who assured him, none the less, that 
 the very pages he had just published were already 
 encrusted with gems. The young man, however, 
 panted for the combinations to come, and, before 
 the face of the beautiful day, renewed to Den- 
 combe his guarantee that his profession would 
 hold itself responsible for such a life. Then he 
 suddenly clapped his hand upon his watch-pocket 
 and asked leave to absent himself for half an hour. 
 Dencombe waited there for his return, but was at 
 last recalled to the actual by the fall of a shadow 
 across the ground. The shadow darkened into 
 that of Miss Vernharn, the young lady in attend 
 ance on the countess ; whom Dencombe, recog 
 nizing her, perceived so clearly to have come to 
 speak to him that he rose from his bench to 
 acknowledge the civility. Miss Yernham indeed 
 
176 THE MIDDLE YEAES 
 
 proved not particularly civil ; she looked strangely 
 agitated, and her type was now unmistakable. 
 
 " Excuse me if I enquire," she said, " whether it s 
 too much to hope that you may be induced to leave 
 Dr. Hugh alone." Then, before Dencombe, greatly 
 disconcerted, could protest : " You ought to be in 
 formed that you stand in his light ; that you may 
 do him a terrible injury." 
 
 "Do you mean by causing the countess to dis 
 pense with his services ? " 
 
 " By causing her to disinherit him." Dencombe 
 stared at this, and Miss Vernham pursued, in the 
 gratification of seeing she could produce an impres 
 sion : " It has depended on himself to come into 
 something very handsome. He has had a mag 
 nificent prospect, but I think you ve succeeded in 
 spoiling it." 
 
 "Not intentionally, I assure you. Is there no 
 hope that the accident may be repaired?" Dencombe 
 asked. 
 
 " She was ready to do any thing for him. She 
 takes great fancies, she lets herself go it s her way. 
 She has no relations, she s free to dispose of her 
 money, and she s very ill." 
 
 " I m very sorry to hear it," Dencombe stam 
 mered. 
 
 "Wouldn t it be possible for you to leave Bourne 
 mouth ? That s what I ve come to ask of you." 
 
 Poor Dencombe sank down on his bench. " I m 
 very ill myself, but I ll try ! " 
 
 Miss Vernham still stood there with her colorless 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAES 177 
 
 eyes and the brutality of her good conscience. 
 " Before it s too late, please ! " she said ; and with 
 this she turned her back, in order, quickly, as if it 
 had been a business to which she could spare but 
 a precious moment, to pass out of his sight. 
 
 Oh, yes ! after this Dencombe was certainly very 
 ill. Miss Vernham had upset him with her rough, 
 fierce news ; it was the sharpest shock to him to dis 
 cover what was at stake for a penniless young man 
 of fine parts. He sat trembling on his bench, 
 staring at the waste of waters, feeling sick with the 
 directness of the blow. He was indeed too weak, 
 too unsteady, too alarmed ; but he would make the 
 effort to get away, for he couldn t accept the guilt 
 of interference, and his honor was really involved. 
 He would hobble home, at any rate, and then he 
 would think what was to be done. He made his 
 way back to the hotel and, as he went, had a 
 characteristic vision of Miss Vernham s great 
 motive. The, countess hated women, of course; 
 Dencombe was lucid about that ; so the hungry 
 pianist had no personal hopes and could only con 
 sole herself with the bold conception of helping 
 Dr. Hugh in order either to marry him after he 
 should get his money or to induce him to recognize 
 her title to compensation and buy her off. If she 
 had befriended him at a fruitful crisis he would 
 really, as a man of delicacy, and she knew what to 
 think of that point, have to reckon with her. 
 
 At the hotel Dencombe s servant insisted on his 
 going back to bed. The invalid had talked about 
 12 
 
178 THE MIDDLE YEAKS 
 
 catching a train and had begun with orders to pack ; 
 after which his humming nerves had yielded to a 
 sense of sickness. He consented to see his physi 
 cian, who immediately was sent for, but he wished 
 it to be understood that his door was irrevocably 
 closed to Dr. Hugh. He had his plan, which was 
 so fine that he rejoiced in it after getting back to 
 bed. Dr. Hugh, suddenly finding himself snubbed 
 without mercy, would, in natural disgust and to 
 the joy of Miss Vernham, renew his allegiance to 
 the countess. When his physician arrived Den- 
 combe learned that he was feverish and that this 
 was very wrong ; he was to cultivate calmness and 
 try, if possible, not to think. For the rest of the 
 day he wooed^slupi^ity ; but there was an ache 
 that kept him sentient, the probable sacrifice of his 
 "extension," the-^itmt of his course. His medical 
 adviser was any thing but pleased ; his successive 
 relapses were ominous. He charged this personage 
 to put out a strong hand and take Dr. Hugh off 
 his mind it would contribute so much to his being 
 quiet. The agitating name, in his room, was not 
 mentioned again, but his security was a smothered 
 fear, and it was not confirmed by the receipt, at ten 
 o clock that evening, of a telegram which his servant 
 opened and read for him and to which, with an 
 address in London, the signature of Miss Vernham 
 was attached. " Beseech you to use all influence 
 to make our friend join us here in the morning. 
 Countess much the worse for dreadful journey, but 
 every thing may still be saved." The two ladies had 
 
THE MIDDLE YEARS 179 
 
 gathered themselves up and had been capable in 
 the afternoon of a spiteful revolution. They had 
 started for the capital, and if the elder one, as Miss 
 Vernham had announced, was very ill, she had 
 wished to make it clear that she was proportion 
 ately reckless. Poor Dencombe, who was not reck 
 less, and who only desired that every thing should 
 indeed be " saved," sent this missive straight off to 
 the young man s lodging and had on the morrow 
 the pleasure of knowing that he had quitted Bourne 
 mouth by an early train. 
 
 Two days later he pressed in with a copy of a 
 literary journal in his hand. He had returned 
 because he was anxious and for the pleasure of 
 flourishing the great review of " The Middle Years." 
 Here at least was something adequate it rose to 
 the occasion ; it was an acclamation, a reparation, 
 a critical attempt to place the author in the niche 
 he had fairly won. Dencombe accepted and sub 
 mitted ; he made neither objection nor enquiry, 
 for old complications had returned and he had had 
 two atrocious days. He was convinced not only 
 that he should never again leave his bed, so that 
 his young friend might pardonably remain, but 
 that the demand he should make on the patience 
 of beholders would be very moderate indeed. Dr. 
 Hugh had been to town, and he tried to find in his 
 eyes some confession that the countess was pacified 
 and his legacy clinched ; but all he could see there 
 was the light of his juvenile joy in two or three of 
 the phrases of the newspaper. Dencombe couldn t 
 
180 THE MIDDLE YEAES 
 
 read them, but when his visitor had insisted on 
 repeating them more than once he was able to 
 shake an unintoxicated head. " Ah, no ! but they 
 would have been true of what I could have done ! " 
 
 " What people ( could have done J is mainly 
 what they ve in fact done," Dr. Hugh contended. 
 
 " Mainly, yes ; but I ve been an idiot ! " said 
 Dencombe. 
 
 Dr. Hugh did remain ; the end was coming 
 fast. Two days later Dencombe observed to him, 
 by way of the feeblest of jokes, that there would 
 now be no question whatever of a second chance. 
 At this the young man stared; then he exclaimed: 
 " Why, it has come to pass it has come to pass ! 
 The second chance has been the public s the 
 chance to find the point of view, to pick up the 
 pearl ! " 
 
 " Oh, the pearl ! " poor Dencombe uneasily 
 sighed. A smile as cold as a winter sunset flick 
 ered on his drawn lips as he added : " The pearl 
 is the unwritten the pearl is the unalloyed, the 
 rest, the lost ! " 
 
 From that moment he was less and less present, 
 heedless to all appearance of what went on around 
 him. His disease was definitely mortal, of an 
 action as relentless, after the short arrest that had 
 enabled him to fall in with Dr. Hugh, as a leak 
 in a great ship. Sinking steadily, though this 
 visitor, a man of rare resources, now cordially 
 approved by his physician, showed endless art in 
 guarding him from pain, poor Dencombe kept no 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAKS 181 
 
 reckoning of favor or neglect, betrayed no symp 
 tom of regret or speculation. Yet toward the last 
 he gave a sign of having noticed that for two 
 days Dr. Hugh had not been in his room, a sign 
 that consisted of his suddenly opening bis eyes to 
 ask of him if he had spent the interval with the 
 countess. 
 
 "The countess is dead," said Dr. Hugh. "I 
 knew that in a particular contingency she wouldn t 
 resist. I went to her grave." 
 
 Dencombe s eyes opened wider. " She left you 
 something handsome ? " 
 
 The young man gave a laugh almost too light 
 for a chamber of woe. " Never a penny ! She 
 roundly cursed me." 
 
 " Cursed you ? " Dencombe murmured. 
 
 " For giving her up. I gave her up for you. I 
 had to choose," his companion explained. 
 
 " You chose to let a fortune go ? " 
 
 "I chose to accept, whatever they might be, 
 the consequences of my infatuation," smiled Dr. 
 Hugh. Then, as a larger pleasantry : "A fortune 
 be hanged ! It s your own fault if I can t get 
 your things out of my head." 
 
 The immediate tribute to his humor was a long, 
 bewildered moan ; after which, for many hours, 
 many days, Dencombe lay motionless and absent. 
 A response so absolute, such a glimpse of a definite 
 result, and such a sense of credit worked together 
 in his mind and producing a strange commotion, 
 slowly altered and transfigured his despair. The 
 
182 THE MIDDLE YEARS 
 
 sense of cold submersion left him he seemed to 
 float without an effort. The incident was ex 
 traordinary as evidence, and it shed an intenser 
 light. At the last he signed to Dr. Hugh to 
 listen, and, when he was down on his knees by the 
 pillow, brought him very near. 
 
 " You ve made me think it all a delusion." 
 
 " Not your glory, my dear friend," stammered 
 the young man. 
 
 " Not my glory what there is of it ! It is 
 glory to have been tested, to have had our little 
 quality, and cast our little spell. The thing is to 
 have made somebody care. You happen to be 
 crazy, of course, but that doesn t affect the 
 law." 
 
 " You re a great success ! " said Dr. Hugh, 
 putting into his young voice the ring of a mar 
 riage bell. 
 
 Dencombe lay taking this in ; then he gath 
 ered strength to speak once more. " A second 
 chance that s the delusion. There never was to 
 be but one. We work in the dark we do what 
 we can we give what we have. Our doubt is 
 our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest 
 is the madness of art." 
 
 " If you ve doubted, if you ve despaired, you ve 
 always done it," his visitor subtly argued. 
 
 "We ve done something or other," Dencombe 
 conceded. 
 
 "Something or other is every thing. It s the 
 feasible. It s you!" 
 
THE MIDDLE YEAES 183 
 
 " Comforter ! " poor Dencombe ironically 
 sighed. 
 
 " But it s true," insisted his friend. 
 
 " It s true. It s frustration that doesn t count." 
 
 "Frustration s only life," said Dr. Hugh. 
 
 " Yes, it s what passes." Poor Dencombe was 
 barely audible, but he had marked with the words 
 the virtual end of his first and only chance. 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD. 
 
 HE had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean 
 anniversaries, and he disliked them still more when 
 they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations 
 and suppressions were equally painful to him, and 
 there was only one of the former that found a 
 place in his life. Again and again he had kept in 
 his own fashion the day of the year on which Mary 
 Antrim died. It would be more to the point per 
 haps to say that the day kept him : it kept him at 
 least, effectually, from doing any thing else. It 
 took hold of him year after year with a hand of 
 which time had softened but had never loosened 
 the touch. He waked up to this feast of memory 
 as consciously as lie would have waked up to his 
 marriage-morn. Marriage had had, of old, but too 
 little to say to the matter : for the girl who was 
 to have been his bride there had been no bridal 
 embrace. She had died of a malignant fever after 
 the wedding-day had been fixed, and he had lost, 
 before fairly tasting it, an affection that promised 
 to fill his life to the brim. 
 
 Of that benediction, however, it would have 
 been false to say this life could really be emptied : 
 it was still ruled by a pale ghost, it was still or- 
 
186 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 dered by a sovereign presence. He had not been 
 a man of numerous passions, and even in all these 
 years no sense had grown stronger with him than 
 the sense of being bereft. He had needed no 
 priest and no altar to make him forever widowed. 
 He had done many things in the world he had 
 done almost all things but one : he had never for 
 gotten. He had tried to put into his existence 
 whatever else might take up room in it, but he had 
 never made it any thing but a house of which the 
 mistress was eternally absent. She was most 
 absent of all on the recurrent December day that 
 his tenacity set apart. He had no designed ob 
 servance of it, but his nerves made it all their own. 
 They always drove him forth on a long walk, for 
 the goal of his pilgrimage was far. She had been 
 buried in a London suburb, in a place then almost 
 natural, but which he had seen lose, one after 
 another every feature of freshness. It was in 
 truth during the moments he stood there that 
 his eyes beheld the place least. They looked at 
 another image, they opened to another light. 
 Was it a credible future ? Was it an incredible 
 past ? Whatever it was, it was an immense escape 
 from the actual. 
 
 It is true that, if there were no other dates than 
 this, there were other memories ; and by the time 
 George Stransom was fifty-five such memories had 
 greatly multiplied. There were other ghosts in 
 his life than the ghost of Mary Antrim. He had 
 perhaps not had more losses than most men, but 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 187 
 
 he had counted his losses more; he had not seen 
 death more closely, but he had, in a manner, felt it 
 more deeply. He had formed little by little the 
 habit of numbering his Dead ; it had come to him 
 tolerably early in life that there was something one 
 had to do for them. They were there in their sim 
 plified, intensified essence, their conscious absence 
 and expressive patience, as personally there as if 
 they had only been stricken dumb. When all 
 sense of them failed, all sound of them ceased, it 
 was as if their purgatory were really still on earth: 
 they asked so little that they got, poor things, even 
 less, and died again, died every day, of the hard 
 usage of life. They had no organized service, no 
 reserved place, no honor, no shelter, no safety. 
 Even ungenerous people provided for the living, 
 but even those who were called most generous did 
 nothing for the others. So, on George Stransom s 
 part, there grew up with the years a determination 
 that he at least would do something do it, that is, 
 for his own and perform the great charity without 
 reproach. Every man had his own, and every 
 man had, to meet this charity, the ample resources 
 of the soul. 
 
 It was doubtless the voice of Mary Antrim that 
 spoke for them best ; at any rate, as the years 
 went on, he found himself in regular communion 
 with these alternative associates, with those whom 
 indeed he always called in his thoughts the Others. 
 He spared them the moments, he organized the 
 charity. How it grew up he probably never could 
 
188 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 have told you, but what came to pass was that an 
 altar, such as was, after all, within every body s 
 compass, lighted with perpetual candles and ded 
 icated to these secret rites, reared itself in his 
 j5pjriUmlj?paj3es^ He had wondered of old, in some 
 embarrassment, whether he had a religion ; being 
 very sure, and not a little content, that he had not 
 at all events the religion some of the people he 
 had known wanted him to have. Gradually this 
 question was straightened out for him ; it became 
 clear to him that the religion instilled by his ear 
 liest consciousness had been simply the religion 
 of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it satisfied 
 his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It 
 answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and 
 splendid ritual ; for no shrine could be more be 
 decked and no ceremonial more stately than those 
 to which his worship was attached. He had no 
 imagination about these things save that they 
 were accessible to every one who should ever feel 
 the need of them. The poorest could build such 
 temples of the spirit could make them blaze with 
 candles and smoke with incense, make them flush 
 with pictures and flowers. The cost, in common 
 phrase, of keeping them up fell entirely on the 
 liberal heart. 
 
II 
 
 HE had this year, on the eve of his anniversary, 
 as it happened, an emotion not unconnected with 
 that range of feeling. Walking home at the close 
 of a busy day, he was arrested in the London 
 street by the particular effect of a shop-front which 
 lighted the dull brown air with its mercenary grin, 
 and before which several persons were gathered. 
 It was the window of a jeweller whose diamonds 
 and sapphires seemed to laugh, in flashes like high 
 notes of sound, with the mere joy of knowing how 
 much more they were ""worth " than most of the 
 dingy pedestrians staring at them from the other 
 side of the pane. Stransom lingered long enough 
 to suspend, in a vision, a string of pearls about the 
 white neck of Mary Antrim, and then was kept an 
 instant longer by the sound of a voice he knew. 
 Next him was a mumbling old woman, and beyond 
 the old woman a gentleman with a lady on his 
 arm. It was from him, from Paul Creston, the 
 voice had proceeded ; he was talking with the 
 lady of some precious object in the window. 
 Stransom had no sooner recognized him than the 
 old woman turned aw T ay ; but simultaneously with 
 this increase of opportunity he became aware of 
 a strangeness which stayed him in the very act of 
 
190 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 laying his band on his friend s arm. It lasted only 
 a few seconds, but a few seconds were long enough 
 for the flash of a wild question. Was not Mrs. 
 Creston dead ? the ambiguity met him there 
 in the short drop of her husband s voice, the drop 
 conjugal, if it ever was, and in the way the two 
 figures leaned to each other. Creston, making a 
 step to look at something else, came nearer, glanced 
 at him, started, and exclaimed a circumstance the 
 effect of which was at first only to leave Stransom 
 staring staring back across the months at the dif 
 ferent face, the wholly other face the poor man 
 had shown him last, the blurred, ravaged mask 
 bent over the open grave by which they had stood 
 together. Creston was not in mourning now ; he 
 detached his arm from his companion s to grasp 
 the hand of the older friend. He colored as well 
 as smiled in the strong light of the shop when 
 Stransom raised a tentative hat to the lady. 
 Stransom had just time to see that she was pretty 
 before he found himself gaping at a fact more 
 portentous. " My dear fellow, let me make you 
 acquainted with my wife." 
 
 Creston had blushed and stammered over it, but 
 in half a minute, at the rate we live in polite 
 society, it had practically become, for Stransom, 
 the mere memory of a shock. They stood there 
 and laughed and talked ; Stransom had instantly 
 whisked the shock out of the way, to keep it for 
 private consumption. He felt himself grimacing, 
 he heard himself exaggerating the usual, but he 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 191 
 
 was conscious that he had turned slightly faint. 
 That new woman, that hired performer, Mrs. 
 Creston ? Mrs. Creston had been more living for 
 him than any woman but one. This lady had a 
 face that shone as publicly as the jeweller s 
 window, and in the happy candor with which she 
 wore her monstrous character there was an effect 
 of gross immodesty. The character of Hugh 
 Creston s wife, thus attributed to her, was mon 
 strous for reasons which Stransom could see that 
 his friend perfectly knew that he knew. The 
 happy pair had just arrived from America, and 
 Stransom had not needed to be told this to divine 
 the nationality of the lady. Somehow it deepened 
 the foolish air that her husband s confused cor 
 diality was unable to conceal. Stransom recalled 
 that he had heard of poor Creston s having, while 
 his bereavement was still fresh, gone to the United 
 States for what people in such predicaments call 
 a little change. He had found the little change ; 
 indeed, he had brought the little change back ; it 
 was the little change that stood there and that, do 
 what he would, he couldn t, while he showed those 
 high front-teeth of his, look like any thing but a 
 conscious ass about. They were going into the 
 shop, Mrs. Creston said, and she begged Mr. Stran 
 som to come with them and help to decide. He 
 thanked her, opening his watch and pleading an 
 engagement for which he was already late, and 
 they parted while she shrieked into the fog, " Mind 
 now you come to see me right away ! " Creston 
 
192 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 had had the delicacy not to suggest that, and 
 Stransom hoped it hurt him somewhere to hear 
 her scream it to all the echoes. 
 
 He felt quite determined, as he walked away, 
 never in his life to go near her. She was perhaps 
 a human being, but Creston oughtn t to have 
 shown her without precautions, oughtn t indeed to 
 have shown her at all. His precautions should 
 have been those of a forger or a murderer, and the 
 people at home would never have mentioned extra 
 dition. This was a wife for foreign service or 
 purely external use ; a decent consideration would 
 have spared her the injury of comparisons. Such 
 were the first reflections of George Stransom s 
 amazement ; but as he sat alone that night these 
 were particular hours that he always passed 
 alone the harshness dropped from them and left 
 only the pity. He could spend an evening with 
 Kate Creston, if the man to whom she had given 
 every thing couldn t. He had known her twenty 
 years, and she was the only woman for whom he 
 might perhaps have been unfaithful. She was all 
 cleverness and sympathy and charm ; her house 
 had been the very easiest in all the world, and her 
 friendship the very firmest. Without accidents 
 he had loved her, without accidents every one had 
 loved her ; she had made the passions about her as 
 regular as the moon makes the tides. She had 
 been also of course far too good for her husband, 
 but he never suspected it, and in nothing had she 
 been more admirable than in the exquisite art with 
 
or THE 
 
 THE ALTAR <& THE^EAD jf 193 
 
 which she tried to keep^eVFy ; -tjn1f 5 else (keeping 
 Creston was no trouble) from finding it out. Here 
 was a man to whom she had devoted her life and 
 for whom she had given it up dying to bring into 
 the world a child of his bed ; and she had had only 
 to submit to her fate to have, ere the grass was 
 green on her grave, no more existence for him 
 than a domestic servant he had replaced. The 
 frivolity, the indecency of it made Stransom s eyes 
 fill ; and he had that evening a rich, almost happy 
 sense that he alone, in a world without delicacy, 
 had a right to hold up his head. While he 
 smoked, after dinner, he had a book in his lap, 
 but he had no eyes for his page ; his eyes, in the 
 swarming void of things, seemed to have caught 
 Kate Creston s, and it was into their sad silences 
 he looked. It was to him her sentient spirit had 
 turned, knowing that it was of her he would think. 
 He thought, for a long time, of how the closed 
 eyes of dead women could still live how they 
 could open again, in a quiet lamplit room, long 
 after they had looked their last. They had looks 
 that remained, as great poets had quoted lines. 
 
 The newspaper lay by his chair the thing that 
 came in the afternoon, and the servants thought 
 one wanted ; without sense for what was in it, he 
 had mechanically unfolded and then dropped it. 
 Before he went to bed he took it up, and this time, 
 at the top of a paragraph, he was caught by five 
 words that made him start. He stood staring, 
 before the fire, at the " Death of Sir Acton Hague, 
 13 
 
194 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 K. 0. B.," the man who, ten years earlier, liad been 
 the nearest of his friends, and whose deposition 
 from this eminence had practically left it without 
 an occupant. He had seen him after that catas 
 trophe, but he had not seen him for years. Stand 
 ing there before the fire, he turned cold as he read 
 what had befallen him. Promoted a short time 
 previous to the governorship of the Westward 
 Islands, Acton Hague had died, in the bleak honor 
 of this exile, of an illness consequent on the bite of 
 a poisonous snake. His career was compressed by 
 the newspaper into a dozen lines, the perusal of 
 which excited on George Stransom s part no warmer 
 feeling than one of relief at the absence of any 
 mention of their quarrel, an incident accidentally 
 tainted at the time, thanks to their joint immersion 
 in large affairs, with a horrible publicity. Public, 
 indeed, was the wrong Stransom had, to his own 
 sense, suffered, the insult he had blankly taken 
 from the only man with whom he had ever been 
 intimate ; the friend, almost adored, of his univer 
 sity years, the subject, later, of his passionate 
 loyalty ; so public that he had never spoken of it 
 to a human creature, so public that he had com 
 pletely overlooked it. It had made the difference 
 for him that friendship too was all over, but it had 
 only made just that one. The shock of interests 
 had been private, intensely so ; but the action 
 taken by Hague had been in the face of men. 
 To-day it all seemed to have occurred merely to 
 the end that George Stransom should think of him 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 195 
 
 as "Hague," and measure exactly how much he 
 himself could feel like a stone. He went cold, 
 suddenly, and horribly cold, to bed. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE next day, in the afternoon, in the great 
 gray suburb, he felt that his long walk had tired 
 him. In the dreadful cemetery alone he had been 
 on his feet an hour. Instinctively, coming back, 
 they had taken him a devious course, and it was 
 a desert in which no circling cabman hovered 
 over possible prey. He paused on a corner and 
 measured the dreariness ; then he became aware 
 in the gathered dusk that he was in one of those 
 tracts of London which are less gloomy by night 
 than by day, because, in the former case, of the 
 civil gift of light. By day there was nothing, but 
 by night there were lamps, and George Stransom 
 was in a mood which made lamps good in them 
 selves. It wasn t that they could show him any 
 thing ; it was only that they could burn clear. 
 To his surprise, however, after a while, they did 
 show him something : the arch of a high doorway 
 approached by a low terr ace of steps, in the depth 
 of which it formed a dim vestible the raising of 
 a curtain, at the moment he passed, gave him a 
 glimpse of an avenue of gloom with a glow of tapers 
 at the end. He stopped and looked up, making 
 
196 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 out that the place was a church. The thought 
 quickly came to him that, since he was tired, he 
 might rest there ; so that, after a moment, he had 
 in turn pushed up the leathern curtain and gone in. 
 It was a temple of the old persuasion, and there 
 had evidently been a function perhaps a service 
 for the dead ; the high altar was still a blaze of 
 candles. This was an exhibition he always liked, 
 and he dropped into a seat with relief. More than 
 it had ever yet come home to him it struck him as 
 good that there should be churches. 
 
 This one was almost empty and the other altars 
 were dim ; a verger shuffled about, an old woman 
 coughed, but it seemed to Stransom there was 
 hospitality in the thick, sweet air. Was it only 
 the savor of the incense, or was it something 
 larger and more guaranteed? He had at any rate 
 quitted the great gray suburb and come nearer to 
 the warm centre. He presently ceased to feel an 
 intruder he gained at last even a sense of com 
 munity with the only worshipper in his neighbor 
 hood, the sombre presence of a woman, in mourn 
 ing unrelieved, whose back was all he could see of 
 her, and who had sunk deep into prayer at no great 
 distance from him. He wished he could sink, like 
 her, to the very bottom, be as motionless, as rapt 
 in prostration. After a few moments he shifted 
 his seat ; it was almost indelicate to be so aware 
 of her. But Stransom subsequently lost himself 
 altogether ; he floated away on the sea of light. 
 If occasions like this had been more frequent in 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 197 
 
 his life, be would have been more frequently 
 conscious of the great original type, set up in a 
 myriad temples, of the unapproachable shrine he 
 had erected in his mind. That shrine had begun 
 as a reflection of ecclesiastical pomps, but the echo 
 had ended by growing more distinct than the 
 sound. The sound now rang out, the type blazed 
 at him with all its fires and with a mystery of 
 radiance in which endless meanings could glow. 
 The thing became, as he sat there, his appropriate 
 altar, and each starry candle an appropriate vow. 
 He numbered them, he named them, he grouped 
 them it was the silent roll-call of his Dead. 
 They made together a brightness vast and intense 
 a brightness in which the mere chapel of his 
 thoughts grew so dim that, as it faded away, he 
 asked himself if he shouldn t find his real comfort 
 in some material act, some outward worship. 
 
 This idea took possession of him while, at a 
 distance, the black-robed lady continued prostrate ; 
 he was quietly thrilled with his conception, which 
 at last brought him to his feet in his sudden ex 
 citement of a plan. He wandered softly about the 
 church, pausing in the different chapels, which 
 were all, save one, applied to a special devotion. 
 It was in this one, dark and ungarnished, he stood 
 longest the length of time it took him fully to 
 grasp the conception of gilding it with his bounty. 
 He should snatch it from no other rites and as 
 sociate it with nothing profane; he would simply 
 take it as it should be given up to him and make 
 
198 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 it a masterpiece of splendor and a mountain of fire. 
 Tended sacredly all the year, with the sanctifying 
 church around it, it would always be ready for his 
 offices. There would be difficulties, but from the 
 first they presented themselves only as difficulties 
 surmounted. Even for a person so little affiliated 
 the thing would be a matter of arrangement. He 
 saw it all in advance, and how bright in especial 
 the place would become to him in the intermis 
 sion of toil and the dusk of afternoons; how rich 
 in assurance at all times, but especially in the 
 indifferent world. Before withdrawing he drew 
 nearer again to the spot where he had first sat 
 down, and in the movement he met the lady 
 whom he had seen praying and who was now on 
 her way to the door. She passed him quickly, 
 and he had only a glimpse of her pale face and 
 her unconscious, almost sightless eyes. For that 
 instant she looked faded and handsome. 
 
 This was the origin of the rites more public, 
 yet certainly esoteric, that he at last found himself 
 able to establish. It took a long time, it took a 
 year ; and both the process and the result would 
 have been for any who knew a vivid picture 
 of his good faith. No one did know, in fact 
 no one but the bland ecclesiastic whose acquaint 
 ance he had promptly sought, whose objections 
 he had softly overridden, whose curiosity and 
 sympathy he had artfully charmed, whose assent to 
 his eccentric munificence he had eventually won, 
 and who had asked for concessions in exchange 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 199 
 
 for indulgences. Stransom had of course at an 
 early stage of his enquiry been referred to the 
 bishop, and the bishop had been delightfully 
 human ; the bishop had been almost amused. 
 Success was within sight, at any rate, from the 
 moment the attitude of those whom it concerned 
 became liberal in response to liberality. The altar 
 and the small chapel that enclosed it, consecrated to 
 an ostensible and customary worship, were to be 
 splendidly maintained; all that Stranson reserved 
 to himself was the number of his lights and the 
 free enjoyment of his intention. When the in 
 tention had taken complete eifect, the enjoyment 
 became even greater than he had ventured to 
 hope. He liked to think of this effect when he 
 was far from it he liked to convince himself of 
 it yet again when he was near. He was not often, 
 indeed, so near as that -a visit to it had not per 
 force something of the patience of a pilgrimage ; 
 but the time he gave to his devotion came to seem 
 to him more a contribution to his other interests 
 than a betrayal of them. Even a loaded life 
 might be easier when one had added a new neces 
 sity to it. 
 
 Plow much easier was probably never guessed 
 by those who simply knew that there were hours 
 when he disappeared, and for many of whom there 
 was a vulgar reading of what they used to call his 
 plunges. These plunges were into depths quieter 
 than the deep sea-caves ; and the habit, at the end 
 of a year or two, had become the one it would 
 
200 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 have cost him most to relinquish. Now they had 
 really, his Dead, something that was indefeasibly 
 theirs ; and he liked to think that they might, in 
 cases, be the Dead of others, as well as that the 
 Dead of others might be invoked there under the 
 protection of what he had done. Whoever bent 
 a knee on the carpet he had laid down appeared 
 to him to act in the spirit of his intention. Each 
 of his lights had a name for him, and from time 
 to time a new light was kindled. This was what 
 he had fundamentally agreed for, that there 
 should always be room for them all. What those 
 who passed or lingered saw was simply the most 
 resplendent of the altars, called suddenly into 
 vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly man, for 
 whom it evidently had a fascination, often seated 
 there in a maze or a doze ; but half the satisfac 
 tion of the spot, for this mysterious and fitful wor 
 shipper, was that he found the years of his life 
 there, and the ties, the affections, the struggles, 
 the submissions, the conquests, if there had been 
 such a record of that adventurous journey in 
 which the beginnings and the endings of human 
 relations are the lettered mile-stones. He had in 
 general little taste for the past as a past of his 
 own history; at other times and in other places, 
 it mostly seemed to him pitiful to consider and 
 impossible to repair; but on these occasions he ac 
 cepted it with something of that positive gladness 
 with which one adjusts one s self to an ache that 
 is beginning to succumb to treatment. To the 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 201 
 
 treatment of time the malady of life begins at a 
 given moment to succumb ; and these were doubt 
 less the hours at which that truth most came 
 home to him. The day was written for him 
 there on which he had first become acquainted 
 with death, and the successive phases of the ac 
 quaintance were each marked with a flame. 
 
 The flames were gathering thick at present, for 
 Stransom had entered that dark defile of our 
 earthly descent in which some one dies every day. 
 It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had 
 flashed out her white fire; yet already there were 
 younger stars ablaze on the tips of the tapers. 
 Various persons in whom his interest had not been 
 intense drew closer to him by entering this com 
 pany. He went over it, head by head, till he felt 
 like the shepherd of a huddled flock, with all a 
 shepherd s vision of differences imperceptible. He 
 knew his candles apart, up to the color of the 
 flame, and would still have known them had their 
 positions all been changed. To other imagina 
 tions they might stand for other things that 
 they should stand for something to be hushed 
 before was all he desired ; but he was intensely 
 conscious of the personal note of each and of the 
 distinguishable way it contributed to the concert. 
 There were hours at which he almost caught him 
 self wishing that certain of his friends would now 
 die, that he might establish with them in this 
 manner a connection more charming than, as it 
 happened, it was possible to enjoy with them in | 
 
202 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 life. In regard to those from whom one was sep 
 arated by the long curves of the globe such a con 
 nection could only be an improvement ; it brought 
 them instantly within reach. Of course there were 
 gaps in the constellation, for S transom knew he 
 could only pretend to act for his own, and it was 
 not every figure passing before his eyes into the 
 great obscure that was entitled to a memorial. 
 There was a strange sanctification in death, but 
 some characters were more sanctified by being for 
 gotten than by being remembered. The greatest 
 blank in the shining page was the memory of 
 Acton Hague, of which he inveterately tried to 
 rid himself. For Acton Hague no flame could 
 ever rise on any altar of his. 
 
 IV 
 
 EVERY year, the day he walked back from the 
 great graveyard, he went to church as he had 
 done the day his idea was born. It was on this 
 occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed, 
 that he began to observe his altar to be haunted 
 by a worshipper at least as frequent as himself. 
 Others of the faithful, and in the rest of the 
 church, came and went, appealing sometimes, 
 when they disappeared, to a vague or to a partic 
 ular recognition ; but this unfailing presence was 
 always to be observed when lie arrived and still 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 203 
 
 in possession when lie departed. He was sur 
 prised, the first time, at the promptitude with 
 which it assumed an identity for him the identity 
 of the lady whom, two years before, on his anni 
 versary, he had seen so intensely bowed, and of 
 whose tragic face he had had so flitting a vision. 
 Given the time that had elapsed, his recollection 
 of her was fresh enough to make him wonder. Of 
 himself she had, of course, no impression, or, 
 rather, she had none at first. The time came 
 when her manner of transacting her business sug 
 gested to him that she had gradually guessed his 
 call to be of the same order. She used his altar 
 for her own purpose ; he could only hope that, 
 sad and solitary as she always struck him, she 
 used it for her own Dead. There were interrup 
 tions, infidelities, all on his part, calls to other as 
 sociations and duties ; but as the months went on 
 he found her whenever he returned, and he ended 
 by taking pleasure in the thought that he had 
 given her almost the contentment he had given 
 himself. They worshipped side by side so often 
 that there were moments when he wished he 
 might be sure, so straight did their prospect 
 stretch away of growing old together in their 
 rites. She was younger than he, but she looked 
 as if her Dead were at least as numerous as his 
 candles. She had no color, no sound, no fault, 
 and another of the things about which he had 
 made up his mind was that she had no .fortune. 
 She was always black-robed, as if she had had a 
 
204 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 succession of sorrows. People were not poor, 
 after all, whom so many losses could overtake ; 
 they were positively rich when they had so much 
 to give up. But the air of this devoted and 
 indifferent woman, who always made, in any atti 
 tude, a beautiful, accidental line, conveyed some 
 how to Stransom that she had known more kinds 
 of trouble than one. 
 
 He had a great love of music and little time for 
 the joy of it ; but occasionally, when workaday 
 noises were muffled by Saturday afternoons, it 
 used to come back to him that there were glories. 
 There were, moreover, friends who reminded him 
 of this, and side by side with whom he found him 
 self sitting out concerts. On one of these winter 
 evenings, in St. James Hall, he became aware, 
 after he had seated himself, that the lady he had 
 so often seen at church was in the place next him 
 and was evidently alone, as he also this time hap 
 pened to be. She was at first too absorbed in the 
 consideration of the programme to heed him, but 
 when she at last glanced at him he took advantage 
 of the movement to speak to her, greeting her 
 with the remark that he felt as if he already knew 
 her. She smiled as she said : " Oh, yes ! I recog 
 nize you." Yet in spite of this admission of their 
 long acquaintance it was the first time he had ever 
 seen her smile. The effect of it was suddenly to 
 contribute more to that acquaintance than all the 
 previous meetings had done. He hadn t "taken 
 in," he said to himself, that she was so pretty. 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 205 
 
 Later that evening (it was while he rolled along 
 in a hansom on his way to dine out) he added 
 that he hadn t taken in that she was so interest 
 ing. The next morning, in the midst of his work, 
 he quite suddenly and irrelevantly reflected that 
 his impression of her, beginning so far back, was 
 like a winding river that had at last reached the 
 sea. 
 
 His work was indeed blurred a little, all that 
 day, by the sense of what had now passed between 
 them. It wasn t much, but it had just made the 
 difference. They had listened together to Beet 
 hoven and Schumann ; they had talked in the 
 pauses and at the end, when at the door, to which 
 they moved together, he had asked her if he could 
 help her in the matter of getting away. She had 
 thanked him and put up her umbrella, slipping 
 into the crowd without an allusion to their meet 
 ing yet again, and leaving him to remember at 
 leisure that not a word had been exchanged about 
 the place in which they frequently met. This cir 
 cumstance seemed to him at one moment natural 
 enough and at another perverse. She mightn t in 
 the least have recognized his warrant for speak 
 ing to her ; and yet, if she hadn t, he would have 
 judged her an underbred woman. It was odd 
 that, when nothing had really ever brought them 
 together, he should have been able successfully to 
 assume that they were in a manner old friends 
 that this negative quantity was somehow more 
 than they could express. His success, it was true, 
 
206 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 had been qualified by her quick escape, so that 
 there grew up in him an absurd desire to put it to 
 some better test. Save in so far as some other 
 improbable accident might assist him, such a test 
 could be only to meet her afresh at church. Left 
 to himself he would have gone to church the very 
 next afternoon, just for the curiosity of seeing if 
 he should find her there. But he was not left to 
 himself, a fact he discovered quite at the last, after 
 lie had virtually made up his mind to go. The 
 influence that kept him away really revealed to 
 him how little to himself his Dead ever left him. 
 They reminded him that he went only for them 
 for nothing else in the world. 
 
 The force of this reminder kept him away ten 
 days ; he hated to connect the place with any 
 thing but his offices, or to give a glimpse of the 
 curiosity that had been on the point of moving 
 him. It was absurd to weave a tangle about a 
 matter so simple as a custom of devotion that 
 might so easily have been daily or hourly ; yet the 
 tangle got itself woven. He was sorry, he was 
 disappointed ; it was as if a long, happy spell had 
 been broken and he had lost a familiar security. 
 At the last, however, he asked himself if he was 
 to stay away forever from the fear of this muddle 
 about motives. After an interval, neither longer 
 nor shorter than usual, he re-entered the church 
 with a clear conviction that he should scarcely 
 heed the presence or the absence of the lady of 
 the concert. This indifference didn t prevent his 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 207 
 
 instantly perceiving that for the only time since 
 be had first seen her she was not on the spot. He 
 had now no scruple about giving her time to 
 arrive, but she didn t arrive, and when he went 
 away still missing her he was quite profanely and 
 consentingly sorry. If her absence made the 
 tangle more intricate, that was only her fault. 
 By the end of another year it was very intricate 
 indeed ; but by that time he didn t in the least 
 care, and it was only his cultivated consciousness 
 that had given him scruples. Three times in 
 three months he had gone to church without find 
 ing her, and he felt that he had not needed these 
 occasions to show him that his suspense had quite 
 dropped. Yet it was, incongruously, not indiffer 
 ence, but a refinement of delicacy that had kept 
 him from asking the sacristan, who would of 
 course immediately have recognized his descrip 
 tion of her, whether she had been seen at other 
 hours. His delicacy had kept him from asking 
 any question about her at any time, and it was 
 exactly the same virtue that had left him so free 
 to be decently civil to her at the concert. 
 
 This happy advantage now served him anew, 
 enabling him when she finally met his eyes it 
 was after a fourth trial to determine without hesi 
 tation to wait till she should retire. He joined 
 her in the street as soon as she had done so, and 
 asked her if he might accompany her a certain 
 distance. With her placid permission he went as 
 far as a house in the neighborhood at which she 
 
208 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 had business ; she let him know it was not where 
 she lived. She lived, as she said, in a mere slum, 
 with an old aunt, a person in connection with 
 whom she spoke of the engrossment of hurndrnm 
 duties and regular occupations. She was not, the 
 mourning niece, in her first youth, and her van 
 ished freshness had left something behind which, 
 for Stransom, represented the proof that it had 
 been tragically sacrificed. Whatever she gave 
 him the assurance of she gave it without refer 
 ences. She might in fact have been a divorced 
 duchess, and she might have been an old maid 
 who taught the harp. 
 
 THEY fell at last into the way of walking 
 together almost every time they met, though, for 
 a long time, they never met anywhere save at 
 church. He couldn t ask her to come and see 
 him, and, as if she had not a proper place to re 
 ceive him, she never invited him. As much as 
 himself she knew the world of London, but from 
 an undiscussed instinct of privacy they haunted 
 the region not mapped on the social chart. On 
 the return she always made him leave her at the 
 same corner. She looked with him, as a pretext 
 for a pause, at the depressed things in suburban 
 shopfronts ; and there was never a word he had 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 209 
 
 said to her that she had not beautifully under 
 stood. For long ages he never knew her name, 
 any more than she had ever pronounced his own ; 
 but it was not their names that mattered, it was 
 only their perfect practice and their common 
 need. 
 
 These things made their whole relation so im 
 personal that they had not the rules or reasons 
 people found in ordinary friendships. They 
 didn t care for the things it was supposed neces 
 sary to care for in the intercourse of the world. 
 They ended one day (they never knew which of 
 them expressed it first) by throwing out the idea 
 that they didn t care for each other. Over this 
 idea they grew quite intimate ; they rallied to it 
 in a way that marked a fresh start in their con 
 fidence. If to feel deeply together about certain 
 things wholly distinct from themselves didn t con 
 stitute a safety, where was safety to be looked 
 for? Not lightly nor often, not without occasion 
 nor without emotion, any more than in any other 
 reference by serious people to a mystery of their 
 faith ; but when something had happened to 
 warm, as it were, the air for it, they came as near 
 as they could come to calling their Dead by name. 
 They felt it was coming very near to utter their 
 thought at all. The word "they" expressed 
 enough ; it limited the mention, it had a dignity 
 of its own, and if, in their talk, you had heard our 
 friends use it, you might have taken them for a 
 pair of pagans of old alluding decently to the 
 14 
 
210 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 domesticated gods. They never knew at least 
 Stransom never knew how they had learned to be 
 sure about each other. If it had been with each a 
 question of what the other was there for, the certi 
 tude had come in some fine way of its own. Any 
 faith, after all, has the instinct of propagation, and 
 it was as natural as it was beautiful that they 
 should have taken pleasure on the spot in the 
 imagination of a following. If the following was 
 for each but a following of one, it had proved in 
 the event to be sufficient. Her debt, however, of 
 course, was much greater than his, because while 
 she had only given him a worshipper he had given 
 her a magnificent temple. Once she said she 
 pitied him for the length of his list (she had 
 counted his candles almost as often as himself) 
 and this made him wonder what could have been 
 the length of hers. He had wondered before at 
 the coincidence of their losses, especially as from 
 time to time a new candle was set up. On some 
 occasion some accident led him to express this 
 curiosity, and she answered as if she was surprised 
 that he hadn t already understood. " Oh, for me, 
 you know, the more there are the better there 
 could never be too many. I should like hundreds 
 and hundreds I should like thousands ; I should 
 like a perfect mountain of light." 
 
 Then, of course, in a flash, he understood. 
 "Your Dead are only One?" 
 
 She hesitated as she had never hesitated. "Only 
 One," she answered, coloring as if now he knew 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 211 
 
 her innermost secret. It really made him feel that 
 he knew less than before, so difficult was it for 
 him to reconstitute a life in which a single expe 
 rience had reduced all others to nought. His own 
 life, round its central hollow, had been packed 
 close enough. After this she appeared to have 
 regretted her confession, though at the moment 
 she spoke there had been pride in her very em 
 barrassment. She declared to him that his own 
 was the larger, the dearer possession the portion 
 one would have chosen if one had been able to 
 choose ; she assured him she could perfectly 
 imagine some of the echoes with which his silences 
 were peopled. He knew she couldn t ; one s re 
 lation to what one had loved and hated had been 
 a relation too distinct from the relations of others. 
 But this didn t affect the fact that they were 
 growing old together in their piety. She was a 
 feature of that piety, but even at the ripe stage of 
 acquaintance in which they occasionally arranged 
 to meet at a concert, or to go together to an exhi 
 bition, she was not a feature of any thing else. 
 The most that happened was that his worship 
 became paramount. Friend by friend dropped 
 away till at last there were more emblems on his 
 altar than houses left him to enter. She was 
 more than any other the friend who remained, 
 but she was unknown to all the rest. Once when 
 she had discovered, as they called it, a new star, 
 she used the expression that the chapel at last was 
 full. 
 
212 THE ALTAK OF THE DEAD 
 
 "Oh, no!" Stransom replied, "there is a great 
 thing wanting for that ! The chapel will never 
 be full till a candle is set up before which all the 
 others will pale. It will be the tallest candle 
 of all." 
 
 Her mild wonder rested on him. " What can 
 dle do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean, dear lady, my own." 
 
 He had learned after a long time that she 
 earned money by her pen, writing under a desig 
 nation that she never told him in magazines that 
 he never saw. She knew too well what he couldn t 
 read and what she couldn t write, and she taught 
 him to cultivate indifference with a success that 
 did much for their good relations. Her invisible 
 industry was a convenience to him ; it helped his 
 contented thought of her, the thought that rested 
 in the dignity of her proud, obscure life, her little 
 remunerated art and her little impenetrable home. 
 Lost, with her obscure relative, in her dim su 
 burban world, she came to the surface for him in 
 distant places. She was really the priestess of 
 his altar, and whenever he quitted England he 
 committed it to her keeping. She proved to him 
 afresh that women have more of the spirit of 
 religion than men ; he felt his fidelity pale and 
 faint in comparison with hers. He often said to 
 her that since he had so little time to live he re 
 joiced in her having so much ; so glad was he to 
 think she would guard the temple when he should 
 have ceased. He had a great plan for that, which, 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 213 
 
 of course, he told her, too, a bequest of money to 
 keep it up in undiminished state. Of the admin 
 istration of this fund he would appoint her super 
 intendent, and, if the spirit should move her, she 
 might kindle a taper even for him. 
 
 " And who will kindle one even for me ? " she 
 gravely enquired. 
 
 VI 
 
 SHE was always in mourning, yet the day he 
 came back from the longest absence he had yet 
 made her appearance immediately told him she 
 had lately had a bereavement. They met on this 
 occasion as she was leaving the church, so that, 
 postponing his own entrance, he instantly offered 
 to turn round and walk away with her. She con 
 sidered, then she said : " Go in now, but come and 
 see me in an hour." He knew the small vista of 
 her street, closed at the end and as dreary as an 
 empty pocket, where the pairs of shabby little 
 houses, semi-detached but indissolubly united, were 
 like married couples on bad terms. Often, how 
 ever, as he had gone to the beginning, he had 
 never gone beyond. Her aunt was dead that he 
 immediately guessed, as well as that it made a 
 difference ; but when she had for the first time 
 mentioned her number he found himself, on her 
 leaving him, not a little agitated by this sudden 
 
214 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 liberality. She was not a person with whom, after 
 all, one got on so very fast ; it had taken him 
 months and months to learn her name, years and 
 years to learn her address. If she had looked, on 
 this reunion, so much older to him, how in the 
 world did he look to her ? She had reached the 
 period of life that he had long since reached, when, 
 after separations, the dreadful clock-face of the 
 friend we meet announces the hour we have tried 
 to forget. He couldn t have said what he ex 
 pected, as, at the end of his waiting, he turned the 
 corner at which, for years, he had always paused ; 
 simply not to pause was a sufficient cause for 
 emotion. It was an event, somehow ; and in all 
 their long acquaintance there had never been such 
 a thing. The event grew larger when, five minutes 
 later, in the faint elegance of her little drawing- 
 room, she quavered out some greeting which 
 showed the measure she took of it. He had a 
 strange sense of having come for something in 
 particular ; strange because, literally, there was 
 nothing particular between them, nothing save that 
 they were at one on their great point, which had 
 long ago become a magnificent matter of course. 
 It was true that, after she had said, " You can 
 always come now, you know," the thing he was 
 there for seemed already to have happened. He 
 asked her if it was the death of her aunt that made 
 the difference ; to which she replied : " She never 
 knew I knew you. I wished her not to." The 
 beautiful clearness of her candor her faded beauty 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 215 
 
 was like a summer twilight disconnected the 
 words from any image of deceit. They might 
 have struck him as the record of a deep dissimula 
 tion ; but she had always given him a sense of 
 noble reasons. The vanished aunt was present, as 
 he looked about him, in the small complacencies of 
 the room, the beaded velvet and the fluted moreen ; 
 and though, as we know, he had the worship of the 
 dead, he found himself not definitely regretting 
 this lady. If she was not in his long list, how 
 ever, she was in her niece s short one, and Stran- 
 som presently observed to his friend that now, at 
 least, in the place they haunted together, she would 
 have another object of devotion. 
 
 " Yes, I shall have another. She was very kind 
 to me. It s that that makes the difference." 
 
 He judged, wondering a good deal before he 
 made any motion to leave her, that the difference 
 would somehow be very great and would consist of 
 still other things than her having let him come in. 
 It rather chilled him, for they had been happy 
 together as they were. He extracted from her at 
 any rate an intimation that she should now have 
 larger means, that her aunt s tiny fortune had come 
 to her, so that there was henceforth only one to 
 consume what had formerly been made to suffice 
 for two. This was a joy to Stransom, because it 
 had hitherto been equally impossible for him either 
 to offer her presents or to find contentment in not 
 doing so. It was too ugly to be at her side that 
 way, abounding himself and yet not able to over- 
 
216 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 flow a demonstration that would have been a 
 signally false note. Even her better situation too 
 seemed only to draw out in a sense the loneliness 
 of her future. It would merely help her to live 
 more and more for their small ceremonial, at a 
 time when he himself had begun wearily to feel 
 that, having set it in motion, he might depart. 
 When they had sat a while in the pale parlor she 
 got up and said : " This isn t my room : let us go 
 into mine." They had only to cross the narrow 
 hall, as he found, to pass into quite another air. 
 When she had closed the door of the second room, 
 as she called it, he felt that he had at last real 
 possession of her. The place had the flush of life 
 it was expressive ; its dark red walls were articu 
 late with memories and relics. These were simple 
 things photographs and water-colors, scraps of 
 writing framed and ghosts of flowers embalmed ; 
 but only a moment was needed to show him they 
 had a common meaning. It was here that she had 
 lived and worked ; and she had already told him 
 she would make no change of scene. He saw that 
 the objects about her mainly had reference to cer 
 tain places and times ; but after a minute he dis 
 tinguished among them a small portrait of a gentle 
 man. At a distance and without their glasses his 
 eyes were only caught by it enough to feel a vague 
 curiosity. Presently this impulse carried him 
 nearer, and in another moment he was staring at 
 the picture in stupefaction and with the sense that 
 some sound had broken from him. He was further 
 
THE ALTAE OF THE DEAD 217 
 
 conscious that he showed his companion a white 
 face when he turned round on her with the ex 
 clamation : " Acton Hague ! " 
 
 She gave him back his astonishment. " Did you 
 know him? " 
 
 " He was the friend of all my youth my early 
 manhood. And you knew him?" 
 
 She colored at this, and for a moment her an 
 swer failed ; her eyes took in every thing in the 
 place, and a strange irony reached her lips as she 
 echoed : " Knew him ? " 
 
 Then Stransom understood, while the room 
 heaved like the cabin of a ship, that its whole con 
 tents cried out with him, that it was a museum in 
 his honor, that all her later years had been ad 
 dressed to him, and that the shrine he himself had 
 reared had been passionately converted to this use. 
 It was all for Acton Hague that she had kneeled 
 every day at his altar. What need had there 
 been for a consecrated candle when he was present 
 in the whole array? The revelation seemed to 
 smite our friend in the face, and he dropped into a 
 seat and sat silent. He had quickly become aware 
 that she was shocked at the vision of his own 
 shock, but as she sank on the sofa beside him and 
 laid her hand on his arm he perceived almost as 
 soon that she was unable to resent it as much as 
 she would have liked. 
 
VII 
 
 HE learned in that instant two things : one of 
 them was that even in so long a time she had 
 gathered no knowledge of his great intimacy and 
 his great quarrel ; the other was that, in spite of 
 this ignorance, strangely enough, she supplied on 
 the spot a reason for his confusion. " How extra 
 ordinary," he presently exclaimed, " that we should 
 never have known ! " 
 
 She gave a wan smile, which seemed to Stransom 
 stranger even than the fact itself. " I never, never 
 spoke of him." 
 
 Stransom looked about the room again. " Why 
 then, if your life had been so full of him ? " 
 
 " Mayn t I put you that question as well. 
 Hadn t your life also been full of him?" 
 
 " Any one s, every one s life was who had the 
 wonderful experience of knowing him. I never 
 spoke of him," Stransom added in a moment, " be 
 cause he did me years ago an unforgetable 
 wrong." She was silent, and with the full effect 
 of his presence all about them it almost startled 
 her visitor to hear no protest escape from her. 
 She accepted his words ; he turned his eyes to her 
 again to see in what manner she accepted them. It 
 was with rising tears, and an extraordinary sweet- 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 219 
 
 ness in the movement of putting out her hand to 
 take his own. Nothing more wonderful had ever 
 appeared to Stransom than, in that little chamber 
 of remembrance and homage, to see her convey 
 with such exquisite mildness that, as from Acton 
 Hague, any injury was credible. The clock ticked 
 in the stillness Hague had probably given it to 
 her and while he let her hold his hand with a 
 tenderness that was almost an assumption of re 
 sponsibility for his old pain as well as his new, 
 Stransom after a minute broke out : " Good God, 
 how he must have used you /" 
 
 She dropped his hand at this, got up and, mov 
 ing across the room, made straight a small picture 
 to Avhich, on examining it, he had given a slight 
 push. Then, turning round on him, with her pale 
 gayety recovered : " I ve forgiven him ! " she de 
 clared. 
 
 " I know what you ve done," said Stransom ; " I 
 know what you ve done for years." For a mo 
 ment they looked at each other across the room, 
 with their long community of service in their eyes. 
 This short passage made, to Stransom s sense, for 
 the woman before him, an immense, an absolutely 
 naked confession ; which was presently, suddenly 
 blushing red and changing her place again, what 
 she appeared to become aware that he perceived 
 in it. He got up. "How you must have loved 
 him ! " 
 
 " Women are not like men. They can love even 
 where they ve suffered." 
 
220 THE ALTAK OF THE DEAD 
 
 " Women are wonderful," said Stransom. "But 
 I assure you I ve forgiven him too." 
 
 " If I had known of any thing so strange I 
 wouldn t have brought you here." 
 
 " So that we might have gone on in our igno 
 rance to the last ? * 
 
 " What do you call the last ? " she asked, smil 
 ing still. 
 
 At this he could smile back at her. " You ll 
 see when it comes." 
 
 She reflected a moment. " This is better per 
 haps ; but as we were it was good." 
 
 " Did it never happen that he spoke of me ? " 
 Stransom enquired. 
 
 Considering more intently, she made no answer, 
 and he quickly recognized that he would have been 
 adequately answered by her asking how often he 
 himself had spoken of their terrible friend. Sud 
 denly a brighter light broke in her face, and an 
 excited idea sprang to her lips in the question : 
 "You have forgiven him?" 
 
 "How, if I hadn t, could I linger here ? " 
 
 She winced, for an instant, at the deep but un 
 intended irony of this ; but even while she did so 
 she panted quickly : " Then in the lights on your 
 altar ? " 
 
 " There s never a light for Acton Hague ! " 
 
 She stared, with a great visible fall. " But if 
 he s one of your Dead?" 
 
 " He s one of the world s, if you like he s one 
 of yours. But he s not one of mine. Mine are 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 221 
 
 only the Dead who died possessed of me. They re 
 mine in death because they were mine in life." 
 
 "He was yours in life, then, even if for a while 
 he ceased to be. If you forgave him you went 
 back to him. Those whom we ve once loved " 
 
 "Are those who can hurt us most," Stransom 
 broke in. 
 
 " Ah, it s not true you ve not forgiven him ! " 
 she wailed, with a passion that startled him. 
 
 He looked at her a moment. " What was it he 
 did to you ? " 
 
 " Every thing ! " Then abruptly she put out her 
 hand in farewell. " Good-by." 
 
 He turned as cold as he had turned that night 
 he read of the death of Acton Hague. " You 
 mean that we meet no more ? " 
 
 "Not as we have met not there J" 
 
 He stood aghast at this snap of their great bond, 
 at the renouncement that rang out in the word she 
 so passionately emphasized. " But what s changed 
 for you ? " 
 
 She hesitated, in all the vividness of a trouble 
 that, for the first time since he had known her, 
 made her splendidly stern. " How can you 
 understand now when you didn t understand 
 before?" 
 
 " I didn t understand before only because I 
 didn t know. Now that I know, I see what I ve 
 been living with for years," Stransom went on 
 very gently. 
 
 She looked at him with a larger allowance, as if 
 
222 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 she appreciated his good-nature. " How can I, 
 then, with this new knowledge of my own, ask 
 you to continue to live with it ? " 
 
 " I set up my altar, with its multiplied mean 
 ings " Stransom began ; but she quickly inter 
 rupted him : 
 
 " You set up your altar, and when I wanted one 
 most I found it magnificently ready. I used it, 
 with the gratitude I ve always shown you, for I 
 knew from of old that it was dedicated to Death. 
 I told you, long ago, that my Dead were not 
 many. Yours were, but all you had done for them 
 was none too much for my worship ! You had 
 placed a great light for Each I gathered them 
 together for One ! " 
 
 " We had simply different intentions," Stran 
 som replied. "That, as you say, I perfectly 
 knew, and I don t see why your intention shouldn t 
 still sustain you." 
 
 "That s because you re generous you can 
 imagine and think. But the spell is broken." 
 
 It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resist 
 ance, that it really was, and the prospect stretched 
 gray and void before him. All, however, that he 
 could say was : " I hope you ll try before you give 
 up." 
 
 "If I had known you had ever known him, I 
 should have taken for granted he had his candle," 
 she presently rejoined. " What s changed, as you 
 say, is that on making the discovery I find he 
 never has had it. That makes my attitude " she 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 223 
 
 paused a moment, as if thinking how to express it, 
 then said simply "all wrong." 
 
 " Come once again," Stransorn pleaded. 
 
 "Will you give him his candle?" she asked. 
 
 He hesitated, but only because it would sound 
 ungracious ; not because he had a doubt of 
 his feeling. " I can t do that ! " he declared at 
 last. 
 
 " Then good-by." And she gave him her hand 
 again. 
 
 He had got his dismissal ; besides which, in the 
 agitation of every thing that had opened out to 
 him, he felt the need to recover himself as he could 
 only do in solitude. Yet he lingered lingered to 
 see if she had no compromise to express, no attenu 
 ation to propose. But he only met her great 
 lamenting eyes, in which indeed he read that she 
 was as sorry for him as for any one else. This 
 made him say : " At least, at any rate, I may see 
 you here." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! come if you like. But I don t think 
 it will do." 
 
 Stransom looked round the room once more ; 
 he felt in truth by no means sure it would do. 
 He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and 
 his chill was like an ague in which he had to make 
 an effort not to shake. " I must try on my side, if 
 you can t try on yours," he dolefully rejoined. She 
 came out with him to the hall and into the door 
 way, and here he put to her the question that 
 seemed to him the one he could least answer from 
 
224 THE ALTAR OP THE DEAD 
 
 his own wit. " Why have you never let me come 
 before?" 
 
 " Because my aunt would have seen you, and I 
 should have had to tell her how I came to know 
 you." 
 
 " And what would have been the objection to 
 that ? " 
 
 " It would have entailed other explanations ; 
 there would at any rate have been that danger." 
 
 " Surely she knew you went every day to church," 
 Stransom objected. 
 
 " She didn t know what I went for." 
 
 " Of me then she never even heard ? " 
 
 "You ll think I was deceitful. But I didn t 
 need to be ! " 
 
 Stransom was now on the lower doorstep, and 
 his hostess held the door half-closed behind him. 
 Through what remained of the opening he saw her 
 framed face. He made a supreme appeal. " What 
 did he do to you ? " 
 
 " It would have come out she would have told 
 you. That fear, at my heart that was my 
 reason ! " And she closed the door, shutting him 
 out. 
 
 VIII 
 
 HE had ruthlessly abandoned her that, of 
 course, was what he had done. Stransom made it 
 all out in solitude, at leisure, fitting the unmatched 
 pieces gradually together and dealing one by one 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 225 
 
 with a hundred obscure points. She had known 
 Hague only after her present friend s relations 
 with him had wholly terminated ; obviously indeed 
 a good while after ; and it was natural enough that 
 of his previous life she should have ascertained 
 only what he had judged good to communicate. 
 There were passages it was quite conceivable that 
 even in moments of the tenderest expansion, he 
 should have withheld. Of many facts in the career 
 of a man so in the eye of the world there was of 
 course a common knowledge ; but this lady lived 
 apart from public affairs, and the only period 
 perfectly clear to her would have been the period 
 following the dawn of her own drama. A man, 
 in her place, would have " looked up " the past 
 would even have consulted old newspapers. It 
 remained singular indeed that in her long contact 
 with the partner of her retrospect no accident had 
 lighted a train ; but there was no arguing about 
 that ; the accident had in fact come ; it had simply 
 been that security had prevailed. She had taken 
 what Hague had given her, and her blankness in 
 respect of his other connections was only a touch 
 in the picture of that plasticity Stransom had 
 supreme reason to know so great a master could 
 have been trusted to produce. 
 
 This picture, for a while, was all that our friend 
 saw ; he caught his breath again and again as it 
 came over him that the woman with whom he had 
 had for years so fine a point of contact was a 
 woman whom Acton Hague, of all men in the 
 15 
 
226 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 world, had more or less fashioned. Such as she 
 sat there to-day, she was ineffaceably stamped with 
 him. Beneficent, blameless as Stransom held her, 
 he couldn t rid himself of the sense that he had been 
 the victim of a fraud. She had imposed upon him 
 hugely, though she had known it as little as he. 
 All this later past came back to him as a time gro 
 tesquely misspent. Such at least were his first 
 reflections ; after a while he found himself more 
 divided and only, as the end of it, more troubled. 
 He imagined, recalled, reconstituted, figured out 
 for himself the truth she had refused to give him ; 
 the effect of which was to make her seem to him 
 only more saturated with her fate. He felt her 
 spirit, in the strange business, to be finer than his 
 own in the very degree in which she might have 
 been, in which she certainly had been, more wronged. 
 A woman, when she was wronged, was always more 
 wronged than a man, and there were conditions 
 when the least she could have got off with was 
 more than the most he could have to endure. He 
 was sure this rare creature wouldn t have got off 
 with the least. He was awe-struck at the thought 
 of such a surrender such a prostration. Moulded 
 indeed she had been by powerful hands, to have 
 converted her injury into an exaltation so sublime. 
 The fellow had only had to die for every thing that 
 was ugly in him to be washed out in a torrent. It 
 was vain to try to guess what had taken place, but 
 nothing could be clearer than that she had ended 
 by accusing herself. She absolved him at every 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 227 
 
 point, she adored her very wounds. The passion 
 by which he had profited had rushed back after 
 its ebb, and now the tide of tenderness, arrested 
 forever at flood, was too deep even to fathom. 
 Stransom sincerely considered that he had forgiven 
 him ; but how little he had achieved the miracle that 
 she had achieved ! His forgiveness was silence, 
 but hers was mere unuttered sound. The light 
 she had demanded for his altar would have 
 broken his silence with a blare ; whereas all the 
 lights in the church were for her too great a hush. 
 She had been right about the difference she 
 had spoken the truth about the change ; Stransom 
 felt before long that he was perversely but defi 
 nitely jealous. His tide had ebbed, not flowed ; 
 if he had " forgiven " Acton Hague, that forgive 
 ness was a motive with a broken spring. The very 
 fact of her appeal for a material sign, a sign that 
 should make her dead lover equal there with the 
 others, presented the concession to Stransom as 
 too handsome for the case. He had never thought 
 of himself as hard, but an exorbitant article might 
 easily render him so. He moved round and round 
 this one, but only in widening circles the more 
 he looked at it the less acceptable it appeared. At 
 the same time he had no illusion about the effect 
 of his refusal ; he perfectly saw that it was the 
 beginning of a separation. He left her alone for 
 many days ; but when at last he called upon her 
 again this conviction acquired a depressing force. 
 In the interval he had kept away from the church, 
 
228 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 and he needed no fresh assurance from her to know 
 she had not entered it. The change was complete 
 enough ; it had broken up her life. Indeed it had 
 broken up his, for all the fires of his shrine seemed 
 to him suddenly to have been quenched. A great 
 indifference fell upon him, the weight of which 
 was in itself a pain ; and he never knew what his 
 devotion had been for him till, in that shock, it 
 stopped like a dropped watch. Neither did he 
 know with how large a confidence he had counted 
 on the final service that had now failed ; the mortal 
 deception was that in this abandonment the whole 
 future gave way. 
 
 These days of her absence proved to him of what 
 she was capable ; all the more that he never 
 dreamed she was vindictive or even resentful. It 
 was not in anger she had forsaken him ; it was in 
 absolute submission to hard reality, to crude des 
 tiny. This came home to him when he sat with 
 her again in the room in which her late aunt s con 
 versation lingered like the tone of a cracked 
 piano. She tried to make him forget how much 
 they were estranged ; but in the very presence of 
 what they had given up it was impossible not to 
 be sorry for her. He had taken from her so much 
 more than she had taken from him. He argued 
 with her again, told her she could now have the 
 altar to herself ; but she only shook her head with 
 pleading sadness, begging him not to waste his 
 breath on the impossible, the extinct. Couldn t he 
 see that, in relation to her private need, the rites 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 229 
 
 he had established were practically an elaborate 
 exclusion ? She regretted nothing that had hap 
 pened ; it had all been right so long as she didn t 
 know, and it was only that now she knew too 
 much, and that from the moment their eyes were 
 open they would simply have to conform. It had 
 doubtless been happiness enough for them to go 
 on together so long. She was gentle, grateful, 
 resigned ; but this was only the form of a deep 
 immutability. He saw that he should never more 
 cross the threshold of the second room, and he felt 
 how much this alone would make a stranger of him 
 and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He 
 would have hated to plunge again into that well of 
 reminders, but he enjoyed quite as little the vacant 
 alternative. 
 
 After he had been with her three or four times 
 it seemed to him that to have come at last into her 
 house had had the horrid effect of diminishing 
 their intimacy. He had known her better, had 
 liked her in greater freedom, when they merely" 
 walked together or kneeled together. Now they 
 only pretended ; before they had been nobly sin-^^J 
 cere. They began to try their walks again, but it 
 proved a lame imitation, for these things, from the 
 first, beginning or ending, had been connected 
 with their visits to the church. They had either 
 strolled away as they came out or had gone in to 
 rest on the return. Besides, Stransom now grew 
 weary ;. he couldn t walk as of old. The omission 
 made every thing false ; it was a horrible mutila- 
 
230 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 tion of tlieir lives. Our friend was frank and 
 monotonous ; he made no mystery of his remon 
 strance and no secret of his predicament. Her 
 response, whatever it was, always came to the 
 same thing an implied invitation to him to judge, 
 if he spoke of predicaments, of how much comfort 
 she had in hers. For him indeed there was no 
 comfort even in complaint, for every allusion to 
 what had befallen them only made the author of 
 their trouble more present. Acton Hague was 
 between them, that was the essence of the matter ; 
 and he was never so much between them as when 
 they were face to face. Stransom, even while he 
 wanted to banish him, had the strangest sense of 
 desiring a satisfaction that could come only from 
 having accepted him. Deeply disconcerted by 
 what he knew, he was still worse tormented by 
 really not knowing. Perfectly aware that it would 
 have been horribly vulgar to abuse his old friend 
 or to tell his companion the story of their quarrel, 
 it yet vexed him that her depth of reserve should 
 give him no opening and should have the effect of 
 a magnanimity greater even than his own. 
 
 He challenged himself, denounced himself, asked 
 himself if he were in -love with her that he should 
 care so much what adventures she had had. He 
 had never for a moment admitted that he was in 
 love with her ; therefore nothing could have sur 
 prised him more than to discover that he was 
 jealous. What but jealousy could give a man that 
 sore, contentious wish to have the detail of what 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 231 
 
 would make him suffer ? Well enough he knew 
 indeed that he should never have it from the only 
 person who, to-day, could give it to him. She let 
 him press her with his sombre eyes, only smiling 
 at him with an exquisite mercy and breathing 
 equally little the word that would expose her 
 secret and the word that would appear to deny his 
 literal right to bitterness. She told nothing, she 
 judged nothing ; she accepted every thing but 
 the possibility of her return to the old symbols. 
 Stransom divined that for her, too, they had been 
 vividly individual, had stood for particular hours 
 or particular attributes particular links in her 
 chain. He made it clear to himself, as he believed, 
 that his difficulty lay in the fact that the very 
 nature of the plea for his faithless friend con 
 stituted a prohibition; that it happened to have 
 come from her was precisely the vice that attached 
 to it. To the voice of impersonal generosity he 
 felt sure he would have listened ; he would have 
 deferred to an advocate who, speaking from 
 abstract justice, knowing of his omission, without 
 having known Hague, should have had the imagi 
 nation to say : " Oh, remember only the best of 
 him ; pity him ; provide for him ! " To provide 
 for him on the very ground of having discovered 
 another of his turpitudes was not to pity him, but 
 to glorify him. The more Stransom thought, the 
 more he made it out that this relation of Hague s, 
 whatever it was, could only have been a deception 
 finely practised. Where had it come into the life 
 
232 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 that all men saw ? Why had he never heard of it, 
 if it had had the frankness of an attitude honor 
 able ? Stransom knew enough of his other ties, of 
 his obligations and appearances, not to say enough 
 of his general character, to be sure there had been 
 some infamy. In one way or another the poor 
 woman had been coldly sacrificed. That was why, 
 at the last as well as the first, he must still leave 
 him out. 
 
 IX 
 
 AND yet this was no solution, especially after 
 he had talked again to his friend of all it had 
 been his plan that she should finally do for him. 
 He had talked in the other days, and she had 
 responded with a frankness qualified only by a 
 courteous reluctance a reluctance that touched 
 him to linger on the question of his death. She 
 had then practically accepted the charge, suffered 
 him to feel that he could depend upon her to be 
 the eventual guardian of his shrine ; and it was in 
 the name of what had so passed between them that 
 he appealed to her not to forsake him in his old 
 age. She listened to him now with a sort of shin 
 ing coldness and all her habitual forbearance to 
 insist on her terms ; her deprecation was even still 
 tenderer, for it expressed the compassion of her 
 own sense that he was abandoned. Her terms, 
 however, remained the same, and scarcely the less 
 
THE ALTAE OF THE DEAD 233 
 
 audible for not being uttered ; although he was 
 sure that, secretly, even more than he, she felt 
 bereft of the satisfaction his solemn trust was to 
 have provided for her. They both missed the rich 
 future, but she missed it most, because, after all, 
 it was to have been entirely hers ; and it was her 
 acceptance of the loss that gave him the full 
 measure of her preference for the thought of 
 Acton Hague over any other thought whatever. 
 He had humor enough to laugh rather grimly 
 when he said to himself : " Why the deuce does 
 she like him so much more than she likes me ?" 
 the reasons being really so conceivable. But even 
 his faculty of analysis left the irritation standing, 
 and this irritation proved perhaps the greatest 
 misfortune that had ever overtaken him. There 
 had been nothing yet that made him so much want 
 to give up. He had of course by this time well 
 reached the age of renouncement ; but it had not 
 hitherto been vivid to him that it was time to give 
 up every thing. 
 
 Practically, at the end of six months, he had 
 renounced the friendship that was once so charm 
 ing and comforting. His privation had two faces, 
 and the face it had turned to him on the occasion 
 of his last attempts to cultivate that friendship was 
 the one he could look at least. This was the 
 privation he inflicted ; the other was the privation 
 he bore. The conditions she never phrased he 
 used to murmur to himself in solitude : " One 
 more, one more only just one." Certainly he was 
 
234 THE ALTAE OF THE DEAD 
 
 going down ; he often felt it when he caught him 
 self, over his work, staring at vacancy and giving 
 voice to that inanity. There was proof enough 
 besides in his being so weak and so ill. His irrita 
 tion took the form of melancholy, and his melan 
 choly that of the conviction that his health had 
 quite failed. His altar, moreover, had ceased to 
 exist ; his chapel, in his dreams, was a great dark 
 cavern. All the lights had gone out all his Dead 
 had died again. He couldn t exactly see at first 
 how it had been in the power of his late companion 
 to extinguish them, since it was neither for her nor 
 \ uy her that they had been called into being. Then 
 he understood that it was essentially in his own 
 soul the revival had taken place, and that in the 
 air of this soul they were now unable to breathe. 
 The candles might mechanically burn, but each of 
 them had lost its lustre. The church had become 
 a void ; it was his presence, her presence, their 
 common presence, that had made the indispensable 
 medium. If any thing was wrong every thing 
 was her silence spoiled the tune. 
 
 Then, when three months were gone, he felt so 
 lonely that he went back ; reflecting that as they 
 had been his best society for years his Dead per 
 haps wouldn t let him forsake them without doing 
 something more for him. They stood there, as he 
 had left them, in their tall radiance, the bright 
 cluster that had already made him, on occasions 
 when he was willing to compare small things with 
 great, liken them to a group of sea-lights on the 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 235 
 
 edge of the ocean of life. It was a relief to him, 
 after a while, as he sat there, to feel that they had 
 still a virtue. lie was more and more easily tired, 
 and he always drove now ; the action of his heart 
 was weak, and gave him none of the reassurance 
 conferred by the action of his fancy. None the 
 less he returned yet again, returned several times, 
 and finally, during six months, haunted the plac! 
 with a renewal of frequency and a strain of im 
 patience. In winter the church was unwarmed, 
 and exposure to cold was forbidden him, but the 
 glow of his shrine was an influence in which he 
 could almost bask. He sat and wondered to what 
 he had reduced his absent associate, and what she 
 now did with the hours of her absence. There were 
 other churches, there were other altars, there were 
 other candles ; in one way or another her piety 
 would still operate ; he couldn t absolutely have 
 deprived her of her rites. So he argued, but with 
 out contentment ; for he well enough knew there 
 was no other such rare semblance of the mountain 
 of light she had once mentioned to him as the 
 satisfaction of her need. As this semblance again 
 gradually grew great to him and his pious practice 
 more regular, there was a sharper and sharper pang 
 for him in the imagination of her darkness ; for 
 never so much as in these weeks had his rites been 
 real, never had his gathered company seemed so to 
 respond and even to invite. He lost himself in the 
 large lustre, which was more and more what he 
 had from the first wished it to be as dazzling as 
 
236 THE ALTAE OF THE DEAD 
 
 the vision of heaven in the mind of a child. He 
 wandered in the fields of light ; he passed, among 
 the tall tapers, from tier to tier, from fire to fire, 
 from name to name, from the white intensity of 
 one clear emblem, of one saved soul, to another. 
 It was in the quiet sense of having saved his souls 
 that his deep, strange instinct rejoiced. This was 
 no dim theological rescue, no boon of a contingent 
 world ; they were saved better than faith or works 
 could save them, saved for the warm world they 
 had shrunk from dying to, for actuality, for con 
 tinuity, for the certainty of human remembrance. 
 By this time he had survived all his friends ; 
 the last straight flame was three years old ; there 
 was no one to add to the list. Over and over he 
 called his roll, and it appeared to him compact 
 and complete. Where should he put in another ; 
 where, if there were no other objection, would it 
 stand in its place in the rank ? He reflected, with 
 a want of sincerity of whicli he was quite con 
 scious, that it would be difficult to determine that 
 place. More and more, besides, face to face with 
 his little legion, reading over endless histories, 
 handling the empty shells and playing with the 
 silence mor^ and more he could see that he had 
 never introduced an alien. He had had his great 
 compassions, his indulgences there were cases in 
 which they had been immense ; but what had his 
 devotion after all been, if it hadn t been funda 
 mentally a respect? He was, however, himself 
 surprised at his stiffness ; by the end of the winter 
 
THE ALTAR OP THE DEAD 237 
 
 the responsibility of it was what was uppermost in 
 his thoughts. The refrain had grown old to them, 
 the plea for just one more. There came a day 
 when, for simple exhaustion, if symmetry should 
 really demand just one more, he was ready to take 
 symmetry into account. Symmetry was harmony, 
 and the idea of harmony began to haunt him ; he 
 said to himself that harmony was of course every 
 thing. He took, in fancy, his composition to 
 pieces, redistributing it into other lines, making 
 other juxtapositions and contrasts. He shifted 
 this and that candle ; he made the spaces different ; 
 he effaced the disfigurement of a possible gap. 
 There were subtle and complex relations, a scheme 
 of cross-reference, and moments in which he 
 seemed to catch a glimpse of the void so sensible 
 to the woman who wandered in exile or sat where 
 he had seen her with the portrait of Acton Hague. 
 Finally, in this way, he arrived at a conception of 
 the total, the ideal, which left a clear opportunity 
 for just another figure. " Just one more, to round 
 it off ; just one more, just one," continued to hum 
 itself in his head. There was a strange confusion 
 in the thought, for he felt the day to be near when 
 lie too should be one of the Others. What, in this 
 case, would the Others matter to him, since they 
 only mattered to the living ? Even as one of the 
 Dead, what would his altar matter to him, since 
 his particular dream of keeping it up had melted 
 away ? What had harmony to do with the case, if 
 his lights were all to be quenched ? What he had 
 
238 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 hoped for was an instituted thing. He might per 
 petuate it on some other pretext, but his special 
 meaning would have dropped. This meaning was 
 to have lasted with the life of the one other person 
 who understood it. 
 
 In March he had an illness during which lie 
 spent a fortnight in bed, and when he revived a 
 little he was told of two things that had happened. 
 One was that a lady, whose name was not known 
 to the servants (she left none), had been three times 
 to ask about him ; the other was that in his sleep, 
 and on an occasion when his mind evidently wan 
 dered, he was heard to murmur a^ain and again : 
 " Just one more just one." As soon as he found 
 himself able to go out, and before the doctor in 
 attendance had pronounced him so, he drove to see 
 the lady who had come to ask about him. She 
 was not at home ; but this gave him the oppor 
 tunity, before his strength should fail again, to 
 take his way to the church. He entered the church 
 alone ; he had declined, in a happy manner he pos 
 sessed of being able to decline effectively, the com 
 pany of his servant or of a nurse. He knew now 
 perfectly what these good people thought ; they 
 had discovered his clandestine connection, the 
 magnet that had drawn him for so many years, 
 and doubtless attached a significance of their own 
 to the odd words they had repeated to him. The 
 nameless lady was the clandestine connection a 
 fact nothing could have made clearer than his in 
 decent haste to rejoin her. He sank on his knees 
 
THE ALTAR OP THE DEAD 239 
 
 before his altar, and his head fell over on his hands. 
 His weakness, his life s weariness, overtook him. 
 It seemed to him he had come for the great sur 
 render. At first he asked himself how he should 
 get away ; then, with the failing belief in the 
 power, the very desire to move gradually left him. 
 He had come, as he always came, to lose himself ; 
 the fields of light were still there to stray in ; only 
 this time, in straying, he would never come back. 
 He had given himself to his Dead, and it was 
 good ; this time his Dead would keep him. He 
 couldn t rise from his knees ; he believed he 
 should never rise again ; all he could do was to 
 lift his face and fix his eyes upon his lights. They 
 looked unusualh^ strangely splendid, but the one 
 that always drew him most had an unprecedented 
 lustre. It was the central voice of the choir, the 
 glowing heart of the brightness, and on this occa 
 sion it seemed to expand, to spread great wings of 
 flame. The whole altar flared it dazzled and 
 blinded ; but the source of the vast radiance 
 burned clearer than the rest ; it gathered itself 
 into form, and the form was human beauty and 
 human charity ; it was the far-off face of Mary 
 Antrim. She smiled at him from the glory of 
 heaven she brought the glory down with her to 
 take him. He bowed his head in submission, and 
 at the same moment another wave rolled over him. 
 Was it the quickening of joy to pain ? In the 
 midst of his joy, at any rate, he felt his buried 
 face grow hot as with some communicated knowl- 
 
240 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 edge that had the force of a reproach. It suddenly 
 made him contrast that very rapture with the bliss 
 he had refused to another. This breath of the 
 passion immortal was all that other had asked ; 
 the descent of Mary Antrim opened his spirit with 
 a great compunctious throb for the descent of 
 Acton Hague. It was as if Stransom had read 
 what her eyes said to him. 
 
 After a moment he looked round him in a de 
 spair which made him feel as if the source of life 
 were ebbing. The church had been empty he 
 was alone ; but he wanted to have something 
 done, to make a last appeal. This idea gave him 
 strength for an effort ; he rose to his feet with a 
 movement that made him turn, supporting himself 
 by the back of a bench. Behind him was a pros 
 trate figure, a figure he had seen before ; a woman 
 in deep mourning, bowed in grief or in prayer. 
 He had seen her in other days the first time he 
 came into the church, and he slightly wavered 
 there, looking at her again till she seemed to be 
 come aware he had noticed her. She raised her 
 head and met his eyes : the partner of his long 
 worship was there. She looked across at him an 
 instant with a face wondering and scared ; he saw 
 that he had given her an alarm. Then quickly 
 rising, she came straight to him with both hands out. 
 
 " Then you could come ? God sent you ! " he 
 murmured, with a happy smile. 
 
 " You re very ill you shouldn t be here," she 
 urged, in anxious reply, 
 
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 241 
 
 " God sent me too, I think. I was ill when I 
 came, but the sight of you does wonders." He 
 held her hands, and they steadied and quickened 
 him. " I ve something to tell you." 
 
 "Don t tell me!" she tenderly pleaded; "let 
 me tell you. This afternoon, by a miracle, the 
 sweetest of miracles, the sense of our difference left 
 me. I was out I was near, thinking, wandering 
 alone, when, on the spot, something changed in my 
 heart. It s my confession there it is. To come 
 back, to come back on the instant the idea gave 
 me wings. It was as if I suddenly saw something 
 as if it all became possible. I could come for 
 what you yourself came for : that was enough. 
 So here I am. It s not for my own that s over. 
 But I m here for them" And breathless, infinitely 
 relieved by her lo\v, precipitate explanation, she 
 looked with eyes that reflected all its splendor at 
 the magnificence of their altar. 
 
 " They re here for you," Stransom said, " they re 
 present to-night as they ve never been. They 
 speak for you don t you see ? in a passion of 
 light they sing out like a choir of angels. Don t 
 you hear what they say ? they offer the very 
 thing you asked of me." 
 
 " Don t talk of itdon t think of it ; forget it ! " 
 She spoke in hushed supplication, and while the 
 apprehension deepened in her eyes she disengaged 
 one of her hands and passed an arm round him, to 
 support him better, to help him to sink into a 
 seat. 
 
 16 
 
242 THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD 
 
 He let himself go, resting on her ; he dropped 
 upon the bench, and she fell on her knees ber ^e 
 him with his arm on her shoulder. So he remained 
 an instant, staring up at his shrine. "They say 
 there s a gap in the array they say it s not full, 
 complete. Just one more," he went on, softly 
 " isn t that what yon wanted ? Yes, one more, 
 one more." 
 
 " Ah, no more no more ! " she wailed, as if 
 with a quick, new horror of it, under her breath. 
 
 "Yes, one more," he repeated simply; "just 
 one ! " And with this his head dropped on her 
 shoulder ; she felt that in his weakness he had 
 fainted. But alone with him in the dusky church 
 a great dread was on her of what might still 
 happen, for his face had the whiteness of death. 
 
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