LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 .mm
 
 THE HISTORY 
 
 OP 
 
 DAVID CJEIEVE 
 
 BY 
 
 MES. HrMPHRY AVARD 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' ROBERT ELSMERE ' 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 MACMILLAX AND CO. 
 
 A X D L O N D O X 
 1892 
 
 All rif/hts reserved
 
 r.i 
 
 Copyright, 1891, 
 By MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 Typogbapht by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
 Pbesswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S.A.
 
 TO 
 THE BEAR MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 MY MOTHER
 
 Childhood 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Of Vol. 1 
 BOOK I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BOOK II 
 Youth ... 203 
 
 r.OOK III 
 Storm and Stress . 425
 
 ?.OOT\ I 
 ClIlJ.DlloolJ
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 * Tak your hat, Louie ! Yo're alius leavin summat 
 behind yer.' 
 
 ' David, yo go for 't,' said the child addressed to a 
 boy by her side, nodding her head insolently towards 
 the speaker, a tall and bony woman, who stood on the 
 steps the children had just descended, holding out a 
 battered hat. 
 
 ' Yo're a careless thing, Louie,' said the boy, but he 
 went back and took the hat. 
 
 ' Mak her tie it,' said the woman, showing an anti- 
 quated pair of strings. ' If she loses it she needna 
 coom cryin for anudder. She'd lose her yead if it 
 wor loose.' 
 
 Then she turned and went back into the house. It 
 was a smallish house of grey stone, three windows 
 above, two and a door below. Dashes of white on the 
 stone gave, as it were, eyebrows to the windows, and 
 over the door there Avas a meagre trellised porch, up 
 which grew some now leafless roses and honeysuckles. 
 To the left of the door a scanty bit of garden Avas 
 squeezed in between the hill, against which the house 
 Avas set edgeways, and the rest of the Hat space, occu- 
 pied by the uneven farmyard, the cart-shed and stable, 
 tlie cow-houses and duck-pond. This garden contained 
 two shabby apple trees, as jet hardly touched by the 
 spring; some currant and gooseberry bushes, already 
 fairly green ; and a clump ur two of scattered daffodils
 
 4 TIIK HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 and wallflowers. The hedge round it Avas broken 
 through in various places, and it had a casual neg- 
 lected air. 
 
 The children went their way through the yard. In 
 front of them a flock of some forty sheep and lambs 
 pushed along, guarded by two black short-haired col- 
 lies. The boy, brandishing a long stick, opened a 
 gate deplorably in want of mending, and the sheep 
 crowded through, keenly looked after by the dogs, who 
 waited meanwhile on their flanks with heads up, ears 
 cocked, and that air of self-restrained energy which 
 often makes a sheep-dog more human than his master. 
 The field beyond led to a little larch plantation, where 
 a few primroses showed among the tufts of long, rich 
 grass, and the drifts of last year's leaves. Here the 
 flock scattered a little, but David and the dogs were 
 after them in a twinkling, and the plantation gate was 
 soon closed on the last bleating mother. Then there 
 was nothing more for the boy to do than to go up to 
 the top of the green rising ground on which the farm 
 stood and see if the gate leading to the moor was 
 safely shut. For the sheep he had been driving were 
 not meant for the open moorland. Their feeding 
 grounds lay in the stone-walled fields round the home- 
 stead, and had they strayed on to the mountain beyond, 
 which was reserved for a hardier Scotch breed, David 
 would have been answerable. So he strode, whistling, 
 up the hill to have a look at that top gate, while Louie 
 sauntered down to the stream which ran round the 
 lower pastures to wait for him. 
 
 The top gate was fast, but David climbed the wall 
 and stood there a while, hands in his pockets, legs 
 apart, whistling and looking. 
 
 ' They can see t' Downfall from Stockport to-day,' 
 he was saying to himself ; * it's coomin ower like mad.' 
 
 Some distance away in front of liiui, beyond the
 
 CHAI'. I 
 
 flllLDIIOOl) 
 
 undulating heather ground at his feet, rose a magni- 
 ficent curving front of moor, the steep sides of it 
 crowned with bhick edges and cliffs of grit, the outline 
 of the south-western end sweeping finely up on the 
 right to a purple peak, the king of all the moorland 
 round. No such colour as clothed that bronzed and 
 reddish wall of rock, heather, and bilberry is known 
 to Westmoreland, hardly to Scotland ; it seems to be 
 the peculiar i)roperty of that lonely and inaccessible 
 district which marks the mountainous centre of mid- 
 England — the district of Kinder Scout and the High 
 Peak. Before the boy's ranging eye spread the whole 
 western rampart of the Peak — to the right, the highest 
 point, of Kinder Low, to the left, ' edge ' behind ' edge,' 
 till the central rocky mass sank and faded towards the 
 north into milder forms of green and undulating hills. 
 Tn the very centre of the great curve a white and surg- 
 ing mass of water cleft the mountain from top to bot- 
 tom, falling straight over the edge, here some two 
 thousand feet above the sea, and roaring downward 
 along an almost precipitous bed into the stream — the 
 Kinder — which swept round the hill on which the boy 
 was standing, and througli the valley behind him. In 
 ordinary times the * Downfall,' as the natives call it, 
 only makes itself visible on the mountain-side as a 
 black ravine of tossed and tumbled rocks. But there 
 had been a late snowfall on the high plateau beyond, 
 followed by heavy rain, and the swollen stream was 
 to-day worthy of its grand setting of cliff and moor. 
 On such occasions it becomes a landmark for all the 
 country round, for the cotton-spinning centres of New 
 Mills and Stocki)ort, as well as for the grey and scat- 
 tered farms whi(di climb the long backs of moorland 
 lying between the Peak and the Cheshire border. 
 
 To-day, also, after the snow and rains of early 
 April, the air was clear again. The sun was shining ;
 
 6 TIIK HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 a cold, dry wind was blowing ; there were sounds of 
 spring in the air, and signs of it on the thorns and 
 larches. Far away on the boundary wall of the farm- 
 land a cuckoo was sitting, his long tail swinging 
 behind him, his inonotonous note filling the valley ; 
 and overhead a couple of peewits chased each other in 
 the pale, Avindy blue. 
 
 The keen air, the sun after the rain, sent life and 
 exhilaration through the boy's young limbs. He leapt 
 from the wall, and raced back down the field, his dogs 
 streaming behind him, the sheep, with their newly 
 dro])ped lambs, shrinking timidly to either side as he 
 passed. He made for a corner in the wall, vaulted it 
 on to the moor, crossed a rough dam built in the 
 stream for sheep-washing purposes, jumped in and out 
 of the two grey-walled sheep-pens beyond, and then 
 made leisurely for a spot in the brook — not the Down- 
 fall stream, but the Red Brook, one of its westerly 
 affluents — where he had left a miniature water-wheel 
 at work the day before. Before him and around him 
 spread the brown bosom of Kinder Scout ; the culti- 
 vated land was left behind ; here on all sides, as far 
 as the eye could see, was the wild home of heather 
 and plashing water, of grouse and peewit, of cloud and 
 breeze. 
 
 The little wheel, sha2:)ed from a block of firwood, 
 was turning merrily under a jet of water carefully 
 conducted to it from a neighbouring fall. David went 
 down on hands and knees to examine it. He made 
 some little alteration in the primitive machinery of 
 it, his fingers touching it lightly and iieatly, and then, 
 delighted with the success of it, he called Louie to 
 come and look. 
 
 Louie was sitting a few yards further up the 
 stream, crooning to herself as she swung to and fro, 
 and snatching every now and then at some tufts of
 
 CHAP. J CH1LJJ11(J()J> 7 
 
 I)rini roses growing near lier, which she wrenched 
 away witli a hasty, wasteful hand, careless, appar- 
 ently, whether they reached her la}) or merely strewed 
 the turf about her with their torn blossoms. When 
 David called her she gathered up the flowers anyhow 
 ill her aiiron, and dawdled towards him, leaving a trail 
 of them behind her. As she reached him, however, 
 she was struck by a book sticking out of his pocket, 
 and, stooping over him, with a sudden hawk-like ges- 
 ture, as he sprawled head downwards, she tried to 
 get hold of it. 
 
 JUit he felt her movement. ' Let goo ! ' he said 
 imperiously, and, throwing himself round, while one 
 foot slipped into the water, he caught her hand, 
 with its thin predatory fingers, and pulled the book 
 away. 
 
 ' Yo just leave my books alone, Louie. Yo do "em 
 a mischeef whaniver yo can — an I'll not have it.' 
 
 He turned his handsome, regular face, crimsoned 
 by his position and si)lashed by the water, towards 
 her with an indignant air. She laughed, and sat her- 
 self down again on the grass, looking a very imp of 
 provocation, 
 
 ' They're stupid,' she said, shortly. ' They mak yo 
 a stupid gonner ony ways.' 
 
 ' Oh ! do they ? ' he retorted, angrily. ' Bit I'll be 
 even wi yo. I'll tell yo noa moor stories out of 'em, 
 not if yo ast iver so.' 
 
 The girl's mouth curled contemptuously, and she 
 began to gather her [)rimroses into a bunch with an 
 air of the utmost serenity. She was a thin, agile, 
 lightly made creature, apparently about eleven. Her 
 piercing black eyes, when they lifted, seemed to over- 
 weight the face, whereof the other features were at 
 present small and pinched. The mouth had a trick of 
 remaining slightly open, showing a line of small pearly
 
 8 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE hook i 
 
 teeth ; the chin was a little sharp and shrewish. As 
 for the hair, it promised to be splendid ; at present it 
 was an unkempt, tangled mass, which Hannah Grieve, 
 tlie children's aunt, for her own credit's sake at chapel, 
 or in the public street, made occasional violent attempts 
 to reduce to order — to very little purpose, so strong and 
 stubborn was the curl of it. The whole figure was out 
 of keeping with the English moorside, with the sheep, 
 and the primroses. 
 
 But so indeed was that of the boy, whose dark 
 colouring was more vivacious and pronounced than 
 his sister's, because the red of his cheek and lip was 
 deeper, while his features, though larger than hers, 
 were more finely regular, and his eyes had the same 
 piercing blackness, the same all-examining keenness, 
 as hers. The yellowish tones of his worn fustian suit 
 and a red Tam-o'-Shanter cap completed the general 
 effect of brilliancy and, as it were, foreignness. 
 
 Having finished his inspection of his water-mill, he 
 scrambled across to the other side of the stream so as 
 to be well out of his sister's way, and, taking out the 
 volume which was stretching his pocket, he began to 
 read it. It was a brown calf-bound book, much worn, 
 and on its title-page it bore the title of ' The Wars of 
 Jerusalem,' of Flavins Josephus, translated by S. Cal- 
 met, and a date somewhere in the middle of the eigh- 
 teenth century. To this antique fare the boy settled 
 himself down. The two collies lay couched beside 
 him ; a stone-chat perched on one or other of the great 
 blocks which lay scattered over the heath gave out his 
 clinking note; while every now and then the loud 
 peevish cluck of the grouse came from the distant 
 sides of the Scout. 
 
 Titus was now making his final assault on the 
 Temple. The Zealots were gathered in the innermost 
 court, frantically beseeching Heaven for a sign ; the
 
 CHAT. I 
 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 walls, the outer approaches of tlie Sanctuary were 
 choked with the dying and the dead. David sat ab- 
 sorbed, elbows on knees, his face framed in his hands. 
 Suddenly the descent of something cold and clammy 
 on his bent neck roused him with a most unpleasant 
 shock. 
 
 Quick as lightning he faced round, snatching at his 
 assailant ; but Louie was off, scudding among the bil- 
 berry hillocks with peals of laughter, while the slimy 
 moss she had just gathered from the edges of the 
 brook sent cold creeping streams into the recesses of 
 David's neck and shoulders, lie shook himself free 
 of the mess as best he could, and rushed after her. 
 For a long time he chased her in vain, then her foot 
 tripped, and he came up with her just as she rolled 
 into the heather, gathered up like a hedgehog against 
 attack, her old hat held down over her ears and face. 
 David fell upon her and chastised her ; but his fisti- 
 cuffs probably looked more formidable than they felt, 
 for Louie laughed i)rovokingly all the time, and when 
 he stopped out of breath she said exultantly, as she 
 sprang up, holding her skirts round her ready for an- 
 other flight, ' It's greened aw yur neck and yur collar 
 — luvely ! Doan't yo be nassty for nothink next 
 time I ' 
 
 And off she ran. 
 
 ' If yo meddle wi me ony moor,' he shouted after 
 her fiercely, 'yo see what I'll do ! ' 
 
 But in reality the male was helpless, as usual. lie 
 went ruefully down to the brook, and loosening his 
 shirt and coat tried to clean his neck and hair. Then, 
 extremely sticky and uncomfortable, he Avent back to 
 his seat and his book, his wrathful eyes taking careful 
 note meanwhile of Louie's whereabouts. And thence- 
 forward he read, as it were, on guard, looking up every 
 other minute.
 
 10 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE hook i 
 
 Louie established herself some way up tlie further 
 slope, in a steep stony nook, under two black boulders, 
 which protected her rear in case of reprisals from 
 David. Time passed away. David, on the other side 
 of the brook, revelling in the joys of battle, and all 
 the more alive to them perhaps because of the watch 
 kept on Louie by one section of his brain, was con- 
 scious of no length in the minutes. But Louie's mood 
 gradually became one of extreme flatness. All her 
 resources Avere for the moment at an end. She could 
 til ink of no fresh torment for David ; besides, she knew 
 that she w^as observed. She had destroyed all the 
 scanty store of primroses along the brook; gathered 
 rushes, begun to plait them, and thrown them away ; 
 she had found a grouse's nest among the dead fern, 
 and, contrary to the most solemn injunctions of uncle 
 and keeper, enforced by the direst threats, had pur- 
 loined and broken an egg ; and still dinner-time delayed. 
 Perhaps, too, the cold blighting wind, which soon made 
 her look blue and pinched, tamed her insensibly. At 
 any rate, she got up after about an hour, and coolly 
 walked across to David. 
 
 He looked up at her with a quick frown. But she 
 sat down, and, clasping her hands round her knees, 
 while the primroses she had stuck in her hat dangled 
 over her defiant eyes, she looked at him with a grin- 
 ning composure. 
 
 ' Yo can read out if yo want to,' she remarked. 
 
 'Yo doan't deserve nowt, an I shan't,' said David, 
 shortly. 
 
 'Then I'll tell Aunt Hannah about how yo let t' 
 lambs stray lasst evenin, and about yor readin at neet.' 
 
 ' Yo may tell her aw t' tally diddles yo can think 
 on,' was the unpromising reply. 
 
 Louie threw all the scorn possible into her forced 
 smile, and then, dropping full-length into the heather,
 
 f:nAi'. I CHILDHOOD 11 
 
 she began to sing at the top of a shrill, unpleasing 
 voice, mainly, of course, for the sake of harrying any- 
 one in her neighbourhood who might wish to read. 
 
 * Stop that squealin ! ' David commanded, peremp- 
 torily. Whereupon Louie sang louder than before. 
 
 David looked round in a fury, but his fury was, 
 apparently, instantly damped by the inward conviction, 
 l)()ru of long experience, that he could do nothing to 
 help himself. He sprang up, and thrust his book 
 into his pocket. 
 
 'Nobory nil mak owt o' yo till yo get a bastin 
 twice a day, wi an odd lick extra for Sundays,' he 
 remarked to her with grim emphasis when he had 
 reached what seemed to him a safe distance. Then 
 he turned and strode up the face of the hill, the dogs 
 at his heels. Louie turned on her elbow, and threw 
 such small stones as she could discover among the 
 heather after him, but they fell harmlessly about 
 him, and did not answer their purpose of provoking 
 him to turn round again. 
 
 She observed that he was going up to the old 
 Smithy on the side of Kinder Low, and in a few min- 
 utes she got up and sauntered lazily after him. 
 
 * T' owd smithy ' had been the enchanted ground of 
 David's childhood. It was a ruined building standing 
 deep in heather, half-way up the mountain-side, and 
 ringed by scattered blocks and tabular slabs of grit. 
 Here in times far remote — beyond the memory of even 
 the oldest inhabitant — the millstones of the district, 
 which gave their name to the •' millstone grit ' forma- 
 tion of the Peak, weie fashioned. High up on the 
 dark moorside stood what remained of the primitive 
 workshop. The fire-marked stones of the hearth were 
 l)lainly visible ; deep in the heather near lay the 
 broken jambs of the window ; a stone doorway with 
 its lintel was still standing ; and on the slope beneath
 
 12 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 it, hardly to be distinguished now from the great 
 primaeval blocks out of which they had sprung and to 
 which they were fast returning, reposed two or three 
 huge millstones. Perhaps they bordered some an- 
 cient track, climbed by the millers of the past when 
 they came to. this remote spot to giv-^e their orders ; 
 but, if so, the track had long since sunk out of sight 
 in the heather, and no visible link remained to con- 
 nect the history of this high and lonely place with 
 that of those teeming valleys hidden to west and 
 north among the moors, the dwellers wherein must 
 once have known it well. From the old threshold the 
 eye commanded a wilderness of moors, rising wave- 
 like one after another, from the green swell just 
 below whereon stood Reuben Grieve's farm, to the 
 far-distant Alderley Edge. In the hollows between, 
 dim tall chimneys veiled in mist and smoke showed 
 the places of the cotton towns — of Haytield, Xew 
 Mills, Staley bridge, Stockport ; while in the far north- 
 west, any gazer to whom the country-side spoke famil- 
 iarly, might, in any ordinary clearness of weather, look 
 for and find the eternal smoke-cloud of Manchester. 
 
 So the deserted smithy stood as it were spectator 
 for ever of that younger, busier England which wanted 
 it no more. Human life notwithstanding had left 
 on it some very recent traces. On the lintel of the 
 ruined door two names were scratched deep into the 
 whitish under-grain of the black weather-beaten grit. 
 The upper one ran: 'David Suveret Grieve, Sept. 15, 
 1863 ; ' the lower, ' Louise Stephanie Grieve, Sept. 15, 
 1863.' They were written in bold round-hand, and 
 could be read at a considerable distance. During the 
 nine months they had been there, many a rustic 
 passer-by had been stojjped by them, especially by 
 the oddity of the name Suveret, which tormented the 
 Derbyshire mouth.
 
 CHAP. I C'lITLDIK Kil) 13 
 
 In a ronier of the walls stood something more puz- 
 zling still — a large iron pan, filled to the brim with 
 water, and firmly bedded on a foundation of earth and 
 stones. So still in general was the shining sheltered 
 round, that the branches of the mountain ash which 
 leant against the crumbling wall, the tufts of hard 
 fern growing among the stones, the clouds which 
 sailed overhead, were all delicately mirrored in it. 
 That pan was David Grieve's dearest possession, and 
 those reflections, so magical, and so alive, had con- 
 trived for him many a half-hour of almost breathless 
 pleasure. He had carried it off from the refuse-yard 
 of a foundry in the valley, where he had a friend in 
 one of the apprentices. The farm donkey and him- 
 self had dragged it thither on a certain never-to-be- 
 forgotten day, when Uncle Reuben had been on the 
 other side of the mountain at a shepherds' meeting in 
 the Woodlands, while Aunt Hannah was safely up to 
 her elbows in the washtub. Boy's back and donkey's 
 back had nearly broken under the task, but there the 
 pan stood at last, the delight of David's heart. In a 
 crevice of the wall beside it, hidden jealously from 
 the passer-by, lay the other half of that perpetual 
 entertainment it provided — a store of tiny boats fash- 
 ioned by David, and another friend, the lame minister 
 of the ' Christian Brethren ' congregation at Clough 
 End, the small factory town just below Kinder, who 
 was a sea-captain's son, and with a knife and a bit of 
 deal could fashion you any craft you pleased. These 
 boats David only brought out on rare occasions, very 
 seldom admitting Louie to the show. But when he 
 pleased they became fleets, and sailed for new conti- 
 nents. Here were the ships of Captain Cook, there 
 the ships of Columbus. On one side of the pan lay 
 the Spanish main, on the other the islands of the 
 South Seas. A (H-rtain tattered copy of the '' Royal
 
 14 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 Magazine/ with pictures, which hxy in Uncle Reuben's 
 Clipboard at home, provided all that for David was 
 to be known of these names and places. But fancy 
 played pilot and led the way ; she conjured up storms 
 and islands and adventures ; and as he hung over his 
 pan high on the Derbyshire moor, the boy, like Sidney 
 of old, ' sailed the seas where there was never sand ' 
 — the vast and viewless oceans of romance. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Once safe in the Smithy, David recovered his temper. 
 If Louie followed him, which was probable, he would 
 know better how to deal with her here, with a wall at 
 his back and a definite area to defend, than he did in 
 the treacherous openness of the heath. However, 
 just as he was settling himself down, with a sigh of 
 relief, between the pan and the wall, he caught sight 
 of something through one of the gaps of the old ruin 
 which made -him fling down his book and run to the 
 doorway. There, putting his fingers to his mouth, he 
 blew a shrill whistle along the side of the Scout. A 
 bent figure on a distant path stopped at the sound. 
 It was an old man, with a plaid hanging from his 
 shoulders. He raised the stick he held, and shook it 
 in recognition of David's signal. Then resuming his 
 bowed walk, he came slowly on, followed by an old 
 hound, whose gait seemed as feeble as his master's. 
 
 David leant against the doorway waiting. Louie, 
 meanwhile, was lounging in the heather just below 
 him, having very soon caught him up. 
 
 ' What d' yo want 'im for ? ' she asked contemptu- 
 ously, as the new-comer approached: 'he'd owt to be 
 in th' sylum. Aunt Hannah says he's gone that silly, 
 he owt to be took up.'
 
 ciiAf. II rillLDIIooD 15 
 
 ' Well, he woan't be, then,' retorted David. ' Theer's 
 nobory about as all lay a finger on 'im. He doan't do 
 her no harm, nor yo noatlier. Women foak and gells 
 alius want to be wooryin soomtliin.' 
 
 'Aunt Hannah says he lost his wits wi fuddlin,' 
 repeated Louie shrilly, striking straighter still for 
 what she knew to be one of David's tenderost points — 
 his friendship for 'owd 'Lias Dawson,' the queer 
 dreamer, who, fifteen years before, had been the 
 schoolmaster of Frimley Moor End, and in local 
 esteem ' t' cliverest mon abeawt t' Peak.' 
 
 David with difficulty controlled a hot inclination to 
 fall upon his sister once more. Instead, however, he 
 affected not to hear her, and shouted a loud 'Good 
 niornin ' to the old man, who was toiling up the knoll 
 on which the smithy stood. 
 
 'Lias responded feebly, panting hard the while. 
 He sank down on a stone outside the smithy, and for 
 a while had neither breath nor voice. Then he began 
 to look about him ; his heaving chest subsided, and 
 there was a rekindling of the strange blue eyes. He 
 wore a high white stock and ueckcloth ; his plaid hung 
 round his emaciated shoulders with a certain antique 
 dignity ; his rusty wideawake covered hair still abun- 
 dant and even curly, but snow-white ; the face, with 
 its white eyebrows, was long, thin, and full of an 
 ascetic delicacy. 
 
 ' Wal, Davy, my lad,' the old man said at last, with 
 a sort of pompous mildness ; ' I winna blame yo for 't, 
 but yo interrupted me sadly wi yur whistlin. I ha 
 been occupied this day wi business o' grciat import- 
 ance. His Majesty King Charles has been wi me 
 since seven o'clock this raornin. And for th' fust 
 time I ha been gettiu reet to th' bottoyn o' things wi 
 him. I ha been probin him, Davy — probin him. He 
 couldno riddle through wi loes ; I kept him to 't, as
 
 16 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 yo mun keep a horse to a jump — straight an tight. I 
 had it aw out about Strafford, an t' Five Members, an 
 thoose dirty dealins wi th' Irish devils ! Yo should 
 ha yerd it, Davy — yo should, I'll uphowd yo ! ' 
 
 And placing his stick between his knees, the old 
 man leant his hands upon it, with a meditative and 
 judicial air. The boy stood looking down at him, a 
 broad smile lighting up the dark and vivid face. Old 
 'Lias supplied him with a perpetual ' spectacle ' which 
 never palled. 
 
 'Coe him back, 'Lias, he's soomwheer about. Yo 
 need nobbut coe him, an he'll coom.' 
 
 'Lias looked fatuously pleased. He lifted his head 
 and affected to scan the path along which he had just 
 travelled. 
 
 ' Aye, I daur say he's not far. — Yor Majesty ! ' 
 
 And 'Lias laid his head on one side and listened. 
 In a few seconds a cunning smile stole over his lips. 
 
 ' Wal, Davy, yo're in luck. He's noan so onwillin, 
 we'st ha him here in a twinklin. Yo may coe him 
 mony things, but yo conno coe him proud. ISToa, as 
 I've fund him, Charles Stuart has no soart o' pride 
 about him. Aye, theer yo are ! Sir, your Majesty's 
 obleeged an humble servant ! ' 
 
 And, raising his hand to his hat, the old man took 
 it off and swept it round with a courtly deliberation. 
 Then replacing it, he sat with his face raised, as 
 though to one standing near, his whole attitude full of 
 a careful and pomjoous dignity. 
 
 'Kow then, yor Majesty,' said 'Lias grimly, 'I'st ha 
 to put that question to yo, yance moor, yo wor noan 
 so well pleased Avi this mornin. But yo shouldno be 
 soa tender, mon ! Th' truth can do yo noa harm, 
 wheer yo are, an I'm nobbut askin for informashuri' s 
 sake. Soa out Avi it ; I'st not use it agen yo. Tliat 
 — loee — hit — o' — damned — -paper, — man, what sent poor
 
 CHAP. II fHILDHOOD 17 
 
 Strafford to liis eeiul — yo mind it ? — aye, 'at yo do ! 
 Well, now ' — and the old man's tone grew gently 
 seductive — 'expUiin ynrsel. We'n had their tale,' and 
 he pointed away to some imaginary accusers. 'But 
 yo man trust an Englishman's sense o' fair play. Say 
 your say. We' st gie yo a varra patient hearin.' 
 
 And with chin thrown up, and his hall-blurred eyes 
 blinking under their white lashes, 'Lias waited with 
 a bland imperativeness for the answer. 
 
 •Eh?' said 'Lias at last, frowning and hollowing 
 his hand to his ear. 
 
 He listened another few seconds, then he dropped 
 his hand sharply. 
 
 • What's 'at yo're sayin ? ' he asked hastily ; ' 'at 
 yo couldno help it, not ivhativer — that i' truth yo had 
 nothin to do wi 't, uo moor than mysel — that yo wor 
 foix'it to it — willy-nilly — by them devils o' Parliament 
 foak — by ]\lr. Pym and his loike, Avi whom, if God- 
 amighty ha' not reckoned since, theer's no moor justice 
 i' His Kingdom than yo found i' yours ? ' 
 
 The words came out with a rush, tumbling over one 
 another till they suddenly broke off in a loud key of 
 indignant scorn. Then 'Lias. fell silent a moment, and 
 slowly shook his head over the inveterate shuffling of 
 the House of Stuart. 
 
 ' 'Twinna do, man — 'twinna do,' he said at last, with 
 an air of fine reproof. * He wor j^our friend, wor that 
 poor sinner Strafford — your awn familiar friend, as t' 
 Psalm says. I'm not takin up a brief for him, t' 
 Lord knoAVs ! He wor but meetin his deserts, to my 
 thinkin, when his yed went loupin. But yo put a 
 black nuirk agen 7jore name when yo signed that bit 
 paper for your awn skin's sake. Xaw, naw, man, 3-0 
 should ha lost your awn yetl a bit sooner fust. Eh, 
 it wor base — it wor cooardly I ' 
 
 'Lias's voice dropped, and he fell muttering to him- 
 
 VOL. I c
 
 18 THE HISTORY OP DAVID GEIEVE book i 
 
 self indistinctly. David, bending over him, could 
 not make out whether it was Charles or his interlo- 
 cutor speaking, and began to be afraid that the old 
 man's performance was over before it had well begun. 
 But on the contrary, 'Lias emerged with fresh energy 
 from the gulf of inarticulate argument in which his 
 poor wits seemed to have lost themselves awhile. 
 
 'But I'm no blamin yo awthegither,' he cried, 
 raising himself, with a protesting wave of the hand. 
 'Theer's naw mak o' mischief i' this world, but t' 
 women are at t' bottom o't. Whar's that proud foo 
 of a wife o' yourn ? Send her here, man ; send her 
 here ! 'Lias Dawson ull mak her hear reason ! Now, 
 Davy ! ' 
 
 And the old man drew the lad to him with one 
 hand, wdiile he raised a finger softly with the other, 
 
 'Just study her, Davy, my lad,' he said in an 
 undertone, which swelled louder as his excitement 
 grew, 'theer she stan's, by t' side o' t' King. She's a 
 gay good-lookin female, that I'll confess to, but study 
 her ; look at her curls, Davy, an her paint, an her 
 nakedness. For shame, madam ! Goo hide that 
 neck o' yourn, goo hide it, I say ! An her faldaddles, 
 an her jewels, an her ribbons. Is that a woman — a 
 French hizzy like that — to get a King out o' trooble, 
 wha's awready lost aw t' wits he wor born wi ? ' 
 
 And with sparkling eyes and outstretched arm 
 'Lias pointed sternly into vacancy. Thrilled with 
 involuntary awe the boy and girl looked round them. 
 For, in spite of herself, Louie had come closer, little 
 by little, and was now sitting cross-legged in front of 
 'Lias. Then Louie's shrill voice broke in — 
 
 ' Tell us what she's got on ! ' And the girl leant 
 eagerly forward, her magnificent eyes kindling into 
 interest. 
 
 ' What she's got on, my lassie ? Eh, but I'm feart
 
 (•iiAi>. II ('IIILDIK)OD 19 
 
 your yead, too, is fu' o' gauds ! — Wal, it's but nateral 
 to femal(!S. She's aw in white satin, my lassie, — an 
 in her brown liair theer's pearls, an a blue ribbon just 
 howdin down t' little luve-locks on her forehead — an 
 on her saft neck theer's pearls again — not soa white, 
 by a thoosand mile, as her white skin — an t' lace fa's 
 ower her proud shoothers, an down her luvely arms — 
 an she looks at me wi her angry eyes — Eh, but she's a 
 queen ! ' cried 'Lias, in a sudden outburst of admira- 
 tion. ' She hath been a persecutor o' th' saints — a 
 varra Jeezebel — the Lord hath put her to shame — but 
 she's moor sperrit — moor o' t' blood o' kingship i' her 
 little tiuger, nor Charles tlieer in aw his body ! ' 
 
 And by a strange and crazy reversal of feeling, the 
 old man sat in a kind of ecstasy, enamoured of his 
 own creation, looking into thin air. As for Louie, 
 during the description of the Queen's dress she had 
 drunk in every word with a greedy attention, her 
 changing eyes fixed on the speaker's face. When he 
 stopped, however, she drew a long breath. 
 
 ' It's aw lees ! ' she said scornfully. 
 
 ' Howd your tongue, Louie ! ' cried David, angrily. 
 
 But 'Lias took no notice. He was talking again 
 very fast, but incoherently. Hampden, Pym, Fairfax, 
 Falkland — the great names clattered past every now 
 and then, like horsemen, through a maze of words, 
 but with no perceptible order or purpose. The 
 phrases concerning them came to nothing ; and though 
 there were apparently many voices speaking, nothing 
 intelligible could be made out. 
 
 When next the mists cleared a little from the old 
 visionary's brain, David gathered that Cromwell was 
 close by, defending himself with ditHculty, apparently, 
 like Charles, against 'Lias's assaults. In his youth 
 and middle age — until, in fact, an event of some 
 })athos and mystery had broken his life across, and
 
 20 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 cut liim off from his profession — 'Lias liad been a 
 zealous teacher and a voracious reader ; and through 
 the dreams of fifteen years the didactic faculty had 
 persisted and grown amazingly. He played school- 
 master now to all the heroes of history. Whether 
 it were Elizabeth wrangling with Mary Stuart, or 
 Cromwell marshalling his Ironsides, or Buckingham 
 falling under the assassin's dagger at 'Lias's feet, or 
 Xapoleon walking restlessly up and down the deck of 
 the 'Belleroplion,' 'Lias rated them everyone. He 
 was lord of a shadow world, wherein he walked with 
 kings and queens, warriors and poets, putting them 
 one and all superbly to rights. Yet so subtle were 
 the old man's wits, and so bright his fancy, even in 
 derangement, that he preserved through it all a con- 
 siderable measure of dramatic fitness. He gave his 
 puppets a certain freedom ; he let them state their 
 case ; and threw almost as much ingenuity into the 
 pleading of it as into the refuting of it. Of late, 
 since he had made friends with Davy Grieve, he had 
 contracted a curious habit of weaving the boy into 
 his visions. 
 
 ' Davy, what's your opinion o' that ? ' or, ' Davy, my 
 lad, did yo iver hear sich clit-clat i' your life ? ' or 
 again, 'Davy, yo'll not be misled, surely, by sich a 
 piece o' speshul-pleadin as that ? ' 
 
 So the appeals would run, and the boy, at first be- 
 wildered, and even irritated by them, as by something 
 which threw hindrances in the way of the only 
 dramatic entertainment the High Peak was likely to 
 afford him, had learnt at last to join in them with 
 relish. Many meetings with 'Lias on the moorside, 
 which tlie old seer made alive for both of them — the 
 plundering of 'Lias's books, whence he had drawn the 
 brown ' Josephus' in his pocket — these had done more 
 than anything else to stock the boy's head with
 
 cii.vr. II 
 
 Cllll.J)ll«»<iD 21 
 
 its present strange jumble of knowledge and ideas. 
 Knowledge, indeed, it scarcely was, but rather the 
 materials lor a certain kind of excitement. 
 
 ' Wal, Davy, did yo hear that ? ' said 'Lias, pres- 
 ently, looking round on the boy with a doubtful coun- 
 teiiance, after Cromwell had given an unctuous and 
 highly Biblical account of the slaughter at Drogheda 
 and its reasons. 
 
 'How mony did he say he killed at that place?' 
 asked the boy sharply. 
 
 'Thoosands,' sai<l Dawson, solemnly. 'Theer was 
 naw mercy asked nor gi"en. And those wha escaped 
 kno(;kin on t' yead, were aw sold as slaves— every 
 mon jock o' them ! ' 
 
 A strong light of anger showed itself in David's 
 face. 
 
 ' Then he wor a cantin murderer 1 Yo mun tell 
 him so ! If I'd my way, he'd hang for 't ! ' 
 
 > Eh, laddie, they were nowt but rebels and Papists,' 
 said the old man, complacently. 
 
 'Don't yo becall Papists!' cried David, fiercely, 
 facing round upon him. ' My mither wor a Papist.' 
 
 A curious change of expression appeared on 'Lias's 
 face. He put his hand behind his ear that he might 
 hear better, turned a pair of cunning eyes on David, 
 while his lips pressed themselves together. 
 
 ' Your mither wor a Papist ? an your feyther wor 
 Sandy Grieve. Ay, ay — I've yeerd tell strange things 
 o' Sandy Grieve's wife,' he said slowly. 
 
 Suddenly Louie, who had been lying full length on 
 her back in the sun, with her hat over her face, ap- 
 parently asleep, sat bolt upright. 
 
 'Tell us what about her,' she said imperiously. 
 
 'Xoa — noa,' said the old man, shaking his head, 
 while a sort of film seemed to gather over the eyes, 
 and the face and features relaxed — fell, as it were,
 
 22 THK IIISTOHV OF DAVID GRIEVE hook i 
 
 into their natural expression of weak senility, which 
 so long as he was under the stress of his favourite 
 illusions was hardly apparent. 'But it's true — it's 
 varratrue — I've yeerdtell strange things about Sandy 
 Grieve's wife.' 
 
 And still aimlessly shaking his head, he sat staring 
 at the opposite side of the ravine, the lower jaw drop- 
 ping a little. 
 
 'He knows nowt about it,' said David, roughly, the 
 light of a sombre, half-reluctant curiosity, which had 
 arisen in his look, dying down. 
 
 He threAV himself on the grass by the dogs, and 
 began teasing and playing with them. Meanwhile 
 Louie sat studying 'Lias with a frowning hostility, 
 making faces at him now and then by way of amuse- 
 ment. To disappoint the impetuous will embodied in 
 that small frame was to commit an offence of the first 
 order. 
 
 But one might as well make faces at a stone post as 
 at old 'Lias when his wandering fit was on him. 
 When the entertainment palled, Louie got up with a 
 yawn, meaning to lounge back to the farm and investi- 
 gate the nearness of dinner. But, as she turned, some- 
 thing caught her attention. It was the gleam of a 
 pool, far away beyond the Downfall, on a projecting 
 spur of the moor. 
 
 ' What d' yo coe that bit watter ? ' she asked David, 
 suddenly pointing to it. 
 
 David rolled himself round on his face, and took a 
 look at the l)luish patch on the heather. 
 
 ' It hasna got naw name,' he said, at a venture. 
 
 'Then yo're a stoopid, for it has,' replied Louie, 
 triumphantly. ' It's t' Mermaid Pool. Theer wor a 
 Manchester mon at Wigsons' last week, telling aw 
 maks o' tales. Theer's a mermaid lives in 't — a 
 woman, I tell tha, wi a fish's tail — it's in a book, an
 
 CHAi'. II ("IIILDIIOOD 23 
 
 he read it out, soa theer — an on Easter Eve neet she 
 coonis out, an walks about t' Scout, combin lier liair 
 — an if onybody sees lier an wishes for soonithin, tlicy 
 get it, sartin sure; an ' 
 
 'Mermaids is just faddle an nonsense,' interrupted 
 David, tersely. 
 
 ' Oh, is they ? Then T spose books is faddle. 
 Most on 'em are — t' kind of books yo like — I'll u})- 
 howd yo ! ' 
 
 *0h, is they?' said David, mimicking her. 'Wal, 
 I like 'em, yo see, aw t' same. I tell yo, mermaids is 
 nonsense, cos T ^->jo?" they are. Theer was yan at 
 I [ay field Fair, an the fellys they nearly smashed t' 
 booth down, cos they said it wor a cheat. Theer was 
 just a gell, an they'd stuffed her into a fish's skin and 
 sewed 'er up ; an when yo went close yo could see t' 
 stuffin runnin out of her. An theer was a man as 
 held 'er up by a wire roun her waist, an waggled her i' 
 t' watter. But t' foak as had paid sixpence to coom 
 in, they just took an tore down t' place, an they'd 'a 
 dookt t' man an t' gell boath, if th' coonstable hadn't 
 coom. Naw, mermaids is faddle,' he repeated con- 
 temptuously. 
 
 ' Faddle ? ' repeated 'Lias, interrogatively. 
 
 The children started. They had supposed 'Lias 
 was off doting and talking gibberish for the rest of 
 the morning. But his tone was brisk, and as David 
 looked up he caught a queer flickering brightness in 
 the old man's eye, which showed him that 'Lias was 
 once more capable of furnishing amusement or infor- 
 mation. 
 
 ' ^Vhat do they coe that bit watter, 'Lias ? ' he 
 inquired, pointing to it. 
 
 * That bit watter ? ' repeated 'Lias, eyeing it. A sort 
 of vague trouble came into his face, and his wrinkled 
 hands lying on his stick began to twitch nervously.
 
 24 THE HI8TOKY OF DAVID GKIEVE book i 
 
 * Aye — theer's a Manchester man been cramming 
 Wigsons wi tales — says he gets em out of a book — 
 bout a woman 'at walks t' Scout Easter Eve neet, — 
 an a lot o' ninny-hommer's talk. Yo niver heerd 
 nowt about it — did yo, 'Lias ? ' 
 
 'Yes, yo did, Mr. Dawson — now, didn't yo ? ' said 
 Louie, persuasively, enraged that David would never 
 accept information from her, while she was always 
 expected to take it from him. 
 
 ' A woman — 'at walks t' Scout,' said 'Lias, uncer- 
 tainly, flushing as he spoke. 
 
 Then, looking tremulously from his companions to 
 the pool, he said, angrily raising his stick and shaking 
 it at David, ' Davy, yo're takin advantage — Davy, 
 yo're doin what yo owt not. If my Margret were 
 here, she'd let yo know ! ' 
 
 The words rose into a cry of quavering passion. 
 The children stared at him in amazement. But as 
 Davy, aggrieved, was defending himself, the old 
 man laid a violent hand on his arm and silenced 
 him. His eyes, which were black and keen still in 
 the blanched face, were riveted on the gleaming pool. 
 His features worked as though under the stress of 
 some possessing force ; a shiver ran through the 
 emaciated limbs. 
 
 ' Oh I yo want to know abeaAvt Jenny Crum's pool, 
 do yo ? ' he said at last in a low agitated voice. ' i^Tob- 
 but look, my lad ! — nobbut look I — and see for your- 
 sen.' 
 
 He paused, his chest heaving, his eye fixed. Then, 
 suddenly, he broke out in a flood of passionate speech, 
 still gripping David. 
 
 ' Passon Maine ! Passon Maine ! — ha yo got her, th' 
 owd woman ? Aye, aye — sure enough — 'at 's she — as 
 yo're aw drivin afore yo — hoontit like a wild beeast — 
 wi her grey hair streamin, and her hands tied — Ah ! '
 
 CHAP. II CHILDHOOD 25 
 
 — and the old man gave a wild ory, which startled 
 both the children to their feet. 'Conno yo hear her? 
 eh, but it's enough to tear a body's heart out to hear 
 an owd woman scream like that ! ' 
 
 He stopped, trembling, and listened, his hand hol- 
 lowed to his ear. Louie looked at her brother and 
 laughed nervously ; but her little hard face had paled. 
 David laid hold of her to keej) her quiet, and shook 
 himself free of 'Lias. But 'Lias took no notice of 
 them now at all, his changed seer's gaze saw nothing 
 but the distance and the pool. 
 
 'Are yo quite sure it wor her, Passon?' he went 
 on, appealingly. ' She's nobbut owd, an it's a far cry 
 fro her bit cottage to owd Needham's Farm. An th' 
 chilt might ha deed, and t' cattle might ha strayed, and 
 t' geyats might ha opened o' theirsels ! Yo'll not dare 
 to speak agen that. They mirjht? Ay, ay, we aw know 
 t' devil's strong; but she's eighty -one year coom 
 
 Christmas — an — an . Doan't, domi't let t' childer 
 
 see, nor t' yoong gells ! If yo let em see sich sects 
 they'll breed yo wolves, not babes ! Ah ! ' 
 
 And again 'Lias gave the same cry, and stood half 
 risen, his hands on his staff, looking. 
 
 ' What is it, 'Lias ? ' said David, eagerly ; ' what is 't 
 yo see ? ' 
 
 ' Theer's my grandfeyther,' said 'Lias, almost in a 
 whisper, 'an owd Xeedham an his two brithers, an 
 yoong Jack Needham's woife — her as losst her babby 
 — an yoong lads an lasses fro Clough End, childer 
 awmost, and t' coonstable, and Passon Maine — Ay — 
 ay — yo've doon it ! yo've doon it ! She'll mak naw 
 moor mischeef neets — she's gay quiet now ! T' wat- 
 ter's got her fasst enough ! ' 
 
 And, drawing himself up to his full height, the old 
 man pointed a quivering finger at the pool. 
 
 ' Ay, it's got her — an your stones are tied fasst !
 
 26; THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 Passon Maine says she's safe — that yo'll see her naw 
 
 jnoor — 
 
 While holly sticks be green, 
 
 While stone on Kinder Scoot be seen. 
 
 But 1 tell yo, Passon Maine lees! 1 tell yo t' witch 
 ull KaJk—t' witch ull walk!' 
 
 For several seconds 'liias stood straining forward — 
 out of himself — a tragic and impressive figure. Then, 
 in a moment, from that distance his weird gift had been 
 re-peopling, something else rose towards him-r-some 
 liideous memory, as it seemed, of personal anguish, 
 personal fear. The exalted seer's look vanished, the 
 tension within gave way, the old man shrank together. 
 He fell back heavily on the stone, hiding his face in 
 his hands, and muttering to himself. 
 
 The children looked at each other oddly. Then 
 David, half afraid, touched him. 
 
 ' What's t' matter, 'Lias ? Are yo bad ? ' 
 
 The old man did not move. They caught some dis- 
 jointed Avords, — ' cold — ay, t' neet's cold, varra cold ! ' 
 
 '•'Lias! ' shouted David. 
 
 'Lias looked \\\) startled, anc^ shook his head feebly. 
 
 ' Are yo bad, 'Lias ? ' 
 
 ' Ay ! ' said the old schoolmaster, in the voice of one 
 speaking through a dream — ' ay, varra bad, varra cold 
 — I muu — lig me down — a bit.' 
 
 And he rose feebly. David instinctively caught 
 hold of him, and led him to a corner close by in the 
 ruined walls, where the heather and bilberry grew thick 
 up to the stones. 'Lias sank down, his head fell against 
 the wall, and a light and restless sleep seemed to take 
 possession of him. 
 
 David stood studying him, his hands in his pockets. 
 Never in all his experience of him had 'Lias gone 
 through such a performance as this. What on earth
 
 CHAP. 11 
 
 (JJilLl)lI(XJD 27 
 
 did it mean ? There was more in it than appeared, 
 clearly. He would tell jNIargaret, 'Lias's old wife, who 
 kept liim and tended him like the apple of her eye. 
 And he would find out about the pool, anyway. Jenni/ 
 Cnim's pool ? What on earth did that mean ? The 
 name had never reached his ears before. Of course 
 Uncle Eeuben would know. The boy eyed it curiously, 
 the details of 'Lias's grim vision returning upon him. 
 The wild circling moor seemed suddenly to have gained 
 a mysterious interest. 
 
 'Didn't I tell yo he wor gone silly ?' said Louie, 
 triumphantly, at his elbow. 
 
 ' He's not gone that silly, ony ways, but he can free- 
 ten little gells,' remarked David, dryly, instinctively 
 putting out an arm, meanwhile, to prevent her dis- 
 turbing the poor sleeper. 
 
 'I worn't froctened,' insisted liouie ; ^ yo were I 
 He may skrike aw day if he likes — for aw I care. 
 He'll be runnin into hedges by dayleet soon. Owd 
 churn-yed ! ' 
 
 • Howd your clatterin tongue ! ' said David, angrily, 
 pushing her out of the doorway. She lifted a loose 
 sod of heather, which lay just outside, flung it at him, 
 and then took to her heels, and made for the farm and 
 dinner, with the speed of a wild goat. 
 
 David brushed his clothes, took a stroll with the 
 dogs, and recovered his temper as best he might. 
 When he came back, pricked by the state of his appe- 
 tite, to see whether 'Lias had recovered enough sanity 
 to get home, he found the old man sitting up, looking 
 strangely Avhite and exhausted, and fumbling, in a 
 dazed way, for the tobacco to which he always re- 
 sorted at moments of nervous fatigue. His good wife 
 Margaret never sent him out Avithout mended clothes, 
 spotless linen, and a paper of tobacco in his pocket. 
 He sat chewing it awhile in silence ; David's remai'ks
 
 28 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 to him met with only incoherent answers, and at last 
 the schoolmaster got up and with the help of his stick 
 tottered off along the path by which he had come. 
 David's eyes followed the bent figure uneasily ; nor 
 did he turn homeward till it disappeared over the 
 brow. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Anyone opening the door of Xeedham Farm kitchen 
 that night at eight would have found the inmates at 
 supper — a meagre supper, which should, according to 
 the rule of the house, have been eaten in complete 
 silence. Hannah Grieve, the children's aunt, and 
 mistress of the farm, thought it an offence to talk at 
 meals. She had not been so brought up. 
 
 But Louie this evening was in a state of nerves. 
 The afternoon had seen one of those periodical strug- 
 gles between her and Hannah, which did so much to 
 kee]) life at Needham Farm from stagnating into any- 
 thing like comfort. The two combatants, however, 
 must have taken a certain joy in them, since they 
 recurred with so much regularity. Hannah had won, 
 of course, as the grim self-importance of her bearing 
 amply showed. Louie had been forced to patch the 
 house-linen as usual, mainly by the temjiorary confis- 
 cation of her Sunday hat, the one piece of decent 
 clothing she possessed, and to which she clung with a 
 feverish attachment — generally, indeed, sleeping with 
 it beside her pillow. But, though she was beaten, she 
 was still seething with rebellion. Her eyes were red, 
 but her shaggy head was thrown back defiantly, and 
 there was hysterical battle in the expression of her 
 sharply tilted nose and chin. 
 
 'Mind yorsel,' cried Hannah angrily, as the child
 
 CHAP, in CHILDHOOD 29 
 
 put down her plate of porridge with a bang which 
 made the housewife tremble for her crockery. 
 
 ' What's t' matter wi yo, Louie ? ' said Uncle Reu- 
 ben, looking at her with some discomfort. He had 
 just finished the delivery of a long grace, into which 
 he had thrown much unction, and Louie's manners 
 made but an ill-fitting Amen. 
 
 ' It's nasty ! * said the child passionately. ' It's 
 alius porridge — porridge — porridge — porridge — an I 
 hate it — an it's bitter — an it's a shame ! I wish I wor 
 at Wigson's— 'at I do I ' 
 
 Davy glanced up at his sister under his eyebrows. 
 Hannah scanned her niece all over with a slow, ob- 
 servant scrutiny, as though she were a dangerous 
 animal that must be watched. Otherwise Louie misrht 
 have spoken to the wall for all the effect she produced. 
 Reuben, however, was more vulnerable. 
 
 ' What d' 3^0 want to be at Wigson's for ? ' he asked. 
 'Yo should be content wi your state o' life, Louie. 
 It's a sin to be discontented — I've tellt yo so many 
 times.' 
 
 ' They've got scones and rhubarb jam for tea I ' 
 cried the child, tunibling the news out as though she 
 were bursting with it. 'Mrs. Wigson, she's alius 
 makin em nice things. She's kind, she is — she's nice 
 — she wouldn't make em eat stuff like this — she'd give 
 it to the pigs — 'at she would ! ' 
 
 And all the time it was pitiful to see how the child 
 was gobbling up her unpalatable food, evidently from 
 the instinctive fear, nasty as it was, that it would be 
 taken from her as a punishment for her behaviour. 
 
 ' Xow, Louie, yo're a silly gell,' began Reuben, ex- 
 postulating ; but Hannah interposed. 
 
 'Iwudn't advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to go wastin 
 your breath on sich a minx. If I were yo, I'd keep it 
 fur my awn eatin.'
 
 30 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 And she calmly put another slice of cold bacon on 
 his plate, as though reminding him of his proper 
 business. Eeuben fell silent and munched his bacon, 
 though be could not forbear studying his niece every 
 now and then uncomfortably. He Avas a tall, large- 
 boned man, with weakish eyes, sandy whiskers and 
 beard, grown in a fringe round his long face, and a 
 generall}' clumsy and disjointed air. The tremulous, 
 uncertain movements of his hand as he stretched it 
 out for one article of food after another seemed to 
 express the man's character. 
 
 Louie went on gulping down her porridge. Her 
 plate was just empty when Hannah caught a move- 
 ment of Reuben's fork. He was in the act of fur- 
 tively transferring to Louie a portion of bacon. But 
 he could not restrain himself from looking at Hannah 
 as he held out the morsel. Hannah's answering look 
 was too much for him. The bacon went into his 
 mouth. 
 
 Supper over, Louie went out to sit on the steps, and 
 Hannah contemptuously forbore to make her come in 
 and help clear away. Out in the air, the child slowly 
 quieted down. It was a clear, frosty April night, 
 promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew 
 on the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against 
 her will almost, her spirits came back. She swept 
 Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan 
 something which consoled her. When would they 
 have their stupid prayers and let her get upstairs ? 
 
 David meanwhile hung about the kitchen. He 
 would have liked to ask Uncle Reuben about the pool 
 and 'Lias's story, but Hannah was bustling about, and 
 he never mentioned 'Lias in her hearing. To do so 
 would have been like handing over something weak, 
 for which he had a tenderness, to be Avorried. 
 
 But he rummaged out an old paper-covered guide
 
 cHAi'. Ill nilLDIIOOD 31 
 
 to the Peak, which lie renieinbered to liave been left 
 at tlie farm one sinnmcr's day b}' a passing tourist, 
 who paid Hannah handsomely for some bread and 
 cheese. Turning to the part which concerned Clough 
 End, Hayfield, and the Scout, he found : — 
 
 'In speaking of the Mermaiden's Pool, it may be 
 remarked that the natives of several little hamlets 
 surrounding Kinder .Scout have long had a tradition 
 that there is a beautiful woman — an English Hama- 
 dryad — lives in the side of the Scout; that she comes 
 to bathe every day in the ]\lermaid's Well, and that 
 the man who has the good luck to behold her bathing 
 will become immortal and never die.' 
 
 David shut the book and fell pondering, like many 
 another wiser mortal before him, on the discrepancies 
 of evidence. What was a Hamadryad? and why no 
 mention of Easter Eve '.' and what had it all to do 
 with the witch and Parson Maine and 'Lias's ex- 
 citement ? 
 
 Meanwhile, the thump made by the big family 
 Bible as Hannah deposited it on the table warned 
 both him and the truant outside that prayer-time had 
 come. Louie came in noisily Avhen she was called, 
 and both children lounged unwillingly into their ap- 
 pointed seats. 
 
 Nothing but the impatience and inditference of 
 childhood, however, could have grudged Reuben 
 Grieve the half-hour which followed. During that 
 one half-hour in the day, the mild, effaced man, w^hose 
 absent-minded ways and complete lack of business 
 faculty were the perpetual torment of his wife, was 
 master of his house. While he was rolling out the 
 psalm, expounding the chapter, or ' wrestling ' in 
 prayer, he was a personality and an influence even for 
 the wife who, in spite of a dumb congruity of habit, 
 regarded him generally as incompetent and in the
 
 32 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 way. Reuben's religious sense was strong and deep, 
 but some very natural and pathetically human in- 
 stincts entered also into his constant pleasure in this 
 daily function. Hannah, with her strong and harsh 
 features settled into repose, with her large hands, red- 
 dened by the day's work, lying idle in her lap, sat op- 
 posite to him in silence ; for once she listened to him, 
 whereas all day he had listened to her ; and the mo- 
 ment made a daily oasis in the life of a man who, in 
 his own dull, peasant way, knew that he was a failure, 
 and knew also that no one was so Avell aware of it as 
 his wife. 
 
 With David and Louie the absorbing interest was 
 generally to see whether the prayer would be over 
 before the eight-day clock struck nine, or whether the 
 loud whirr which preceded that event would be sud- 
 denly and deafeningly let loose upon Uncle Eeuben 
 in the middle of his peroration, as sometimes hap- 
 pened when the speaker forgot himself. To-night 
 that catastrophe was just avoided by a somewhat ob- 
 vious hurry through the Lord's Prayer. When they 
 rose from their knees Hannah put away the Bible, 
 the boy and girl raced each other upstairs, and the 
 elders were left alone. 
 
 An hour passed away. Reuben was dozing j^eace- 
 fully in the chimney-corner ; Aunt Hannah had just 
 finished putting a patch on a pair of Reuben's trousers, 
 was folding up her work and preparing to rouse her 
 slumbering companion, when a sound overhead caught 
 her ear. 
 
 'What's that chilt at now ? ' she exclaimed angrily, 
 getting lip and listening. ' She'd owt ta been in bed 
 long ago. Soomthin mischeevous, I'll be bound.' 
 And lighting a dip beside her, she went upstairs with 
 a treacherously quiet step. There was a sound of an 
 opeidng door, and then Reuben downstairs was startled
 
 CHAP. Ill riITLT)Iir)nD 33 
 
 out of liis snooze by a sudden gamut of angry cries, a 
 scurrying of feet, and Hannah scolding loudly — 
 
 ' Coom downstairs wi yo ! — cooni down an show 
 your uncle what a figure o' foon yo'n been makkin 
 o' yorsel ! I'st teach yo to burn three candles down 
 awbut to nothink 'at yo may bedizen yorsel Mj^his 
 way. Coom along wi yo.' 
 
 There was a scuttte on the stairs, and then Hannah 
 burst open the door, dragging in an extraordinary 
 figure indeed. Struggling and crying in her aunt's 
 grip, was Louie. White trailing folds swept behind 
 her ; a white garnipnt underneath, apparently her 
 nightgown, was festooned with an old red-and-blue 
 striped sash of some foreign make. Round her neck 
 hung a necklace of that gold filigree work which 
 spreads from Genoa all along the Riviera ; her mag- 
 nificent hair hung in masses over her shoulders, 
 crowned by the primroses of the morning, which had 
 been hurriedly twisted into a wreath by a bit of red 
 ribbon rummaged out of some drawer of odds-and-ends ; 
 and her thin brown arms and hands appeared under 
 the white cloak — nothing but a sheet — which was be- 
 ing now trodden underfoot in the child's passionate 
 efforts to get away from her aunt. Ten minutes be- 
 fore she had been a happy queen flaunting over her 
 attic floor in a dream of joy before a broken, propped- 
 up looking-glass under the splendid illumination of 
 three dips, long since secreted for purposes of the 
 kind. Now she was a bedraggled, tear-stained Fury, 
 with a fierce humiliation and a boundless hatred glar- 
 ing out of the eyes, which in Aunt Hannah's opinion 
 were so big as to be ' right down oogly.' I'oor Louie ! 
 
 Uncle Reuben, startled from his snooze by this 
 apparition, looked at it with a sleepy bewilderment, 
 and fumbled for his spectacles. 'Ay, yo'd better 
 hike at her close,' said Hannah, grimly, giving her 
 
 VOL. 1 D
 
 34 • THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 niece a violent shake as she spoke ; ' I wor set yo 
 shouhl just see her fur yance at lier antics. Yo say 
 soomtimes I'm hard on her. Well, I'd ask ony pusson 
 aloive if they'd put up wi this soart o' thing — dressin 
 np like a bad hizzy that waaks t' streets, wi three 
 candles — three, I tell yo, Reuben — flarin away, and 
 the curtains close to, an nothink but the Lord's muss}' 
 keepin 'em from catchin. An she peacockin an galli- 
 vantin away enough to mak a cat laugh ! ' 
 
 And Aunt Hannah in her enraged scorn even 
 undertook a grotesque and mincing imitation of the 
 peacocking aforesaid. ' Let goo ! ' muttered Louie be- 
 tween her shut teeth, and with a wild strengtli she 
 at last flung off her aunt and sprang for the door. 
 But Hannah was too quick for her and put her back 
 against it. 
 
 ' Xo — yo'll not goo till your ooncle there's gien yo 
 a word. He sliati't say I'm hard on yo for nothink, 
 yo good-for-nowt little powsement — he shall see yo as 
 yo are ! ' 
 
 And with the bitterness of a smouldering grievance, 
 expressed in every feature, Hannah looked peremp- 
 torily at her liusl)and. He, poor man, was much per- 
 plexed. The liour of devotion was past, and outside 
 it he was not accustomed to be placed in important 
 situations. 
 
 '■ Louie — didn't yo know yo wor a bad gell to 
 stay up and burn t' candles, an fret your aunt ? ' he 
 said with a feeble solemnity, his look fixed on the 
 huddled white figure against the mahogany press. 
 
 Louie stood with eyes resolutely cast down, and a 
 forced smile, tremulous, but insolent to a degree, slowly 
 lifting up the corners of her mouth as Uncle Reuben 
 addressed her. The tears were still running off her 
 face, but she meant her smile to convey the indomi- 
 table scorn for her tormentors which not even Aunt 
 Hannah could shake out of lier.
 
 CHAP. Ill 
 
 CHII.DIIOOD 35 
 
 Hannah Grieve was exasperated by the- child's ex- 
 pression. 
 
 ' Yo litth> sloot ! ' she said, seizing licr by the arm 
 again, and losing her temper for good and all, ' yo've 
 got your mither's bad blude in yo — an it uU coom out, 
 happen what may ! ' 
 
 ' Hannah ! ' exclaimed Reuben, ' Hannah — mind 
 yoursel.' 
 
 ' .My mither's dead,' said the child, slowly raising her 
 dark, burning eyes. ' ^ly mither worn't bad ; an if yo 
 say she wor, yo're a beast for sayin it ! I wish it wor 
 yo wor dead, an my mither wor here instead o' yo ! ' 
 
 To convey the concentrated rage of this speech is 
 impossible. It seemed to Hannah that the child had 
 the evil eye. Even she quailed under it. 
 
 ' Go 'long wi yo,' she said grimly, in a white heat, 
 while she opened the door — • an the less yo coom into 
 my way for t' future, the better.' 
 
 She pushed the child out and shut the door. 
 
 ' Yo are hard on her, Hannah I ' exclaimed Reuben, in 
 his perplexity — pricked, too, as usual in his conscience. 
 
 The repetition of this parrot-cry, as it seemed to her, 
 maddened his wife. 
 
 ' She's a wanton's brat,' she said violently ; ' an she's 
 got t' wanton's blood.' 
 
 Reuben was silent. He was afraid of his wife in 
 these moods. Hannah began, with trembling hands, 
 to pick up the contents of her work-basket, which had 
 been overturned in the seutiie. 
 
 Meanwhile Louie rushed upstairs, stumbling over 
 and tearing her finery, the convulsive sobs beginning 
 again as soon as the tension of her aunt's hated pres- 
 ence was removed. 
 
 At the top she ran against something in the dark. 
 It was David, who had been hanging over the stairs, 
 listening. Rut she flung past him.
 
 36 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ' What's t' matter, Louie ? ' he asked in a loud whis- 
 per through the door slie shut in his face ; 'what's th' 
 owd crosspatch been slanging about ? ' 
 
 But he got no answer, and he was afraid of being 
 caught by Aunt Hannah if he forced his way in. So 
 he went back to his OAvn room, and closed, without 
 latching, his door. He had had an inch of dip to go 
 to bed with, and had spent that on reading. His book 
 was a battered copy of ' Anson's Voyages,' which also 
 came from 'Lias's store, and he had been straining his 
 eyes over it with enchantment. Then had come the 
 sudden noise upstairs and down, and his candle and 
 his pleasure had gone out together. The heavy foot- 
 steps of his uncle and aunt ascending warned him to 
 keep quiet. They turned into their room, and locked 
 their door as their habit was. David noiselessly 
 opened his window and looked out. 
 
 A clear moonlight reigned outside. He could dis- 
 tinguish the rounded shapes, the occasional move- 
 ments of the sheep in their pen to the right of the 
 farmyard. The trees in the field threw long shadows 
 down the white slope ; to his left was the cart-shed 
 with its black caverns and recesses, and the branches 
 of the apple-trees against the luminous sky. Owls 
 were calling in the woods below ; sometimes a bell 
 round the neck of one of the sheep tinkled a little, and 
 the river made a distant background of sound. 
 
 The boy's heart grew heavy. After the noises in 
 the Grieves' room ceased he listened for something 
 which he knew must be in the air, and caught it — the 
 sound of a child's long, smothered sobs. On most 
 nights they would not have made much impression on 
 him. Louie's ways with her brother were no more 
 engaging than with the rest of the world ; and she was 
 not a creature who invited consolation from anybody. 
 David, too, with his power of escape at any time into
 
 CHAP. Ill CHILDHOOD 37 
 
 a world of books and dreams or simply into the wild 
 shepherd life of the moors, was often inclined to a 
 vague irritation with Louie's state of perpetual revolt. 
 The ioodicas nasty, their clothes Z6'e?-e ugly and scanty, 
 Aunt Hannah ivas as hard as nails — at the same time 
 Louie was enough to put anybody's back up. What 
 did she get by it? — that was liis feeling; though, per- 
 haps, he never shaped it. He had never felt much 
 pity for her. She had a way of putting herself out of 
 court, and he was, of course, too young to see her life 
 or his own as a whole. What their relationship might 
 mean to hiiu was still vague — to be decided by the 
 future. Whatever softness there was in the boy was 
 at this moment called out by other people — by old 
 'Lias and his wife ; by Mr. Ancrum, the lame minister 
 at Clough End ; by the dogs ; hardly ever by Louie. 
 He had grown used, moreover, to her perpetual explo- 
 sions, and took them generally with a boy's natural 
 callousness. 
 
 But to-night her woes affected him as they had 
 never done before. The sound of her sobbing, as he 
 stood listening, gradually roused in him an unbearable 
 restlessness. An unaccountable depression stole upon 
 him — the reaction, perhaps, from a good deal of men- 
 tal exertion and excitement in the day. A sort of sick 
 distaste awoke in him for most of the incidents of 
 existence — for Aunt Hannah, for Uncle Keuben's in- 
 comprehensible prayers, for the thought of the long 
 Puritanical Sunday just coming. And, in addition, 
 the low vibrations of that distant sobbing stirred in 
 him again, by association, certain memories which 
 were like a clutch of physical i)ain, and which the 
 healthy young animal instinctively and passionately 
 avoided whenever it could. But to-night, in the dark 
 and in solitude, there were no distractions, and as the 
 boy put his head down on his arms, rolling it from
 
 38 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 side to side as though to shake them off, the same old 
 images pursued him — the lodging-house room, and the 
 curtainless iron bed in which he slept with his father; 
 reminiscences of some long, inexplicable anguish 
 through which that father had passed; then of his 
 death, and his own lonely crying. He seemed still to 
 feel the strange sheets in that bed upstairs, where a 
 compassionate fellow-lodger had put him the night 
 after his father died ; he sat up again bewildered in 
 the cold dawn, tilled with a home-sickness too be- 
 nvimbing for words. He resented these memories, 
 tried to banish them ; but the nature on which they 
 were impressed was deep and rich, and, once shaken, 
 vibrated long. The boy trembled through and through. 
 The more he was ordinarily shed abroad, diffused in 
 the life of sensation and boundless mental curiosity, the 
 blacker were these rare moments of self-consciousness, 
 Avheu all the world seemed pain, an iron vice which 
 pinched and tortured him. 
 
 At last he went to his door, pulled it gently open, 
 and with bare feet went across to Louie's room, which 
 he entered with infinite caution. The moonlight was 
 streaming in on the poor gauds, which lay wildly 
 scattered over the floor. David looked at them with 
 amazement. Amongst them he saw something glitter- 
 ing. He picked it up, saw it was a gold necklace which 
 had been his mother's, and carefully put it on the little 
 toilet table. 
 
 Then he walked on to the bed. Louie was lying 
 with her face turired away from him. A certain pause 
 in the sobbing as he came near told him that she 
 knew he was there. But it began again directly, 
 being indeed a physical relief which the child could 
 not deny herself. He stood beside her awkwardly. 
 He conld think of nothing to say. But timidly he 
 stretched out his hand and laid the back of it against
 
 ruAP. IV ClIILJ)lli)OD 30 
 
 her wet cheek. He half expected she would shake 
 it off, but she did not. It made him feel less lonely 
 that she let it stay; the impulse to comfort had some- 
 how brought himself comfort. He stood there, feel- 
 ing very cold, thinking a whirlwind of thoughts about 
 old 'Lias, about the sheep, about Titus and Jerusalem, 
 and about Louie's extraordinary proceedings — till 
 suddenly it struck him that Louie was not crying any 
 more. He bent over her. The sobs had changed into 
 the long breaths of sleep, and, gently drawing away 
 his hand, he crept off to bed. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 It was Sunday afternoon, still cold, nipping, and 
 sunny. Reuben Grieve sat at the door of the farm- 
 house, his pipe in his hand, a ' good book ' on his knee. 
 Beyond the wall which bounded the farmyard he 
 could hear occasional voices. The children were sit- 
 ting there, he supposed. It gave him a sensation of 
 jdeasure once to hear a shrill laugh, which he knew 
 was Louie's. For all this morning, through the long 
 services in the ' Christian Brethren ' chapel at Clough 
 End, and on the walk home, he had been once more 
 pricked in his conscience. Hannah and Louie were 
 not on speaking terms. At meals the annt assigned 
 the child her coarse food without a word, and on the 
 way to chapel and back there had been a stony silence 
 between them. It was evident, even to his dull mind, 
 that the girl was white and thin, and that between 
 her wild temper and mischief and the mirth of other 
 children there was a great difference. Moreover, cer- 
 tain passages in the chapel prayers that morning had 
 come home sharply to a mind whereof the only defi-
 
 40 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 nite gift was a true religious sensitiveness. The text 
 of the sermon especially — ■■ Whoso loveth not his 
 brother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, 
 whom he hath not seen ? ' — vibrated like an accus- 
 ing voice within him. As he sat in the doorway, with 
 the sun stealing in upon him, the clock ticking loudly 
 at his back, and the hens scratching round the steps, 
 he began to think with much discomfort about his 
 dead brother and his brother's children. 
 
 As to his memories of the past, they may perhaps 
 be transformed here into a short family history, with 
 some details added which had no place in Reuben's 
 mind. Twenty years before this present date Needham 
 — once Needham's — Farm had been held by Reuben's 
 father, a certain James Grieve. He had originally 
 been a kind of farm-labourer on the Berwickshire 
 border, who, driven southwards in search of work by 
 the stress of the bad years which followed the great 
 war, had wandered on, taking a job of work here and 
 another there, and tramping many a score of weary 
 miles between, till at last in this remote Derbyshire 
 valley he had found a final anchorage. Needham Farm 
 was then occupied by a young couple of the name of 
 Pierson, beginning life under fairly prosperous circum- 
 stances. James Grieve took service with them, and 
 they valued his strong sinews and stern Calvinistic 
 probity as they deserved. But he had hardly been 
 two years on the farm when his young employer, doz- 
 ing one winter evening on the shafts of his cart coming 
 back from Glossop market, fell off, was run over, and 
 killed. The widow, a young thing, nearly lost her 
 senses with grief, and James, a man of dour exterior 
 and few words, set himself to keep things going on 
 the farm till she was able to look life in the face again. 
 Her sister came to be with her, and there was a child 
 born, which died. She was left better provided for
 
 ruAF. IV CHILDHOOD 41 
 
 than most women of her class, and she had expecta- 
 tions from her parents. After the child's death, when 
 the widow began to go about again, and James still 
 managed all the work of the farm, the neighbours 
 naturally fell talking. James took no notice, and he 
 was not a man to meddle with, either in a public- 
 house or elsewhere. But presently a crop of suitors 
 for the widow began to appear, and it became neces- 
 sary also to settle the destiny of the farm. Xo one 
 outside ever knew how it came aloout, for Jenny Pier- 
 son, who was a soft, prettyish creature, had given no 
 particular sign; but one Sunday morning the banns of 
 James Grieve, bachelor, and Jenny Pierson, widow, 
 were suddenly given out in the Presbyterian chapel at 
 Clough End, to the mingled astonishment and disgust 
 of the neighbourhood. 
 
 Years passed away. James held his own for a time 
 with any farmer of the neighbourhood. But, by the 
 irony of fate, the prosperity which his industry and 
 tenacity deserved was filched from him little by little 
 hy the ill-health of his wife. She bore him two sons, 
 Reuben and Alexander, and then she sank into a hope- 
 less, fretful invalid, tormented by the internal ailment 
 of which she ultimately died. But the small farmer 
 who employs little or no labour is lost without an 
 active wife. If he has to pay for the milking of his 
 cows, the making of his butter, the cooking of his 
 food, and the nursing of liis children, his little margin 
 of profit is soon eaten away ; and with the disappear- 
 ance of this margin, existence becomes a blind struggle. 
 Even James Grieve, the man of iron will and indomi- 
 table industry, was beaten at last in the unequal con- 
 test. The life at the farm became bitter and tragic. 
 Jenny grew more helpless and more peevish year by 
 year ; James was not exactly unkind to her, but he 
 Qould not but revenge upon her in some degree that
 
 42 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ruin of his silent aniLitions whicli her sickliness had 
 brought upon him. 
 
 The two sons greAv up in the most depressing at- 
 mosphere conceivable. Reuben, Avho was to have the 
 farm, developed a shy and hopeless taciturnity under 
 the pressure of the family chagrin and privations, and 
 found his only relief in the emotions and excitements 
 of Methodism. Sandy seemed at first more fortunate. 
 An opening was found for him at Sheffield, where 
 he was apprenticed to a rope-maker, a cousin of his 
 mother's. This man died before Sandy was more than 
 halfway through his time, and the youth went through 
 a period of hardship and hand-to-mouth living which 
 ended at last in the usual tramp to London. Here, 
 after a period of semi-starvation, he found it impossi- 
 ble to get work at his own trade, and finally drifted 
 into carpentering and cabinet-making. The begin- 
 nings of this new line of life were incredibly difficult, 
 owing to the jealousy of his fellow-workmen, who had 
 properly served their time to the trade, and did not 
 see why an interloper from another trade, without 
 qualifications, should be allowed to take the bread out 
 of their moiiths. One of Sandy's first successes was 
 in what was called a ^shop-meeting,' a gathering of 
 all the employes of the firm he worked for, before 
 whom the North-countryman pleaded to be allowed to 
 earn his bread. The tall, finely grown, famished-look- 
 ing lad spoke with a natural eloquence, and here and 
 there with a Biblical force of phrase — the inheritance 
 of his Scotch blood and training — Avhich astonished 
 and melted most of his hearers. He was afterwards 
 let alone, and even taught by the men about him, in 
 return for 'drinks,' which swallowed up sometimes as 
 much as a third of his wages. 
 
 After two or three years he was fully master of his 
 trade, an admirable workman, and a keen politician to
 
 ruxr. IV CHILDHOOD 43 
 
 boot. All this time he had spent his evenings in self- 
 oflueation, buying books with every spare penny, anrl 
 turning specially to science and mathematics. His 
 abilities presently drew the attention of the heads of 
 the Shoreditch firm lor which he worked, and when 
 the post of a foreman in a West-end shop, in which 
 they were largely interested, fell vacant, it was their 
 influence which put Sandy Grieve into the Avell-paid 
 and coveted post. He could hardly believe his own 
 good fortune. The letter in which he announced it to 
 his father reached the farm just as the last phase of 
 his mother's long martyrdom was developing. The 
 pair, already old — James with work and anxiety, his 
 wife with sickness — read it together. They shut it 
 up without a word. Its tone of jubilant hope seemed 
 to have nothing to do with them, or seemed rather to 
 make their own narrowing prospects look more nar- 
 row, and the approach of the King of Terrors more 
 black and relentless, than before. Jenny lay back on 
 her poor bed with the teai'S of a dumb self-pity run- 
 ning down her cheeks, and James's only answer to it 
 was conveyed in a brief summons to Sandy to come 
 and see his mother before the end. The prosperous 
 son, broadened out of knowledge almost by good feed- 
 ing and good clothes, arrived. He brought money, 
 which was acce])ted without much thanks ; but his 
 mother treated h'un almost as a stranger, and the dour 
 James, while not unwilling to draw out his account of 
 himself, would look him u]i and down from under his 
 bushy grey eyebrows, and often interpose with some 
 sarcasm on his ' foine ' ways of speaking, or his ' gen- 
 'leman's cloos.' Sandy was ill at ease. He was really 
 anxious to help, and his heart was touched by his 
 mother's state ; but perhaps there was a strain of self- 
 importance in his manner, a half-conscious inclination 
 to thank God that his life was not to be as theirs,
 
 44 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 which came out in spite of him, and dug a gulf be- 
 tween him and them. Only his brother Keuben, dull, 
 pious, affectionate Reuben, took to him, and showed 
 that patient and wondering admiration of the younger's 
 cleverness, which probably Sandy had reckoned on 
 as his right from his parents also. 
 
 On the last evening of his stay — he had luckily 
 been able to make his coming coincide with an Easter 
 three days' holiday — he was sitting beside his mother 
 in the dusk, thinking, with a relief which every now 
 and then roused in him a pang of shame, that in four- 
 teen or fifteen more hours he should be back in Lon- 
 don, in the world which made much of him and knew 
 what a smart fellow he was, when his mother opened 
 her eyes — so wide and blue they looked in her pinched, 
 death-stricken face — and looked at him full. 
 
 ' Sandy ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, mother ! ' he said, startled — for he had been 
 sunk in his own thoughts — and laying his hand on 
 hers. 
 
 ' You should get a wife, Sandy.' 
 
 ' Well, some day, mother, I suppose I shall,' he said, 
 with a change of expression which the twilight con- 
 cealed. 
 
 She was silent a minute, then she began again, slow 
 and feebly, but with a strange clearness of articulation. 
 
 ' If she's sick, Sandy, doaii't grudge it her. Women 
 'ud die fasster iv they could.' 
 
 The whole story of the slow consuming bitterness of 
 years spoke through those fixed and filmy eyes. Her 
 son gave a sudden irrepressible sob. There was a faint 
 lightening in the little wrinkled face, and the lips made 
 a movement. He kissed her, and in that last moment 
 of consciousness the mother almost forgave him his 
 good clothes and his superior airs. 
 
 Poor Sandy I Looking to his after story, it seems
 
 CHAP. IV rilTLDTTOdr) 45 
 
 strange that any one should ever have felt him un- 
 bearably prosperous. About six months after his 
 mother's death he married a milliner's assistant, Avhom 
 he met first in the pit of a theatre, and whom he was 
 already courting Avheu his mother gave him the advice 
 recorded. She was French, from the neighbourhood 
 of Aries, and of course a Catholic, She had come to 
 London originally as lady's-maid to a Kussian family 
 settled at Nice. Sliortly after their arrival, her mas- 
 ter shot his young wife for a supposed intrigue, and 
 then put an end to himself. Xaturally the whole 
 establishment was scattered, and the pretty Louise 
 Suveret found herself alone, with a few pounds, in 
 London. Thanks to the kind offices of the book-keeper 
 in the hotel where they had been staying, she had 
 been introduced to a milliner of repute in the Bond 
 Street region, and the results of a trial given her, in 
 which her natural Frenchwoman's gift and her acquired 
 skill came out triumphant, led to her being perma- 
 nently engaged. Thenceforward her good spirits — 
 which had been temporarily depressed, not so much 
 by her mistress's tragic ending as by her own unex- 
 pected discomfort — reappeared in all their native exu- 
 berance, and she proceeded to enjoy London. She 
 defended herself first against the friendly book-keeper, 
 who became troublesome, and had to be treated with 
 the most decided ingratitude. Then she gradually 
 built herself up a store of clothes of the utmost ele- 
 gance, which were the hopeless envy of the other girls 
 employed at Madame Catherine's. And, finally, she 
 looked aboi;t for serviceable acquaintances. 
 
 One night, in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre, while 
 'The Lady of Lyons' was going on, Sandy Grieve 
 found himself next to a dazzling creature, with fine 
 black eyes, the smooth olive skin of the South, white 
 teeth, and small dimpled Imuds, hardly spoilt at all by
 
 46 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 her trade. She had with her a plain girl-companion, 
 and her manner, though conscious and provocative, 
 had that haughtiness, that implied readiness to take 
 offence, which is the grisette's substitute for breeding. 
 She was, however, affable to Sandy, whose broad 
 shoulders and handsome, well-to-do air attracted her 
 attention. She allowed him to get her a programme, 
 to beguile her into conversation, and, finally, to offer 
 her a cup of coffee. Afterwards he escorted the two 
 to the door of their lodging, in one of the streets off 
 Theobald's Road, and walked home in a state of excite- 
 ment which astonished him. 
 
 This happened immediately before his visit to the 
 farm and his mother's death. During the six months 
 after that event Sandy knew the 'joy of eventful living.' 
 He was establishing his own business position, and he 
 was courting Louise Sviveret with alternations of de- 
 spair and flattered passion, which stirred the now burly, 
 full-blooded Xorth-countryman to his depths. She let 
 him escort her to her work in the morning and take 
 her home in the evening, and she allowed him to give 
 her as many presents of gloves, ribbons, bonbons — for 
 which last she had a childish passion — and the like, 
 as he pleased. But when he pressed her to marry him 
 she generally laughed at him. She was, in reality, 
 observing her world, calculating her chances, and she 
 had several other strings to her bow, as Sandy 
 shrewdly suspected, though she never allowed his 
 jealousy any information to feed upon. It was sim- 
 ply owing to the failure of the most promising of 
 these other strings — a failure which roused in Louise 
 one of those white heats of passion which made the 
 chief flaw in her organisation, viewed as a pleasure- 
 procuring machine — that Sandy found his opportunity. 
 In a moment of mortal chagrin and outraged vanity 
 she consented to marry him, and three weeks after-
 
 CHAF. IV CHILDHOOD 47 
 
 wards he was the blissful owner uf the black eyes, the 
 small hands, the quick tongue, and the seductive 
 chiffona he had so long admired more or less at a 
 distance. 
 
 Their marriage lasted six years. At first Louise 
 found some pleasure in arranging the little house 
 Sandy had taken for her in a new suburb, and in mak- 
 ing, wearing, and altering the additional gowns which 
 their joint earnings — for she still worked intermit- 
 tently at her trade — allowed her to enjoy. After the 
 first infatuation was a little cooled, Sandy discovered 
 in her a paganism so unblushing that his own Scotch 
 and Puritan instincts reacted in a sort of superstitious 
 fear. It seemed impossible that God Almighty should 
 long allow Himself to be flouted as Louise flouted 
 Him. He found also that the sense of truth was 
 almost non-existent in her, and her vanity, her greed 
 of dress and admiration, was so consuming, so frenzied, 
 that his only hope of a peaceful life — as he quickly 
 realised — lay in ministering to it. Her will soon got 
 the upper hand, and he sank into the patient servant 
 of her pleasures, snatching feverishly at all she gave 
 him in return with the instinct of a man who, having 
 sold his soul, is determined at least to get the last 
 farthing he can of the price. 
 
 They had two children in four years — David Suveret 
 and Louise Stephanie. Louise resented the advent of 
 the second so intensely that poor Sandy became con- 
 scious, before the child appeared, of a fatal and apall- 
 ing change in her relation to him. She had been 
 proud of her first-born — an unusually handsome and 
 precocious child — and had taken pleasure in dressing 
 it and parading it before the eyes of the other 
 mothers in their terrace, all of whom she passionately 
 despised. But Louie nearly died of neglect, and the 
 two years that followed her birth were black indeed
 
 48 THE HISTORY OF BA^'ID GRIEVE book i 
 
 for Sandy. His ^vUe, he knew, had begun to hate 
 him ; in business his energies failed him, and his 
 employers cooled towards him as he grew visibly less 
 pushing and inventive. The little household got 
 deeper and deeper into debt, and towards the end of 
 the time Louise would sometimes spend the whole 
 day away from home without a word of explanation. 
 So great was his nervous terror — strong, broad fellow 
 that he was — of that pent-up fury in her, which a 
 touch might have unloosed, that he never questioned 
 her. At last the inevitable end came. He got home 
 one summer evening to tind the house empty and ran- 
 sacked, the children — little things of five and two — 
 sitting crying in the desolate kitchen, and a crowd of 
 loud-voiced, indignant neighbours round the door. 
 To look for her would have been absurd. Louise was 
 much too clever to disappear and leave traces behind. 
 Besides, he had no wish to find her. The hereditary 
 self in him accepted his disaster as representing the 
 natural retribution which the canny Divine vengeance 
 keeps in store for those who take to themselves wives 
 of the daughters of Heth. And there was the sense, 
 too, of emerging from something unclean, of recover- 
 ing his manhood. 
 
 He took his two children and went to lodgings in a 
 decent street near the Gray's Inn Road. There for a 
 year things went fairly well with him. His boy and 
 girl, whom he paid a neighbour to look after during the 
 day, made something to come home to. As he helped 
 the boy, who was already at school, with his lesson 
 for the next day, or fed Louie, perched on his knee, 
 with the bits from his plate demanded by her covetous 
 eyes and open mouth, he got back, little by little, his 
 self-respect. He returned, too, in the evenings to some 
 of his old pursuits, joined a Radical club near, and some 
 science lectures. He was aged and much more silent
 
 CHAP. IV flllLDllOOD 49 
 
 than of yore, but not unhappy ; liis employers, too, 
 feelino; that theiv man had someliow recovered himself, 
 and hearing something of his history, were sorry for 
 him, and showed it. 
 
 Then one autumn evening a constable knocked at 
 his door, and, coming in upon the astonished group of 
 father and cliildren, produced from his pocket a soaked 
 and tattered letter, and showing Sandy the address, 
 asked if it was for him. Sandy, on seeing it, stood up, 
 put down Louie, who, half inidressed, had been having 
 a ride on his knee, and asked his visitor to come out on 
 to the landing. There he read the letter under the 
 gas-lamp, and put it deliberately into his pocket. 
 
 * Where is she ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' In Lambeth mortuary,' said the man briefly — 
 • picked up two hours ago. Nothing else found on her 
 but this.' 
 
 Half an hour afterwards Sandy stood by a slab in 
 the mortuary, and, drawing back a sheet which covered 
 the burden on it, stood face to face with his dead wife. 
 The black brows were drawn, the small hands clenched. 
 What struck Samly with peculiar liorror was that one 
 delicate wrist was broken, having probably struck 
 something in falling. She — who in life had rebelled 
 so hotly against the least shadow of physical pain ! 
 Thanks to the bandage which had been passed round 
 it, the face was not much altered. She could not have 
 been long in the water. Probably about the time 
 
 when he was walking home from work, she He 
 
 felt himself suffocating — the bare whitewashed walls 
 grew dim and wavering. 
 
 The letter found upon her was the strangest appeal 
 to his pity. Her seducer had apparently left her ; she 
 was in dire straits, and there was, it seemed, no one 
 but Sandy in all London on whose compassion she 
 could throw herself. She asked him. calloush', for 
 
 VOL. I E
 
 50 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 money to take her back to some Nice relations. They 
 need only know what she chose to tell them, as she 
 calmly pointed out, and, once in Nice, she could make 
 a living. She would like to see her children, she said, 
 before she left, but she supposed he would have to 
 settle that. How had she got his address ? From his 
 place of business probably, in some roundabout way. 
 
 Then Avhat had happened? Had she been seized 
 with a sudden persuasion that he would not answer, 
 that it was all useless trouble ; and in one of those 
 accesses of blind rage by which her clear, sharp brain- 
 life was at all times apt to be disturbed, had she rushed 
 out to end it all at once and for ever ? It made him 
 forgive her that she could have destroyed herself — 
 could have faced that awful plunge — that icy Avater — 
 that death-struggle for breath. He gauged the misery 
 she must have gone through by what he knew of her 
 sensuous love for comfort, for bten-etre. He saw her 
 again as she had been that night at the theatre when 
 they first met, — the little crisp black curls on the 
 temples, the dazzling eyes, the artificial pearls round 
 the neck, the slight traces of powder and rouge on 
 brow and cheek, which made her all the more attrac- 
 tive and tempting to his man's eye — the pretty foot, 
 which he first noticed as she stepped from the thresh- 
 old of the theatre into the street. Nature had made 
 all that, to bring her work to this grim bed at last ! 
 
 He himself lived eighteen months afterwards. His 
 acquaintances never dreamt of connecting his death 
 with his wife's, and the connection, if it existed, would 
 have been difficult to trace. Still, if little David could 
 have put his experiences at this time into words, they 
 might have thrown some light on an event which was 
 certainly a surprise to the small world which took an 
 interest in Sandy Grieve. 
 
 There was a certain sound which remained all
 
 CHAP. IV CHILDHOOD 61 
 
 through his life firmly fixed in David's memory, and 
 which he never thought of without a sense of desola- 
 tion, a shiver of sick dismay, such as belonged to no 
 other association whatever. It was the sound of a 
 long sigh, brought up, as it seemed, from the very 
 depths of being, and often, often repeated. The 
 thousrht of it brought with it a vision of a small bare 
 room at night, with two iron bedsteads, one for Louie, 
 one for himself and his father; a bit of smouldering 
 fire in a tiny grate, and beside it a man's figure bowed 
 over the warnath, thrown out dark against the distem- 
 pered -wall, and sitting on there hour after hour ; of a 
 child, wakened intermittently by the light, and tor- 
 mented by the recurrent sound, till it had once more 
 burrowed into the bed-clothes deep enough to shut out 
 everything but sleep. All these memories belonged 
 to the time immediately following on Louise's suicide. 
 Probably, during the interval between his wife's death 
 and his own, Sandy suffered severely from the effects 
 of strong nervous shock, coupled with a certain growth 
 of religious melancholy, the conditions for which are 
 rarely wanting in the true Calvinist blood. Owing to 
 the privations and exposure of his early manhood, too, 
 it is possible that he was never in reality the strong 
 man he looked. At any rate, his fight for his life when 
 it came was a singularly weak one. The second winter 
 after Louise's death was bitterly cold ; he was over- 
 worked, and often without sleep. One bleak east-wind 
 day struck home. He took to his bed with a chill, 
 which turned to peritonitis; the system showed no 
 power of resistance, and he died. 
 
 On the day but one before he died, when the mortal 
 pain was gone, but death was absolutely certain, he 
 sent post-haste for his brother Reuben. Reuben he 
 believed was married to a decent woman, and to Reuben 
 he meant to commend his children.
 
 52 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 Reuben arrived, looking more bewildered and stupid 
 than ever, pure countryman that he was, in this London 
 which he had never seen. Sandy looked at him with 
 a deep inward dissatisfaction. But what could he do ? 
 His marriage had cut hira off from his old friends, and 
 since its wreck he had had no energy wherewith to 
 make new ones. 
 
 ' I've never seen your Avife, Reuben,' he said, when 
 they had talked a while. 
 
 Reuben was silent a minute, apparently collecting 
 his thoughts. 
 
 ' Naw,' he said at last ; ' naw. She sent yo her luve, 
 and she hopes iv it's the Lord's will to tak yo, that it 
 all foind yo prepared.' 
 
 He said it like a lesson. A sort of nervous tremor 
 and shrinking overspread Sandy's face. He had suf- 
 fered, so much through religion during the last few 
 months, that in this final moment of humanity the 
 soul had taken refuge in numbness — apathy. Let God 
 decide. He could think it out no more; and in this 
 vitter feebleness his terrors of hell — the ineradicable 
 deposit of childhood and inheritance — had passed away. 
 He gathered his forces for the few human and practical 
 things which remained to him to do. 
 
 ' Did she get on comfortable with father ? ' he asked, 
 fixing Reuben with his eyes, which had the penetration 
 of death. 
 
 Reuben looked discomposed, and cleared his throat 
 once or twice. 
 
 ' Wal, it warn't what yo may call just coomfortable 
 atween 'em. Naw, I'll not say it wor.' 
 
 ' What was wrong ? ' demanded Sandy. 
 
 Reuben fidgeted. 
 
 ' Wal,' he said at last, throwing up his head in des- 
 peration, ' I spose a woman likes her house to hersel 
 when she's fust married. He wor childish like, an
 
 cHAr. IV CIlll.DIKMd) 53 
 
 mighty trooblesome times. An she's alius stirrin', 
 an rootin', is Hannah. I'ddor fnak must look aloive 
 too.' 
 
 The conflict in Jveuben's mind between his innate 
 tiuthfulness and his desire to excuse his wife was 
 curious to see. Sandy had a vision of his father sit- 
 ting in his dotage by his own hearth, and ministered 
 to by a daughter-in-law who grudged him his years 
 and his infirmities, as he had grudged his wife all the 
 troublesome incidents of licr long decay. But it only 
 affected him now as it bore upon what was still living 
 in him, the one feeling whicli still survived amid the 
 Avreck made by circumstance and disease. 
 
 ' Will she be kind to them ? ' he said sharply, with a 
 motion of the head towards the children, first towards 
 David, who sat drooping on his father's bed, where 
 for some ten or twelve hours now he had remained 
 glued, refusing to touch either breakfast or dinner, 
 and then towards Louie, who was on the floor by the 
 fire, with her rag dolls, which she was dressing up 
 with smiles and chatter in a strange variety of finery. 
 ' If not, she shan't have 'em. There's time yet.' 
 
 But the grey hue was already on his cheek, his feet 
 were already cold. The nurse in the far corner of 
 the room, looking up as he spoke, gave him mentally 
 'an hour or two.' 
 
 Eeubeu flushed and sat bolt upright, his gnarled 
 and wrinkled hands trembling on his knees. 
 
 'She shall be kind to 'em,' he said with energy. 
 'Gie em to us, Sandy. You wouldna send your childer 
 to strangers ? ' 
 
 The clannish instinct in Sandy responded. Besides, 
 in spite of his last assertion, he knew very well there 
 was nothing else to be done. 
 
 'There's money,' he said slowly. 'She'll not need 
 to stint them of anything. This is a poor place,' for
 
 54 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 at the "\vord 'money' he noticed that Reuben's eyes 
 travelled with an awakening shrewdness over the 
 barely furnished room ; ' but it was the debts first, 
 and then I had to put by for the children. iSTone of 
 the shop-folk or the fellows at the club ever came 
 here. We lived as we liked. There's an insurance, 
 and there's some savings, and there's some commission 
 money owing from the firm, and there's a bit invest- 
 ment Mr. Gurney (naming the head partner) helped 
 me into last year. There's altogether about six hun- 
 dred pound. . You'll get the interest of it for the 
 children ; it'll go into Gurneys', and they'll give five 
 per cent, for it. Mr, Gurney's been very kind. He 
 came here yesterday, and he's got it all. You go to 
 him.' 
 
 He stopped for weakness. Reuben's eyes were 
 round. Six hundred pounds ! Who'd have thought it 
 of Sandy ? — after that bad lot of a wife, and he not 
 thirty ! 
 
 ' And what d' yo want Davy to be, Sandy ? ' 
 
 ' You must settle/ said the father, with a long sigh. 
 ' Depends on him — what he turns to. If he wants to 
 farm, he can learn with you, and put in his money 
 when he sees an opening. For the bit farms in our 
 part there'd be enough. But I'm feeart' (the old 
 Derbyshire word slipped out unawares) 'he'll not stay 
 in the country. He's too sharp, and you mustn't 
 force him. If you see he's not the farming sort, 
 when he's thirteen or fourteen or so, take Mr. Gur- 
 ney's advice, and bind him to a trade. Mr. Gurney 
 '11 pay the premiums for him and he can have the 
 balance of the money — for I've left him to manage it 
 all, for himself and Louie too — when he's fit to set up 
 for himself. — You and Hannah '11 deal honest wi 
 'em ? ' 
 
 The question was unexpected, and as he put it with
 
 riiAP. IV CIIILT)Il«»r)I) 65 
 
 a startling energy the dying man raised himself on his 
 elbow, and looked sharply at his brother. 
 
 'D' yo tliink I'd cheat yo, or your childor, Sandy ? ' 
 cried Keuben, flushing and pricked to the heart. 
 
 Sandy sank back again, his sudden qualm appeased. 
 ' Xo,' he said, his thoughts returning painfully to his 
 son. 'I'm feeart he'll not stay wi j-ou. He's cleverer 
 than I ever was, and I was the cleverest of us all.' 
 
 The words had in them a whole epic of human fate. 
 Under the prick of them Keuben found a tongue, not 
 now for his wife, but for himself. 
 
 ' It's not cliverness as ull help yo now, Sandy, wi 
 your Mjiaker ! and yo feeace t' feeace v>-i 'un ! ' he 
 cried. ' It's nowt but satisfacshun by t' blood o' 
 Jesus ! ' 
 
 Sandy made no answer, unless, indeed, the poor 
 heart within made its last cry of agony to heaven at 
 the words. The sinews of the spiritual as well as the 
 l^hysical man were all spent and useless. 
 
 'Davy,' he called presently. The child, who had 
 been sitting motionless during this talk watching his 
 father, slid along the bed with alacrity, and tucking 
 his little legs and feet well away from Sandy's long 
 frame, put his head down on the pillow. His father 
 turned his eyes to him, and Avith a solemn, lingering 
 gaze took in the childish face, the thick, tumbled hair, 
 the expression, so piteous, yet so intelligent. Then 
 he put up his own large hand, and took both the boy's 
 into its cold and feeble grasp. His eyelids fell, and 
 the breathing changed. The nurse hurriedly rose, 
 lifted up Louie from her toys, and put her on the bed 
 beside him. The child, disturbed in her play and 
 frightened by she knew not what, set up a sudden 
 cry. A tremor seemed to pass through the shut lids 
 at the sound, a slight compression of pain appeared in 
 the grey lips. It was Sandy Grieve's last sign of life.
 
 56 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 Reuben Grieve remembered well the letter he had 
 written to his wife, with infinite difficulty, from be- 
 side his brother's dead body. He told her that he 
 was bringing the children back with him. The poor 
 bairns had got nobody in the world to look to but 
 their uncle and aunt. And they would not cost Han- 
 nah a penny. For Mr. Gurney woixld pay thirty 
 pounds a year for their keep and bringing up. 
 
 With what care and labour his clumsy fingers had 
 penned the last sentence so that Hannah might read 
 it plain ! 
 
 Afterwards he brought the children home. As he 
 drove his light cart up the rough and lonely road to 
 Xeedham Farm, Louie cried with the cold and the 
 dark, and Davy, with his hands tucked between his 
 knees, grew ever move and more silent, his restless 
 little head turning perpetually from side to side, as 
 though he were trying to discover something of the 
 strange, new world to Avhich he had been brought, 
 through the gloom of the February evening. 
 
 Then at the sound of wheels outside in the lane, the 
 back door of the farm was opened, and a dark figure 
 stood on the threshold. 
 
 ' Yo're late,' Reuben heard. It was Hannah's pierc- 
 ing voice that spoke. 'Bring 'em into t' back kitchen, 
 an let 'em take their shoes off afore they coom ony 
 further.' 
 
 By Avhich Reuben knew that it had been scrubbing- 
 day, and that her flagstones were more in Hannah's 
 mind than the guests he had brought her. He obeyed, 
 and then the barefooted trio entered the front kitchen 
 together. Hannah came forward and looked at the 
 children — at David white and blinking — at the four- 
 year-old Louie, bundled up in an old shawl, which 
 dragged on the ground behind her, and staring wildly
 
 CHAP. IV rHTLDnooi) 57 
 
 round her at the old low-roofed kitchen with the terror 
 of the trapped bird. 
 
 'Hannah, they're varra cold/ said Keuben — 'ha yo 
 got sunmiat hot ? ' 
 
 'Theer'll be supper bime-by,' Hannah replied with 
 decision. ' I've naw time scrubbin-days to be foolin 
 about wi things out o' hours. I've nobbut just got 
 straight an cleaned mysel. They can sit down an 
 warm tlieirsels. I conno say they feature ony of yor 
 belongins, Reuben.' And she went to put Louie on 
 the settle by the fire. I^ut as the tall woman in black 
 approached her, the child hit out madly with her small 
 fists and burst into a loud howl of crying. 
 
 ' Get away, nasty woman ! Nasty woman — ugly 
 woman ! Take me away — I want my daddy, — I want 
 my daddy.' 
 
 And she threw herself kicking on the floor, while, 
 to Hannah's exasperation, a piece of crumbling bun 
 she had been holding tight in her sticky little hand 
 escaped and littered all the new-washed stones. 
 
 'Tak yor niece oop, Reuben, an mak her behave' — 
 the mistress of the house commanded angrily. ' She'll 
 want a stic^k takken to her, soon, I can see.' 
 
 Reuben obeyed so far as he could, but Louie's shrieks 
 only ceased when, by the combined efforts of husband 
 and wife, she had been put to bed, so exhausted with 
 rage, excitement, and the journey, that sleep mercifully 
 took possession of her just after she had performed 
 the crowning feat of knocking the tea and bread and 
 butter Reuben brought her out of her uncle's hand 
 and all over the room. 
 
 Meanwhile, David sat perfectly still in a chair 
 against the wall, beside the old clock, and stared about 
 him ; at the hams and bunches of dried herbs hanging 
 from the ceiling ; at the chiffonnier, with its red baize 
 doors under a brass trellis-work ; at the high wooden
 
 58 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 settle, the framed funeral cards, and the two or three 
 coloured prints, now brown with age, which Eeuben 
 had liung up twenty years before, to celebrate his 
 marriage. Hannah was propitiated by the boy's 
 silence, and as she got supper ready she once or twice 
 noticed his fine black eyes and his curly hair. 
 
 ' Yo can coom an get yor supper,' she said to him, 
 more graciously than she had spoken yet. ' It's a 
 mussy yo doan't goo shrikin like your sister.' 
 
 ' Thank j'ou, ma'am,' said the little fellow, with a 
 townsman's politeness, hardly understanding, however, 
 a word of her north-country dialect — ' I'm not hungry. 
 — You've got a picture of General Washington there, 
 ma'am ; ' and, raising a small hand trembling with 
 nervousness and fatigue, he pointed to one of the 
 prints opposite. 
 
 '"Wal, I niver,' said Hannah, with a stare of as- 
 tonishment. 'Yo're a quare lot — the two o' yer.' 
 
 One thing more Reuben remembered with some 
 vividness in connection with the children's arrival. 
 When they were both at last asleep — Louie in an un- 
 used room at the back, on an old wooden bedstead, 
 which stood solitary in a wilderness of bare boards ; 
 David in a sort of cupboard off the landing, which got 
 most of its light and air from a wooden trellis-work, 
 overlooking the staircase — Hannah said abruptly to 
 her husband, as they two were going to bed, 'When 
 ull Mr. Gurney pay that money ? ' 
 
 ' Twice a year — so his clerk towd me — Christmas an 
 Midsummer. Praps we shan't want to use it aAv, 
 Hannah ; praps we might save soom on it for t' chil- 
 der. Their keep, iv yo feed em on paaritch, is nobbut 
 a fleabite, and they'n got a good stock o' cloos, Sandy's 
 nurse towd me.' 
 
 He looked anxiously at Hannah. In his inmost
 
 (iiAP. IV ciin.DnooT) 59 
 
 heart there was a passionate wish to do his duty to 
 Sandy's orplians, fij,diting with a dread of his wife, 
 which was the fruit of lung habit and constitutional 
 weakness. 
 
 Hannah faced round upon him. It was Reuben's 
 misfortune that dignity was at all times impossible 
 to him. Now, as he sat in his shirt-sleeves and 
 stocking-feet, flushed with the exertion of pulling ott" 
 his heavy boots, the light of the tallow candle falling 
 on his weak eyes with their red rims, on his large open 
 mouth with the conspicuous gap in its front teeth, and 
 his stubbly hair, he was more than usually grotesque. 
 • As slamp an wobbly as an owd corn-boggart,' so his 
 neighbours described him when they wished to be dis- 
 respectful, and the simile fitted very closely with the 
 dishevelled, disjointed appearance which was at all 
 times characteristic of him, Sundays or weekdays. 
 No one studying the pair, especially at such a moment 
 as this — the malaise of the husband — the wife tower- 
 ing above him, her grey hair hanging loose round her 
 black brows and sallow face instinct with a rugged 
 and indomitable energy — could have doubted in whose 
 hands lay the government of Xeedham Farm. 
 
 ' I'll thank yo not to talk nonsense, Reuben Grieve,' 
 said his Avife sharply. 'D'yo think they're m?/ flesh 
 an blood, thoose childer ? An who'll ha to do for em 
 but me, I should loike to know ? "\Mio"ll ha to put up 
 wi their messin an their dirt but me? Twenty year 
 ha yo an I been married, Reuben, an niver till this 
 neet did I ha to goo down on my knees an sweep 
 oo}) after scrubbin-day ! Iv I'm to be moidered Avi 
 em, I'll be paid for 't. Soa I let yo know — it's little 
 enough.' 
 
 And Hannah took her payment. As he sat in the 
 sun, looking back on the last seven years, with a slow
 
 60 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE hook i 
 
 and dreaming mind, Reuben recognised, using his own 
 phrases for the matter, that the chihiren's thirty 
 pounds had been the pivot of Hannah's existence. He 
 was but a small sheep farmer, with very scanty capi- 
 tal. By dint of hard work and painful thrift, the 
 childless pair had earned a sufficient living in the past 
 — nay, even put by a bit, if the truth of Hannah's 
 savings-bank deposits were known. But every fluctu- 
 ation in their small profits tried them sorely — tried 
 Hannah especially, Avhose temper was of the brooding 
 and grasping order. The certamty of Mr. Gurney's 
 cheques made them very soon the most cheerful facts 
 in the farm life. On two days in the year — the 20th 
 of June and the 20th of December — Reuben might be 
 sure of finding his wife in a good temper, and he had 
 long shrewdly suspected, without inquiring, that Han- 
 nah's savings-bank book, since the children came, had 
 been very pleasant reading to her. 
 
 Reu.ben fidgeted uncomfortably as he thought of 
 those savings. Certainly the children had not cost 
 what was paid for them. He began to be oddly exer- 
 cised this Sunday morning on the subject of the 
 porridge Louie hated so much. Was it his fault or 
 Hannah's if the friigal living which had been the rule 
 for all the remoter farms of the Peak — nay, for the 
 whole north country — in his father's time, and had 
 been made doubly binding, as it were, on the dwellers 
 in Xeedham Farm by James Grieve's Scotch blood 
 and habits, had survived under their roof, while all 
 about them a more luxurious standard of food and 
 comfort was beginning to obtain among their neigh- 
 bours ? Where could you find a finer set of men than 
 the Berwickshire hinds, of whom his father came, and 
 who were reared on 'parritch' from year's end to 
 year's end ? 
 
 And yet, all the same, Reuben's memory was full
 
 CUAI-. IV CHILDHOOD Gl 
 
 this morning of disturbing pictures of a little Loudon 
 child, full of town daintiness and accustomed to the 
 spoiling of an indulgent father, crying herself into fits 
 over the new uni)alatable food, refusing it day after 
 day, till tlie sharj), wilful face had grown pale and 
 pinched with famine, and caring no more apparently 
 for her aunt's beatings than she did for the clumsy 
 advances by which her uncle would sometimes try to 
 propitiate her. There had been a great deal of beat- 
 ing — whenever lieuben thouglit of it he had a super- 
 stitious way of putting Sandy out of his mind as much 
 as possible. Many times he had gone far away from 
 the house to avoid the sound of the blows and shrieks 
 he was powerless to stop. 
 
 Well, but what harm had come of it all ? Louie 
 was a strong lass now, if she were a bit thin and over- 
 grown. David was as fine a boy as anyone need wish 
 to see. 
 
 David ? 
 
 lieuben gut up from his seat at the farm door, took 
 his pipe out of his pocket, and went to hang over the 
 garden-gate, that he might unravel some very worry- 
 ing thoughts at a greater distance from Hannah. 
 
 The day before he had been overtaken coming out 
 of Clough End by Mr. Ancrum, the lame minister. 
 He and Grieve liked one another. If there had been 
 intrigues raised against the minister within the '■ Chris- 
 tian Brethren' congregation, Eeuben Grieve had taken 
 no part in them. 
 
 After some general conversation, Mr. Ancrum sud- 
 denly said, ' Will you let me have a word with you, 
 Mr. Grieve, about your nephew David — if you'll not 
 think me intruding ? ' 
 
 ' Say on, sir — say on,' said Eeuben hastily, but with 
 an inward shrinking. 
 
 ' Well, ]\Ir. Grieve, you'ye got a remarkable boy there
 
 62 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 — a curious luid reuuirkable boy. What are you going 
 to do with him ? ' 
 
 'Do Avi him? — me, sir? Wal, I doan't know as 
 I've iver thowt mich about it,' said Reuben, bnt with 
 an agitation of manner that struck his interrogator. 
 'He be varra useful to me on t' farm, Mr. Ancrum. 
 Soom toimes i' t' year theer's a lot doin, yo knaw, sir, 
 even on a bit place like ours, and he ha gitten a good 
 schoolin, he ha.' 
 
 The apologetic incoherence of the little speech was 
 curious. Mr. Ancrum did not exactly know how to 
 take his man. 
 
 'I dare say he's iiseful. But he's not going to be 
 the ordinary labourer, Mr. Grieve — he's made of quite 
 different stuff, and, if I may say so, it will pay you 
 very well to recognise it in good time. That boy will 
 read books now which hardly any grown man of his 
 class — about here, at any rate — would be able to read. 
 Aye, and talk about them, too, in a way to astonish 
 you ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, I know at he's oncommon cliver wi his books, 
 is Davy,' Reuben admitted. 
 
 ' Oh ! it's not only that. But he's got an unusual 
 brain and a wonderful memory. And it would be a 
 thousand pities if he were to make nothing of them. 
 You say he's useful, but — excuse me, Mr. Grieve — he 
 seems to me to spend three parts of his time in loafing 
 and desultory reading. He wants more teaching — he 
 wants steady training. Why don't you send him to 
 Manchester,' said the minister boldly, 'and apprentice 
 him ? It costs money, no doubt.' 
 
 And he looked interrogatively at Reuben. Reuben, 
 however, said nothing. They were toiling up the 
 steep road from Clough End to the high farms under 
 the Scout, a road which tried the minister's infirm 
 limb severely ; otherwise he would have taken more
 
 CHAP. IV CHILDHOOD 63 
 
 notice of his companion's awkward flush and evident 
 discomposure. 
 
 'But it wouUl pay you in the long run,' he said, 
 when they stoi)ped to take breath ; ' it wouhl be a 
 capital investment if the boy lives, I promise you 
 th;it, Mr. Grieve. And he could carry on his educa- 
 tion there, too, a bit — what Avith evening classes and 
 lectures, and the different libraries he could get the 
 use of. It's wonderful how all the facilities for work- 
 ing-class education have grown in Manchester during 
 the last few years.' 
 
 * Aye, sir — I spose they have — I spose they have,' 
 said Eeuben, uncomfortably, and then seemed incapa- 
 ble of carrying on the conversation any further. Mr. 
 Ancrum talked, but nothing more was to be got out of 
 the farmer. At last the minister turned back, saying, 
 as he shook hands, ' Well, let me know if I can be of 
 any use. I have a good many friends in Manchester. 
 I tell you tliat's a boy to be proud of, Mr. Grieve, a 
 boy of promise, if ever there was one. But he wants 
 taking the right way. He's got plenty of mixed stuff 
 in him, bad and good. I should feel it anxious work, 
 the next few years, if he were my boy.' 
 
 Xow it was really this talk which was fermenting 
 in Reuben, and which, together with the 'rumpus' 
 between Hannah and Louie, had led to his singularly 
 disturbed state of conscience this Sunday morning. As 
 he stood, miserably pulling at his pipe, the whole pros- 
 pect of sloi)ing iield, and steep distant moor, gradually 
 vanished from his eyes, and, instead, he saw the same 
 London room which David's memory held so tena- 
 ciously — he saw Sandy raising himself from his death- 
 bed with that look of sudden distrust — ' Now, you'll 
 deal honest wi 'em, Keuben ? ' 
 
 Keuben groaned in s])irit. 'A boy to be proud of 
 indeed. It seemed to liim, now that he was perforce
 
 04 THE HTSTOT^Y OF DAYTD GIUEVE book i 
 
 made to think about it, that he had never been easy in 
 his mind since Sandy's orphans came to the house. 
 On the one hand, his wife had had her way — liow was 
 he to prevent it ? On the other, his religious sense 
 liad kept pricking and tormenting — like the gadfly 
 that it Avas. 
 
 Who, in the name of fortune, was to ask Hannah for 
 money to send the boy to Manchester and a]jprentice 
 him ? And who was going to write to Mr. Gurney 
 about it without her leave ? Once upset the system 
 of things on which those two half-yearly cheques 
 depended, how many more of them would be forth- 
 coming? And how was Hannah going to put up with 
 the loss of them '.' It made Keuben shiver to think of it. 
 
 Shouts from the lane behind. Reuben suddenly 
 raised himself and made for the gate at the corner of 
 the farmyard. He came out upon the children, who 
 had been to Sunday school at Clough End since din- 
 ner, and were now in consequence in a state of restless 
 animal spirits. Louie Avas swinging violently on the 
 gate which barred the path on to the moor. David 
 was shying stones at a rook's nest opposite, the clatter 
 of the outraged colony to Avhich it belonged sounding 
 as music in his ears. 
 
 They stared when they saw Reuben cross the road, 
 sit down on a stone beside David, and take out his pipe. 
 David ceased throwing, and Louie, crossing her feet 
 and steadying herself as she sat on the topmost bar 
 of the gate by a grip on either side, leant hard on her 
 hands and watched her uncle in silence. When caught 
 unawares by their elders, these two had always some- 
 thing of the air of captives defending themselves in an 
 alien country, 
 
 *Wal, Davy, did tha have Mr. Ancrum in school ?' 
 began Reuben, affecting a brisk manner, oddly unlike 
 him.
 
 niAi-. IV ( IIII.DIIOOD 65 
 
 *Kaw. It Avor Brother A\'iuterbotham from Halifax, 
 or soom sich name.' 
 
 ' Wor he edify in, Davy ? ' 
 
 ' He wor — lie wor — a leatlicr-yed,' said David, with 
 sudden enerj,fy, and, taking uj) a stone again, he tlung 
 it at a tree trunk opposite, with a certain vindictive- 
 ness as though Brother Winterbotham was sitting 
 there. 
 
 ' Now, yo're not s[)eaking as yo owt, Davy,' said 
 Reuben reprovingly, as he puffed away at liis pipe and 
 felt the pleasantness of the spring sunshine Avhich 
 streamed down into the lane through the still bare 
 but budding brancdies of the sycamores. 
 
 ' He u-or a leather-yed,' David rei)eated with em- 
 phasis. ' He said it wor Alexander fought t' battle o' 
 Marathon.' 
 
 Reuben was silent for a while. When tests of this 
 kind were going, he could but lie low. However, 
 David's answer, after a bit, suggested an ojjeuing to 
 him. 
 
 ' Yo've a rare deal o' book-larnin for a farmin lad, 
 Davy. If yo wor at a trade now, or a mill-hand, or 
 summat o' that soart, yo'd ha noan so mich time for 
 readin as yo ha now.' 
 
 The boy looked at him askance, with his keen black 
 eyes. His imcle puzzled him. 
 
 *Wal, I'm not a mill-hand, onyways,' he said, shortly, 
 ' an I doan't mean to be.' 
 
 'Noa, yo're too lazy,' said Louie shrilly, from the 
 top of the gate. ' Theer's heaps o' boys no bigger nor 
 yo, arns their ten shillins a week.' 
 
 'They're Avelcome,' said David, laconically, throwing 
 another stone at the water to keep his hand in. For 
 some years now the boy had cherished a hatred of the 
 mill-life on which CUuigli Yau\ and the other small 
 towns and villages in the neighbourhood existed. The 
 
 VOL. 1 r
 
 66 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 thought of the long monotonous hours at the mules or 
 the looms was odious to the lad whose joys lay in free 
 moorland wanderings with the sheep, in endless read- 
 ing, in talks with 'Lias Dawson. 
 
 ' Wal, now, I'm real glad to heer yo say sich things, 
 Davy, lad,' said Reuben, with a curious flutter of man- 
 ner. 'I'm real glad. So yo take to the farmin, 
 Davy? Wal, it's nateral. All yor forbears — all on 
 em leastways, nobbut yor feyther — got their livin off 
 t' land. It cooms nateral to a Grieve.' 
 
 The boy made no answer — did not commit himself 
 in any way. He went on absently throwing stones. 
 
 ' Why doan't he larn a trade ? ' demanded Louie. 
 ' Theer's Harry Wigson, he's gone to Manchester to be 
 prenticed. He doan't goo loafin round aw day.' 
 
 Her sharp wits disconcerted Reuben. He looked 
 anxiously at David. The boy coloured furiously, and 
 cast an angry glance at his sister. 
 
 'Theer's money wanted for prenticin,' he said 
 shortly. 
 
 Reuben felt a stab. Neither of the children knew 
 that they possessed a penny. A blunt word of Han- 
 nah's first of all, about 'not gien 'em ony high noshuns 
 o' theirsels,' aided on Reuben's side by the natural 
 secretiveness of the peasant in money affairs, had 
 effectually concealed all knowledge of their own share 
 in the family finances from the orphans. 
 
 He reached out a soil-stained hand, shaking already 
 wdth ineii)ient age, and laid it on David's sleeve. 
 
 ' Art tha hankeriu after a trade, lad ? ' he said 
 hastily, nay, harshly. 
 
 David looked at his uncle astonished. A hundred 
 thoughts flew through the boy's mind. Then he raised 
 his head and caught sight of the great peak of Kinder 
 Low iu tlie distance, beyond the green swells of 
 meadow-land, — the heathery slopes running up into its
 
 CIIA1-. IV CHILDHOOD 67 
 
 rocky breast, — the black patch on the brown, to the 
 left, which marked the site of the Smitliy. 
 
 'No,' he said decidedly. 'No; i can't say as I am. 
 I like t' farmin well enough.' 
 
 And then, boy-like, hating to be talked to about 
 himself, he shook himself free of his uncle and walked 
 away, lleuben fell to his pipe again with a beaming 
 countenance. 
 
 ' Louie, my gell,' he said. 
 
 ' Yes,' said the cliild, not moving. 
 
 ' Coom yo heer, Louie.' 
 
 She unwillingly got down and came xip to him. 
 
 Reuben put down his pipe, and fumbled in his 
 waistcoat pocket. Out of it, with difficulty, he pro- 
 duced a si.xpence. 
 
 ' Art tha partial to goodies, Louie ? ' he said, drop- 
 ping his voice almost to a whisper, and holding up the 
 coin before her. 
 
 Louie nodded, her eyes glistening at the magnitude 
 of the coin. Uncle Reuben might be counted on for a 
 certain number of pennies during the year, but silver 
 Avas unheard of. 
 
 'Tak it then, child, an welcome. If yo have a 
 sweet tooth — an it's t' way wi moast gells — I conno 
 see as it can be onything else but Providence as gave 
 it yo. So get yorsel soom biill's-eyes, Louie, an — an ' 
 — he looked a little conscious as he slipped the coin 
 into her eager hand — ' doan't let on ti your aunt I 
 She'd think mebbe I wor spoilin your teeth, or sum- 
 mat, — an, Louie ' — 
 
 Was Uncle Reuben gone mad ? For the first time 
 in her life, as it seemed to Louie, he was looking at 
 what she had on, nay, was even taking up her dress 
 between his finger and thumb. 
 
 ' Is thissen your Sunday frock, chilt ? ' 
 'Yes,' said the girl, flushing scarlet, 'bean't it a 
 dishclout '! '
 
 68 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 And she stood looking down at it with passionate 
 scorn. It Avas a worn and patched garment of brown 
 alpaca, made out of an ancient gown of Hannah's. 
 
 ' Wal, I'm naw judge i' these matters,' said Reuben, 
 dubiously, drawing out his spectacles. ' It's got naw 
 holes 'at I can see, but it's not varra smart, perhaps. 
 Satan's varra active wi gells on this pint o' dress — yo 
 nam tak noatice o' that, Louie — but — listen heer ' — 
 
 And he drew her nearer to him by her skirt, look- 
 ing cautiously up and down the lane and across to the 
 farm. 
 
 'If I get a good price for t' wool this year — an 
 theer's a new merchant coomin round, yan moor o' t' 
 buy in soart nor owd Croker, soa they say, I'st save yo 
 five shillin for a frock, chilt. Yo can goo an buy it, 
 an I'st mak it straight wi yor aunt. But I mun get 
 a good price, yo knov^, or your aunt ull be fearfu' bad 
 to manage.' 
 
 And he gazed up at her as though appealing to her 
 common sense in the matter, and to her understand- 
 ing of both his and her situation. Louie's cheeks were 
 red, her eyes did not meet his. They looked away, 
 down towards Clough End. 
 
 ' Theer's a blue cotton at Hinton's,' she said, hur- 
 riedly — 'a light-blue cotton. They want sixpence 
 farthin, — but Annie Wigson says yo could bate 'em a 
 bit. But what's t' use ? ' she added, with a sudden 
 savage darkening of her bright look — ' she'd tak it 
 away.' 
 
 The tone gave Reuben a shock. But he did not 
 rebuke it. Por the first time he and Louie were con- 
 spirators in the same i)lot. 
 
 'Ko, no, I'd see to 'at. But how lul yo get it 
 made ? ' He was beginning to feel a childish interest 
 in his scheme. 
 
 'Me an Annie Wigson ud mak it oop fast enough.
 
 niM'. IV ( Il[|.I)ll(»(tI) 69 
 
 Theer are things I can do for lior ; she'd not want no 
 payin, an she's fearfu' good at diessmakin. She wor 
 prenticed two years afore she took ill.' 
 
 '(xie me a kiss then, my gell ; doan't yo gie naw 
 trooble, an we'st see. But I mun get a good price, yo 
 know.' 
 
 And rising, Reuben bent towards his niece. She 
 rose on tiptoe, and just touched his rough cheek. 
 There was no natural childish effusiveness in the 
 action. For the seven years since she left her father, 
 Louie had quite unlearnt kissing. 
 
 Reuben proceeded up the lane to the gate leading 
 to the moor. He was in the highest spirits. What a 
 mercy he had not bothered Hannah with Mr. Ancriim's 
 remarks ! Why, the boy wouldn't go to a trade, not 
 if he were sent ! 
 
 At the gate he ran against David, who came hastily 
 out of the farmyard to intercept him. 
 
 'Uncle Reuben, what do they coe that bit watter 
 up theer ? ' and he pointed up the lane towards the 
 main ridge of the Peak. ' Yo know — that bit pool on 
 t' way to th' Downfall ? ' 
 
 The farmer stopped bewildered. 
 
 'That bit watter ? What they coe that bit watter ? 
 Why, they coe it t' Witch's Pool, or used to i' my 
 yoong days. An for varra good reason too. They 
 drownded an owd witch theer i' my grandfeyther's 
 time — I've hecrd my grandmither tell th' tale on't 
 scores o' times. An theer's aw mak o' tales about it, 
 or used to be. I hannot yeerd mony words about it 
 o' late years. Who's been talkiu to yo, Davy ? ' 
 
 Louie came running up and listened. 
 
 ' I doan't know,' said the boy, — ' what soart o' 
 tales ? ' 
 
 ' Why, they'd use to say th' witch walked, on soom 
 neets i' th' year — Easter Eve, most pertickerlerly —
 
 70 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 an foak wor feeart to goo onywhere near it on those 
 neets. But doan't yo goo listenin to tales, Davj^,' 
 said Reuben, with a paternal effusion most rare with 
 him, and born of his recent proceedings ; ' yo'll only 
 freeten yorsel o' neets for nothin.' 
 
 'What are witches ? ' demanded Louie, scornfully. 
 'I doan't bleeve in 'em.' 
 
 Reuben frowned a little. 
 
 ' Theer wor witches yance, my gell, becos it's in th' 
 Bible, an whativer's in th' Bible's true,'' and the farmer 
 brought his hand down on the top bar of the gate. 
 'I'm no gien ony judgment about 'em nowadays. 
 Theer wor aw mak o' queer things said about Jenny 
 Crum an aSTeedham Farm i' th' owd days. I've heerd 
 my grandmither say it worn't worth a Christian man's 
 while to live in Needham Farm when Jenny Crum wor 
 about. She meddled wi everythin — wi his lambs, an 
 his coos, an his childer. I niver seed nothin mysel, so 
 I doan't say nowt — not o' mi awn knowledge. But I 
 doan't soomhow bleeve as it's th' Awmighty's will to 
 freeten a Christian coontry wi witches, i' M present 
 dispensation. An murderin's a graat sin, wheder it's 
 witches or oother foak.' 
 
 ' In t' books they doan't coe it t' Witch's Pool at 
 aw,' said Louie, obstinately. 'They coe it t' Mer- 
 maicVs Pool. 
 
 ' An anoother book coes it a " Hammer-dry-ad," ' 
 said David, mockingly, ' soa theer yo are.' 
 
 ' Aye, soom faddlin kind of a name they gie it — T 
 know — those Manchester chaps, as cooms trespassin 
 ower t' Scout wheer they aren't wanted. To hear ony 
 yan o' them talk, yo'd think theer wor only three 
 fellows like 'im cam ower i' three ships, and two were 
 drownded. T'aint ov ony account what they an their 
 books coe it.' 
 
 And Reuben, as he leant against the gate, blew his
 
 CHAP. IV nilLDIIooI) 71 
 
 smoke contemptuously in tlic air. It was not often 
 that Reuben Grieve allowed liimself, or was allowed 
 by his world, to use airs of superiority towards any 
 other human being whatever. IJut in the case of 
 the Manchester clerks and warehousemen, who canu3 
 tramping over the grouse moors which Eeuben rented 
 for his sheep, and were always being turned back by 
 keepers or himself — and in their case only — did he 
 exercise, once in a while, the commonest privilege of 
 humanity. 
 
 * Did yo iver know onybody 'at went up on Easter 
 Eve ? ' asked David. 
 
 Both children hung on the answer. 
 
 Reuben scratched his head. The tales of Jenny 
 Crum, once well known to him, had sunk deep into the 
 waves of memory of late years, and his slow mind had 
 some difficulty in recovering them. But at last he 
 said with the sudden brightening of recollection : 
 
 '■ Aye — of coorse ! — I knew theer wor soom one. Yo 
 know 'im, Davy, owd 'Lias o' Frimley Moor ? He wor 
 alius a foo'hardy sort o' creetur. But if he wor short 
 o' wits when he gan up, he wor mich shorter when he 
 cam down. That wor a rum skit ! — now I think on 't. 
 Sich a seet he Avor ! He came by here six o'clock i' th' 
 mornin. I found him hangin ower t' yard gate theer, 
 as white an slamp as a puddin cloth oop on eend ; an I 
 browt him in, an was for gien him soom tay. An yor 
 aunt, she gien him a warkl o' good advice about his 
 gooins on. But bless yo, he didn't tak in a word o' 't. 
 An for th' tay, he'd naw sooner swallowed it than he 
 runs out, as quick as leetnin, an browt it aw up. He 
 wor fairly clemmed wi' t' cold, — 'at he wor. I put in 
 th' horse, an I took him down to t' Frimle}^ carrier, an 
 we packed him i' soom rugs an straw, an soa he got 
 home. But they put him out o' t' school, an he wor 
 months in his bed. An they do tell me, as nobory
 
 72 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 Ccan mak owt o' 'Lias Dawson these mony years, i' th' 
 matter o' brains. Eh, but yo shudno meddle wi 
 Satan.' 
 
 ' What d'yo think he saw ? ' asked David, eagerly, 
 his black eyes all aglow. 
 
 ' He saw t' woman wi' t' fish's tail — 'at's what he 
 saw,' said Louie, shrilly. 
 
 Keuben took no notice. He was sunk in silent 
 reverie poking at his pipe. In spite of his confi- 
 dence in the Almighty's increased goodwill towards 
 the present dispensation, he was not prepared to 
 say for certain what 'Lias Dawson did or didn't see. 
 
 ' Nobory should goo an meddle wi Satan,' he 
 repeated slowly after an interval, and then opening 
 the yard gate he went off on his usual Sunday walk 
 over the moors to have a look at his more distant 
 sheep. 
 
 Davy stood intently looking after him ; so did 
 Louie. She had clasped her hands behind her head, 
 her eyes were wide, her look and attitude all eagerness. 
 She was putting two and two together — her uncle's 
 promise and the mermaid story as the Manchester 
 man had delivered it. You had but to see her and 
 wish, and, according to the Manchester man and his 
 book, you got your wish. The child's hatred of ser- 
 mons and ministers had not touched her capacity for 
 belief of this sort in the least. She believed fever- 
 ishly, and was enraged with David for setting up a 
 rival creed, and with her uncle for endorsing it. 
 
 David turned and walked towards the farmyard. 
 Louie followed him, and tapped him peremptorily on 
 the arm. 'I'm gooin up tlieer Easter Eve — Saturday 
 week ' — and she pointed over her shoulder to the 
 Scout. 
 
 ' Gells conno be out neets,' said David firmly ; ' if I 
 goo I can tell yo.'
 
 niAP. V ( iiii.nnooD 
 
 hi 
 
 ' Yo'll not goo without me — I'd tell Aunt Hannah ! ' 
 
 ' Yo've naw moor sense nor rotten sticks ! ' said 
 David, angrily. ' Vo'll get your death, an Aunt Han- 
 nah '11 be stick stock mad wi boath on us. If I goo 
 she'll niver tind out.' 
 
 Louie hesitated a moment. To provoke Aunt 
 Hannah too mucli might, indeed, endanger the blue 
 frock. But daring and curiosity triumplLed. 
 
 ' I doan't care I ' she said, tossing her head ; ' I'm 
 gooin.' 
 
 David slamned the yard gate, and, hiding himself 
 in a corner of the cowhouse, fell into moody medita- 
 tions. It took all the tragic and mysterious edge off 
 an adventure he had set his heart on that Louie should 
 insist on going too. But there was no help for it. 
 Xext day they planned it together. 
 
 CHAPTEK V 
 
 'Reubex, ha yo seen t' childer ? ' inquired Aunt 
 Hannah, poking her head round the door, so as to be 
 heard by her husband, who was sitting outside cob- 
 bling at a bit of broken harness. 
 
 ' Noa ; niver seed un since dinner.' 
 
 ' They went down to Clough End, two o'clock about, 
 for t' bread, an I've yerd nothin ov em since. Coom 
 in to your tay, Reuben ! I'll keep nothin waitin for 
 them I They may goo empty if they conno keep 
 time ! ' 
 
 Reuben Avent in. An hour later the husband and 
 wife came out together, and stood looking down the 
 steep road leading to the town. 
 
 'Just cast your eye on aw them stockins waitin to 
 be mended,' said Hannah, angrily, turning back to the
 
 74 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GKTEA^E book i 
 
 kitchen, and pointing to a chair piled with various 
 garments. 'That's why she doon it, I spose. I'll be 
 even wi her ! It's a poor soart of a supper she'll get 
 this neet, or he noather. An her stomach aw she 
 cares for ! ' 
 
 Eeuben wandered down into the road, strolled up 
 and down for nearly an hour, while the sun set and 
 the light waned, went as far as the corner by Wigson's 
 farm, asked a passer-by, saw and heard nothing, and 
 came back, shaking his head in answer to his wife's 
 shrill interrogations. 
 
 ' Wal, if I doan't gie Louie a good smackin,' ejacu- 
 lated Hannah, exasperated ; and she was just going 
 back into the house when an exclamation from 
 Reuben stopped her ; instead, she ran out to him, 
 holding on her cap against the east wind. 
 
 ' Look theer,' he said, pointing ; ' what iver is them 
 two uj) to ? ' 
 
 For suddenly he had noticed outside the gate lead- 
 ing into the field a basket lying on the ground against 
 the wall. The two j^eered at it with amazement, for 
 it was their own basket, and in it reposed the loaves 
 David had been told to bring back from Clough End, 
 while on the top lay a couple of cotton reels and a 
 card of mending which Louie had been instructed to 
 buy for her aunt. 
 
 After a moment lieuben looked up, his face working. 
 
 ' I'm thinkin, Hannah, they'n roon away ! ' 
 
 It seemed to him as he spoke that such a possibility 
 had been always in his mind. And during the past 
 Aveek there had been much bad blood between aunt 
 and niece. Twice had the child gone to bed supper- 
 less, and yesterday, for some impertinence, Hannah 
 had given her a blow, the marks of which on her 
 cheek Reuben had watched guiltily all day. At night 
 he had dreamed of Sandy. Since Mr. Ancrum had
 
 CHAP. V rniLl)Tl(tni) 75 
 
 set him thinking, and so stirred his conscience in 
 various indirect and unforeseen ways, Sandy had been 
 a terror to him ; tlie dead man liad gained a mysteri- 
 ous hokl on the living. 
 
 'Koon away ! ' rejjeated Hannah scornfully; 'whar 
 ud they roon to ? They're just at soom o' their divil- 
 ments, 'afs what they are. An if yo doan't tak a stick 
 to boath on them when they coom back, / loill, soa 
 theer, lleuben Grieve. Yo niver had no sperrit wi 'em 
 — niver — and that's yan reason why they've grown up 
 soa ramjam full o' wickedness.' 
 
 It relieved her to abuse her husband. Reuben said 
 nothing, but hung over the wall, straining his eyes 
 into the gathering darkness. The wooded sides of the 
 great moor which enclosed the valley to the north 
 were fading into dimness, and to the east, above the 
 ridge of Kinder Low a young moon was rising. The 
 black steep wall of the Scout was swiftly taking to 
 itself that majesty which all mountains win from the 
 approach of night. Involuntarily, Reuben held his 
 breath, listening, hungering for the sound of children's 
 voices on the still air. Nothing — but a few intermit- 
 tent bird notes and the eternal hurry of water from 
 the moorland to the plain. 
 
 There was a step on the road, and a man passed 
 whistling. 
 
 'Jim Wigson! ' shouted Hannah, 'is that yo, Jim ?' 
 
 The man opened the yard gate, and came through 
 to them. Jim was the eldest son of the neighbouring 
 farmer, whose girls were Louie's only companions. 
 He was a full-blooded swaggering youth, with whom 
 David was generally on bad terms. David despised 
 him for an oaf who could neither read nor write, and 
 hated him for a bully. 
 
 He grinned Avhen Hannah asked him questions 
 about the truants.
 
 76 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 '"Why, they're gone to Edale, th' yoong rascots, I'll 
 uphowd yo ! There's a parcel o' gijjsies there tellin 
 fortunes, an' lots o' foak ha gone ower there to-day. 
 You may mak your mind up they've gone to Edale. 
 That Louie's a limb, she is. She's got spunk enough 
 to waak to Lunnon if she'd a mind. Oh, they'll be 
 back here soon enough, trust 'em.' 
 
 ' I shut my door at nine o'clock,' said Hannah, 
 grimly. ' Them as cooms after that, may sleep as 
 they can.' 
 
 ' Well, that'll be sharp wark for th' eyes if they're 
 gone to Edale,' said Jim, with a laugh. ' It's a good 
 step fro here to Edale.' 
 
 ' Aye, and soom o' 't bad ground,' said Eeuben un- 
 easily — ' varra bad ground.' 
 
 'Aye, it's not good walkin, neets. If they conno 
 see their way when they get top o' t' Downfall, they'll 
 stay theer till it gets niornin, if they've ony sort o' 
 gumption. But, bless yo, it bean't gooin to be a dark 
 neet,' — and he pointed to the moon. ' They'll be here 
 afore yo goo to bed. An if yo want onybody to help 
 yo gie Davy a bastin. just coe me, Mr. Grieve. Good 
 neet to yo.' 
 
 Eeuben fidgeted restlessly all the evening. Towards 
 nine he went out on the pretext of seeing to a cow 
 that had lately calved and was in a weakly state. He 
 gave the animal her food and clean litter, doing every- 
 thing more clumsily than usual. Then he went into 
 the stable and groped about for a lantern that stood 
 in the corner. 
 
 He found it, slipped through the farmyard into the 
 lane, and then lit it out of sight of the house. 
 
 ' It's bad ground top o' t' Downfall,' he said to him- 
 self, apologetically, as he guiltily opened the gate on 
 to the moor — ' varra bad ground.' 
 
 Hannah shut her door that night neither at nine nor
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 77 
 
 at ten. For by the latter hour the master of the house 
 was still absent, and nowhere to be found, in spite of 
 repeated calls from the door and up the lane. Hannah 
 guessed where he had gone without much difficulty ; 
 but her guess only raised her wrath to a white heat. 
 Troublesome brats Sandy's children had always been — 
 Louie more especially — but they had never perpetrated 
 any such overt act of rebellion as this before, and the 
 dour, tyrannical woman was filled with a kind of silent 
 frenzy as she thought of her husband going out to 
 welcome the wanderers. 
 
 'It's a quare kind o' fatted calf they'll get when 1 
 lay hands on 'em,' she thought to herself as she stood 
 at the front door, in the cold darkness, listening. 
 
 Meanwhile David and Louie, high up on the side of 
 Kinder Scout, were speculating with a fearful joy as to 
 what might be happening at the farm. The manner of 
 their escape had cost them much thought. Should they 
 slip out of the front door instead of going to bed ? But 
 the woodwork of the farm was old and creaking, and 
 the bolts and bars heavy. They were generally secured 
 before supper by Hannah herself, and, though they 
 might be surreptitiously oiled, the children despaired 
 — considering how close the kitchen was to the front 
 door — of getting out without rousing Hannah's sharp 
 ears. Other projects, in which windows and ropes 
 played a part, were discussed. David held strongly 
 that he alone could have managed any one of them, 
 but he declined flatly to attempt them with a 'gell.' 
 In the same way he alone could have made his way up 
 the Scout and over the river in the dark. But who'd 
 try it with a ' gell ' ? 
 
 The boy's natural conviction of the uselessness of 
 'gells' was never more disagreeably expressed than 
 on this occasion. But he could not shake Louie 
 off. She pinched him when he enraged her beyond
 
 78 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 bounds, but she never wavered in her determination 
 to go too. 
 
 Finally they decided to brave Aunt Hannah and 
 take the consequences. They meant to be out all 
 uight in hiding, and in the morning they would come 
 back and take their beatings. David comfortably 
 reflected that Uncle Reuben couldn't do him much 
 harm, and, though Louie could hardly flatter herself 
 so far, her tone, also, in the matter was philosophical. 
 
 ' Theer's soom bits o' owd books i' th' top-attic,' she 
 said to David ; ' I'll leave 'em in t' stable, an when 
 we coom home, I'll tie 'em on my back — under my 
 dress — an she may leather away till Christmas.' 
 
 So on their return from Clough End with the bread 
 — about five o'clock — they slipped into the field, 
 crouching under the wall, so as to escape Hannah's 
 observation, deposited their basket by the gate, took 
 up a bundle and tin box which David had hidden that 
 morning under the hedge, and, creeping back again 
 into the road, passed noiselessly through the gate on 
 to the moor, just as Aunt Hannah was lifting the 
 kettle off the fire for tea. 
 
 Then came a wild and leaping flight over the hill, 
 down to the main Kinder stream, across it, and up the 
 face of the Scout — up, and up, with smothered laugh- 
 ter, and tumbles and scratches at every step, and a 
 glee of revolt and adventure swelling every vein. 
 
 It was then a somewhat stormy afternoon, with 
 alternate gusts of wind and gleams of sun playing on 
 the black boulders, the red-brown slopes of the moun- 
 tain. The air was really cold and cutting, promising 
 a frosty night. But the children took no notice of it. 
 Up, and on, through the elastic carpet of heather and 
 bilberry, and across bogs which showed like veins of 
 vivid green on the dark surface of the moor ; under 
 circling peewits, who fled before them, crying with
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 79 
 
 plaintive shrillness to eacli other, as though in pro- 
 test ; and past grouse-nests, whence 'the startled 
 mothers soared precipitately with angry duckings, 
 each leaving behind her a loose gathering of eggs 
 lying wide and ojjen on the heather, those newly laid 
 gleaming a brighter red beside their fellows. The tin 
 box and its contents rattled under David's arm as he 
 leapt and straddlrd across tlie bogs, choosing always 
 the widest jump and the stiffest bit of climb, out of 
 sheer wantonness of life and energy. Louie's thin 
 figure, in its skimp cotton dress and red crossover, 
 her long legs in their blue worsted stockings, seemed 
 to fly over the moor, winged, as it were, by an ecstasy 
 of freedom. If one could but be in two places at once 
 — on the Scout — and peeping from some safe corner 
 at Aunt Hannah's wrath ! 
 
 Presently they came to the shoulder whereon — 
 gleaming under the level light — lay the jNIermaid's 
 Pool. David had sufficiently verified the fact that the 
 tarn did indeed bear this name in the modern guide- 
 book parlance of the district. Young men and w^omen, 
 out on a holiday from the big towns near, and carry- 
 ing little red or green ' guides,' sj^oke of the ' Mer- 
 maid's Pool' with the accent of romantic interest. 
 But the boy had also discovered that no native-born 
 farmer or shepherd about had ever heard of the name, 
 or would have a word to say to it. And for the first 
 time he had stumbled full into the deep deposit of 
 Avitch-lorc and belief still surviving in the Kinder 
 Scout district, as in all the remoter moorland of the 
 North. Especially had he won the confidence of a 
 certain ' owd ^Nlatt,' a shepherd from a farm high on 
 Mardale Moor ; and the tales ' owd ]\Iatt ' had told 
 him — of mysterious hares coursed at night by angry 
 farmers enraged by the 'bedivilment' of their stock, 
 shot at with silver slugs, and identified next morning
 
 80 THE HISTORY OF D.UII) (BRIEVE book i 
 
 Avith some dreaded hag or other lying groaning and 
 wounded in her bed — of calves' hearts burnt at mid- 
 night with awful ceremonies, while the baffled witch 
 outside flung herself in rage and agony against the 
 close-barred doors and windows — of spells and Avise 
 men — these things had sent chills of pleasing horror 
 through the boy's frame. They Avere altogether new 
 to him, in this vivid personal guise at least, and 
 mixed up Avith all the familiar names and places of 
 the district ; for his childish life had been singularly 
 solitary, giving to books the part Avliich half a century 
 ago Avould have been taken by tradition ; and, more- 
 over, the witch-belief in general had noAV little foot- 
 hold among the younger generation of the Scout, and 
 Avas only spoken of Avith reserve and discretion among 
 the older men. 
 
 But the stories once heard had struck deep into the 
 lad's quick and pondering mind. Jenny Crum seemed 
 to have been the latest of all the great Avitches of 
 Kinder Scout. The memory of her as a real and 
 awful personage was still fresh in the mind of many 
 a grey-haired farmer ; the history of her death Avas 
 Avell knoAvn ; and most of the local inhabitants, even 
 the boys and girls, turned out, Avhen a'ou came to 
 inquire, to be familiar Avith the later legends of the 
 Pool, and, as David presently discovered, Avith one or 
 more tales — for the stories were discrepant — of 'Lias 
 DaAvson's meeting Avith the witch, noAV fifteen years 
 ago. 
 
 ' What had 'Lias seen ? What Avould they see ? ' 
 His flesh crept deliciously. 
 
 ' Wal, OAvd Mermaid I ' shouted Louie, defiantly, as 
 soon as she had got her breath again. ' Are yo coomin 
 out to-night ? Yo'll ha coompany if you do.' 
 
 David smiled contemptuously and did not conde- 
 scend to argue.
 
 . iiAi'. V CHILDHOOD 81 
 
 * Are yo coomin on ? ' he said, shouldering his box 
 and bundle again. 'They'st be up after us if we 
 doan't look out.' 
 
 And on they went, cliuibing a steep boulder-strewn 
 slope above the ])Ool till they came to the ' edge ' 
 itself, a tossed and Itroken battlement of stone, run- 
 ning along the top of the Scout. Here the great black 
 slabs of grit were lying fantastically ]>iled ujion each 
 other at every angle and in every possible combina- 
 tion. The path which leads from the Hayfield side 
 across the desolate tableland of the Scout to the Snake 
 Inn on the eastern side of the ridge, ran among them, 
 and many a wayfarer, benighted or mist-bound on the 
 moor, had taken refuge before now in their caverns 
 and recesses, waiting for the light, and dreading to 
 hnd himself on the cliffs of the Downfall. 
 
 But David pushed on past many hiding-places well 
 known to him, till the two reached the point where the 
 mountain face sweeps l)aekward in the curve of which 
 the Downfall makes the centre. At the outward 
 edge of the curve a great buttress of ragged and jut- 
 ting rocks descends perpendicularly towards the val- 
 ley, like a ruined staircase with displaced and gigantic 
 steps. 
 
 DoAvn this David began to make his way, and Louie 
 jumped, and slid, and swung after him, as lithe and 
 sure-footed as a cat. Presently David stopped. 'This 
 uU do,' he said, surveying the place with a critical 
 eve. 
 
 They had just slid down a sloping chimney of rock, 
 and were now standing on a flat block, over which 
 hung another like a penthouse roof. On the side of 
 the Downfall there was a projecting stone, on which 
 David stepped out to look about liira. 
 
 Holding on to a rock above for precaution's sake, 
 he reconnoitred their position. To his left was the 
 
 AT)L. I G
 
 82 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 black and semicircular cliff, down the centre of which 
 the Downfall stream, now tamed and thinned by the 
 dry spring winds, was trickling. The course of the 
 stream was marked by a vivid orange colour, pro- 
 duced, apparently, in the grit by the action of water ; 
 and about halfway down the fall a mass of rock had 
 recently slipped, leaving a bright scar, through which 
 one saw, as it were, the inner mass of the Peak, the 
 rectangular blocks, now thick, now thin, as of some 
 Cyclopean masonry, wherewith the earth-forces had 
 built it up in days before a single alp had yet risen 
 on the face of Europe. Below the boy's feet a preci- 
 pice, which his projecting stone overhung, fell to the 
 bed of the stream. On this side at least they were 
 abundantly protected. 
 
 On the moorside the steep broken ground of the 
 hill came np to the rocky line they had been descend- 
 ing, and offered no difficulty to any sure-footed person. 
 But no path ran anywhere near them, and from the 
 path up above they were screened by the grit 'edge' 
 already spoken of. Moreover, their penthouse, or 
 half-gable, had towards the Downfall a tolerably wide 
 opening ; but towards the moor and the north there 
 was but a narrow hole, which David soon saw could be 
 stopped by a stone. When he crept back into their 
 hiding-place, it pleased him extremely. 
 
 '■ They'll niver find us, if they look till next week ! ' 
 he exclaimed exultantly, and, slipping off the heavy 
 bundle strapped on his back, he undid its contents. 
 Two old woollen rugs appeared — one a blanket, the 
 other a horse-rug — and wrapped np in the middle of 
 them a jagged piece of tarpaulin, a hammer, some 
 wooden pegs, and two or three pieces of tallow dip. 
 Louie, sitting cross-legged in the other corner, with 
 her chin in her hands, looked on with her usual de- 
 tached and critical air. David had not allowed her
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 83 
 
 iiuu:h of a voice in the preparations, and she felt an 
 instinctive aversion towards other people's ingenu- 
 ities. All she had contributed was something to 
 while away the time, in the shape of a bag of bull's- 
 eyes, bought with some of the sixpence Uncle Reuben 
 had given her. 
 
 Having laid out his stores, David went to work. 
 Getting out on tlie projecting stone again, he laid the 
 bit of tarpaulin along the sloping edge of the rock 
 which roofed them, pegged it down into crevices at 
 either end, and laid a stone to hold it in the middle. 
 Then he slipped back again, and, behold, there was a 
 curtain between them and the Downfall, which, as the 
 dusk was fast advancing, made the little den inside 
 almost completely dark. 
 
 ' What's t' good o' that? ' incpiired Louie, scornfully, 
 more than half inclined to put out a mischievous hand 
 and pull it down again. 
 
 ' Doair't worrit, and yo'll see,' returned David, and 
 Louie's curiosity got the better of her malice. 
 
 Stooping down beside her, he looked through the 
 hole which opened to the moor. His eye travelled 
 down the hillside to the path far below, just visible in 
 the twilight to a practised eye, to the river, to the 
 pasture-fields on the hill beyond, and to the smoke, 
 rising above the tops of some unseen trees, which 
 marked the site of the farmhouse. Ko one in sight. 
 The boy crawled out, and searched the moor till he 
 found a large flattish stone, which he brought and 
 placed against the opening, ready to be drawn quite 
 across it from inside. 
 
 Then he slii)ped back again, and in the glimmer of 
 light which remained groped for his tin box. Louie 
 stooped over and eagerly watched him open it. Out 
 came a bottle of milk, some large slices of bread, some 
 oatcake, and some cheese, in the corner, recklessly
 
 84 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 near the cheese, lurked a grease-bespattered lantern 
 and a box of matches. David had borrowed the lan- 
 tern that afternoon from a Clough End friend under 
 the most solemn vows of secrecy, and he drew it out 
 now with a deliberate and special relish. When he 
 had driven a peg into a cranny of the rock, trimmed 
 half a dip carefully, lighted it, put it into the lantern, 
 and hung the lantern on the peg, he fell back on his 
 heels to study the effect, with a beaming countenance, 
 filled all through with the essentially human joy of 
 contrivance. 
 
 'Now, then, d'yo see what that tarpaulin's for ?' he 
 inquired triumphantly of Louie. 
 
 But Louie's mouth was conveniently occupied with 
 a bull's-eye, and she only sucked it the more vigor- 
 ously in answer. 
 
 ' Why, yo little silly, if it worn't for that we couldno 
 ha no leet. They'd see us from t' fields even, as soon 
 as it's real dark.' 
 
 ' Doan't bleeve it,' said Louie, laconically, in a voice 
 much mufSed by bull's-eyes. 
 
 'Wal, yo needn't; I'm gooin to have my tea.' 
 
 And David, diving into the tin, brought out a hunch 
 of bread and a knob of cheese. The voracity with 
 which he fell on them, soon, with him also, stopped 
 up the channels of speech. Louie, alarmed perhaps 
 by the rapidity with which the mouthfuls disappeared, 
 slid up on her heels and claimed her share. Never was 
 there a more savoury meal than that ! Their little den 
 with its curtain felt warm for the moment after the 
 keen air of the moor ; the lantern light seemed to shut 
 them in from the world, gave them the sense of settlers 
 carving a home out of the desert, and milk which had 
 been filched from Aunt Hannah lay like nectar in the 
 mouth. 
 
 After their meal both children crept out on to the
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 85 
 
 moor to see what miglit be going on in the world out- 
 side. Darkness was fast advancing. A rising wind 
 swept through tlie dead bracken, whirled round the 
 great grit boulders, and sent a shiver through Louie's 
 thin body. 
 
 * It's cowd,' she said pettishly ; < I'm gooin back.' 
 
 'Did yo spose it wor gooin to be warm, yo little 
 silly ? That's why I browt t' rugs, of course. Gells 
 never think o' nothin. It's parishin cowd here, neets 
 — fit to tie yo up in knots Avi tli' rheumatics, like Jim 
 Spedding, if yo doan't mind yorsel. It wor only lay- 
 ing out a neet on Frimley Moor — poachin, I guess — 
 'at twisted Jim that way.' 
 
 Louie's countenance fell. Jim Spedding was a lit- 
 tle crooked greengrocer in Clough End, of whom she 
 had a horror. The biting hostile wind, which obliged 
 her to hold her hat on against it with both hands, the 
 black moor at their feet, the grey sweep of sky, the 
 ].>ale cloudy moon, the darkness which was fast envel- 
 oping them— blotting out the distant waves of hill, 
 and fusing the great blocks of grit above them into 
 one threatening mass— all these became suddenly hate- 
 ful to her. She went back into their den, wrapped 
 herself up in one of the tattered rugs, and crept sulk- 
 ily into a corner. The lantern gleamed on the child's 
 huddled form, the frowning brow, the great vixenish 
 eyes. She had half a mind to run home, in spite of 
 Aunt Hannah. Hours to wait I and she loathed waiting. 
 
 But gradually, as the rug warmed her, the passion 
 for adventure and mystery — the vision of the mermaid 
 — the hope of the blue cotton — reasserted themselves, 
 and the little sharp face relaxed. She began to amuse 
 herself with hunting the spiders and beetles which 
 ran across the rocky roof above her head, or crept in 
 and out of the crevices of stone, wondering, no doubt, 
 at this unbidden and tormenting daylight. She
 
 86 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 caught one or two small blackbeetles in a dirty rag of 
 a lianilkercliief — for she would not touch them it" she 
 could help it — and then it delighted her to push aside 
 the curtain, stretch her hand out into the void dark- 
 ness, and let them fall into the gulf below. Even if 
 they could fly, she reflected, it must 'gie em a good 
 start.' 
 
 Meanwhile, David had charged up the hill, filled 
 with a sudden curiosity to see what the top of the 
 Scout might look like by night. He made his way 
 through the battlement of grit, found the little path 
 behind, gleaming white in the moonlight, because of 
 the quartz sheddings which wind and weather are for 
 ever teasing out of the grit, and which drift into the 
 open spaces ; and at last, guided by the sound and the 
 gleam of water, he made out the top of the Downfall, 
 climbed a high peak bank, and the illimitable plateau 
 of the Scout lay wide and vast before him. 
 
 Here, on the mountain-top, there seemed to be 
 more daylight left than on its rocky sides, and the 
 moon among the parting clovids shone intermittently 
 over the primeval waste. The top of the Peak is, so 
 to speak, a vast black glacier, whereof the crevasses 
 are great fissures, ebon-black in colour, sometimes ten 
 feet deep, and with ten feet more of black water 
 at the bottom. For miles on either side the ground 
 is seamed and torn with these crevasses, now shal- 
 lower, now deeper, succeeding each other at intervals 
 of a yard or two, and it is they which make the cross- 
 ing of the Peak in the dark or in mist a matter of 
 danger sometimes even for the native. David, high 
 on his bank, from which the black overhanging eaves 
 curled inwards beneath his feet to a sullen depth of 
 water, could see against the moonlit sky the posts 
 which marked the track from the Downfall to the 
 Snake Inn on the Glossop Road. Miss that track — a
 
 CHAP. V CIIII-DlIixtl) 87 
 
 matter of some fifteen minutes' walk for the sturdy 
 farmer wlio knows it well — and you iind yourself lost 
 in a region wliieli has no features and no landmarks, 
 where the earth lays snares for you and the mists be- 
 tray you, and wliere even in bright sunshine there 
 reigns an eternal and indescribable melancholy. The 
 strangeness and wildness of the scene entered the boy's 
 consciousness, and brought with them a kind of exal- 
 tation. He stood gazing; that inner life of his, of 
 which Louie, his constant companion, knew as good as 
 nothing, asserting itself. 
 
 For the real companions of his heart were not Louie 
 or the boys with whom he had joked and sparred at 
 school ; they were ideas, images, sounds, imaginations, 
 caught from books or from the talk of old 'Lias and 
 Mr. Ancrum. He had but to stand still a moment, as 
 it were, to listen, and the voices and sights of another 
 world came out before him like players on to a stage. 
 Spaces of shining water, crossed by ships with decks 
 manned by heroes for whom tlio blue distance was for 
 ever revealing new lands to conquer, new adventures 
 to affront ; the plumed Indian in his forest divining 
 the track of his enemy from a displaced leaf or twig ; 
 the Zealots of Jehovah urging a last frenzied defence 
 of Jehovah's Sanctuary against the Roman host; and 
 now, last of all, the gloom and flames, the infernal 
 palaces, the towering hends, the grandiose and lumber- 
 ing war of ' Paradise Lost ' : these things, together 
 with the names and suggestions of 'Lias's talk — that 
 whole crew of shining, fighting, haranguing men and 
 women whom the old dreamer was for ever bringing 
 into weird action on the moorside — lived in the boy's 
 mind, and in any pause of silence, as we have said, 
 emerged and took possession. 
 
 It was only that morning, in an old meal-chest 
 which had belonged to his grandfather, James Grieve,
 
 88 THE IIISTOIJY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 he had discovered the old calf-bound copy of ' Paradise 
 Lost,' which was now in one of his pockets, balanced 
 by ' Anson's Voyages ' in the other. All the morning 
 he had been lying hidden in a corner of the sheepfold 
 devouring it, the rolling verse imprinting itself on the 
 boy's plastic memory by a sort of enchantment — 
 
 You dreary plain, forlorn and -wild, 
 The seat of desolation, void of light. 
 Save what the glimmering of these livid tlanies 
 Casts pale and dreadful. 
 
 He chanted the words aloud, flinging them out in an 
 ecstasy of pleasure. Before him, as it seemed, there 
 stretched that very plain 'forlorn and wild,' with its 
 black fissures and its impenetrable horizons ; the fit- 
 ful moonlight stood for the glimmering of the Tar- 
 tarean flames ; the remembered words and the actual 
 sights played into and fused witli each other, till in 
 the cold and darkness the boy thrilled all through 
 with that mingling of joy and terror Avhich is only 
 possible to the creature of fine gifts and high imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Jenny Criim, too ! A few more hours and he might 
 see her face to face — as 'Lias had seen her. He 
 quaked a little at the thought, but he would not have 
 flinched for the world. He was not going to lose his 
 wits, as 'Lias did ; and as for Louie, if she were fright- 
 ened it would do her good to be afraid of something. 
 
 Hark ! He turned, stooped, put his hand to his 
 ear. 
 
 The sound he heard had startled him, turned him 
 pale. But he soon recovered himself. It was the 
 sound of heavy boots on stones, and it was brought to 
 him by the wind, as it seemed, from far below. Some 
 one was coming after them — perhaps more than one. 
 He thought he heard a voice.
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 89 
 
 He leapt fissure after fissure like a young too, fled 
 to the top of the Downfall and looked over. Did the 
 light show through the tarpaulin? Alack I — there 
 must be a rent somewhere — for he saw a dim glow- 
 worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the 
 mountain. It was invisible from below, Ijut any rov- 
 ing eye from the top would be cauglit by it in an 
 instant. In a second he had raced along the edge, 
 dived in and out of the blocks, guiding liis way by a 
 sort of bat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stair- 
 way, which he descended at imminent risk of his neck. 
 
 'Put your hand ower t' leet, Louie, till I inove t' 
 stone ! ' 
 
 The light disappeared, David crept in, and the two 
 children crouched together in a glow of excitement. 
 
 'Is 't Uncle Reuben?' whispered Louie, pressing 
 her face against the side of the rocks, and trying to 
 look through the chink between it and the covering 
 stone. 
 
 'Aye — wi a lantern. But there's talkin — theer's 
 someone else. Jim Wigson, mebbe.' 
 
 'If it's Jim Wigson,' said Louie, between her small, 
 shut teeth, 'I'll bite him!' 
 
 ' Cos yo're a gell. Gells and cats bite — they can't 
 do nowt else !' 
 
 Whereupon Louie pinched him, and David, giving 
 an involuntary kick as he felt the nip, went into first 
 a fit of smothered laughter, and then seized her arm 
 in a tight grip. 
 
 ' Keep quiet, conno yo ? Now they're coomin, an I 
 bleeve they're coomin this way ! ' 
 
 But, after another minute's waiting, he was quite 
 unable to obey his own injunction, and he crept out on 
 the stone overlooking the precipice to look. 
 
 'Coom back! They'll see yo!' cried Louie, in a 
 shrill whisper ; and she caught him by the ankle.
 
 90 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 David gave a kick. ' Let goo ; if yo do 'at I shall 
 fall and be kilt ! ' 
 
 She held her breath. Presently, with an exclama- 
 tion, he knelt down and looked over the edge of the 
 great sloping block which served them for roof. 
 
 ' Wal, I niver I Theer's nobory bnt Uncle Reuben, 
 an he's talkin to hissel. Wal, this is a rum skit ! ' 
 
 And he stayed outside watching, in spite of Louie's 
 angry commands to him to come back into the den. 
 David had no fears of being discovered by Uncle 
 Reuben. If it had been Jim Wigson it would have 
 been different. 
 
 Presently, on the path some sixty feet above them, 
 but hidden from them by the mass of tumbled rocks 
 through which they had descended, they heard some- 
 one puffing and blowing, a stick striking and slipping 
 on the stones, and weird rays of light stole down the 
 mountain-side, and in and out of the vast blocks with 
 which it was overstrewn. 
 
 ' He's stopt up theer,' said David, creeping in under 
 the gable, 'an I mun hear what he's saying. I'm 
 gooin up nearer. If yo coom we'll be caught.' 
 
 ' Yo stoopid ! ' cried Louie. But he had crawled up 
 the narrow chimney they had come down by in a 
 moment, and she was left alone. Her spirit failed her 
 a little. She daren't climb after him in the dark. 
 
 David clambered in and out, the fierce wind that 
 beat the side of the mountain masking whatever 
 sounds he may have made, till he found himself 
 directly under the place where Reuben Grieve sat, 
 slowly recovering his breath. 
 
 '■ Lord ! Lord ! They're aw reet, Sandy — 
 they're aw reet ! ' 
 
 The boy crouched down sharply under an over- 
 hanging stone, arrested by the name — Sandy — his 
 father's name.
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 01 
 
 Once or twice since he came to Kinder he had 
 heard it on Uncle Reuben's lips, once or twice from 
 neighbours who had known James Grieve's sons in 
 their youth. But Sandy had left the farm early and 
 was little remembered, and the true story of Sandy's 
 life was unknown in the valley, though there were 
 many rumours. What the close and timid Reuben 
 heard from Mr. Gurney, the head of Sandy's firm, 
 after Sandy's death, he told to no one but Hannah, 
 The children knew generally, from what Hannah often 
 let fall when she was in a temper, that their mother 
 was a disgrace to them, but they knew no more, and, 
 with the natural instinct of forlorn creatures on the 
 defensive, studiously avoided the subject within the 
 walls of Xeedham Farm. They might question old 
 'Lias ; they would suffer many things rather than 
 question their uncle and aunt. 
 
 But David especially had had many secret thoughts 
 he could not put away, of late, about his parents. 
 And to hear his father's name drojoped like this into 
 the night moved the lad strangely. He lay close, 
 listening with all his ears, expecting passionately, he 
 knew not what. 
 
 But nothing came — or the wind carried it away. 
 When he was rested, Reuben got up and began to 
 move about with the lantern, apparently throwing its 
 light from side to side. 
 
 ' David ! Louie ! ' 
 
 The hoarse, weak voice, strained to its utmost pitch, 
 died away on the night wind, and a weird echo came 
 back from the cliffs of the Downfall. 
 
 There Avas no menace in the cry — rather a piteous 
 entreaty. The truant below had a strange momentary 
 impulse to answer — to disclose himself. But it was 
 soon past, and instead, he crept well out of reach of 
 the rays which tiashe dover the precipitous ground
 
 92 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 about him. As he did so he noticed the Mermaid's 
 Pool, gleaming in a pale ray of moonlight, some two 
 hundred feet below. A sudden alarm seized him, lest 
 Keuben should be caught by it, put two and two 
 together and understand. 
 
 But Reuben was absorbed in a discomfort, half 
 moral, half superstitious, and nothing else reached 
 the slow brain — which was besides preoccupied by 
 Jim Wigson's suggestion. After a bit, he picked up 
 his stick and went on again. David, eagerly watch- 
 ing, tracked him along the path which follows the 
 ridge, and saw the light pause once more close to the 
 Downfall. 
 
 So far as the boy could see, his uncle made a long 
 stay at a point beyond the stream, the bed of which 
 was just discernible, as a sort of paler streak on the 
 darkness. 
 
 ' Why, that's about whar th' Edale path cooms in,' 
 thought David, wondering. ' What ud he think we'd 
 be doin theer ? ' 
 
 Faint sounds came to him in a lull of the wind, as 
 though Reuben were shouting again — shouting many 
 times. Then the light went wavering on, defining in 
 its course the curved ridge of the further moor, till at 
 last it made a long circuit downwards, disappearing 
 for a minute somewhere in the dark bosom of Kinder 
 Low, about midway between earth and sky. David 
 guessed that Uncle Reuben must be searching the 
 Smithy. Then it descended rapidly, till finally it 
 vanished behind the hill far below, which was just 
 distinguishable in the cloudy moonshine. Uncle 
 Reuben had gone home. 
 
 David drew a long breath. But that patient quest 
 in the dark — the tone of the farmer's call — that 
 mysterious word Sandy, had touched the boy, made 
 him restless. His mood grew a little flat, even a little
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 93 
 
 remorseful. The joy of their great adventure ebbed 
 a little. 
 
 However, he climbed down again to Louie, and 
 found a dark elfish figure standing outside their den, 
 and dancing with excitement. 
 
 'Wouldn't yo like to ketch us — wouldn't yo? — 
 wouldn't yo ? ' screeched the child, beside herself. She 
 too had been watching, had seen the light vanish. 
 
 ' Yo'll have t' parish up after yo if yo doan't howd 
 your tongue,' said David roughly. 
 
 And creeping into their den he relit the lantern. 
 Then he pulled out a watch, borrowed from the same 
 friend who had provided the lantern. Past nine. Two 
 hours and more before they need think of starting down- 
 wards for the Pool. 
 
 Louie condescended to come in again, and the stone 
 was drawn close. But how fierce the wind had grown, 
 and how nipping was the air ! Uavid shivered, and 
 looked about for the rugs. He wrapt Louie in the 
 horse-rug, which was heaviest, and tucked the blanket 
 round himself. 
 
 ' Howd that tight round yo,' he commanded, struck 
 with an uneasy sense of responsibility, as he happened 
 to notice how starved she looked, ' and goo to sleep if 
 yo want to. I'll wake yo — I'm gooin to read.' 
 
 Louie rolled the rug round her chr^'salis-like, and 
 then, disdaining the rest of David's advice, sat bolt 
 upright against the rock, her wide-open eyes staring 
 defiantly at all within their ken. 
 
 The minutes went by. David sat close up against 
 the lantern, bitterly cold, but reading voraciously. At 
 last, however, a sharper gust than usual made him look 
 up and turn restive. Louie still sat in the opposite 
 corner as stiffly as before, but over the great staring 
 eyes the lids had just fallen, sorely against their 
 owner's will; the head was dropping against the rock;
 
 94 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 the child was fast asleep. It occurred to David she 
 looked odd ; the face seemed so grey and white. He 
 instinctively took his own blanket and put it over 
 her. The silence and helplessness of her sleep seemed 
 to appeal to him, to change his mood towards her, for 
 the action was brotherly and tender. Then he pushed 
 the stone aside and crept out on to the mooi\ 
 
 There he stood for a while, with his hands in his 
 pockets, marking time to warm himself. How the 
 wind bit to be sure ! — and it would be colder still by 
 dawn. 
 
 The pool showed dimly beneath him, and the grue- 
 some hour was stealing on them fast. His heart beat 
 quick. The weirdness and loneliness of the night came 
 home to him more than they had done yet. The old 
 woman dragged to her death, the hooting crowd, the 
 inexorable parson, the struggle in the water, the last 
 gurgling cry — the vision rose before him on the dark 
 with an ever ghastlier plainness than a while ago on 
 the mountain-top. How had 'Lias seen her that the 
 sight had changed him so ? Did she come to him 
 with her drowned face and floating grey hair — grip 
 him with her cold hands ? David, beginning to thrill 
 in good earnest, obstinately filled in the picture with 
 all the horrible detail he could think of, so as to 
 harden himself. Only now he wished with all his 
 heart that Louie were safe at home. 
 
 An idea occurred to him. He smiled at it, turned 
 it over, gradually resolved upon it. She would lead 
 him a life afterward, but what matter ? — let her ! 
 
 From the far depths of the unseen valley a sound 
 struck upwards, piercing through the noises of river 
 and wind. It was the clock of Clough End church, 
 tolling eleven. 
 
 Well, one could not stand perishing there another 
 hour. He stooped down and crawled in beside Louie.
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 95 
 
 She was sleeping heavily, the added warmth of David's 
 blanket conducing thereto. He hung over her, watch- 
 ing her breathing with a merry look, which gradually 
 became a broad grin. It was a real shame — she would 
 be just mad when she woke up. But mermaids were 
 all stuff, and Jenny Crum would 'skeer' her to death. 
 Just in proportion as the adventure became more awe- 
 some and more real did the boy's better self awake. 
 He grew soft for his sister, while, as he proudly 
 imagined, iron for himself. 
 
 He crept in under the blanket carefully so as not to 
 disturb her. He was too tired and excited to read. 
 He would think the hour out. So he lay staring at 
 the opposite wall of rock, at its crevices, and creep- 
 ing ants, at the odd lights and shadows thrown by the 
 lantern, straining his eyes every now and then, that 
 he might be the more sure how wide awake they were. 
 
 Louie stretched herself. What was the matter? 
 Where was she ? What was that smell ? She leant 
 forward on her elbow. The lantern was just going 
 out, and smelt intolerably. A cold grey light was in 
 the little den. What ? Where ? 
 
 A loud wail broke the morning silence, and David 
 sleeping profoundly, his open mouth just showing 
 above the horse-rug, was roused by a shower of blows 
 from Louie's fists. He stirred uneasily, tried to 
 escape them by plunging deeper into the folds, but 
 they pursued him vindictively. 
 
 ' Give ower ! ' he said at last, striking back at ran- 
 dom, and then sitting up he rubbed his eyes. There 
 was Louie sitting opposite to him, crj'ing great tears 
 of rage and pain, now rocking her ankle as if it hurt 
 her, and now dealing cuffs at him. 
 
 He hastily pulled out his watch. Half-past four 
 o'clock !
 
 96 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ' Yo great gonner, yo ! ' sobbed Louie, her eyes 
 blazing at him through her tears. ' Yo good-for- 
 nowt, yo muffiu-yed, yo donkey !' And so on through 
 all the words of reviling known to the Derbyshire 
 child. David looked extremely sheepish under them. 
 
 Then suddenly he put his head down on his knees 
 and shook Avith laughter. The absurdity of it all — ■ 
 of their preparations, of his own terrors, of the dis- 
 turbance they had made, all to end in this flat and 
 futile over-sleeping, seized upon him so that he could 
 not control himself. He laughed till he cried, while 
 Louie hit and abused him and cried too. But her cry- 
 ing had a different note, and at last he looked up at 
 her, sobered. 
 
 ' Howd your tongue ! — an doan't keep bully-raggin 
 like 'at ! What's t' matter wi' yo ? ' 
 
 For answer, she rolled over on the rock and lay on 
 her face, howling with pain. David sprang up and 
 bent over her. 
 
 ' What iver^s t' matter wi' yo, Louie ? ' 
 
 But she kept him off like a wildcat, and he could 
 make nothing of her till her passion had spent itself 
 and she was quiet again, from sheer exhaustion. 
 
 Then David, who had been standing near, shivering, 
 with his hands in his pockets, tried again. 
 
 ' ISTow, Louie, do coom home,' he said appealingly. 
 ' I can find yo a place in t' stable ull be warmer nor 
 this. You be parished if yo stay here.' For, ignorant 
 as he was, her looks began to frighten him. 
 
 Louie would have liked never to speak to him again. 
 The thought of the blue cotton and of her own lost 
 chance seemed to be burning a hole in her. But the 
 stress of his miserable look drew her eyes open whether 
 she would or no, and when she saw him her self-pity 
 overcame her. 
 
 ' I conno walk,' she said, with a sudden loud sob. 
 * It's my leg.'
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 97 
 
 ' What's wrong wi 't 'i ' said David, inspecting it 
 anxiously. ' It's got tli' cowd in 't, that's what it is; 
 it's th' rheumatics, I speck. Tak howd on me, I'll 
 help yo down.' 
 
 And with much coaxing on his part and many cries 
 and outbursts on hers he got her up at last, and out of 
 the den. He had tied his tin box across his back, and 
 Louie, with the rugs wrapped about her, clung, limp- 
 ing, and with teeth chattering, on to his arm. The 
 child was in the first throes of a sharp attack of rheu- 
 matism, and half her joints were painful. 
 
 That was a humiliating descent ! A cold grey 
 morning was breaking over the moor; the chimneys 
 of the distant cotton-towns rose out of mists, under a 
 sky streaked with windy cloud. The ]\Iermaid's Pool, 
 as they passed it, looked chill and mocking; and the 
 world altogether felt so raw and lonely that David 
 welcomed the first sheep they came across with a leap 
 of the heart, and positively hungered for a first sight 
 of the farm. How he got Louie — in whose cheeks the 
 fever-spots were rising — over the river he never quite 
 remembered. But at last he had dragged her up the 
 hill, through the fields close to the house, where the 
 lambs were huddling in tlie nipping dawu beside their 
 mothers, and into the farmyard. 
 
 The house rose before them .grey and frowning. 
 The lower windows were shuttered ; in the upper ones 
 the blinds were pulled closely down ; not a sign of 
 life anywhere. Yes ; the dogs had heard them ! Such 
 a barking as began ! Jock, in his kennel by the front 
 door, nearly burst his chain in his joyful efforts to get 
 at them ; while Tib, jumi)ing the half-door of the out- 
 house in the back yard, where he had been curled up in 
 a heap of bracken, lea})t about them and barked like mad. 
 
 Louie sank down crying and deathly pale on a stone 
 by the stable door. 
 
 VOL. 1 H
 
 98 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 'They'll hear that fast enoof/ said David, looking 
 anxiously up at the shut windows. 
 
 But the dogs went on barking, and nothing hap- 
 pened. Ten minutes of chilly waiting passed away. 
 
 'Tak him away, do.-" she cried, as Tib jumped up 
 at her. ' No, I woan't ! — I woan't ! ' 
 
 The last words rose to a shriek, as David tried to 
 persuade her to go into the stable, and let him make 
 her a bed in the straw. He stood looking at her in 
 despair. They had always supposed they would be 
 locked out ; but surely the sleepers inside must hear 
 the dogs. He turned and stared at the house, hunger- 
 ing for some sign of life in it. Uncle Keuben would 
 hear them — Uncle Reuben would let them in ! 
 
 But the blinds of the top room never budged. 
 Louie, with her head against the stable-door, and her 
 eyes shut, went on convulsively sobbing, while Tibby 
 sniffed about her for sympathy. And the bitter wind 
 coming from the Scout whistled through the yard and 
 seemed to cut the shivering child like a knife. 
 
 ' I'll mak a clunter agen th' window wi some gravel,' 
 said David at last, in desperation. And he picked up 
 a handful and threw it, first cautiously, then reck- 
 lessly. Yes ! — at last a hand moved the blind — a 
 hand the children knew well, and a face appeared to 
 one side of it. Hannah Grieve had never looked so 
 forbidding as at that moment. The boy caught one 
 glance of a countenance pale with wrath and sleep- 
 lessness ; of eyes that seemed to blaze at them through 
 the window; then the blind fell. He waited breath- 
 lessly for minute after minute. Not a sound. 
 
 Furiously he stooped for more gravel, and flung it 
 again and again. For an age, as it seemed to him, no 
 more notice was taken. At last, there was an agita- 
 tion in the blind, as though more than one person was 
 behind it. It was Hannah who lifted it again; but
 
 CHAP. V CHILDHOOD 99 
 
 David thought he caught a motion of her anu as 
 though she were holding some one else back. The lad 
 pointed excitedly to Louie. 
 
 ' She's took bad ! ' he shouted. ' Uncle Reuben ! — 
 Uncle Reuben I — coom down an see for yorsel. If 
 yo let her in, yo can keep me out as long as yo 
 like ! ' 
 
 Hannah looked at him, and at the figure huddled 
 against the stable-door— looked deliberately, and then, 
 as deliberately, pulled the blind down lower than be- 
 fore, and not a sign of Reuben anywhere. 
 
 A crimson flame sprang to David's cheek. He 
 rushed at the door, and while with one hand he banged 
 away at the old knocker, he thumped with the other, 
 kicking lustily the while at the panels, till Louie, al- 
 most forgetting her pains in the fierce excitement of 
 the moment, thought he would kick them in. In the 
 intervals of his blows, David could hear voices inside 
 in angry debate. 
 
 ' Vnde Reuben ! ' he shouted, stopping the noise 
 for a moment, 'Uncle Reuben,. Louie's turned sick! 
 She's clemmed wi t' cold. If yo doan't open th' door, 
 I'll go across to Wigson's, and tell 'em as Louie's 
 parishin, an yo're bein th' death on her.' 
 
 The bolt shot back, and there stood Reuben, his red 
 hair sticking up wildly from his head, his frame shak- 
 ing with unusual excitement. 
 
 ' What are yo makin that roompus for, Davy ?' began 
 Reuben, with would-be severity. ' Ha done wi yo, or 
 I'll have to tak a stick to yo.' 
 
 But the boy stood akimbo on the steps, and the old 
 farmer shrank before him, as David's black eye trav- 
 elled past him to a gaunt figure on the stairs. 
 
 ' Yo'll tak noa stick to me, Uncle Reuben. Til not 
 put up wi it, an yo know it. I'm goin to bring Louie 
 in, AVe've bin on t' moor by t' Pool lookin for th'
 
 100 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ovvd witch, an we both on us fell asleep, an Louie's 
 took the rheumatics. — Soa theer. — Stan out o' t' 
 Avay.' 
 
 And running back to Louie, who cried out as he 
 lifted her up, he half carried, half dragged her in. 
 
 ' Why, she's like death,' cried Eeuben. ' Hannah ! 
 summat hot — at woonst.' 
 
 But Hannah did not move. She stood at the foot 
 of the stairs, barring the way, the chill morning light 
 falling on her threatening attitude, her grey dishevelled 
 hair and all the squalid disarray of her dress. 
 
 ' Them as doos like beggar's brats,' she said grimly, 
 ' may fare like 'em. 7'11 do nowt for 'em.' 
 
 The lad came up to her, his look all daring and 
 resolution — his sister on his arm. But as he met the 
 woman's expression, his lips trembled, he suddenly 
 broke down. 
 
 ' iSTow, look here,' he cried, with a sob in his throat. 
 ' I know we're beggar's brats. I know yo hate th' sect 
 on us. But I wor t' worst. I'm t' biggest. Tak 
 Louie in, and bully-rag me as mich as yo like. Louie 
 — Louie!' and he hung over her in a frenzy, ' wake up, 
 Louie ! ' 
 
 But the child was insensible. Fatigue, the excite- 
 ment of the struggle, the anguish of movement had 
 done their work — she lay like a log upon his arm. 
 
 ' She's fainted,' said Hannah, recognising the fact 
 with a sort of fierce reluctance. ' Tak her up, an 
 doan't Stan blatherin theer.' 
 
 And she moved out of the way. 
 
 The boy gathered up the thin figure, and, stumbling 
 over the tattered rugs, carried her up by a superhuman 
 effort. 
 
 Eeuben leant against the passage wall, staring at 
 his wife. 
 
 'Yo're a hard woman, Hannah — a hard woman,' he
 
 CHAP. VI CHILDHOOD 101 
 
 said to her under his breath, in a low, shaken voice. 
 ' An yo coed em beggar's brats — oh Lord — Lord ! ' 
 
 ' Howd your tongue, an blow up t' fire,' was all the 
 reply she vouchsafed him, and Reuben obeyed. 
 
 INIcanwhile upstairs Louie had been laid on her bed. 
 Consciousness had come back, and she was moaning. 
 
 David stood beside her in utter despair. He thought 
 she was going to die, and he had done it. At last he 
 sank down beside her, and flinging an arm round her, 
 he laid his hot cheek to her icy one. 
 
 ' Louie, doan't — doan't — I'll tak yo away from here, 
 Louie, when I can. I'll tak care on yo, Louie. 
 Doan't, Louie, — doan't ! ' 
 
 His whole being seemed rent asunder by sympathy 
 and remorse. Uncle Keuben, coming up with some 
 hot gruel, found him sitting on the bed beside his 
 sister, on whom he had heaped all the clothing he 
 could find, the tears running down his cheeks. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 From that night forward, David looked upon the 
 farm and all his life there with other eyes. 
 
 Up till now, in spite of the perennial pressure of 
 Hannah's tyrannies, which, however, weighed much 
 less upon him than upon Louie, he had been — as he 
 had let Reuben see — happy enough. The open-air 
 life, the animals, his books, out of all of them he man- 
 aged to extract a very fair daily sum of enjoyment. 
 And he had been content enough with his daily tasks — 
 herding the sheep, doing the rough work of the stable 
 and cow-house, running Aunt Hannah's errands with 
 the donkey cart to Clough End, helping in the hay- 
 making and the sheep-shearing, or the driving of
 
 102 , THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 stock to and from the various markets Keuben fre- 
 quented. All these things he had done with a curious 
 placidity, a detachment and yet readiness of mind, as 
 one who lends himself, without reluctance, to a life 
 not his own. It was this temper mainly, helped, no 
 doubt, by his unusual tastes and his share of foreign 
 blood and looks, which had set him apart from the 
 other lads of his own class in the neighbourhood. He 
 had few friends of his own age, yet he was not unpop- 
 ular, except, perhaps, with an overbearing animal like 
 Jim Wigson, who instinctively looked upon other 
 people's brains as an offence to his own muscular 
 pretensions. 
 
 But his Easter Eve struggle with Hannah closed, 
 as it were, a childhood, which, though hard and love- 
 less, had been full of compensations and ignorant of its 
 own worst wants. It woke in him the bitterness of 
 the orphan dependant, who feels himself a burden 
 and loathes his dependence. That utter lack of the 
 commonest natural affection, in which he and Louie 
 had been brought up — for Reuben's timorous advances 
 had done but little to redress the balance — had not 
 troubled him much, till suddenly it was writ so 
 monstrous large in Hannah's refusal to take pity on 
 the fainting and agonised Louie. Thenceforward 
 every morsel of food he took at her hands seemed to 
 go against him. They were paupers, and Aunt Hannah 
 hated them. The fact had been always there, but it 
 had never meant anything substantial to him till 
 now. Now, at last, that complete dearth of love, in 
 which he had lived since his father died, began to 
 react in revolt and discontent. 
 
 The crisis may have been long preparing, those 
 words of his uncle as to his future, as well as the 
 incident of their locking out, may have had something 
 to say to it. Anyway, a new reflective temper set in.
 
 CHAP. VI CHILDHOOD 103 
 
 The young immature creature became self-conscious, 
 began to feel the ferments of growth. The ambition 
 and the restlessness his father had foreseen, with 
 dying eyes, began to stir. 
 
 Reuben's qualms returned upon him. On the 15th 
 of May, he and David went to "Woodhead, some six- 
 teen or seventeen miles off, to receive the young stock 
 from the Yorkshire breeders, which were to be grazed 
 on the farm during the summer. In general, David 
 had taken the liveliest interest in the animals, in the 
 number and quality of them, in the tariff to be paid 
 for them, and the long road there and back had been 
 cheered for the farmer by the lad's chatter, and by the 
 athletic antics he was always playing with any handy 
 gate or tree which crossed their path. 
 
 ' Them heifers ull want a deal o' grass puttin into 
 'era afoor they'll be wuth onybody's buyin, Davy,' 
 said lieuben, inspecting his mixed herd with a critical 
 eye from a roadside bank, as they climbed the first 
 hill on their return journey. 
 
 'Aye, they're a poor lot,' returned David, shortly, 
 and walked on as far in front of his uncle as might be, 
 with his head in the air and his moody look fixed on 
 the distance. 
 
 'T' Wigsons ull be late getting whoam,' began 
 Reuben again, with an uneasy look at the boy. ' Owd 
 Wigson wor that f\;ll up wi yell when I last seed 
 him they'll ha a job to get him started straight this 
 neet.' 
 
 To this remark David had nothing at all to say, 
 though in general he had a keen neighbourly relish for 
 the misdeeds of the Wigsons. Reuben did not know 
 what to make of him. However, a mile further on he 
 made another attempt : 
 
 'Lord, how those Yorkshire breeders did talk ! 
 Yo'd ha thowt they'd throw their jaws off the hinges.
 
 104 THE fflSTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 An a lot o' gimcrack notions as iver wor — wi their 
 new foods, an their pills an strengthening mixtnres — 
 messin wi cows as though they wor humans. Why 
 conno they leave God Awniighty alone ? He can 
 bring a calvin cow through beawt ony o' their med- 
 dlin, I'll ui)howd yo ! ' 
 
 But still not a word from the lad in front. Reuben 
 mitrht as well have talked to the wall beside him. He 
 had grown used to the boy's companionship, and the 
 obstinate silence which David still preserved from 
 hour to hour as they drove their stock homewards 
 made a sensible impression on him. 
 
 Inside the house there was a constant, though in 
 general a silent, struggle going on between the boy 
 and Hannah on the subject of Louie. Louie, after the 
 escapade of Easter Eve, was visited with a sharp at- 
 tack of inflammatory rheumatism, only just stopping 
 short of rheumatic fever. Hannah got a doctor, and 
 tended her sufficiently while the worst lasted, partly 
 because she was, after all, no monster, but only a com- 
 monly sordid Aud hard-natured woman, and partly 
 because for a day or two Louie's state set her ponder- 
 ing, perforce, what might be the effect on Mr. Gur- 
 ney's remittances if the child incontinently died. 
 This thought undoubtedly quickened whatever nat- 
 ural instincts might be left in Hannah Grieve ; and 
 the child had her doctor, and the doctor's orders were 
 more or less followed. 
 
 But when she came downstairs again — a lanky, 
 ghostly creature, much grown, her fierce, black eyes 
 more noticeable than ever in her pinched face — Han- 
 nah's appetite for ' snipin ' — to use the expressive 
 Derbyshire word — returned upon her. The child was 
 almost bullied into her bed again — or would have been 
 if David had not found ways of preventing it. He 
 realised for the first time that, as the young and active
 
 CRAP. VI CHILDHOOD 105 
 
 male of the household, he was extremely necessary to 
 Hannah's convenience, and now whenever Hannah ill- 
 treated Louie her convenience suffered. David dis- 
 appeared. Her errands were undone, the wood uncut, 
 and coals and water had to be carried as they best 
 could. As to reprisals, with a strong boy of fourteen, 
 grown very nearly to a man's height, Hannah found 
 herself a good deal at a loss. ' Bully-raggin ' he took 
 no more account of than of a shower of rain ; blows 
 she instinctively felt it would have been dangerous 
 to attempt ; and as to deprivation of food, the lad 
 seemed to thrive on hunger, and never whistled so 
 loudly as when, according to Hannah's calculations, 
 he must have been as -keen-bitten as a hawk.' For 
 the first time in her life Hannah was to some extent 
 tamed. When there was business about she generally 
 felt it expedient to let Louie alone. 
 
 But this sturdy protection was more really a matter 
 of roused pride and irritation on David's part than of 
 brotherly love. It was the tragedy of Louie Grieve's 
 fate — whether as child or woman — that she was not 
 made to be loved. Whether she could love, her story 
 Avill show; but to love her when you were close to her 
 was always hard. How different the days would have 
 been for the moody lad, who had at last learnt to 
 champion her, if their common isolation and depen- 
 dence had but brought out in her towards him anything 
 clinging — anything confidential, any true spirit of 
 comradeship ! On the contrary, while she was still 
 ill in bed, and almost absolutely dependent on what 
 he might choose to do for her, she gibed and flouted 
 him past bearing, mainly, no doubt, for the sake of 
 breaking the tedium of her confinement a little. And 
 when she was about again, and he was defending her 
 weakness from Aunt Hannah, it seemed to him that 
 she viewed his proceedings rather with a malicious
 
 106 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 than a grateful eye. It amused and excited her to 
 see him stand up to Hannah, but he got little reward 
 from her for his pains. 
 
 She was, as it were, always watching him with a 
 sort of secret discontent. He did not suit her — was 
 not congenial to her. Especially was she exasperated 
 now more than ever by his bookish tastes. Possibly 
 she was doubly jealous of his books ; at any rate, un- 
 less he had been constantly on his guard, she would 
 have hidden them, or done them a mischief whenever 
 she could, in her teasing, magpie way. 
 
 One morning, in the grey summer dawn, Louie had 
 just wakened, and was staring sleepily at the door, 
 when, all of a sudden, it opened — very quietly, as 
 though pushed by some one anxious not to make a 
 noise — and Reuben's head looked round it. Louie, 
 amazed, woke up in earnest, and Reuben came stealth- 
 ily in. He had his hat and stick under his arm, and 
 one hand held his boots, while he stepped noiselessly 
 in his stocking feet across the room to where Louie 
 lay — ' Louie, are yo awake ? ' 
 
 The child stared up at him, seeing mostly his stub- 
 ble of red hair, Avhich came like a grotesque halo 
 between her and the wall. Then she nodded. 
 
 ' Doan't let yor aunt hear nothin, Louie. She 
 thinks I'm gone out to th' calves. But, Louie, that 
 merchant I towd yo on came yesterday, an he wor a 
 hard un, he wor — as tough as nails, a sight worse nor 
 owd Croker to deal wi, ony day in th' week. I could 
 mak nowt on him — an he gan me sich a poor price, I 
 darn't tak a penny on 't from your aunt — noa, I darn't, 
 Louie, — not if it wor iver so. She'll be reet down mad 
 when she knaws — an I'm real sorry about that bit 
 dress o' yourn, Louie.' 
 
 He stood looking down at her, his spectacles falling
 
 CHAP. VI CHILDHOOD 107 
 
 forward on his nose, the corners of his mouth droop- 
 ing — a big ungainly culprit. 
 
 For a second or two the child was quite still, noth- 
 ing but the black eyes and tossed masses of hair 
 showing above the sheet. Then the eyes blinked sud- 
 denly, and flinging out her hand at hira with a pas- 
 sionate gesture, as though to push him away, she 
 turned on her face and drew the bedclothes over her 
 head. 
 
 ' Louie I ' he said — ' Louie ! ' 
 
 But she made no sign, and, at last, with a gro- 
 tesquely concerned face, he went out of the room and 
 downstairs, hanging his head. 
 
 Out of doors, he found David already at work in 
 the cowhouse, but as surly and uncommunicative as 
 before when he was spoken to. That the lad had 
 turned ' agen his wark,' and was on his way to hate the 
 farm and all it contained, was plain even to Reuben, 
 Why was he so glum and silent — why didn't he speak 
 up ? Perhaps he would, Reuben's conscience replied, 
 if it were conveyed to him that he possessed a sub- 
 stantial portion of six hundred pounds ! 
 
 The boy knew that his uncle watched him — 
 anxiously, as one watches something explosive and 
 incalculable — and felt a sort of contempt for himself 
 that nothing practical came of his own revolt and 
 discontent. But he was torn with indecision. How to 
 leave Louie — what to do with himself without a far- 
 thing in the world — whom to go to for advice ? He 
 thought often of Mr. Ancrum, but a fierce distaste for 
 chapels and ministers had been growing on him, and 
 he had gradually seen less and less of the man who 
 had been the kind comrade and teacher of his early 
 childhood. His only real companions during this year 
 of moody adolescence were his books. From the for-
 
 108 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 gotten deposit in the old meal-ark upstairs, which had 
 yielded ' Paradise Lost/ he drew other treasures by 
 degrees. He found there, in all, some tattered leaves 
 — three or four books altogether — of Pope's ' Iliad,' 
 about half of Foxe's ' Martyrs ' — the rest having been 
 used apparently by the casual nurses, who came to 
 tend Keuben's poor mother in her last days, to light 
 the fire — a complete copy of Locke ' On the Human 
 Understanding,' and various volumes of old Calvinist 
 sermons, which he read, partly because his reading 
 appetite was insatiable, partly from a half-contempt- 
 uous desire to find out Avhat it might be that Uncle 
 Reuben was always troubling his head about. 
 
 As to 'Lias Dawson, David saw nothing of him for 
 many long weeks after the scene which had led to the 
 adventure of the pool. He heard only that 'Lias was 
 ' bad,' and mostly in his bed, and feeling a little guilty, 
 he hardly knew why, the lad kept away from his old 
 friend. 
 
 Summer and the early autumn passed away. Octo- 
 ber brought a spell of wintry weather; and one day, 
 as he was bringing the sheep home, he met old Mar- 
 garet, 'Lias's wife. She stopped and accosted him. 
 
 'Why doan't yo coom and see 'Lias sometimes, 
 Davy, my lad ? Yo might leeten him up a bit, an' he 
 wants it, t' Lord knows. He's been fearfu' bad in his 
 sperrits this summer.' 
 
 The lad stammered out some sheepish excuses, and 
 soon made his way over to Primley Moor. But the 
 visits were not so much pleasure as usual. 'Lias was 
 very feeble, and David had a constant temptation to 
 struggle with. He understood that to excite 'Lias, to 
 throw him again into the frenzy which had begotten 
 the vision of the pool, would be a cruel act. But all 
 the same he found it more and more difficult to restrain 
 himself, to keep back the questions which burnt on 
 his tongue.
 
 CHAP. VI CHILDHOOD 109 
 
 As for 'Lias, his half-shut eye would brighten when- 
 ever David showed himself at the door, and he Avould 
 l)oint to a wooden stool on the other side of the 
 fire. 
 
 ' Sit tha down, lad. Margret, gie him soom tay,' or 
 ' ]\Iargret, yo'll just find him a bit oatcake.' 
 
 And then the two would fall upon their books 
 together, and the conversation would glide impercep- 
 tibly into one of those scenes of half-dramatic imper- 
 sonation, for which David's relish was still unimpaired. 
 
 But the old man was growing much weaker ; his 
 inventions had less felicity, less range than of old ; and 
 the watchful ]\Iargaret, at her loom in the corner, kept 
 an eye on any signs of an undue excitement, and turned 
 out David or any other visitor, neck and crop, without 
 scruple, as soon as it seemed to her that her crippled 
 seer was doing himself a mischief. Poor soul ! she 
 had lived in this tumult of 'Lias's fancies year after 
 year, till the solid world often turned about her. And 
 she, all the while, so simple, so sane — the ordinary 
 good woman, wdth the ordinary woman's hunger for 
 the common blessings of life — a little love, a little 
 chat, a little prosaic well-being I She had had two 
 sons — they were gone. She had been the proud wife 
 'o' t' cliverest mon atwixt Sheffield an ]\lanchester,' 
 as Frimley and the adjacent villages had once expressed 
 it, when every mother that respected herself sent her 
 children to 'Lias Dawson's school. And the myste- 
 rious chances of a summer night had sent home upon 
 her hands a poor incapable, ruined in mind and body, 
 who was to live henceforward upon her charity, wan- 
 dering amid the chaotic wreck and debris of his former 
 self. 
 
 Well, she took up her burden ! 
 
 The straggling village on Frimley Moor was mainly 
 iuhabited by a colony of silk hand-loom weavers — the
 
 110 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 descendants of French prisoners in the great war, and 
 employed for the most part by a firm at Leek. Very 
 dainty work was done at Frimley, and very beautiful 
 stuffs made. The craft went from father to son. 
 All Margaret's belongings had been weavers ; but 'Lias, 
 in the pride of his schoolmaster's position, would never 
 allow his wife to use the trade of her youth. When 
 he became dependent on her, Margaret bought a dis- 
 used loom from a cousin, had it mended and repaired, 
 and set to work. Her fingers had not forgotten their 
 old cunning; and when she was paid for her first 'cut,' 
 she hurried home to 'Lias with a reviving joy in her 
 crushed heart. Thenceforward, she lived at her loom ; 
 she became a skilled and favoured Avorker, and the work 
 grew dear to her — first, because 'Lias lived on it, and, 
 next, because the bright roses and ribbon-patterns she 
 wove into her costly stuffs were a perpetual cheer to 
 her. The moors might frown outside, the snow might 
 drift against the cottage walls : Margaret had always 
 something gay under her fingers, and threw her shuttle 
 with the more zest the darker and colder grew the 
 Derbyshire world without. 
 
 Naturally the result of this long concentration of 
 effort had been to make the poor soul, for whom each 
 day was lived and fought, the apple of Margaret's eye. 
 So long as that bent, white form sat beside her fire, 
 Margaret was happy. Her heart sank with every 
 fresh sign of age and weakness, revived with every 
 brighter hour. He still lorded it over her often, as 
 he had done in the days of their prosperity, and when- 
 ever this old mood came back upon him, Margaret 
 could have cried for pleasure. 
 
 The natural correlative of such devotion was a dry- 
 ing up of interest in all the world beside. Margaret 
 had the selfishness of the angelic woman — everything 
 was judged as it affected her idol. So at first she
 
 CHAP. VI CHILDHOOD 111 
 
 took no individual interest in David — he cheered up 
 'Lias — she had no other thought about him. 
 
 On a certain November day David was sitting 
 opposite to 'Lias. The tire burnt between them, and 
 on the tire was a griddle, whereon Margaret had just 
 deposited some oatcakes for tea. The old man was 
 sitting drooped in his chair, his chin on his breast, his 
 black eyes staring beyond David at the wall. David 
 was seized with curiosity — what was he thinking 
 about ? — what did lie see ? There was a mystery, a 
 weirdness aljout the figure, about that hungry gaze, 
 which tormented him. His temptation returned upon 
 him irresistibly. 
 
 ' 'Lias,' he said, bending forward, his dark cheek flush- 
 ing with excitement, 'Louie and I went up, Easter 
 Eve, to t' Pool, but we went to sleep an saw nowt. 
 What was't yo saw. 'Lias ? Did yo see her for sure ?' 
 
 The old man raised his head frowning, and looked 
 at the boy. But the frown was merely nervous, he 
 had heard nothing. On the other hand, ]\[argaret, 
 Avhom David had supposed to be in the back kitchen, 
 but who was in reality a few steps behind him, mend- 
 ing something which had gone wrong in her loom, ran 
 forward suddenly to the tire, and bending over her 
 griddle somehow promptly threw down the tongs, 
 making a clatter and commotion, in the midst of 
 which the cakes caught, and old 'Lias moved from 
 the fender, saying fretfully, 
 
 'Yo're that orkard wi things, Margret, yo're like a 
 dog dancin.' 
 
 But in the bustle Margaret had managed to say to 
 David, ' Howd your tongue, noddle-yed, will yo ? ' 
 
 And so unexpected was the lightning from her 
 usually mild blue eyes that David sat dumbfounded, 
 and presently sulkily got up to go. ]Margaret followed 
 him out and down the bit of garden.
 
 112 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 And at the gate, when they were well out of hear- 
 ms: of 'Lias, she fell on the bov with a torrent of 
 words, gripping him the while with her long thin hand, 
 so that only violence could have released him. Her 
 eyes flamed at him under the brown woollen shawl she 
 wore pinned under her chin ; the little emaciated crea- 
 ture became a fury. What did he come there for, 
 ' moiderin 'Lias wi his divihnents ? ' If he ever said a 
 word of such things again, she'd lock the door on him, 
 and he might go to Jenny Crum for his tea. Not a 
 bite or a sup should he ever have in her house again. 
 
 ' I meant no harm,' said the boy doggedly. ' It wor 
 he towd me about t' witch — it wor he as put it into 
 our yeds — Louie an me.' 
 
 Margaret exclaimed. So it was he that got 'Lias 
 talking about the Pool in the spring ! Some one had 
 been '■ cankin wi him about things they didn't owt ' — 
 that she knew — ' and she might ha thowt it wor' Davy. 
 For that one day's ' worritin ov him ' she had had him 
 on her hands for weeks — off his sleep, and off his feed, 
 and like a blighted thing. 'Aye it's aw play to yo,' 
 she said, trembling all through in her passion, as she 
 held the boy — ' it's aw play to yo and your minx of a 
 sister. An if it means deein to the old man hissel, yo 
 don't care ! " Margaret," says the doctor to me last 
 week, " if you can keep his mind quiet he may hang 
 on a bit. But you munna let him excite hissel about 
 owt — he mun tak things varra easy. He's like a 
 wilted leaf — nobbut t' least thing will bring it down. 
 He's worn varra thin like, heart an lungs, and aw t' 
 rest of him." An d' yo think I'st sit still an see yo 
 mxmler him — the poor lamb — afore my eyes — me as 
 ha got nowt else but him i' t' wide warld ? No — yo 
 yoong varlet — goo an ast soom one else about Jenny 
 Crum if yo're just set on meddlin wi divil's wark — 
 but yo'll no trouble my 'Lias.'
 
 CHAP. VI CHILDHOOD 113 
 
 She took her hands off him, and the boy was going 
 away in a half-sullen silence, when she caught him 
 again. 
 
 ' Who towd yo about 'Lias an t' Pool, nobbut 'Lias 
 hissel ? ' 
 
 ' Uncle Eeuben towd me summat.' 
 
 ' Aye Reuben Grieve — he put him in t' carrier's cart, 
 an behaved moor like a Christian nor his wife — I alius 
 mind that o' lleuben Grieve, when foak coe him a foo. 
 ^Val, I'st tell yo, Davy, an if iver yo want to say a 
 word about Jenny Crum in our house afterwards, yo 
 mun ha a gritstone whar your heart owt to be — that's 
 aw.' 
 
 And she leant over the wall of the little garden, 
 twisting her apron in her old, tremulous hands, and 
 choking down the tears which had begun to rise. 
 Then, looking straight before her, and in a low, plain- 
 tive voice, which seemed to float on hidden depths of 
 grief, she told her stor}-. 
 
 It appeared that 'Lias had been 'queer' a good 
 while before the adventure of the Pool. But, accord- 
 ing to his wife, 'he wor that cliver on his good days, 
 foak could mak shift wi him on his bad days ; ' the 
 school still prospered, and money was still plentiful. 
 Then, all of a sudden, the moorland villages round were 
 overtaken by an epidemic of spirit-rapping and table- 
 turning. ' It wor sperrits here, sperrits there, sperrits 
 everywhere — t' warld wor gradely swarmin wi em,' 
 said Margaret bitterly. It was all started, apparently, 
 by a worthless ' felly ' from Castleton, who had a great 
 reputation as a medium, and would come over on sum- 
 mer evenings to conduct seances at Frimley and the 
 places near. 'Lias, already in an excitable, over- 
 worked state, Avas bitten by the new mania, and could 
 think of nothing else. 
 
 One night he and the Castleton medium fell talk- 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 114 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ing about Jenny Crum, the witch of Kinder Scout, 
 and her Easter Eve performances. The medium bet 
 'Lias a handsome sum that he would not dare face 
 her. 'Lias, piqued and wrathful, and ' wi moor yell 
 on board nor he could reetly stan,' took the bet. 
 Margaret heard nothing of it. He announced on Eas- 
 ter Eve that he was going to a brother in Edale for 
 the Sunday, and gave her the slip. She saw no more 
 of him till the carrier brought home to her, on the 
 Sunday morning, a starved and pallid object — 'gone 
 clean silly, an hutched thegither like an owd man o' 
 seventy — he bein iifty-six by his reet years.' With 
 woe and terror she helped him to his bed, and in that 
 bed he stayed for more than a year, while everything 
 went from them — school and savings, and all the joys 
 of life. 
 
 ' An yo'll be wantin to know, like t' rest o' 'em, 
 what he saw ! ' cried Margaret angrily, facing round 
 upon the boy, whose face was, indeed, one question. 
 ' "Margaret, did he tell tha what t' witch said to un?" 
 — every blatherin idiot i' th' parish asked me that, wi 
 his mouth open, till I cud ha stopped my ears an run 
 wheniver I seed a livin creetur. What do I keer ? — 
 what doos it matter to me what he saw ? I doan't 
 bleeve he saw owt, if yo ast me. He wor skeert wi 
 his own thinkins, an th' cowd gripped him i' th' 
 in'ards, an twisted him as yo may twist a withe of 
 hay — Aye ! it wor a cruel neet. When I opened t' 
 door i' t' early mornin, t' garden wor aw black — th' ice 
 on t' reservoir wor inches thick. Mony a year after- 
 wards t' foak round here ud talk o' that for an April 
 frost. An my poor 'Lias — lost on that fearfu Scout — 
 sleepin out wi'out a rag to cover him, an skeert soom- 
 how — t' Lord or t' Devil knows how ! And then foak 
 ud have me mak a good tale out o' it — soomthin to gie 
 'em a ticklin down their back-bane — soomthin to pass 
 an evenin — Lord ! '
 
 CHAP. VI ClIILDHUOI) 115 
 
 The wife's voice paused abruptly on tliis word of 
 imprecation, or appeal, as though her own passion 
 choked her. David stood beside her awkwardly, his 
 eyes fixed on the gravel, wherewith one foot was play- 
 ing. There was no more sullenness in his expression. 
 
 Margaret's hand still played restlessly with the 
 handkercliief. Her eyes were far away, her mind 
 absorbed by the story of her own fate. Bound the 
 moorside, on which the cottage was built, there bent 
 a circling edge of wood, now aflame with all the 
 colour of late autumn. Against its deep reds and 
 browns, Margaret's small profile was thrown out — the 
 profile already of the old woman, with the meeting 
 nose and chin, the hollow cheek, the maze of wrinkles 
 round the eyes. Into that face, worn by the labour 
 and the grief of the poor — into that bending figure, 
 with the peasant shawl folded round the head and 
 shoulders — there had passed all the tragic dignit}' 
 which belongs to the simple and heartfelt things of 
 human life, to the pain of helpless affection, to the 
 yearning of irremediable loss. 
 
 The boy beside her was too young to feel this. But 
 he felt more, perhaps, than any other lad of the moor- 
 side could have felt. There was, at all times, a natural 
 responsiveness in him of a strange kind, vibrating 
 rather to pain than joy. He stood by her, embarrassed, 
 yet drawn to her — waiting, too, as it seemed to him, 
 for something more that must be coming. 
 
 ' An then,' said Margaret at last, turning to him, 
 and speaking more quietly, but still in a kind of tense 
 way, ' then, when 'Lias wor took bad, yo know, Davy, 
 I had my boys. Did yo ever hear tell o' what came to 
 'em, Davy ? ' 
 
 The boy shook his head. 
 
 'Ah I' she said, catching her breath painfully, 
 ' they're moast forgotten, is my boys. 'Lias had been
 
 116 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 seven weeks i' his bed, an I wor noan so niicli cast 
 down — i' those days I had a sperrit more'n most. I 
 thowt th' boys ud keer for us — we'd gien em a good 
 bringin up, an they wor boath on 'em larnin trades i' 
 Manchester. Yan evenin — it wor that hot we had aw 
 t' doors an windows open — theer came a man runnin 
 up fro t' railway. An my boys were kilt, Davy — boath 
 on 'em — i' Duley Moor Tunnel. They wor coomin to 
 spend Sunday wi us, an it wor an excursion train — I 
 niver knew t' reets on 't ! ' 
 
 She paused and gently wiped away her tears. Her 
 passion had all ebbed. 
 
 < An I thowt if I cud ha got 'em home an buried 'em, 
 Davy, I could ha borne it better. But they wor aw 
 crushed, an cut about, an riddlet to bits — they wudna 
 let me ha em. And so we kep it fro 'Lias. Soomtimes 
 I think he knows t' boys are dead — an then soomtimes 
 he frets 'at they doan't coom an see him. Fourteen 
 year ago ! An I goo on tellin him they'll coom soon. 
 An last week, when I towd him it, I thowt to mysel it 
 wor just th' naked truth ! ' 
 
 David leant over the gate, pulling at some withered 
 hollyhocks beside. But when, after a minute of chok- 
 ing silence, Margaret caught his look, she saw, though 
 he tried to hide it, that his black eyes were swimming. 
 Her full heart melted altogether. 
 
 ' Oh, Davy, I meant naw offence ! ' she said, catch- 
 ing him by the arm again. ' Yo're a good lad, an yo're 
 alius a welcome seet to that poor creetur. But yo'll 
 not say owt to trouble him again, laddie — will yo? 
 If he'd yeerd yo just now — but, by t'Lord's blessin, 
 he did na — he'd ha worked himsel up fearfu' ! I'd ha 
 had naw sleep wi him for neets — like it wor i' th' 
 spring. Yo munna — yo munna ! He's all I ha — his 
 livin's my livin, Davy — an when he's took away — why, 
 I'll mak shift soomhow to dee too ! '
 
 CHAP, ri CHILDHOOD 117 
 
 She let him go, and, with a long sigh, she lifted her 
 trembling hands to her head, put her frilled cap 
 straight and her sliawl. She was just moving away, 
 when something of a different sort struck her sensitive 
 soul, and she turned again. She lived for 'Lias, but 
 she lived for her religion too, and it seemed to her she 
 had been sinning in her piteous talk. 
 
 ' Dinna think, Davy,' she said hurriedly, ' as I'm 
 complainin o' th' Lord's judgments. They're aw mer- 
 cies, if we did but know. An He tempers th' wind — 
 He sends us help when we're droppin for sorrow. It 
 worn't for nothin He made us all o' a piece. Theer's 
 good foak i' th' warld — aye, theer is I An what's moor, 
 theer's soom o' th' best mak o' foak gooin about dressed 
 i' th' worst mak o' clothes. Yo'll find it out when yo 
 want 'em.' 
 
 And with a clearing face, as of one who takes up a 
 burden again and adjusts it anew more easily, she 
 walked back to the house. 
 
 David went down the lane homewards, whistling 
 hard. But once, as he climbed a stile and sat dangling 
 his legs a moment on the top, he felt his eyes wet 
 again. He dashed his hand impatiently across them. 
 At this stage of youth he was constantly falling out 
 with and resenting his own faculty of pity, of emotion. 
 The attitude of mind had in it a sort of secret half- 
 conscious terror of what feeling might do with him did 
 he but give it head. He did not want to feel — feeling 
 only hurt and stabbed — he wanted to enjoy, to take in, 
 to discover — to fling the wild energies of mind and 
 body into some action worthy of them. And because 
 he had no knowledge to show him how, and a wav- 
 ering will, he suffered and deteriorated. 
 
 The Dawsons, indeed, became his close friends. In 
 Margaret there had sprung up a motherly affection for 
 the handsome lonely lad ; and he was grateful. He
 
 118 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 took her * cuts' down to the CloughEnd office for her; 
 when the snow was deep on the Scout, and Eeuben 
 and David and tlie dogs were out after tlieir slieep 
 night and day, the boy still found time to shovel the 
 snow from Margaret's roof and cut a passage for her 
 to the road. The hours he spent this Avinter by her 
 kitchen fire, chatting with 'Lias, or eating havercakes, 
 or helping Margaret with some household work, su2> 
 plied him for the first time with something of what 
 his youth was, in truth, thirsting for — the common 
 kindliness of natural affection. 
 
 But certainly, to most observers, he seemed to dete- 
 riorate. Mr. Ancrum could make nothing of him. 
 David held the minister at arm's-length, and mean- 
 while rumours reached him that 'Reuben Grieve's 
 nevvy ' was beginning to be much seen in the public- 
 houses ; he had ceased entirely to go to chapel or Sun- 
 day school ; and the local gossips, starting perhaps 
 from a natural prejudice against the sons of unknown 
 and probably disreputable mothers, projihesied freely 
 that the tall, queer-looking lad Avould go to the bad. 
 
 All this troubled Mr. Ancrum sincerely. Even in 
 the midst of some rising troubles of his own he found 
 the energy to buttonhole Reuben again, and torment 
 him afresh on the subject of a trade for the lad. 
 
 Reuben, flushed and tremulous, went straight from 
 the minister to his wife — with the impetus of Mr. 
 Ancrum's shove, as it were, fresh upon him. Sitting 
 opposite to her in the back kitchen, while she peeled 
 her potatoes with a fierce competence and energy 
 which made his heart sick within him, Reuben told 
 her, with incoherent repetitions of every phrase, that 
 in his opinion the time had come when Mr. Gurney 
 should be written to, and some of Sandy's savings 
 applied to the starting of Sandy's son in the world. 
 
 There was an ominous silence. Hannah's knife
 
 niAi-. VI CHILDHOOD 119 
 
 flashed, and the potato-peelings fell with a rapidity 
 which fairly paralysed Reuben. In liis nervousness, 
 he let fall the name of Mr. Ancruni. Then Hannah 
 broke out. ' Some foo',' she knew, had been meddling, 
 and she might have guessed that fool was Mr. Ancrum. 
 Instead of defending her own position, she fell upon 
 lleuben and his supporter with a rhetoric whereof the 
 moral flavour was positively astounding. Standing 
 with the potato-bowl on one hip, and a hand holding 
 the knife on the other, she delivered her views as 
 to David's laziness, temper, and general good-for-noth- 
 ingness. If Reuben chose to incur the risks of throw- 
 ing such a young lout into town-wiekodness, with no 
 one to look after him, let him ; she'd be glad enough 
 to be shut on him. But, as to writing to Mr. Gurney 
 and that sort of talk, she wasn't going to bandy words 
 — not she ; but nobod}^ had ever meddled with Hannah 
 Grieve's affairs yet and found they had done well for 
 themselves. 
 
 'An I wouldna advise yo, Reuben Grieve, to begin 
 now — no, I wouldna. I gie yo fair noatice. Soa 
 theer's not enough for t' lad to do, Mr. Ancrum, he 
 thinks ? Perhaps he'll tak th' place an try ? I'd 
 not gie him as mich wage as vid fill his stomach i' th' 
 Aveek — noa, I'd not, not if yo wor to ask me — a bleth- 
 erin windy chap as iver I saw. I'd as soon hear a 
 bird-clapper preach as him — theer'd be more sense 
 an less noise ! An they're findin it out down theer — 
 we'st see th' back on him soon.' 
 
 And to Reuben, looking across the little scullery at 
 his wife, at the harsh face shaken with the rage 
 which these new and intolerable attempts of her hus- 
 band to dislodge the yoke of years excited in her, it 
 was as though like Christian and Hopeful he were 
 trying to get back into the Way, and found that the 
 floods had risen over it.
 
 120 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book i 
 
 AVhen he was out of her sight, he fell into a bound- 
 less perplexity. Perhaps she was right, after all. INIr. 
 Ancruni was a meddler and he an ass. When next he 
 saw David, he spoke to the boy harshly, and demanded 
 to know where he went loafing every afternoon. 
 Then, as the days went on, he discovered that Hannah 
 meant to visit his insubordination upon him in various 
 unpleasant Avays. There were certain little creature 
 comforts, making but small show on the surface of a 
 life of general abstinence and frugality, but which, in 
 the course of years, had grown very important to 
 Reuben, and which Hannah had never denied him. 
 They were now Avithdrawn. In her present state of 
 temper with her better half, Hannah could not be 
 'fashed' with providing them. And no one could 
 force her to brew him his toddy at night, or put his 
 slippers to warm, or keep his meals hot and tasty for 
 him, if some emergency among the animals made him 
 late for his usual hours — certainly not the weak and 
 stammering Eeuben. He was at her mercy, and he 
 chafed indescribably under her unaccustomed neglect. 
 
 As for Mr. Ancrum, his own affairs, poor soul, soon 
 became so absorbing that he had no thoughts left for 
 David. There were dissensions growing between him 
 and the ' Christian Brethren.' He spoke often at the 
 Sunday meetings — too often, by a great deal, for the 
 other shining lights of the congregation. But his 
 much speaking seemed to come rather of restlessness 
 than of a full ' experience,' so torn, subtle, and difficult 
 were the things he said. Grave doubts of his doctrine 
 were rising among some of the 'Brethren;' a mean 
 intrigue against him was just starting among others, 
 and he himself was tempest-tossed, not knowing from 
 week to week whether to go or stay. 
 
 Meanwhile, as the winter went on, he soon perceived 
 that Reuben Grieve's formidable wife was added to the
 
 CHAP. VI CHILDHOOD 121 
 
 ranks of his enemies. She came to chapel, because for 
 a Christian Brother or Sister to go anywhere else 
 would have been a confession of weakness in the face 
 of other critical and observant communities — such, for 
 instance, as the Calvinistic Methodists, or the Par- 
 ticular Baptists — not to be thought of for a moment. 
 But when he passed her, he got no greeting from her ; 
 she drew her skirts aside, and her stony eye looked 
 beyond him, as though tliere were nothing on the road. 
 And the sharp-tongued things she said of him came 
 round to him one by one. Reuben, too, avoided the 
 minister, who, a year or two before, had brought foun- 
 tains of refreshing to his soul, and in the business of 
 the chapel, of which he was still an elder, showed 
 himself more inarticulate and confused than ever. 
 While David, who had won a corner in Mr. Ancrum's 
 heart since the days of their first acquaintance at 
 Sunday-school — David fled him altogether, and would 
 have none of his counsel or his friendship. The 
 alienation of the Grieves made another and a bitter 
 drop in the minister's rising cup of failure. 
 
 So the little web of motives and cross-motives, for 
 the most part of the commonest earthiest hue, yet 
 shot every here and there by a thread or two of 
 heavenlier stuff, went spinning itself the winter 
 through round the unknowing children. The reports 
 which had reached j\Ir. Ancrum were true enough. 
 David was, in his measure, endeavouring to ' see life.' 
 On a good many winter evenings the lad, now nearly 
 fifteen, and shooting up fast to man's stature, might 
 have been seen among the topers at the ' Crooked 
 Cow,' nay, even lending an excited ear to the Secular- 
 ist speakers, who did their best to keep things lively 
 at a certain low public kept by one Jerry Timmins, a 
 Radical wag, who had often measured himself both in
 
 122 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 the meeting-houses and in the streets against the 
 local pieachers, and, according to his own following, 
 with no small success. There was a covered skittle- 
 ground attached to this house in which, to the horrid 
 scandal of church and chapel, Sunday dances were 
 sometimes held. A certain fastidious pride, and no 
 doubt a certain conscience towards Eeuben, kept David 
 from experimenting in these performances, which were 
 made as demonstratively offensive to the piovis as they 
 well could be without attracting the attentions of the 
 police. 
 
 But at the disputations between Timmins and a 
 succession of religious enthusiasts, ministers and 
 others, which took place on the same spot during the 
 winter and spring, David was frequently present. 
 
 N"eitlier here, however, nor at the ' Crooked Cow ' 
 did the company feel the moody growing youth to be 
 one of themselves. He would sit with his pint before 
 him, silent, his great black eyes roving round the per- 
 sons present. His tongue was sharp on occasion, and 
 his fists ready, so that after various attempts to make 
 a butt of him he was generally let alone. He got what 
 he wanted — he learnt to know what smoking and 
 drinking might be like, and the jokes of the taproom. 
 And all by the help of a few shillings dealt out to him 
 this winter for the first time by Eeuben, who gave 
 them to him with a queer deprecating look and an 
 injunction to keep the matter secret from Hannah. 
 As to the use the lad made of them, Eeuben was as 
 ignorant as he was of all other practical affairs out- 
 side his own few acres.
 
 ciiAi'. vir CIIILDIIO(n) 123 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 String came round again and the warm days of June. 
 At Easter time David liad made no further attempts 
 to meet with Jenny Crum on her midnight wanderings. 
 The whole tendency of his winter's mental growth, as 
 well perhaps of the matters brutally raised and crudely 
 sifted in Jerry Timmins's pju'lour, had been towards a 
 harder and more sceptical habit of mind. For the 
 moment the supernatural had no thrill in it for an 
 intelligence full of contradictions. So the poor witch, 
 if indeed she ' walked,' revisited her place of pain 
 unobserved of mortal eye. 
 
 About the middle of June David and his uncle went, 
 as usual, to Kettlewell and Masholme, in Yorkshire, 
 for the purpose of bringing home from thence some of 
 that hardier breed of sheep which was required for 
 the moorland, a Scotch breed brought down yearly to 
 the Yorkshire markets by the Lowland farmers be- 
 yond the border. This expedition was an annual mat- 
 ter, and most of the farmers in the Kinder Valley and 
 thereabouts joined in it. They went together by train 
 to Masholme, made their purchases, and then drove 
 their sheep over the moors home, filling the wide 
 ferny stretches and the rough upland road with a 
 patriarchal wealth of flocks, and putting up at night 
 at the village inns, while their charges strayed at will 
 over the hills. These yearly journeys had alwa^'s been 
 in former years a joy to David. The wild freedom of 
 the walk, the change of scene which every mile and 
 every village brought with it, the resistance of the 
 moorland wind, the spring of the moorland turf, every 
 little incident of the road, whether of hardship or of
 
 124 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 rough excess, added fuel to the flame of youth^ and 
 went to build up the growing creature. 
 
 This year, however, that troubling of the waters 
 which was going on in the boy was especially active 
 during the JNlasholme expedition. He kept to himself 
 and his animals, and showed such a gruff unneighbourly 
 aspect to the rest of the world that the other drivers 
 first teased and then persecuted him. He fought one 
 or two pitched battles on the way home, showed him- 
 self a more respectable antagonist, on the whole, than 
 his assailants had bargained for, and was thencefor- 
 ward contemptuously sent to Coventry. '■ Yoong man,' 
 said an old farmer to him once reprovingly, after one 
 of these 'rumpuses,' ^yor temper woan't mouldy wi' 
 keepin.' Reuben coming by at the moment threw an 
 unhappy glance at the lad, whose bruised face and torn 
 clothes showed he had been fighting. To the uncle's 
 mind there was a Avanton, nay, a ruffianly look about 
 him, which was wholly new. Instead of rebuking the 
 culprit, Reuben slouched away and put as much road 
 as possible between himself and Davy. 
 
 One evening, after a long day on the moors, the 
 party came, late in the afternoon, to the Yorkshire 
 village of Haworth. To David it was a village like 
 any other. He was already mortally tired of the 
 whole business — of the endless hills, the company, 
 the bleak grey weather. While the rest of the party 
 were mopping brows and draining ale-pots in the 
 farmers' public, he was employing himself in aim- 
 lessly kicking a stone about one of the streets, when he 
 was accosted by a woman of the shopkeeping class, a 
 decent elderly woman, who had come out for a mouth- 
 ful of air, with a child dragging after her. 
 
 * Yoong mester, yo've coom fro a distance, hannot 
 
 yo?' 
 
 The woman's tone struck the boy pleasantly as
 
 CHAP. VII ClilLDIK^OD 125 
 
 though it had been a plirase of cheerful nmsic. There 
 was a motherliness in it — a something, for whieli, 
 perhaps all unknown to himself, his secret heart was 
 thirsting. 
 
 'Fro' Alasliolme,' he said, looking at her full, so 
 that she could see all the dark, richly coloured face 
 she had had a curiosity to see ; then he added abruptly, 
 'We're bound Kinder way wi t' sheep — reet t'other 
 side o' t' Scout.' 
 
 The woman nodded. ' Aye, I know a good mony o' 
 your Kinder foak. They've coom by here a mony 
 year passt. 13ut I doan't know as I've seen yo afoor. 
 Yo're nobbut a yoong 'un. Eh, but we get sich a 
 sight of strangers here now, the yan fairly drives the 
 tother out of a body's mind.' 
 
 ' Doos foak coom for t' summer ? ' asked David, 
 lifting his eyebrows a little, and looking round on the 
 bleak and straggling village. 
 
 'Xoa, they coom to see the church. Lor' bless 
 ye ! ' said the good woman, following his eyes towards 
 the edifice and breaking into a laugh, ' 'taint becos the 
 church is onything much to look at. 'Taint nowt out 
 o' t' common that I knows on. Noa — but they coom 
 along o' t' monument, an' Miss Bronte — Mrs. Nicholls, 
 as should be, poor thing — rayder.' 
 
 There was no light of understanding in David's 
 face, but his penetrating eyes, the size and beauty of 
 which she could not help observing, seemed to invite 
 her to go on. 
 
 'You niver heerd on our Miss Bronte?' said the 
 woman, mildly. ' Well, I spose not. She was just a 
 bit quiet body. Nobbody hereabouts saw mich in her. 
 But she wrote bukes — tales, yo know — tales about t' 
 foak roun here ; an they do say, them as has read 'em, 
 'at they're terr'ble good. ]\Ir. Watson, at t' Post 
 Office, he's read 'em, and he's alius promised to lend
 
 12G THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 'em me. But soomhow I doan't get th' time. An in 
 gineral I've naw moor use for a book nor a coo has for 
 clogs. But she's terr'ble famous, is Miss Bronte, 
 now — an her sisters too, pore young women. Yo 
 should see t' visitors' book in th' church. Aw t' 
 grand foak as iver wor. They cooms fro Lunnon a 
 purpose, soom on 'em, an they just takes a look roun 
 t' place, an writes their names, an goos away. Would 
 yo like to see th' church ? ' said the good-natured 
 creature — looking at the tall lad beside her with an 
 admiring scrutiny such as every woman knows she 
 may ajoply to any male. 'I'm goin that way, an it's 
 my brother 'at has th' keys.' 
 
 David accompanied her with an alacrity which would 
 have astonished his usual travelling companions, and 
 they mounted the straggling village street together 
 towards the church. As they neared it the woman 
 stopped and, shading her eyes against the sunlight, 
 pointed up to it and the parsonage. 
 
 'Noa, it's not a beauty, isn't our church. They 
 do say our parson ud like to have it pulled clean down 
 an a new one built. Onyways, they're goin to clear 
 th' Brontes' pew away, an sich a rumpus as soom o' V 
 Bradford papers have bin makin, and a gradely few o' 
 t' people here too ! I doan't know t' reets on 't missel, 
 but I'st be sorry when yo conno see ony moor where 
 Miss Charlotte an Miss Emily used to sit o' Sundays 
 — An theer's th' owd house. Yo used to be 'lowed to 
 see Miss Charlotte's room, where she did her writin, 
 but they tell me yo can't be let in now. Seems strange, 
 doan't it, 'at ony body should be real fond o' that place ? 
 When yo go by it i' winter, soomtimes, it lukes that 
 lonesome, with t' churchyard coomin up close roun it, 
 it's enoof to gie a body th' shivers. But I do bleeve, 
 Miss Charlotte she could ha kissed ivery stone in 't ; 
 an they do say, when she came back fro furrin parts,
 
 CHAP. VII CHILDHOOD 127 
 
 she'd sit an cry for joy, she wor that partial to 
 Haworth. It's a phice yo do get to favour soonihow/ 
 said the good woman, apologetically, as though feeling 
 that no stranger could justly be expected to sympathise 
 "with tlie excesses of local patriotism. 
 
 * Did th' oother sisters write books ? ' demanded 
 David, his eyes wandering over the bare stone house 
 towards which the passionate heart of Charlotte Bronte 
 had yearned so often from the land of exile. 
 
 'Bless yo, yes. An theer's niony foak 'at think 
 Miss Emily wor a deol cliverer even nor Miss Char- 
 lotte. Not but what yo get a bad noshun o' Yorkshire 
 folk fro Miss Emily's bukes — soa I'm towd. Bit 
 there's rough doins on t' moors soomtimes, I'll up- 
 howd yo! An ]\riss Emily had eyes like gimlets — 
 they seed reet through a body. Deary me,' she cried, 
 the fountain of gossip opening more and more, 'to 
 think I should ha known 'em in pinafores, Mr. Patrick 
 an aw ! ' 
 
 And under the stress of what was really a wonder 
 at the small beginnings of fame — a wonder which much 
 repetition of her story had only developed in her — 
 she poured out upon her companion the history of the 
 Brontes ; of that awful winter in which three of that 
 weird band — Emily, Patrick, Anne — fell away from 
 Charlotte's side, met the death which belonged to each, 
 and left Charlotte alone to reap the harvest of their 
 common life through a few burning years; of the pub- 
 lication of the books ; how the men of the Mechanics' 
 Institute (the roof of which she pointed out to him) 
 went crazy over 'Shirley;' how everybody about 
 'thowt Miss Bronte had bin puttin ov 'era into prent,' 
 and didn't know whether to be pleased or piqued; 
 how, as the noise made by 'Jane Eyre' and 'Shirley' 
 grew, a wave of excitement passed through the whole 
 countryside, and people came from Halifax, and Brad-
 
 128 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ford, and Huddersfield — 'aye, an Lunnon soomtoimes' 
 — to Haworth church on a Sunday, to see the quiet 
 body at her prayers who had made all the stir ; how 
 Mr. Nicholls, the curate, bided his time and pressed 
 his wooing ; how he won her as liachel was won ; and 
 how love did but open the gate of death, and the fiery 
 little creature — exhausted by such an energy of living 
 as had possessed her from her cradle — sank and died 
 on the threshold of her new life. All this Charlotte 
 Bronte's townswoman told simply and garrulously, 
 but she told it well because she had felt and seen. 
 
 'She wor so sma' and nesh; nowt but a midge. 
 Theer Avas no lasst in her. Aye, when I heerd the 
 bell tolling for Miss Charlotte that Saturday mornin,' 
 said the speaker, shaking her head as she moved away 
 towards the church, ' I cud ha sat down and cried my 
 eyes out. But if she'd ha seen me she'd ha nobbut 
 said, " Martha, get your house straight, an doan't fret 
 for me !" She had sich a sperrit, had Miss Charlotte. 
 Well, now, after aw, I needn't go for t' keys, for th' 
 church door's open. It's Bradford early closin day, 
 yo see, an I dessay soom Bradford f oak's goin over.' 
 
 So she marched him in, and there indeed was a 
 crowd in the little ugly church, congregated especially 
 at the east end, where the Brontes' pew still stood 
 awaiting demolition at the hands of a reforming vicar. 
 As David and his guide came up they found a young 
 weaver in a black coat, with a sallow oblong face, 
 black hair, high collars, and a general look of Lord 
 Byron, haranguing those about him on the iniquity of 
 removing the pews, in a passionate undertone, wliich 
 occasionally rose high above the key prescribed by 
 decorum. It was a half-baked eloquence, sadly liable 
 to bathos, divided, indeed, between sentences ringing 
 with the great words 'genius' and 'fame,' and others 
 devoted to an indignant contemplation of the hassocks
 
 CHAP. VII CHILDHOOD 129 
 
 in the old pews, 'the toucliing and well-worn imple- 
 ments of prayer,' to (juote his handsome description 
 of them, Avhich a meddlesome parson was about to 
 'hurl away,' out of mere hatred for intellect and con- 
 tempt of the popular voice. 
 
 But, half-baked or no, David rose to it greedily. 
 After a few moments' listening, he pressed up closer 
 to the speaker, his broad shoulders already making 
 themselves felt in a crowd, his eyes beginning to glow 
 with the dissenter's hatred of parsons. In the full 
 tide of discourse, however, the orator was arrested by 
 an indignant sexton, who, coming quickly up the 
 church, laid hold upon him. 
 
 'No speechmakin in the church, if you please, sir. 
 Move on if yo're goin to th' vestry, sir, for I'll have to 
 shut up directly.' 
 
 The young man stared haughtily at his assailant, 
 and the men and boys near closed up, expecting a row. 
 But the voice of authority within its own gates is 
 strong, and the champion of outraged genius collapsed. 
 The whole flock broke up and meekly followed the 
 sexton, Avho strode on before them to the vestry. 
 
 'William's a rare way wi un,' said his companion 
 to David, following her brother's triumph with looks 
 of admiration. ' I thowt that un wud ha bin harder 
 to shift.' 
 
 David, however, turned upon her with a frown. 
 ''Tis a black shame,' he said; 'why conno they let t' 
 owd pew bide ? ' 
 
 'Ah, weel,' said the woman with a sigh, 'as I said 
 afore, I'st be reet sorry when Miss Charlotte's seat's 
 gone. But yo conno ha brawlin i' church. William's 
 reet enough there.' 
 
 And beginning to be alarmed lest she should be 
 raising up fresh trouble for William in the person of 
 this strange, foreign-looking lad, with his eyes like 
 
 VOL. I K
 
 130 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book x 
 
 'live birds,' she hurried him on to the vestrj, where 
 the visitors' books were being displayed. Here the 
 Byronic young man was attempting to pick a fresh 
 quarrel with the sexton, by way of recovering himself 
 with his party. But he took little by it ; the sexton 
 was a tough customer. AVhen the local press was 
 shaken in his face, the vicar's hireling, a canny, 
 weather-beaten Yorkshireman, merely replied with a 
 twist of the mouth, 
 
 'Aye, aye, th' newspapers talk — there'd be soom- 
 body goin hoongry if they didn't ; ' or — ' Them 'at has 
 to eat th' egg knaws best whether it is addled or no — • 
 to my thinkin,' and so on through a string of similar 
 aphorisms which finally demolished his antagonist. 
 
 David meanwhile was burning to be in the fray. 
 He thought of some fine Miltonic sayings to hurl at 
 the sexton, but for the life of him he could not get 
 them out. In the presence of that indifferent, sharp- 
 faced crowd of townspeople his throat grew hot and 
 dry whenever he thought of speaking. 
 
 While the Bradford party struggled out of the 
 church, David, having somehow got parted from the 
 woman who had brought him in, lingered behind, be- 
 fore that plain tablet on the wall, whereat the crowd 
 which had just gone out had been worshipping. 
 
 Emily, aged 29. 
 
 Anne, aged 27. 
 
 Charlotte, in the 39th year of her age. 
 
 The church had grown suddenly quite still. The 
 sexton was outside, engaged in turning back a group 
 of Americans, on the plea that visiting hours Avere 
 over for the day. Through the wide open door, the 
 fading yellow light streamed in, and with it a cool
 
 CHAi'. VII CHILDHOOD 131 
 
 wind which chased little eddies of dust about the pave- 
 ment. In the dusk the three names — black on the 
 white — stood out with a stern and yet piteous distinct- 
 ness. The boy stood there feeling the silence — the 
 tomb near by — the wonder and pathos of fame, and 
 all that thrill of undefined emotion to which youth 
 yields itself so hungrily. 
 
 Tlie sexton startled him by tapping him on the 
 shoulder. 'Time to go home, yoong man. ]\[y sister 
 she told me to say good neet to yer, and she wishes 
 yo good luck wi your journey. Where are yo puttin 
 up ? ' 
 
 'At the "Brown Bess,"' murmured the boy ungra- 
 ciously, and hurried out. But the good man, uncon- 
 scious of repulse and kindly disposed towards his 
 sister's waif, stuck to him, and, as they walked down 
 the churchyard together, the difference between the 
 manners of official and those of private life proved to 
 be so melting to the temper that even David's began 
 to yield. And a little incident of the walk mollified 
 him completely. As they turned a corner they came 
 upon a bit of waste land, and there in the centre of an 
 admiring company was the sexton's enemy, mounted 
 on a bit of wall, and dealing out their deserts in fine 
 style to those meddling parsons and their underlings 
 who despised genius and took no heed of the relics of 
 the mighty dead. 
 
 The sexton stopped to listen when they were nearly 
 out of range, and was fairly carried away by the ' go ' 
 of the orator. 
 
 * Doan't he do it nateral ! ' he said wnth enthusiasm 
 to David, after a passage specially and unflatteringly 
 devoted to himself. 'Lor' bless yo, it don't hurt me. 
 But I do loike a bit o' good speakin, 'at I do. If fine 
 worrds wor penny loaves, that yoong gen'leman ud get 
 a livin aisy ! An as for th' owd pew, I cud go skrikin
 
 132 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 about th' streets mysel, if it ud do a ha'porth o' 
 good.' 
 
 David's brow cleared, and, by the time they had 
 gone a hundred yards further, instead of fighting the 
 good man, he asked a favour of him. 
 
 'D' yo think as theer's onybody in Haworth as 
 woukl lend me a seet o' yan o' Miss Bronte's tales for 
 an hour ? ' he said, reddening furiously, as they 
 stopped at the sexton's gate. 
 
 ' Why to be sure, mon,' said the sexton cheerily, 
 pleased with the little opening for intelligent patron- 
 age. ' Coom your ways in, and Ave'U see if we can't 
 oblige yo. I've got a tidy lot o' books in my parlour, 
 an I can give yo " Shirley," I know.' 
 
 David went into the stone-built cottage with his 
 guide, and Avas shown in the little musty front room a 
 bookcase full of books which made his eyes gleam 
 with desire. The half-curbed joy and eagerness he 
 showed so touched the sexton that, after inquiring as 
 to the lad's belongings, and remembering that in his 
 time he had enjoyed many a pipe and 'glass o' yell' 
 with ' owd Eeuben Grieve ' at the ' Brown Bess,' the 
 worthy man actually lent him indefinitely three pre- 
 cious volumes — ' Shirley,' ' Benjamin Franklin's Auto- 
 biography,' and ' Nicholas Nickleby.' 
 
 David ran olf hugging them, and thenceforward he 
 bore patiently enough with the days of driving and 
 tramping which remained, for the sake of the long 
 evenings when in some lonely corner of moor and 
 wood he lay full length on the grass revelling in one 
 or other of his new possessions. He had a voracious 
 way of tearing out the heart of a book first of all, 
 and then beginning it again Avith a different and a 
 tamer curiosity, lingering, tasting, and digesting. By 
 the time he and Eeuben reached home he had rushed 
 through all three books, and his mind Avas full of them.
 
 ciiAi'. VII CIIll.Dllnol) 133 
 
 'Shirley' and 'Nicholas Nickleby ' were the first 
 novels of modern life he had ever laid hands on, and 
 before he had finished them he felt them in his veins 
 like now wine. The real world had been to him for 
 months sonu'tliiug sickeningly narrow and empty, 
 from which at times he had escaped with passion into 
 a distant dream-life of poetry and history. Now the 
 walls of this real world were suddenly pushed back as 
 it were on all sides, and there was an inrush of crowd, 
 excitement, and delight. Human beings like those he 
 heard of or talked with every day — factory hands and 
 mill-owners, parsons, squires, lads and lasses — the 
 Yorkes, and Eobert ]\Ioore, Squeers, Smike, Kate 
 Nickleby and Newman Noggs, came by, looked him 
 in the eyes, made him take sides, compare himself 
 with them, join in their fights and hatreds, pity and 
 exult with them. Here was something more disturb- 
 ing, persoiial, and stimulating, than that mere imagi- 
 native relief he had been getting out of 'Paradise 
 Lost,' or the scenes of the 'Jewish Wars ' ! 
 
 By a natural transition the mental tumult thus 
 roused led to a more intense self-consciousness than 
 any he had yet known. In measuring himself with 
 the world of ' Shirley ' or of Dickens, he began to 
 realise the problem of his own life with a singular 
 keenness and clearness. Then — last of all — the record 
 of Franklin's life, — of the steady rise of the ill-treated 
 printer's devil to knowledge and power — filled him 
 with an urging and concentrating ambition, and set 
 his thoughts, endowed with a new heat and nimble- 
 ness, to the practical unravelling of a practical case. 
 
 They reached home again early on a May day. 
 As he and Eeuben, driving their new sheep, mounted 
 the last edge of the moor which separated them from 
 home, the Kinder Valley lay before them, sparkling
 
 134 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 in a double radiance of morning and of spring. David 
 lingered a minute or two behind his uncle. What a 
 glory of light and freshness in the air — what soaring 
 larks — what dipping swallows ! And the scents from 
 the dew-steeped heather — and the murmur of the blue 
 and glancing stream ! 
 
 The boy's heart went out to the valley — and in the 
 same instant he put it from him. An indescribable 
 energy and exultation took possession of him. The 
 tide of will for which he had been waiting all these 
 months had risen ; and for the first time he felt swell- 
 ing within him the power to break with habit, to cut 
 his way. 
 
 But what first step to take ? Whom to consult ? 
 Suddenly he remembered Mr. Ancruni, first with 
 shame, then with hope. Had he thrown away his 
 friend ? Rumour said that things were getting worse 
 and worse at chapel, and that Mr. Ancrum ^vas going 
 to Manchester at once. 
 
 He ran down the slopes of heather towards home 
 as though he would catch and question Mr. Ancrum 
 there and then. And Louie ? Patience ! He would 
 settle everything. Meanwhile, he was regretfully per- 
 suaded that if you had asked Miss Bronte what could 
 be done with a creature like Louie she would have had 
 a notion or two. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 'Reach me that book, Louie,' said David perempto- 
 rily ; ' it ull be worse for yo if yo don't.' 
 
 The brother and sister were in the Smithy. Louie 
 was squatting on the ground with her hands behind 
 her, her lips sharply shut as though nothing should 
 drag a word out of them, and her eyes blazing defiance
 
 CHA1-. Via CIIILDIIOOD 135 
 
 at David, who liud lier by the shoulder, and looked to 
 the full as tierce as she looked provoking. 
 
 'Find it!' was all she said. He had been absent 
 for a few minutes after a sheep that had got into diffi- 
 culties in the Ked Brook, and when he returned, his 
 volume of KoUin's ' Ancient History ' — 'Lias's latest 
 loan — which he had imprudently forgotten to take 
 with him, had disappeared. 
 
 David gave her an angry shake, on which she top- 
 pled over among the fallen stones with an exasperating 
 limpness, and lay there laughing. 
 
 'Oh, very well,' said David, suddenly recovering 
 himself; 'yo keep yor secret. I'st keep mine, that's 
 aw.' 
 
 Louie lay quiet a minute or two, laughing artifi- 
 cially at intervals, while David searched the corners 
 of the Smithy, turning every now and then to give a 
 stealthy look at his sister. 
 
 The bait took. Louie stopped laughing, sat up, put 
 herself straight, and looked about her. 
 
 ' Yo hain't got a secret,' she said coolly ; ' I'm not 
 to be took in wi snuff that way.' 
 
 ^Very well,' said David indifferently, 'then I haven't.' 
 
 And sitting down near the ])an, he took out one of 
 the little boats from the hole near, and began to trim 
 its keel here and there with his knife. The occupation 
 seemed to be absorbing. 
 
 Louie sat for a while, sucking at a lump of sugar 
 she had swept that morning into the 07nnium gatherum 
 of her pocket. At last she took up a little stone and 
 threw it across at David. 
 
 ' What's your silly old secret about then ? ' 
 
 * Where's my book, then ? ' replied David, holding 
 up the boat and looking with one eye shut along the 
 keel. 
 
 'Iv I gie it yer, an yor secret ain't wo'th it, I'll
 
 136 THE UISTOKY OF DA\'ID (JRIEYE book i 
 
 put soom o' that Avatter down yor neckhole/ said 
 Louie, nodding towards the place. 
 
 'It' you don't happen iind yorsel in th' pan fust/ 
 remarked David unmoved. 
 
 Louie sucked at her sugar a little longer, with her 
 hands round her knees. She had thrown off her hat, 
 and the May sun struck full on her hair, on the glossy 
 brilliance of it, and the natural curls round the tem- 
 ples which disguised a high and narrow brow. She 
 no longer wore her hair loose. In passionate emula- 
 tion of Annie Wigson, she had it plaited behind, and 
 had begged an end of blue ribbon of Mrs. Wigson to 
 tie it with, so that the beautiful arch of the head 
 showed more plainly than before, while the black eyes 
 and brows seemed to have gained in splendour and 
 effectiveness, from their simpler and severer setting. 
 One could see, too, the length of the small neck and 
 of the thin falling shoulders. It was a face now 
 wdiich made many a stranger in the Clough End 
 streets stop and look backward after meeting it. Not 
 so much because of its beauty, for it was still too thin 
 and starved-looking for beauty, as because of a singu- 
 lar daring and brilliance, a sense of wild and yet 
 conscious power it left behind it. The child had 
 grown a great piece in the last year, so that her knees 
 "were hardly decently covered by the last year's cotton 
 frock she wore, and her brown sticks of arms were far 
 beyond her sleeves. David had looked at her once or 
 twice lately with a new kind of scrutiny. He decided 
 that she was a 'rum-looking' creature, not the least 
 like anybody else's sister, and on the whole his raw 
 impression was that she was plain. 
 
 ' How'll I know yo'll not cheat ? ' she said at last, 
 getting up and surveying him with her arms akimbo. 
 
 'Can't tell, I'm sure,' was all David vouchsafed. 
 ' Yo mun find out.'
 
 tuAi-. Via (HII.DIIOOD 137 
 
 Louie studied liiin threateningly. 
 
 'Weel, I'd be even wi yo sooiuhow,' was her final 
 conclusion ; and disappearing through the ruined door- 
 way, she ran down the slope to where one of the great 
 mill-stones lay hidden in the heather, and diving into 
 its central hole, produced the book, keenly watched 
 the while by David, who took mental note of the hid- 
 ing-place. 
 
 ' Naw then,' she said, walking up to him with her 
 hands behind her and the book in them, ' tell me your 
 secret.' 
 
 David first forcibly abstracted the book and made 
 believe to box her ears, then went back to his seat and 
 his boat. 
 
 ' Go on, can't yo ! ' exclaimed Louie, after a minute, 
 stamping at him. 
 
 David laid down his boat deliberately. 
 
 'Well, yo won't like it,' he said; 'I know that. 
 But — I'm off to Manchester, that's aw — as soon as I 
 can goo ; as soon as iver I can hear of onything. An 
 I'm gooin if I don't hear of onything. I'm gooin ony- 
 ways ; I'm tired o' this. So now yo know.' 
 
 Louie stared at him. 
 
 < Yo ain't ! ' she said, passionately, as though she 
 were choking. 
 
 David instinctively put up his hands to keep her off. 
 He thought she Avould have fallen upon him there and 
 then and beaten him for his ' secret.' 
 
 But, instead, she flung away out of the Smithy, and 
 David was left alone and in amazement. Then he got 
 up and went to look, stirred with the sudden fear that 
 she might hajre run off to the farm with the neAvs of 
 what he had been saying, which would have precipi- 
 tated matters unpleasantly. 
 
 Xo one was to be seen from outside, either on the 
 moor path or in the fields beyond^ and she could not
 
 138 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 possibly have got out of sight so soon. 80 he searched 
 among tlie heather and the bilberry hummocks, till he 
 caught sight of a bit of print cotton in a hollow just 
 below the quaint stone shooting-hut, built some sixty 
 years ago on the side of the Scout for the convenience 
 of sportsmen. David stalked the cotton, and found 
 her lying prone and with her hat, as usual, firmly held 
 down over her ears. At sight of her something told 
 him very plainly he had been a brute to tell her his 
 news so. There was a strong moral shock which for 
 the moment transformed him. 
 
 He went and lifted her up in spite of her struggles. 
 Her face was crimson with tears, but she hit out at 
 him wildly to i)revent his seeing them. ' Now, Louie, 
 look here,' he said, holding her hands, ' I didna mean 
 to tell yo short and sharp like that, but yo do put a 
 body's laack up so, there's no bearin it. Don't take on, 
 Louie. I'll coom back when I've found soomthin, an 
 take you away, too, niver fear. Theer's lots o' things 
 gells can do in IVIanehester — tailorin, or machinin, or 
 dressmakin, or soomthin like that. But yo must get 
 a bit older, an I must find a place for us to live in, so 
 theer's naw use fratchin, like a spiteful hen. Yo must 
 bide and I must bide. But I'll coom back for yo, I 
 swear I will, and we'll get shut on Aunt Hannah, and 
 live in a little place by ourselves, as merry as larks.' 
 
 He looked at her appealingly. Her head was turned 
 sullenly away from him, her thin chest still heaved 
 with sobs. But Avhen he stopped speaking she jerked 
 round upon him. 
 
 'Leave me behint, an I'll murder her!' 
 
 The child's look was demoniacal. ' No, yo won't,' 
 said David, laughing. ' I' th' fust place. Aunt Hannah 
 could settle a midge like yo wi yan finger. I' th' sec- 
 ond, hangin isn't a coomfortable way 0' deein. Yo 
 wait till I coom for yo, an when we'st ha got reet
 
 CHAP. VIII 
 
 C'HILDIlooi) 139 
 
 away, an' can just laugh in her face if she riles us, — 
 that '11 sjnte her niich moor nor niurderin.' 
 
 The black eyes gleamed uncannily for a moment 
 and the sobbing ceased. But the gleam passed away, 
 and the child sat staring at the moorland distance, 
 seeing nothing. There was such an unconscious ani- 
 mal pain in the attitude, the pain of the creature that 
 feels itself alone and deserted, that David watched 
 her in a puzzled silence. Louie was always mysterious, 
 whether in her rages or her griefs, but he had never 
 seen her sob quite like this before. He felt a sort 
 of strangeness in her fixed gaze, and with a certain 
 timidity he put out his arm and laid it round her 
 shoulder. Still she did not move. Then he slid up 
 closer in the heather, and kissed her. His heart, 
 which had seemed all frostbound for months, melted, 
 and that hunger for love — home-love, mother-love — 
 •which was, perhaps, at the very bottom of his moody 
 complex youth, found a voice. 
 
 ' Louie, couldn't yo be nice to me soomtimes — 
 couldn't yo just take an interest, like, yo know — as if 
 yo cared a bit — couldn't yo ? Other gells do. Vm a 
 brute to yo, I know, often, but yo keep aggin an 
 teasin, an theer's niver a bit o' peace. Look here, Loo, 
 yo give up, an I'st give np. Theer's nobbut us two — 
 nawbody else cares a ha'porth about the yan or the 
 tother — coom along ! yo give np, an I'st give up.' 
 
 He looked at her anxiously. There was a new man- 
 liness in his tone, answering to his growing manliness 
 of stature. Two slow tears rolled down her cheeks, 
 but she said notliing. She couldn't for the life of her. 
 She blinked, furiously fighting with her tears, and at 
 last she put up an impatient hand which left a long 
 brown streak across her miserable little face. 
 
 ' Yo havn't got no trade,' she said. ' Yo'll be 
 clemmed.'
 
 140 THE IIISTOEY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 David -withdrew his arm, and gulped down his re- 
 buff. 'jSTo, I slia'n't/ he said. 'ISTow you just listen 
 here.' And he described how, the day before, he had 
 been to see Mr. Ancrum, to consult him about leaving 
 Kinder, and what had come of it. 
 
 He had been just in time. Mr. Ancrum, worn, ill, 
 and harassed to death, had been cheei-ed a little during 
 his last days at Clough End by the appearance of 
 David, very red and monosyllabic, on his doorstep. 
 The lad's return, as he soon perceived, Avas due simply 
 to the stress of his own affairs, and not to any knowl- 
 edge of or sympathy with the minister's miseries. 
 But, none the less, there was a certain balm in it for 
 Mr. Ancrum, and they had sat long discussing matters. 
 Yes, the minister was going — would look out at Man- 
 chester for an opening for David, in the bookselling 
 trade by preference, and would write at once. But 
 Davy must not leave a quarrel behind him. He must, 
 if possible, get his uncle's consent, which Mr. Ancrum 
 thought would be given. 
 
 ' I'm willing to lend you a hand, Davy,' he had said, 
 ' for yovi're on the way to no trade but loafing as you 
 are now ; but square it with Grieve. You can, if j-ou 
 don't shirk the trouble of it.' 
 
 Whereupon Davy had made a wry face and said 
 nothing. But to Louie he expressed himself plainly 
 enough. 
 
 'I'll not say owt to oather on 'em,' he said, pointing 
 to the chimneys of the farm, 'till the day I bid 'em 
 good-bye. Uncle Eeuben, mebbe, ud be for givin me 
 somethin to start wi, an Aunt Hannah ud be for 
 cloutin him over the head for thinkin of it. No, I'll 
 not be beholden to yan o' them. I've got a shillin or 
 two for my fare, and I'll keep mysel.' 
 
 'What wages uU yo get?' inquired Louie sharply. 
 
 'Nothing very fat, that's sure,' laughed David. 'If
 
 CHAP. VIH 
 
 CHILDHOOD 141 
 
 Mr. Ancrum can do as he says, an find me a place in 
 a book-shop, they'll, mebbe, gie me six shilliu to begin 
 
 wi.' 
 
 'An what ull yo do wi 'at?' 
 
 ' Live on't,' replied David briefly, 
 
 ' Yo conno, I tell yo ! Yo'll ha food an firin, cloos, 
 an lodgin to pay out o't. Yo conno do 't — soa theer.' 
 
 Louie looked him up and down defiantly. David 
 was oddly struck with the practical knowledge her 
 remark showed. How did such a wild imp know any- 
 thing about the cost of lodging and firing ? 
 
 'I tell yo I'll live on't,' he replied with energy; 
 'I'll get a room for half a crown — two shillin, p'r'aps 
 — an I'll live on sixpence a day, see if I don't.' 
 
 ' See if yo do ! ' retorted Louie, ' clemm on it more 
 like.' 
 
 'That's all yo know about it, miss,' said David, in a 
 tone, however, of high good humour ; and, stretching 
 one of his hands down a little further into his trousers 
 pocket, he drew out a paper-covered book, so that 
 just the top of it appeared. ' Yo're alius naggin about 
 books. \\W\ ; I tell yo, I've got an idea out o' thissen 
 \ill be worth shillins a week to me. It's about Benja- 
 min Franklin. Never yo mind who Benjamin Frank- 
 lin wor ; but he wor a varra cute soart of a felly ; an 
 when he wor yoong, an had nobbut a few shillins a 
 week, he made shift to save soom o' them shillins, 
 becos he found he could do without eatin Jlesli meat, 
 an that wi bread an meal an green stuff, a mon could 
 do very well, an save soom brass every week. When 
 I go to ^lanchester,' contimied David emphatically, ' I 
 shall niver touch meat. I shall buy a bag o' oatmeal 
 like Grand fey ther Grieve lived on, boil it for mysel, 
 wi a sup o' milk, perhaps, an soom salt or treacle to 
 gi it a taste. An I'll buy apples an pears an oranges 
 cheap soomwhere, an store 'em. Yo mun ha a deal o'
 
 142 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 fruit wlien yo doan't ha meat. Foiirpence ! ' cried 
 Davy, his enthusiasm rising, ' I'll live on thruppe^ice a 
 day, as sure as yo're sittin theer ! Seven thruppences 
 is one an nine; lodgin, two shillin — three an nine. 
 Two an three left over, for cloos, firin, an pocket 
 money. Why, I'll be rich before yo can look roun ! 
 An then, o' coorse, they'll not keep me long on six 
 shillins a week. In the book-trade I'll soon be wuth 
 ten, an moor ! ' 
 
 And, springing up, he began to dance a sort of 
 cut and shuffle before her out of sheer spirits. Louie 
 surveyed him with a flushed and sparkling face. The 
 nimbleness of David's wits had never come home to 
 her till now. 
 
 ' What ull I earn when I coom ? ' she demanded 
 abruptly. 
 
 David stopped his cut and shuffle, and took critical 
 stock of his sister for a moment. 
 
 'Now, look here, Louie, yo're goin to stop where 
 yo are, a good bit yet,' he replied decidedly. 'Yo'll 
 have to wait two year or so — moor 'n one, onyways,' 
 he went on hastily, warned by her start and fierce 
 expression. * Yo know, they can ha th' law on yo,' 
 and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the 
 farm. 'Boys is all reet, but gells can't do nothink till 
 they're sixteen. They mun stay wi th' foak as browt 
 'em up, and if they run away afore their sixteenth 
 birthday — they gets put in prison.' 
 
 David poured out his legal fictions hastily, three 
 parts convinced of them at any rate, and watched 
 eagerly for their effect on Louie. 
 
 Slie tossed her head scornfully. 'Doan't b'lieve it. 
 Yo're jest tellin lees to get shut o' me. Nex summer 
 if yo doan't send for me, I'll run away, whativer yo 
 may say. So yo know.' 
 
 ' You're a tormentin thing ! ' exclaimed David, ex-
 
 ciiAi". vm CHILDHOOD 143 
 
 asperated, and began savagely to kick stones down the 
 hill. Then, recovering himself, he came and sat down 
 beside her again. 
 
 ' I doan't want to get shut on yo, Louie. But yo 
 'A'on't understand nothin.' 
 
 He stopped, and began to bite at a stalk of heather, 
 by way of helping himself. J lis mind was full of vague 
 and yet urgent thoughts as to wliat became of girls in 
 large towns with no one to look after them, things he 
 had heard said at the public-house, things he had read. 
 He had never dreamt of leaving Louie to Aunt Hannah's 
 tender mercies. Of course he must take her away when 
 he could. She was his charge, his belonging. But all 
 the same she was a 'limb'; in his opinion she always 
 would be a 'limb.' How could he be sure of her get- 
 ting work, and who on earth was to look after her 
 when he was away ? 
 
 Suddenly Louie broke in on his perplexities. 
 
 'I'll go tailorin,' she cried triumphantly. 'Now I 
 know— it wor t' Wigson's cousin Em'ly went to Man- 
 chester; an she earned nine shillin a week — nine 
 shillin I tell yo, an found her own thread. Yo'll be 
 takin ten shillin, yo say, nex year? an I'll be takin 
 nine. That's nineteen shillin fur th' two on us. Isit^t 
 it nineteen shillin ? ' she said peremptorily, seizing 
 his arm with her long fingers. 
 
 ' Well, I dessay it is,' said David, reluctantly, ' An 
 precious tired yo'll be o' settin stitchin mornin, noon, 
 an neet. Like to see yo do 't.' 
 
 'I'd do it fur nine shillin,' she said doggedly, and 
 sat looking straight before her, with wide glittering 
 eyes. She understood from David's talk that, what 
 with meal, ai)i)les, and greenstuff, your ' eatin ' need 
 cost you nothing. There would be shillings and shil- 
 lings to buy things with. The child who never had a 
 copper but what Uncle Keuben gave her, who passed
 
 144 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 her whole existence hi greedily coveting the unattain- 
 able and in chahng iinder the rule of an iron aud 
 miserly thrift, felt suddenly intoxicated by this golden 
 prospect of illimitable 'buying.' And what could 
 possibly prevent its coming true ? Any fool — such as 
 ' Wigson's Em'ly ' — could earn nine shillings a week at 
 tailoring ; and to make money at your stomach's ex- 
 pense seemed suddenly to put you in possession of a 
 bank on which tlie largest drawings were possible. It 
 all looked so ingenious, so feasible, so wholly within 
 the grip of that indomitable will the child felt tense 
 within her. 
 
 So the two sat gazing out over the moorland. It 
 was the first summer day, fresh and timid yet, as 
 though the world and the sun were still ill-acquainted. 
 Down below, over the sparkling brook, an old thorn 
 was quivering in the warm breeze, its bright thin 
 green shining against the brown heather. The larches 
 alone had as yet any richness of leaf, but the sycamore- 
 buds glittered in the sun, and the hedges in the lower 
 valley made wavy green lines delightful to the eye. 
 A warm soft air laden with moist scents of earth and 
 plant bathed the whole mountain-side, and played with 
 Louie's hair. Nature wooed them with her best, and 
 neither had a thought or a look for her. 
 
 Suddenly Louie sprang up. 
 
 ' Theer's Aunt Hannah shoutin. I mun goo an get 
 t' coos.' 
 
 David ran down the hill with her. 
 
 ' What'll yo do if I tell ? ' she inquired maliciously 
 at the bottom. 
 
 ' If yo do I shall cut at yance, an yo'll ha all the 
 longer time to be by yoursen.' 
 
 A darkness fell over the girl's hard shining gaze. 
 She turned away abruptly, then, when she had gone a 
 few steps, turned and came back to where David stood
 
 CHAP. VIII flllLDIIOOl) 145 
 
 whistling and calling for the dogs. She caught him 
 suddenly from behind round the neck. Naturally he 
 thought she was up to some mischief, and struggled 
 away from her Avith an angry exclamation. But she 
 held him tight and thrust something hard and sweet 
 against his lips. Involuntarily his mouth opened and 
 admitted an enticing cake of butter-scotch. She 
 rannued it in with her wiry little hand so that he al- 
 most choked, and then with a shrill laugh she turned 
 and fled, leaping down the heather between the 
 boulders, across the brook, over the wall, and out of 
 sight. 
 
 David was left behind, sucking. The sweetness he 
 was conscious of was not all in the mouth. Never 
 that he could remember had Louie shown him any 
 such mark of favour. 
 
 Next day David was sent down with the donke}^- 
 cart to Clough End to bring up some Aveekly stores for 
 the family, Hannah specially charging him to call at 
 the post-office and inquire for letters. He started 
 about nine o'clock, and the twelve o'clock dinner 
 passed by without his reappearance. 
 
 When she had finished her supply of meat and suet- 
 pudding, after a meal during which no one of the 
 three persons at table had uttered a word, Louie ab- 
 ruptly pushed her plate back again towards Hannah. 
 
 ' David ! ' was all she said. 
 
 'Mind your manners, miss,' said Hannah, angrily. 
 'Them as cooms late gets nowt.' And, getting up, 
 she cleared the table and put the food away with even 
 greater rapidity than usual. The kitchen was no 
 sooner quite clear than the donkey-cart was heard out- 
 side, and David appeared, crimsoned with heat, and 
 panting from the long tug uphill, through which he 
 had just dragged the donkey. 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 He carried a letter, which he put down on the table. 
 Then he looked round the kitchen. 
 
 'Aunt's put t' dinner away,' said Louie, shortly, 
 "cos yo came late.' 
 
 David's expression changed. ' Then nex time she 
 wants owt, she can fetch it fro Clough End hersel,' he 
 said violently, and went out. 
 
 Hannah came forward and laid eager hands on the 
 letter, which was from London, addressed in a clerk's 
 hand. 
 
 ' Louie ! ' she called imperatively, ' tak un out soom 
 bread-an-drippin.' 
 
 Louie put some on a plate, and went out with it to 
 the cowhouse, where David sat on a stool, occupying 
 himself in cutting the pages of a number of the Vege- 
 tarian News, lent him in Clough End, with trembling 
 hands, while a fierce red spot burnt in either cheek. 
 
 'Tak it away!' he said, almost knockiug the plate 
 out of Louie's hands ; ' it chokes me to eat a crumb o' 
 hers.' 
 
 As Louie was bearing the plate back through the 
 yard. Uncle Reuben came by. ' What's — what's 'at?' 
 he said, peering shortsightedly at what she held. 
 Every month of late Eeuben's back had seemed to 
 grow rounder, his sight less, and his wits of less prac- 
 tical use. 
 
 ' Summat for David,' said Louie, shortly, ' 'cos Aunt 
 Hannah woan't gie him no dinner. But he woan't 
 ha it.' 
 
 Reuben's sudden look of trouble was unmistakable. 
 
 'Whar is he?' 
 
 'I' th' coo-house.' 
 
 Reuben went his way, and found tlie dinnerless boy 
 deep, or apparently deep, in recipes for vegetable soups. 
 
 'What made yo late, Davy?' he asked him, as he 
 stood over him.
 
 CHAP. VIII CIIILDIIOOI) 147 
 
 David had more than half a mind not to answer, 
 but at last he jerked out tiercely, ' Waitiu for th' 
 second post, fust ; then t' donkey fell down half a 
 mile out o' t' town, an th' things were spilt. There 
 was nobody about, an' I had a job to get 'un up at a'.' 
 
 Reuben nervously thrust his hands far into his coat- 
 pockets. 
 
 ' Cooin wi me, Davy, an I'st mak yur aunt gie yer 
 yur dinner.' 
 
 ' I wouldn't eat a morsel if she went down on her 
 bended knees to me,' the lad broke out, and, springing 
 up, he strode sombrely through the yard and into the 
 fields. 
 
 Reuben went slowly back into the house. Hannah 
 was in tlie parlour — so he saw through the half-opened 
 door. He went into the room, which smelt musty and 
 close from disuse. Hannah was standing over the open 
 drawer of an old-fashioned corner cupboard, carefully 
 scanning a letter and enclosure before she locked 
 them up. 
 
 ' Is 't Mr. Gurney's money ? ' Reuben said to her, 
 in a queer voice. 
 
 She was startled, not having heard him come in, 
 but she put what she held into the drawer all the more 
 deliberately, and turned the key. 
 
 'Ay, 't is.' 
 
 Reuben sat himself down on one of the hard chairs 
 beside the table in the middle of the room. The light 
 streaming through the shutters Hannah had just 
 opened streamed in on his grizzling head and face 
 working with emotion. 
 
 ' It's stolen money,' he said hoarsely. ' Yo're stealin 
 it fro Davy.' 
 
 Hannah smiled grimly, and withdrew the key. 
 
 ' I'm paying missel an yo, Reuben Grieve, for t' keep 
 o' two wuthless brats as cost moor nor they pays,' she
 
 148 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 said, with an accent which somehoAv sent a shiver 
 through Reuben. ' I don't keep udder f oaks' childer 
 fur nothin.' 
 
 ' Yo've had moor nor they cost for seven year,' said 
 Reuben, with the same thick tense utterance. ' Yo 
 shoukl let Davy ha it, an gie him a trade.' 
 
 Hannah walked up to the door and shut it. 
 
 * I should, should I ? An who'll pay for Louie — 
 for your luvely limb of a niece ? It 'ud tak about that,' 
 and she pointed grimly to the drawer, ' to coover what 
 she wastes an spiles i' t' yeer.' 
 
 ' Yo get her work, Hannah. Her bit an sup cost 
 yo most nothin. I cud wark a bit moor — soa cud 
 yo. Yo're hurtin me i' mi conscience, Hannah — yo're 
 coomin atwixt me an th' Lord ! ' 
 
 He brought a shaking hand down on the damask 
 table-cloth among the wool mats and the chapel hymn- 
 books which adorned it. His long, loose frame had 
 drawn itself up with a certain dignity. 
 
 ' Ha done wi your cantin ! ' said Hannah under her 
 breath, laying her two hands on the table, and stoop- 
 ing down so as to face him with more effect. The 
 phrase startled Reuben with a kind of horror. What- 
 ever words might have passed between them, never 
 yet that he could remember had his wife allowed her- 
 self a sneer at his religion. It seemed to him sud- 
 denly as though he and she were going fast downhill 
 — slipping to perdition, because of Sandy's six hun- 
 dred pounds. 
 
 But she cowed him — she always did. She stayed a 
 moment in the same bent and threatening position, 
 coercing him with angry eyes. Then she straight- 
 ened herself, and moved away. 
 
 * Let t' lad tak hisself oft' if he wants to,' she said, 
 an iron resolution in her voice. 'I told yo so afore — 
 I woan't cry for 'im. Rut as long as Louie's here, an
 
 CHAP. VI 11 
 
 CIIII-DIMIOI) 149 
 
 I ha to keep her, I'll want that money, an every penny 
 on't. If it bean't i)ai(l, she may go too ! ' 
 
 'Yo'd not turn her out, Hannah'/' cried Reuben, 
 instinctively putting out an arm to feel that the door 
 was closed. 
 
 '^7<e'd not want for a livin,' replied Hannah, with 
 a bitter sneer ; ' she's her mither's child.' 
 
 Reuben ro.se slowly, shaking all ovei\ He opened 
 the door with difficulty, groped his way out of the 
 front passage, then went heavily through the yard 
 and into the fields. There he .wandered by himself 
 for a coui)le of hours, altogetlier forgetting some 
 newly dropped lambs to which he had been anxiously 
 attending. For months past, ever since his conscience 
 had been roused on the subject of his brother's chil- 
 dren, the dull, incapable man had been slowly recon- 
 ceivins: the woman with whom he had lived some five- 
 and-twenty years, and of late the process had been 
 attended with a kind of agony. The Hannah Martin 
 he had married had been a hard body indeed, but re- 
 spectable, upright, with the same moral instincts as 
 himself. She had kept the farm together — he knew 
 that ; he could not have lived without her, and in all 
 practical respects she had been a good and industrious 
 wife. He had coveted her industry and her strong 
 will ; and, having got the use of them, he had learnt 
 to put up with her contempt for him, and to fit his 
 softer nature to hers. Yet it seemed to him that 
 there had always been certain conditions implied in 
 this subjection of his, and that she was breaking them. 
 He could not have been fetching and carrying all these 
 years for a woman who could go on wilfully appropri- 
 ating money that did not belong to her, — who could 
 even speak with callous indifference of the prospect 
 of turning out her niece to a life of sin. 
 
 He thought of Sandy's money with loathing. It
 
 150 THE HISTOllY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 was like the cursed stuff that Achan had brought into 
 the camp — an evil leaven fermenting in their common 
 life, and raising monstrous growths. 
 
 Keuben Grieve did not demand much of himself ; a 
 richer and more spiritual nature would have thought 
 his ideals lamentably poor. But, such as tliey were, 
 the past year had proved that he could not fall below 
 them without a dumb anguish, without a sense of 
 shutting himself out from grace. He felt himself— 
 by his fear of his wife — made a partner in Hannah's 
 covetousness, in Hannah's cruelty towards Sandy's 
 children. Already, it seemed to him, the face of 
 Christ was darkened, the fountain of grace dried up. 
 All those appalling texts of judgment and reprobation 
 he had listened to so often in chapel, protected against 
 them by that warm inward certainty of 'election,' 
 seemed to be now pressing against a bared and jeop- 
 ardised soul. 
 
 But if he wrote to Mr. Gurney, Hannah would 
 never forgive him till her dying day; and the thought 
 of making her his enemy for good put him in a cold 
 sweat. 
 
 After much pacing of the upper meadows he came 
 heavily down at last to see to his lambs. Davy was 
 just jumping the wall on to his uncle's land, having 
 apparently come down the Frimley path. When he 
 saw his uncle he thrust his hands into his pockets, 
 began to whistle, and came on with a devil-may-care 
 swing of the figure. They met in a gateway between 
 two fields. 
 
 'Whar yo been, Davy ?' asked Eeuben, looking at 
 him askance, and holding the gate so as to keep 
 him. 
 
 ' To Dawson's,' said the boy, sharply. 
 
 Reuben's face brightened. Then the lad's empty 
 stomach must have been filled; for he knew that
 
 CHAP. IX CIIII.DIIool) 151 
 
 ' Dawsons ' were kind to liim. He ventured to look 
 at liiin more directly, and, as he did so, something in 
 the attitude of the proud handsome stripling reminded 
 him of Sandy — Sandy, in llie days of his youth, com- 
 ing down to show his prosi)erous self at the farm. lie 
 put his large soil-stained hand on David's shoulder. 
 
 ' Goo your ways in, Davy. I'll see yo ha your 
 reets.' 
 
 David opened his eyes at him, astounded. There is 
 nothing more startling in human relations than tlie 
 strong emotion of weak peojjle. 
 
 Reuben would have liked to say something else, but 
 his lips opened and shut in vain. The boy, too, was 
 hopelessly embarassed. At last, Reuben let the gate 
 fall and walked off, with downcast head, to where, in 
 the sheep-pen, he had a few hours before bound an 
 orphan lamb to a refractory foster-mother. The fos- 
 ter-mother's resistance had broken down, she was 
 lying patiently and gently while the thin long-legged 
 creature sucked; when it was frightened away by 
 Reuben's approach she trotted bleating after it. In 
 his disturbed state of feeling the parallel, or rather 
 the contrast, between the dumb animal and the woman 
 struck home. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 But the crisis which had looked so near delayed ! 
 
 Poor Reuben ! Tlie morning after his sudden show 
 of spirit to David he felt himself, to his own miserable 
 surprise, no more courageous than he had been before 
 it. Yet the impression made had gone too deep to 
 end in nothingness. He contracted a habit of getting 
 by himself in the fields and puzzling his brain with 
 figures — an occupation so unfamiliar and exhausting
 
 152 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 that it wore him a good deal ; and Hannah, when he 
 came in at night, would wonder, with a start, whether 
 he were beginning *to break up.' But it possessed 
 him more and more. Hannah would not give up the 
 money, but David must have his rights. How could 
 it be done ? For the first time Reuben fell to calcu- 
 lation over his money matters, which he did not ask 
 Hannah to revise. But meanwhile he lived in a state 
 of perpetual inward excitement which did not escape 
 his wife. She could get no clue to it, however, and 
 became all the more forbidding in the household the 
 more she was invaded by this wholly novel sense of 
 difficulty in managing her husband. 
 
 Yet she was not without a sense tliat if she could 
 but contrive to alter her ways with the children it 
 would be well for her. Mr. Gurney's cheque was 
 safely put away in the Clough End bank, and clearly 
 her best policy would have been to make things toler- 
 able for the two persons on whose proceedings — if 
 they did but know it I — the arrival of future cheques 
 in some measure depended. But Hannah had not the 
 cleverness which makes the successful hypocrite. 
 And for some time past there had been a strange 
 unmanageable change in her feelings towards Sandy's 
 orphans. Since Reuben had made her conscious that 
 she was robbing them, she had gone nearer to an 
 active hatred than ever before. And, indeed, hatred 
 in such a case is the most natural outcome ; for it is 
 little else than the soul's perverse attempt to justify 
 to itself its own evil desire. 
 
 David, however, when once his rage over Hannah's 
 latest offence had cooled, behaved to his aunt much as 
 he had done before it. He was made placable by his 
 secret hopes, and touched by Reuben's advances — 
 though of these last he took no practical account 
 whatever; and he must wait for his letter. So he
 
 CHAP. IX CHILDHOOD 153 
 
 went back ungraciously to his daily tasks. Mean- 
 while he and Louie, on the strength of the gi-eat coup 
 in prospect, were better friends than they had ever 
 been, and his consideration for her went up as he 
 noticed that, when she pleased, the reckless creature 
 could keep a secret 'as close as wax.' 
 
 The weeks, however, passed away, and still no letter 
 came for David. The shepherds' meetings — first at 
 Clough End for the Cheshire side of the Scout, and 
 then at the 'Snake Inn' for the Sheffield side — when 
 the strayed sheep of the year were restored to their 
 owners, came and went in due course ; sheep-washing 
 and sheep-shearing were over ; the summer was half- 
 way through ; and still no word from Mr. Anerum. 
 
 David, full of annoyance and disappointment, was 
 seething with fresh plans — he and Louie spent hours 
 discussing them at the Smithy — when suddenly an 
 experience overtook him, which for the monlent effaced 
 all his nascent ambitions, and entirely did away with 
 Louie's new respect for him. 
 
 It was on this wise. 
 
 Mr. Anerum had left Clough End towards the end 
 of June. The congregation to which he ministered, and 
 to which Reuben Grieve belonged, represented one of 
 those curious and independent developments of the 
 religious spirit which are to be found scattered through 
 the teeming towns and districts of northern England. 
 They had no connection with any recognised religious 
 community, but the members of it had belonged to 
 many — to the Church, the Baptists, the Independents, 
 the Methodists. They were mostly mill-hands or small 
 tradesmen, penetrated on the one side with the fer- 
 vour, the j^earnings, the strong formless poetry of 
 English evangelical faith, and repelled on the other by 
 various features in the different sects from which they 
 came — by the hierarchical strictness of the Wesleyan
 
 154 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book i 
 
 organisation, or tlie looseness of the Congregationalists, 
 or the coldness of the Chnrch. They had come to- 
 gether to seek the Lord in some wa}- more intimate, 
 more moving, more effectual than any they had yet 
 found ; and in this pathetic search for the ' rainbow 
 gold' of faith they were perpetually brought up against 
 the old stumbling-blocks of the unregenerate man, — 
 the smallest egotisms, and the meanest vanities. Mr. 
 Ancrum, for instance, had come to the Clough End 
 'Brethren' full of an indescribable missionary zeal. 
 He had laboured for them night and day, taxing his 
 sickly frame far beyond its powers. But the most 
 sordid conspiracy imaginable, led by two or three of 
 the prominent members who thought he did not allow 
 them enough share in the evening meetings, had finally 
 overthrown him, and he had gone back to Manchester 
 a bitterer and a sadder man. 
 
 After he left there was an interregnum, during 
 which one or two of the elder ' Brethren ' taught Sun- 
 day school and led the Sunday services. But at last, 
 in August, it became known in Clough End that a new 
 minister for the ' Christian Brethren ' had come down, 
 and public curiosity in the Dissenting circles was keen 
 about him. After a few weeks there began to be a 
 buzz in the little town on the subject of Mr. Dyson. 
 The 'Christian Brethren' meeting-room, a long low 
 upper chamber formerly occupied by half a dozen 
 hand-looms, was crowded on Sundays, morning and 
 evening, not only by the Brethren, but by migrants 
 from other denominations, and the Sunday school, 
 which was held in a little rickety garret off the main 
 room, also received a large increase of members. It 
 was rumoured that Mr. Dyson was specially success- 
 ful with boys, and that there was an 'awakening' 
 among some of the lowest and roughest of the Clough 
 End lads.
 
 CHAP. IX CHILDHOOD 155 
 
 'He ha sich a way wi un,' said a much-stirred 
 mother to Eeuben Grieve, meeting him one day in the 
 street, ' he do seem to melt your varra marrow.' 
 
 Reuben went to liear the new man, was much moved, 
 and came home talking about him with a stammering 
 unction, and many furtive looks at David. He had 
 tried to remonstrate several times on the lad's deser- 
 tion of chapel and Sunday school, but to no purpose. 
 There was something in David's half contemptuous, 
 half obstinate silence on these occasions which for a 
 man like Reuben made argument impossible. To his 
 morbid inner sense the boy seemed to have entered 
 irrecoverably on the broad path which leadeth to 
 destruction. Perhaps in another year he would be 
 drinking and thieving. With a curious fatalism 
 Reuben felt that for the present, and till he had made 
 some tangible amends to Sandy and the Unseen Powers 
 for Hannah's sin, he himself could do nothing. His 
 hands were unclean. But some tremulous passing 
 hopes he allowed himself to build on this new prophet. 
 
 Meanwhile, David heard the town-talk, and took 
 small account of it. He supposed he should see the 
 new comer at Jerry's in time. Then if folk spoke true 
 there would be a shindy worth joining in. Meanwhile, 
 the pressure of his own affairs made the excitement 
 of the neiglibourhood seem to him one more of those 
 storms in the Dissenting tea-cup, of which, boy as he 
 was, he had known a good many already. 
 
 One September evening he was walking down to 
 Clough End, bound to the reading-room. He had 
 qiiite ceased to attend the ' Crooked Cow.' His pen- 
 nies were precious to him now, and he saved them 
 jealously, wondering scornfully sometimes how he 
 could ever have demeaned himself so far as to find 
 excitement in the liquor or the company of the ' Cow.' 
 Halfway down to the town, as he was passing the
 
 156 THE HISTOKY OF DAVID GEIEVE book i 
 
 foundry, whence lie had drawn the pan which had for 
 so long made the Smithy enchanted ground to him, 
 the big slouching apprentice who had been his quon- 
 dam friend and ally there, came out of the foundry 
 yard just in front of him. David quickened up a 
 little. 
 
 ' Tom, whar are yo goin ? ' 
 
 The other looked round at him uneasily. 
 
 'Xiver yo mind.' 
 
 The youth's uncouth clothes were carefully brushed, 
 and his fat face, which wore an incongruous expres- 
 sion of anxiety and dejection, shone with washing. 
 David studied him a moment in silence, then he said 
 abruptly — 
 
 ' Yo're goin prayer-meetin, that's what yo are.' 
 
 'An if I am, it's noa consarn o' yourn. Yo're yan 
 o' th' unregenerate ; an I'll ask yo, Davy, if happen 
 yo're goin town Avay, not to talk ony o' your car- 
 nal talk to me. I'se got hindrances enough, t' Lord 
 knows.' 
 
 And the lad went his way, morosely hanging his 
 head, and stepping more rapidly as though to get rid 
 of his companion. 
 
 'Well, I niver!' exclaimed David, in his astonish- 
 ment, 'What's wrong wi yo, Tom? Yo've got no 
 more spunk nor a moultin hen. What's getten hold 
 o' yo ? ' 
 
 Tom hesitated a moment. ' TK Lord ! ' he burst 
 out at last, looking at Davy with that sudden uncon- 
 scious dignity which strong feeling can bestow for the 
 moment on the meanest of mortals. ' He's a harryin' 
 me ! I havn't slep this three neets for shoutin an 
 cryin ! It's th' conviction o' sin, Davy. Th' devil 
 seems a howdin me, an I conno pull away, not what- 
 iver. T' new minister says, "Dunnot yo pull. Let 
 Jesus do 't all. He's Strang, He is. Yo're nobbut a
 
 CHAP. IX CHILDHOOD 167 
 
 Avorm." But I've naw assurance, Davy, theer's whar 
 it is — I've naw assurance ! ' he repeated, forgetting in 
 liis pain the unvegcnerate mind of his companion. 
 
 David walked on Ijeside him wondering. When he 
 had hxst seen Tom he was lounging in a half-drunken 
 condition outside the door of the 'Crooked Cow,' 
 cracking tipsy jokes with the passers-by. 
 
 ' Where is the prayer-meetin ? ' he inquired pres- 
 ently. 
 
 'In owd Simes's shed — an it's late too — I mun 
 hurry.' 
 
 ' Why, theer'U be plenty o' room in old Simes's 
 shed. It's a fearfu big place.' 
 
 ' An lasst time theer was na stannin ground for a 
 corn-boggart ; an I wudna miss ony o' Mr. Dyson's 
 prayin, not for nothin. Good neet to yo, Davy.' 
 
 And Tom broke into a run ; David, however, kept 
 up with him. 
 
 ' P'raps I'll coom too,' he said, with a kind " of 
 bravado, when they had passed the bridge and the 
 Kinder printing works, and Clough End was in sight. 
 
 Tom said nothing till they had breasted a hill, at 
 the top of which he paused panting, and confronted 
 David. 
 
 ' Noo yo'll not mak a rumpus, Davy,' he said mis- 
 trustfully. 
 
 • An if I do, can't a hunderd or two o' yo kick me 
 out ? ' asked David, mockingly. ' I'll mak no rumpus. 
 P'raps your Mr. Dyson '11 convert me.' 
 
 And he walked on laughing. 
 
 Tom looked darkly at him ; then, as he recovered his 
 wind, his countenance suddenly cleared. Satan laid a 
 new snare for him — poor Tom I — and into his tortured 
 heart there fell a poisonous drop of spiritual pride. 
 Public reprobation applied to a certain order of 
 offences makes a very marketable kind of fame, as the
 
 158 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 author of Manfred knew very well. David in his small 
 obscure way was supplying another illustration of the 
 principle. For the past year he had been something 
 of a personage in Clough End — having always his 
 wits, his book-learning, his looks, and his singular 
 parentage to start from. Tom — the shambling butt 
 of his comrades — began to like the notion of going 
 into prayer-meeting with David Grieve in tow ; and 
 even that bitter and very real cloud of spiritual 
 misery lifted a little. 
 
 So they marched in together, Tom in front, with his 
 head much higher than before ; and till the minister 
 began there were many curious glances thrown at 
 David. It was a prayer-meeting for boys only, and 
 the place was crammed with them, of all ages up to 
 eighteen. 
 
 It was a carpenter's workshop. Tools and timber 
 had been as far as possible pushed to the side, and at 
 the end a rough platform of loose planks had been 
 laid across some logs so as to raise the preacher a 
 little. 
 
 8oon there was a stir, and Mr. Dyson appeared. 
 He was tall and loosely built, Avith the stoop from the 
 neck and the sallow skin which the position of the 
 cotton-spinner at work and the close fluffy atmosphere 
 in which he lives tend to develop. Up to six months 
 ago, he had been a mill-hand and a Wesleyan class- 
 leader. ISTow, in consequence partly of some inward 
 crisis, partly of revolt against an 'unspiritual' super- 
 intendent, he had thrown up mill and Methodism 
 together, and come to live on the doles of the Chris- 
 tian Brethren at Clough End. He had been preaching 
 on the moors already during the day, and was tired 
 out ; but the pallor of the harsh face only made the 
 bright, commanding eye more noticeable. It ran over 
 the room, took note first of the numbers, then of
 
 CHAP. IX CHILDHOOD 159 
 
 individuals, marked who had been there before, who 
 vas a new-comer. The audience fell into order and 
 quiet before it as though a general had taken com- 
 mand. 
 
 He put his hands on his hips and began to speak 
 without any preface, somewhat to the boys' surprise, 
 who had expected a prayer. The voice, as generally 
 happens with a successful revivalist preacher, w^as of 
 fine quality, and rich in good South Lancashire into- 
 nations, and his manner was simplicity itself. 
 
 ' Suppose we put off our prayer a little bit,' he 
 said, in a colloquial tone, his fixed look studying the 
 crowded benches all the while, 'Perhaps we'll have 
 more to pray about bj'-and-by. . . . Well, now, 1 
 haven't been long in Clough End, to be sure, but I 
 think I've been long enough to get some notion of how 
 you boys here live — whether you work on the land, or 
 whether you work in the mills or in shops — I've been 
 watching you a bit, perhaps you didn't think it ; and 
 what I'm going to do to-night is to take your lives to 
 pieces — take them to pieces, an look close into them, 
 as you've seen them do at the mill, perhaps, with a 
 machine that wants cleaning. I want to find out 
 what's wrong wi them, what they're good for, whose 
 work they do — GocVs or the deviVs. . . . First let me 
 take the mill-hands. Perhaps I know most about 
 their life, for I went to work in a cotton-mill when I 
 was eight years old, and I only left it six months ago. 
 I have seen men and women saved in that mill, so that 
 their whole life afterwards was a kind of ecstasy : I 
 have seen others lost there, so that they became true 
 children of the devil, and made those about them as 
 vile and wretched as themselves. I have seen men 
 grow rich there, and I have seen men die there ; so if 
 there is anything I know in this Avorld it is how fac- 
 tory workers spend their time — at least, I think I
 
 160 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 know. But judge for yourselv^es — shout to me if I'm 
 wrong. Isn't it somehow like this ? ' 
 
 And he fell into a description of the mill-hand's 
 working day. It was done with knowledge, some- 
 times with humour, and through it all ran a curious 
 under-current of half-ironical passion. The audience 
 enjoyed it, took the points, broke in now and then 
 with comments as the speaker touched on such burn- 
 ing matters as the tyranny of overlookers, the temper 
 of masters, the rubs between the different classes of 
 'hands,' the behaviour of 'minders' to the 'piecers' 
 employed by them, and so on. The sermon at one 
 time was more like a dialogue between preacher and 
 congregation. David found himself joining in it in- 
 voluntarily once or twice, so stimulating was the 
 Avhole atmosphere, and Mr. Dyson's eye was caught 
 perforce by the tall dark fellow with the defiant car- 
 riage of the head who sat next to Tom Mullins, and 
 whom he did not remember to have seen before. 
 
 But suddenly the preacher stopped, and the room 
 fell dead silent, startled by the darkening of his look. 
 ' Ay,' he said, with stern sharpness. ' Ay, that's how 
 you live — them's the things you spend your time and 
 your minds on. You laugh, and I laugh — not a bad 
 sort of life, you think — a good deal of pleasure, after 
 all, to be got out of it. If a man must work he might 
 do worse. you poor souls ! ' 
 
 The speaker stopped, as though mastering himself. 
 His face worked with emotion ; his last words had 
 been almost a cry of pain. After the easy give and 
 take of the opening, this change was electrical. David 
 felt his hand tremble on his knee. 
 
 'Answer me this!' cried the preacher, his nervous 
 cotton-spinner's hand outstretched. ' Is there any soul 
 here among you factory lads who, when he wakes in 
 the morning, ever thinks of saying a prayer? Not one
 
 CHAP. IX CHILDHOOD 161 
 
 of you, I'll be bound ! What with shovelling on one's 
 clothes, and gulping down one's breakfast, and walking 
 half a mile to the mill, who's got time to think about 
 prayers ? God must wait. He's always there above, 
 you think, sitting in glory. He can listen any time. 
 Well, as you stand at your work — all those hours 1 — 
 is there ever a moment then for putting up a word in 
 Jesus' ear — Jesus, Who died for sinners ? Why, no, 
 how should there be indeed? If you don't keep a 
 sharp eye on your work the overlooker 'ull know the 
 reason why in double-quick time ! . . . But there 
 comes a break, perhaps, for one reason or another. 
 Does the Lord get it ? What a thing to ask, to be 
 sure ! Why, there are other spinners close by, wait- 
 ing for rovings, or leaving off for "baggin," and a 
 bit of talk and a bad word or two are a deal more 
 fun, and come easier than praying. Half-past five 
 o'clock at last — knocking-off time. Then you begin to 
 think of amusing yourselves. There's loafing about the 
 streets, which never comes amiss, and there's smoking 
 and the public for you bigger ones, and there's betting 
 on ]SIanchester races, and there's a bout of swearing 
 every now and then to keep up your spirits, and there 
 are other thoughts, and perhaps actions, for some of 
 you, of which the less said in any decent Christian 
 satherins the better ! And so bedtime comes round 
 a"-ain : still not a moment to think of God in — of the 
 Judgment which has come a day closer — of your sins 
 which have grown a day heavier — of your soul which 
 has sunk a day further from heaven, a day nearer to 
 hell ? Not one. You are dead tired, and mill-work 
 begins so early. Tumble in — God can wait. He has 
 waited fourteen, or eighteen, or twenty years already ! 
 'But you're not all factory hands here. I see a 
 good many lads I know come from the country — from 
 the farms up Kinder or Edale way. Well, I don't 
 
 VOL. 1 M
 
 102 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIE\'E book i 
 
 know so much about your ways as I do about mills ; 
 but I kuow some, and I can guess some. You are not 
 shut up all day with the roar of the machines in your 
 ears, and the cotton-fluff choking your lungs. You 
 have to live harder, perhaps. You've less chances of 
 getting on in the world ; but I declare to you, if you're 
 bad and godless — as some of you are — I think there's 
 a precious sight less excuse for you than there is for 
 the mill-hands ! ' 
 
 And with a startling vehemence, greater by far than 
 he had shown in the case of the mill-workers, he threw 
 himself on the vices and the callousness of the field- 
 labourers. For wei-e they not, day by day, and hour by 
 liour, face to face with the Almighty in His marvellous 
 world — with the rising of His sun, with the flash of 
 His lightning, with His clouds which dropped fatness, 
 and with the heavens which declare His glory ? Xoth- 
 ing between them and the Most High, if they would 
 open their dull eyes and see I And more than that. 
 Not a bit of their life, but had been dear to the Lord 
 Jesus — but He had spoken of it, taught from it, made 
 it sacred. The shepherd herding the sheep — how 
 could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Good 
 Shepherd ? The sower scattering the seed — how could 
 he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Heavenly 
 Sower ? Oh, the crookedness of sin ! Oh, the hard- 
 ness of men's hearts ! 
 
 The secret of the denunciations which followed lay 
 hidden deep in the speaker's personal history. They 
 were the utterances of a man who had stood for years 
 at the 'mules,' catching, when he could, through the 
 coarse panes of factory glass, the dim blue outlines of 
 distant moors. Here were noise, crowd, coarse jesting, 
 mean tyrannies, uncongenial company — everything 
 which a nervous, excitable nature, tuned to poetry in 
 the English way through religion, most loathed; there
 
 cuAP. IX CHILDHOOD 163 
 
 was beauty, peace, leisure for thought, for holiness, for 
 emotion. 
 
 ]MeanAvhile the mind of David Grieve rose once or 
 twice in angry i)rotest. It was not fair — it was unjust 
 — and why did Mr. Dyson always seem to be looking 
 at him ? — flinging at him all these scathing words 
 about farming people's sins and follies ? He was 
 shaken and excited. Oratory, of any sort, never failed 
 to stir him extraordinarily. Once even he would have 
 jumped up to speak, but Tom ^lulliu's watcliful hand 
 closed on his arm. Davy shook it off angrily, but 
 was perforce reminded of his promise. And Mr. 
 Dyson was swift in all things. The pitiless sentences 
 dropped ; the speaker, exhausted, wiped his brow and 
 pondered a moment ; and the lads from the farms 
 about, most of whom David knew by sight, were left 
 staring at the floor, some inclined to laugh by reaction, 
 others crimson and miserable. 
 
 Well ; so God was everywhere forgotten — in the 
 fields and in the mill. The greedy, vicious hours went 
 by, and God still waited — waited. Would He wait 
 for ever ? 
 
 'Nay!' 
 
 The intense, low-spoken word sent a shiver through 
 tlie room. The revivalist passion had been mounting 
 rapidly amongst the listeners, and the revivalist sense 
 divined what was coming. To his dying day David, 
 at least, never forgot the picture of a sinner's death 
 agony, a sinner's doom, which followed. As to the 
 first, it was very quiet and colloquial. The preacher 
 dwelt on the tortured body, the choking breath, the 
 failing sight, the talk of relations and friends round 
 the bed. 
 
 ' " Ay, poor fellow, he'll not lasst mich longer ; t' 
 doctor's gien him uj) — and a good thing too, for his 
 sufferins are terr'ble to see."
 
 1G4 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ' And your poor dying ears will catch what they say. 
 Then will your fear come upon you as a storm, and 
 your calamity as a whirlwind. Such a fear ! 
 
 ' Once, my lads — long ago — I saw a poor girl caught 
 by her hair in one of the roving machines in the mill 
 I used to work at. Three minutes afterwards they 
 tore away her body from the iron teeth which had 
 destroyed her. But I, a lad of twelve, had seen her 
 face just as the thing caught her, and if I live to be a 
 hundred I shall never forget that face — that horrible, 
 horrible fear convulsing it. 
 
 'But that fear, my boys, was as nothing to the sin- 
 ner's fear at death ! Only a few more hours — a few 
 more minutes, perhaps — and then judgment ! All the 
 pleasant loafing and lounging, all the eating and drink- 
 ing, the betting and swearing, the warm sun, the kind 
 light, the indulgent parents and friends left behind : 
 nothing for ever and ever but the torments which 
 belong to sin, and which even the living God can no 
 more spare you and me if we die in sin than the mill- 
 engine, once set going, can spare the poor creature 
 that meddles with it. 
 
 ' Well ; but perhaps in that awful last hour you try 
 to pray — to call on the Saviour. But, alas ! alas ! 
 prayer and faith have to be learnt, like cotton-spin- 
 ning. Let no man count on learning that lesson for 
 the asking. AVhile your body has been enjoying itself 
 in sin, your soul has been dying — dying ; and when at 
 the last you bid it rise and go to the Father, you Avill 
 find it just as helpless as your poor paralysed limbs. 
 It cannot rise, it has no strength ; it cannot go, for 
 it knows not the way. ISTo hope ; no hope. Down it 
 sinks, and the black waters of hell close upon it for 
 ever ! ' 
 
 Then followed a sort of vision of the lost — delivered 
 in short abrupt sentences — the form of the speaker
 
 CHAP. IX CHILDHOOD 165 
 
 drawn rigidly up meanwhile to its full height, the 
 long aim outstretched. The utterance had very little 
 of the lurid materialism, the grotesque horror of the 
 ordinary ranter's hell. But it stole upon the imagina- 
 tion little by little, and possessed it at last with an all- 
 pervading terror. Into it, to begin with, had gone 
 the whole life-ldood and passion of an agonised soul. 
 The man speaking had himself graven the terrors of 
 it on his inmost nature through many a week of 
 demoniacal possession. But since that original ex- 
 perience of fire which gave it birth, there had come 
 to its elaboration a strange artistic instinct. Day 
 after day the preacher had repeated it to hushed con- 
 gregations, and with every repetition, almost, there 
 had come a greater sharpening of the light and shade, 
 a keener sense of what would tell and move. He had 
 given it on the moors that afternoon, but he gave it 
 better to-night, for on the wild walk across the plateau 
 of the Peak some fresh illustrations, drawn from its 
 black and fissured solitude, had suggested themselves, 
 and he worked them out as he went, with a kind of 
 joy, watching their effect. Yet the man was, in his 
 way, a saint, and altogether sincere — so subtle a thing 
 is the life of the spirit. 
 
 In the middle, Tom Mullins, David's apprentice- 
 friend, suddenly broke out into loud groans, rocking 
 himself to and fro on the form. A little later, a small 
 fair-haired boy of twelve sprang up from the form 
 where he had been sitting trembling, and rushed into 
 the space between the benches and the preacher, quite 
 unconscious of what he was doing. 
 
 ' Sir ! ' he said ; * oh, sir ! — please — I didn't want to 
 say them bad words this mornin ; I didn't, sir ; it wor 
 t' big uns made me; they said they'd duck me — an it 
 do hurt that bad. Oh, sir, please ! '
 
 166 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 And the little fellow stood wringing his hands, the 
 tears coursing down his cheeks. 
 
 The minister stopped, frowning, and looked at him. 
 Then a smile broke on the set face, he stepped up to 
 the lad, threw his arm round him, and drew him up 
 to his side fronting the room. 
 
 "^My boy,' he said, looking down at him tenderly, 
 'you and I, thank God, are still in the land of the 
 living ; there is still time to-night — this very minute — 
 to be saved ! Ay, saved, for ever and ever, by the 
 blood of the Lamb. Look away from yourselves — 
 away from sin — away from hell — to the blessed Lord, 
 that suffered and died and rose again ; just for what ? 
 For this only — that He might, with His own pierced 
 hands, draw every soul here to-night, and every soul 
 in the wide world that will but hear His voice, out of 
 the clutches of the devil, and out of the pains of 
 hell, and gather it close and safe into His everlasting 
 arms ! ' 
 
 There was a great sob from the whole room. Eough 
 lads from the upland farms, shop-boys, mill-hands, 
 strained forward, listening, thirsting, responding to 
 every word. 
 
 Bedemption — Salvation — the deliverance of the soul 
 from itself — thither all religion comes at last, whether 
 for the ranter or the philosopher. To the enriching 
 of that conception, to the gradual hewing it out in 
 historical shape, have gone the noblest poetry, the 
 purest passion, the intensest spiritual vision of the 
 highest races, since the human mind began to work. 
 And the historical shape may crumble ; but the need 
 will last and the travail will go on ; for man's quest of 
 redemption is but the eternal yielding of the clay in 
 the hands of the potter, the eternal answer of the 
 creature to the urging indwelling Creator.
 
 CHILDHOOD 167 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Half an hour later, after the stormy praying and 
 singing whicli liad succeeded Mr. Dyson's address, 
 David found himself tramping up the rough and lonely 
 road leading to the high Kinder valley. The lights 
 of Clough End had disappeared ; against the night 
 sky the dark woody side of Mardale jVloor was still 
 visible ; beneath it sang the river ; a few stars were 
 to be seen ; and every noAV and then the windows of 
 a farm shone out to guide the wayfarer. But David 
 stumbled on, noticing nothing. At the foot of the 
 steep hill leading to the farm he stopped a moment, 
 and leant over the gate. The little lad's cry was in 
 his ears. 
 
 Presently he leapt the gate impatientl}-, and ran up 
 whistling. Supper was over, but Hannah ungraciously 
 brought him out some cold bacon and bread. Louie 
 hung about him while he ate, studying him with quick 
 furtive eyes. 
 
 'Whar yo bin?' she said abruptly, when Hannah 
 had gone to the back kitchen for a moment. Reuben 
 was dozing by the fire over the local paper. 
 
 * Xowhere as concerns you,' said David, shortly. He 
 finished his supper and went and sat on the steps. 
 The dogs came and put their noses on his knees. He 
 pulled absently at their coats, looking straight before 
 him at the dark point of Kinder Low. 
 
 * Whar yo bin ? ' said Louie's voice again in his ear. 
 She had squatted down on the step behind him. 
 
 'Be off wi yer,' said David, angrily, getting up in 
 order to escape her. 
 
 But she pursued him across the farmyard. 
 ' Have yo got a letter ? '
 
 108 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ' No, I havn't.' 
 
 ' Did yo ask at t' post-oflfice ? ' 
 
 ' No, I didn't.' 
 
 ' An why didn't yo ? ' 
 
 ' Because I didn't want — soa there — get away.' 
 And he stalked off. Lonie, left behind, chewed the 
 end of reflection in the darkness. 
 
 Presently, to his great disgust, as he was sitting 
 under a wall of one of the pasture-fields, hidden, as 
 he conceived, from all the world by the night, he 
 heard the rustle of a dress, the click of a stone, and 
 there was Louie dangling her legs above him, having 
 attacked him in the rear. 
 
 ' Uncle Reuben's talkin 'is stuff about Mr. Dyson. 
 I seed 'im gooin passt Wigsons' this afternoon. He's 
 nowt — he's common, he is.' 
 
 The thin scornful voice out of the dark grated on 
 him intolerably. He bent forward and shut his ears 
 tight with both his hands. To judge from the muffled 
 sounds he heard, Louie went on talking for a while ; 
 but at last there had been silence for so long, that he 
 took his hands away, thinking she must have gone. 
 
 ' Yo've been at t' prayer-meetin, I tell yo, an yo're 
 a great stupid niuffin-yed, soa theer.' 
 
 And a peremptory little kick on his shoulder from 
 a substantial shoe gave the words point. 
 
 He sprang up in a rage, ran down the hill, jumped 
 over a wall or two, and got rid of her. But he seemed 
 to hear her elfish laugh for some time after. As for 
 himself, he could not analyse what had come over 
 him. But not even the attraction of an unopened 
 parcel of books he had carried home that afternoon 
 from Clough End — a loan from a young stationer he 
 had lately made acquaintance with — could draw him 
 back to the farm. He sat on and on in the dark. 
 And when at last, roused by the distant sounds of
 
 CHAP. X CHILDHOOD 169 
 
 shutting up the house, he slunk in and up to bed, he 
 tossed about for a long time, and woke up often in 
 the night. The tyrannous power of another man's 
 faith was upon him. He could not get ^Vlr. Dyson 
 out of his head. How on earth could anybody be so 
 certain? It was monstrous that any one should be. 
 It was canting stuff. 
 
 Still, next day, hearing by chance that the new 
 comer was going to preach at a hamlet the other side 
 of Clough End, he went, found a large mixed meet- 
 ing mostly of mill-hands, and the tide of Eevivalism 
 rolling high. This time Mr. Dyson picked him out at 
 once — the face and head indeed were easily remem- 
 bered. After the sermon, when the congregation 
 were filing out, leaving behind those more particularly 
 distressed in mind to be dealt with more intimately 
 in a small prayer-meeting by Mr. Dyson and a prayer- 
 leader, the minister suddenly stepped aside from a 
 group of people he was talking with, and touched 
 David on the arm as he was making for the door. 
 
 ' Won't you stay ? ' he said peremptoril3\ * Don't 
 trifle with the Lord.' 
 
 And his feverish divining eyes seemed to look the 
 boy through and through. David flushed, and pushed 
 past him with some inarticulate answer. "When he 
 found himself in the open air he was half angry, 
 half shaken with emotion. And afterwards a curious 
 instinct, the sullen instinct of the wild creature shrink- 
 ing from a possible captor, made him keep himself as 
 much as possible out of Mr. Dyson's way. At the 
 prayer-meetings and addresses, which followed each 
 other during the next fortnight in quick succession, 
 David was almost always present; but he stood at the 
 back, and as soon as the general function wns over 
 he fled. The preacher's strong will was piqued. He 
 began to covet the boy's submission disproportionately,
 
 170 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 and laid schemes for meeting with liim. But David 
 evaded them all. 
 
 Other persons, however, succeeded better. When- 
 ever the revivalist fever attacks a community, it ex- 
 cites in a certain number of individuals, especially 
 Avomen, an indescribable zeal for prosel^^tising. The 
 signs of ' conviction ' in any hitherto unregenerate soul 
 are marked at once, and the ' saved ' make a prey of it, 
 showing a marvellous cunning and persistence in its 
 pursuit. 
 
 One day a woman, the wife of a Clough End shoe- 
 maker, slightly known to David, met him on the moors. 
 
 ' Will yo cooni to-night ? ' she said, nodding to him. 
 ' Theer'll be prayin' at our house — about half a dozen.' 
 
 Then, as the boy stopped, amazed and hesitating, 
 she fixed him with her shining ecstatic eyes. 
 
 ' Awake, thou that sleepest,' she said under her 
 breath, 'and Christ shall give thee light.' 
 
 She had been carrying a bundle to a distant farm. 
 A child was in her arms, and she looked dragged and 
 worn. But all the way down the moor as she came 
 towards him David had heard her singing hymns. 
 
 He hung his head and passed on. But jn the even- 
 ing he went, found three or four other boys his own 
 age or older, the woman, and her husband. The woman 
 sang some of the most passionate Methodist hymns ; 
 the husband, a young shoemaker, already half dead of 
 asthma and bronchitis, told his ' experiences ' in a 
 voice broken by incessant coughing ; one of the boys, 
 a rough specimen, known to David as a van-boy from 
 some calico-printing works in the neighbourhood, 
 prayed aloud, breaking down into sobs in the middle ; 
 and David, at first obstinately silent, found himself 
 joining before the end in the groans and ' Amens,' by 
 force of a contagious excitement he half despised but 
 could not withstand.
 
 rnAP. X CHILDHOOD 171 
 
 The little prayer-meeting, however, broke up some- 
 what in confusion. There was not much real differ- 
 ence of opinion at this time in Clough End, which was, 
 on the whole, a strongly religious town. Even the 
 Churchmanship of it was decidedly evangelical, ready 
 at any moment to make common cause with Dissent 
 against Ritualism, if such a calamity should ever 
 threaten the little community, and very ready to join, 
 more or less furtively, in the excitements of Dissent- 
 ing revivals. Jerry Timmins and his set represented 
 the only serious blot on what the pious Clough Endian 
 might reasonably regard as a fair picture. But this 
 set contained some sharp fellows — provided outlet for 
 a considerable amount of energy of a raw and roving 
 sort, and, no doubt, did more to maintain the mental 
 equilibrium of the small factory-town than any enthu- 
 siast on the other side would for a moment have 
 allowed. The excitement which followed in the train 
 of a man like INEr. Dyson roused, of course, an answer- 
 ing hubbub among the Timmiusites. The whole of 
 Jerry's circle was stirred up, in fact, like a hive of 
 wasps ; their ribaldry grew with what it fed on ; and 
 every day some new and exquisite method of harrying 
 the devout occurred to the more ingenious among 
 them. 
 
 David had hitherto escaped notice. But on this 
 evening, Avhile he and his half-dozen companions were 
 still on their knees, they were first disturbed by loud 
 drummings on the shoemaker's door, which opened 
 directly into the little room Avhere they were congre- 
 gated ; and then, when they emerged into the street, 
 they found a mock prayer-meeting going on outside, 
 with all the usual ' manifestations ' of revivalist fer- 
 vour — sighs, groans, shouts, and the rest of it — in full 
 flow. At the sight of David Grieve there were first 
 stares and then shrieks of laughter.
 
 172 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GKIEVE book i 
 
 ' I say, Davy,' cried a drunken young weaver, sid- 
 ling up to him on his knees and embracing him from 
 behind, ' my heart's real touched. Gie me your coat, 
 Davy ; it's better nor mine, Davy ; and I'm your 
 Christian brothei-, Davy.' 
 
 The emotion of this appeal drew uproarious merri- 
 ment from the knot of Secularists. David, in a 
 frenzy, kicked out, so that his assailant dropped him 
 with a howl. The weaver's friends closed upon the 
 'Ranters,' Avho had to fight their way through. It 
 was not till they had gained the outskirts of the town 
 that the shower of stones ceased, and that they could 
 pause to take stock of their losses. Then it appeared 
 that, though all were bruised, torn, and furious, some 
 were inclined to take a mystical joy in persecution, 
 and to 'find compensation in certain plain and definite 
 predictions as to the eternal fate in store for 'Jerry 
 Timniins's divils.' David, on the other hand, was 
 much more inclined to vent his wrath on his own side 
 than on the Timminsites. 
 
 ' Why can't yo keep what yo're doin to yoursels ? ' 
 he called out fiercely to the knot of panting boys, as 
 he faced round upon them at the gate leading to the 
 Kinder road. ' Yo're a parcel o' fools — always chat- 
 terin an clatterin.' 
 
 The others defended themselves warmly. 'Them 
 Timmins lot' were always spying about. They daren't 
 attack the large meetings, but the^^ had a diabolical 
 way of scenting out the small ones. The meetings at 
 the shoemaker's had been undisturbed for some few 
 nights, then a Tiraminsite passing by had heard 
 hymns, probably listened at the keyhole, and of course 
 informed the main body of the enemy. 
 
 ' They're like them nassty earwigs,' said one boy in 
 disgust, 'they'll wriggle in onywheres.' 
 
 'Howd yor noise 1 ' said David, peremptorily. 'If
 
 f MAP. X rillLDHOOD 173 
 
 yo wanted to keep out o' their way, yo could do 't 
 fasst enough.' 
 
 ' How ? ' they inquired, with equal curtness. 
 
 'Yo needn't meet in th' town at aw. Theer's 
 plenty o' places up on t' moor,' and he waved his 
 hand towards the hills behind him, lying clear in the 
 autumn moonlight. ' Theer's th' owd Smithy — who'd 
 hnd yo there ? ' 
 
 The mention of the Smithy was received as an 
 inspiration. There is a great deal of pure romantic 
 temper roused by these revivalist outbreaks in pro- 
 vincial England. The idea of the moors and the old 
 ruin as setting for a secret prayer-meeting struck 
 the group of excited lads as singularly attractive. 
 They parted cheerfully upon it, in spite of their 
 bruises. 
 
 David, however, walked home fuming. The self- 
 abandonment of the revival had been all along well- 
 nigh intolerable to him — and now, that he should have 
 allowed the Timminsites to know anything about his 
 prayers ! He very nearly broke off from it altogether 
 in his proud disgust. 
 
 However he did ultimately nothing of the sort. As 
 soon as he grew cool again, he was as much tormented 
 as before by what was at bottom more an intellectual 
 curiosity than a moral anguish. There was some 
 moral awakening in it ; he had sonae real qualms about 
 sin, some real aspirations after holiness, and, so far, 
 the self-consciousness which had first stirred at Ha- 
 worth was deepened and fertilised. But the thirst 
 for emotion and sensation was the main force at work. 
 He could not make out what these religious people 
 meant by their ' experiences,' and for the first time 
 he wanted to make out. So when it was proposed to 
 him to meet at the Smithy on a certain Saturday 
 evening, he agreed.
 
 174 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 Meanwhile, Louie was sitting up in bed every night, 
 with her hands round her sharp knees, and her black 
 brows knit over David's follies. It seemed to her he 
 no longer cared ' a haporth ' about getting a letter from 
 Mr. Ancrum, about going to Manchester, about all 
 those entrancing anti-meat schemes which were to lead 
 so easily to a paradise of free ' buying ' for both of 
 them. Whenever she tried to call him back to these 
 things he shook her oft' impatiently, and their new- 
 born congeniality to each other had been all swamped 
 in this craze for ' shoutin hollerin ' people she desjMsed 
 with all her heart. When she flew out at him, he just 
 avoided her. Indeed, he avoided her now at all times, 
 whether she flew out or not. There was an invincible 
 heathenism about Louie, which made her the natural 
 enemy of any ' awakened ' person. 
 
 The relation of the elders. in the farm to the new 
 development in David was a curious one. Hannah 
 viewed it with a secret satisfaction. Christians have 
 less time than other people — such, at least, had been 
 her experience with Reuben — to spend in thirsting for 
 the goods of this world. The more David went to 
 prayer-meetings, the less likely was he to make inad- 
 missible demands on what belonged to him. As for 
 poor Reuben, he seemed to have got his wish ; while 
 he and Hannah had been doing their best to drive 
 Sandy's son to perdition through a downward course 
 of 'loafing,' God had sent Mr. Dyson to put Davy 
 back on the right road. But he was ill at ease ; he 
 watched the excitement, which all the lad's prickly 
 reticence could not hide from those about him, with 
 strange and variable feelings. As a Christian, he 
 should have rejoiced; instead, the uncle and nephew 
 shunned each other more than ever, and shunned 
 especially all talk of the revival. Perhaps the whole 
 situation — the influence of the new man, of the local
 
 cnAP. X CHILDIloOi) 176 
 
 talk, of the quickened spiritual life around him, did 
 but aggravate the inner strain in Keuben. Perhaps 
 liis wife's satisfaction, -which his sharpened conscience 
 perceived and understood, troubled him intolerably. 
 At any rate, his silence and disquiet grew, and his only 
 pleasure lay, more than ever, in those solitary cogita- 
 tions we have already s})oken of. 
 
 The loth of October api)roached — as it happened, 
 the Friday before the Smithy prayer-meeting. On 
 that day of the year, according to ancient and inva- 
 riable custom, the Yorkshire stock — steers, heifers, 
 young horses — which are transferred to the Derby- 
 shire farms on the 15th of May, are driven back to 
 their Yorkshire owners, with all the fatness of Derby- 
 shire pastures showing on their sleek sides. Breeders 
 and farmers meet again at Woodhead, just within the 
 Yorkshire border. The animals are handed over to 
 their owners, paid for at so much a head, and any 
 preventible damage or loss occurring among them is 
 reckoned against the farmer returning them, according 
 to certain local rules. 
 
 As the middle of the month came nearer, Keuben 
 began to talk despondently to Hannah of his probable 
 gains from his Yorkshire ' boarders.' It had been a 
 cold wet summer; he was 'feart' the owners would 
 think he might have taken more care of some of the 
 animals, especially of the young horses, and he men- 
 tioned certain ailments springing from damp and 
 exposure for which he might be held responsible. 
 Hannah grew irritated and anxious. The receipts from 
 this source were the largest they could reckon upon 
 in the year. But the fields on which the Yorkshire 
 animals pastured were at some distance from the 
 house ; this department of the farm business was 
 always left wholly to Keuben ; and. with much grum- 
 bling and scolding, she took his word for it as to
 
 176 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 the probable lowness of the sum he shoukl bring 
 back. 
 
 David, meanwhile, was sometimes a good deal puz- 
 zled by Reuben's behaviour. It seemed to him that 
 his uncle told some queer tales at home about their 
 summer stock. And when Reuben announced his in- 
 tention of going by himself to Woodhead, and leaving 
 David at home, the boy was still more astonished. 
 
 However, he was glad enough to be spared the 
 tramp with a set of people whose ways and talk were 
 more and more uncongenial to him ; and after his 
 uncle's departure he lay for hours hidden from Louie 
 among the heather, sometimes arguing out imaginary 
 arguments with Mr. Dyson, sometimes going through 
 passing thrills of emotion and fear. What was meant, 
 he Avanted to know, by ^the sense of pardon^? Person 
 after person at the prayer-meetings he had been fre- 
 quenting had spoken of attaining it with ecstasy, or 
 of being still shut out from it with anguish. But 
 how, after all, did it differ from pardoning yourself ? 
 You had only, it seemed to him, to think very hard 
 that you were pardoned, and the feeling came. How 
 could anybody tell it was more than that ? David 
 racked his brain endlessly over the same subject. 
 Who could be sure that 'experience ' was not all moon- 
 shine ? But he was as yet much too touched and 
 shaken by what he had been going through to draw 
 any trenchant conclusions. He asked the question, 
 however, and therein lay the great difference between 
 him and the true stuff of Methodism. 
 
 Meanwhile, in his excitement, he, for the first time, 
 ceased to go to the Dawsons' as usual. To begin with, 
 they dropped out of a mind which was preoccupied 
 with one of the first strong emotions of adolescence. 
 Then, some one told him casually that 'Lias was more 
 ailing than usual, and that Margaret was in much
 
 CHAP. X CHILDHOOD 177 
 
 trouble. He was pricked with remorse, but just be- 
 cause Margaret would be sure to question him, a raw 
 shyness came in and held him back from the effort of 
 going. 
 
 On the Saturday evening David, having ingeniously 
 given Louie the slip, sped across the fields to the 
 Smithy. It was past five o'clock, and the light was 
 fading. But the waning gold of the sunset as he 
 jumped the wall on to the moor made the whole 
 autumnal earth about him, and the whole side of the 
 Scout, one splendour. Such browns and pinks among 
 the withering ling ; such gleaming greens among the 
 bilberry leaf ; such reds among the turning ferns ; 
 such fiery touches on the mountain ashes overhanging 
 the Red Brook ! The western light struck in great 
 shafts into the bosom of the Scout ; and over its grand 
 encompassing mass hung some hovering clouds just 
 kindling into rosy flame. As the boy walked along he 
 saw and thrilled to the beauty which lay spread about 
 him. His mood w^as simple, and sweeter than usual. 
 He felt a passionate need of expression, of emotion. 
 There was a true disquiet, a genuine disgust with self 
 at the bottom of him, and God seemed more than 
 imaginatively near. Perhaps, on this day of his youth, 
 of all days, he was closest to the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 At the Smithy he found about a dozen persons, 
 mostly youths, just come out from the two or three 
 mills which give employment to Clough End, and one 
 rather older than the rest, a favourite prayer-leader in 
 Sunday meetings. At first, everything felt strange ; 
 the boys eyed one another; even David as he stepped 
 in among them had a juomentary reaction, and was 
 more conscious of the presence of a red-haired fellow 
 there with whom he had fought a mighty fight on the 
 Huddersfield expedition, than of any spiritual needs. 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 178 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 However, the prayer-leader knew his work. He was 
 slow and pompous ; his tone with the Almighty might 
 easily have roused a hostile sense of humour ; but 
 Dissent in its atitive and emotional forms kills the 
 sense of humour; and, besides, there was a real, un- 
 gainly power in the man. Every phrase of his open- 
 ing prayer was hackneyed; every gesture uncouth. 
 But his heart was in it, and religious conviction is the 
 most infectious thing in the world. He warmed, and 
 his congregation warmed with him. The wild scene, 
 too, did its part — the world of darkening moors spread 
 out before them ; the mountain wall behind them ; the 
 October wind sighing round the rviined walls ; the 
 lonely unaccustomed sounds of birds and water. When 
 he ceased, boy after boy broke out into more or less 
 incoherent praying. Soon in the dusk they could no 
 longer see each other's faces ; and then it was still 
 easier to break through reserve. 
 
 At last David found himself speaking. What he 
 said was at first almost inaudible, for he was kneeling 
 between the wall and the pan which had been his 
 childish joy, with his face and arms crushed against 
 the stones. But when he began the boys about pricked 
 up their ears, and David was conscious suddenly of 
 a deepened silence. There were warm tears on his 
 hidden cheeks ; but it pleased him keenly they should 
 listen so, and he prayed more audibly and freely. 
 Then, when his voice dropped at last, the prayer-leader 
 gave out the familiar hymn, 'Come, thou Traveller 
 unknown : ' — 
 
 Come, O thou Traveller unknown, 
 Whom still I hold, but cannot see! 
 
 My company before is gone. 
 And I am left alone with Thee ; 
 
 With Thee all night I mean to stay, 
 
 And wrestle till the break of day.
 
 CHAP. X rnTLDirooD 179 
 
 Wilt thou not yet to me reveal 
 
 Thy new unutterable name ? 
 Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell— 
 
 To know it now resolved 1 am. 
 Wrestling, I will not let thee go, 
 Till I thy name, thy nature know. 
 
 'Tis Lovel 'tis Love — thou lovest me! 
 
 I hear thy whisper in my heart ; 
 The morning breaks, the shadows flee, 
 
 Pure universal Love thou art ; 
 To me, to all, thy mercies move, 
 Thy nature and thy name is Love. 
 
 Again and again the lines rose on the autumn air ; 
 each time the hymn came to an end it was started 
 afresh, the sound of it spreading far and wide into the 
 purple breast of Kinder Scout. At last the painful 
 sobbing of poor Tom ]\Iullins almost drowned the sing- 
 ing. The prayer-leader, himself much moved, bent 
 over and seized him by the arm. 
 
 'Look to Jesus, Tom. Lay hold on the Saviour. 
 Don't think of your sins; they're done away i' th' 
 blood o' the Lamb. Howd Him fast. Say, "I be- 
 lieve," and the Lord ull deliver yo,' 
 
 With a cry, the great hulking lad sprang to his feet, 
 and clasped his arms above his head — 
 
 • I do believe — I will believe. Help me. Lord Jesus. 
 Oh, I'm saved ! I'm saved ! ' And he remained stand- 
 ing in an ecstasj', looking to the sky above the Scout, 
 where the red sunset glow still lingered. 
 
 ' Hallelujah ! hallelujah ! Thanks be to God ! ' cried 
 the prayer-leader, and the Smithy resounded in the 
 growing darkness with similar shouts. David was 
 almost choking with excitement. He would have 
 given worlds to spring to Tom Mullins's side and pro- 
 claim the same faith. But the inmost heart of him,
 
 180 THE HISTORY OF DxVYID GEIEYE book i 
 
 his real self, seemed to him at this testing moment 
 something dead and cold. No heavenly voice spoke 
 to him, David Grieve. A genuine pang of religions 
 despair seized him. He looked out over the moor 
 through a gap in the stones. There was a dim path 
 below ; the fancy struck him that Christ, the ' Trav- 
 eller unknown/ was passing along it. He had alread}* 
 stretched out His hand of blessing to Tom Mullins. 
 
 ' To me ! to me, too ! ' David cried under his 
 breath, carried away by the haunting imagination, and 
 straining his eyes into the dusk. Had the night 
 opened to his sight there and then in a vision of glory, 
 he would have been no whit surprised. 
 
 Hark ! — what was that sound ? 
 
 A weird scream rose on the wind. The startled 
 congregation in the Smithy scrambled to their feet. 
 Another scream, nearer apparently than the first, and 
 then a loud wailing, broken every few seconds by a 
 strange slight laugh, of which the distance seemed 
 quite indefinite. Was it close by, or beyond the Red 
 Brook ? 
 
 The prayer-leader turned white, the boys stood 
 huddled round him in every attitude of terror. Again 
 the scream, and the little ghostly laugh ! Looking at 
 each other wildly, the whole congregation broke from 
 the Smithy down the hill. But the leader stopped 
 himself. 
 
 'It's mebbe soom one in trouble,' he said manfully, 
 every limb trembling. ' We mun go and see, my lads.' 
 And he rushed off in the direction whence the first 
 sound had seemed to come — towards the Red Brook — 
 half a dozen of the bolder spirits following. The rest 
 stood cowering on the slope under the Smithy. David 
 meanwhile had climbed the ruined wall, and stood 
 with head strained forward, his eyes sweeping the 
 moor. But every outline was sinking fast into the
 
 CHAP. XI rilTI.DIIOOD IRl 
 
 gulf of the night ; only a few indistinct masses — a 
 cluster of gorse-bushes, a clump of mountain ash — 
 still showed here and there. 
 
 The leader made for one of these darker patches 
 on the mountain-side, led on always by the recurrent 
 screams. He reached it ; it was a patch of juniper 
 overhanging the Red Brook — when suddenly from 
 behind it there shot up a white thing, taller than the 
 tallest man, with nodding head and outspread arms, 
 and such laughter — so faint, so shrill, so evil, breaking 
 midway into a hoarse angry yell. 
 
 ' J^iny Crum! Jenny Crum!' cried the whole band 
 with one voice, and, wheeling round, they ran down 
 the Scout, joined by the contingent from the Smithy, 
 some of them falling headlong among the heather in 
 their agony of flight, others ruthlessly knocking over 
 those in front of them who seemed to be in their way. 
 In a few seconds, as it seemed, the whole Scout was 
 left to itself and the night. Footsteps, voices, all 
 were gone — save for one long peal of most human, but 
 still elfish, mirth, which came from the Eed Brook. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A DARK figure sprang down from the wall of the 
 Smithy, leapt along the heather, and plunged into the 
 bushes along the brook. A cry in another key was 
 heard. 
 
 David emerged, dragging something behind him. 
 
 'Yo limb, yo! How dare yo, yo little beast? Yo 
 impident little toad ! ' And in a perfect frenzy of 
 rage he shook what he held. But Louie — for natu- 
 rally it was Louie — wrenched herself away, and stood 
 confronting him, panting, but exultant.
 
 182 THE HISTORY OF DAVID aTJIEVE book i 
 
 'I freetened 'em I just didn't I ? Cantin hvirabugs I 
 '^ Jenny Crnm! Jenny Cnim!'" And, mimicking the 
 voice of the leader, she broke again into an hysterical 
 shout of laughter. 
 
 David, beside himself, hit out and struck her. It 
 was a heavy blow which knocked her down, and for a 
 moment seemed to stun her. Then she recovered her 
 senses, and flew at him in a mad passion, weeping 
 wildly with the smart and excitement. 
 
 He held her off, ashamed of himself, till she flung 
 away, shrieking out — 
 
 ' Go and say its prayers, do — good little boy— poor 
 little babby. Ugh, yo coward ! hittin gells, that's all 
 yo're good for.' 
 
 And she ran off so fast that all sight of her was 
 lost in a few seconds. Only two or three loud sobs 
 seemed to come back from the dark hollow below. As 
 for the boy he stopped a second to disentangle his 
 feet from the mop and the tattered sheet wherewith 
 Louie had worked her transformation scene. Then he 
 dashed up the hill again, past the Smithy, and into a 
 track leading oiit on the high road between Castleton 
 and Clough End. He did not care where he went. 
 Five minutes ago he had been almost in heaven; now 
 he was in hell. He hated Louie, he hated the boys 
 who had cut and run, he loathed himself. Ko ! — re- 
 ligion was not for such as he. No more canting — no 
 more praying — away with it I He seemed to shake all 
 the emotion of the last few week's from him with scorn 
 and haste, as he ran on, his strong young limbs bat- 
 tling with the wind. 
 
 Presently he emerged on the high road. To the 
 left, a hundred yards away, were the lights of a way- 
 side inn ; a farm waggon and a pair of horses standing 
 with drooped and patient heads Avere drawn up on the 
 cobbles in front of it. David felt in his pockets.
 
 CHAP. XI rillLDTTOOD 183 
 
 There was eighteenpence in them, the remains of 
 lialf-a-crown a strange gentleman had given him in 
 Clough End the week before for stopping a runaway 
 horse. In he stalked. 
 
 ' Two penn'orth of gin — hot ! ' he commanded. 
 
 The girl serving the bar brought it and stared at 
 him curiously. The glaring paraffin lamp above his 
 head tlirew the frowning brows and wild eyes, the 
 crimson cheeks, heaving chest, and tumbled hair, into 
 strong light and shade. ' That's a quare un I ' she 
 thought, but she found him handsome all the same, 
 and, retreating behind the beer-taps, she eyed him 
 surreptitiously. She was a raw country lass, not yet 
 stript of all her natural shyness, or she would have 
 begun to 'chaff' liini. 
 
 'Another!' said David, pushing forward his glass. 
 This time he looked at her. His reckless gaze trav- 
 elled over her coarse and comely face, her full figure, 
 her bare arms. He drank the glass she gave him, and 
 yet another. She began to feel half afraid of him, and 
 moved away. The hot stimulant ran through his veins. 
 Suddenly he felt his head wliirling from the effects of 
 it, but that horril)le clutch of despair was no longer 
 on him. He raised himself defiantly and turned to 
 go, staggering along the floor. He was near the en- 
 trance when an inner door opened, and the carter, who 
 had been gossiping in a room behind with the land- 
 lord, emerged. He started with astonishment when 
 he saw David. 
 
 ' Hullo, Davy, what are yo after ? ' 
 
 David turned, nearly losing his balance as he did 
 so, and clutching at the bar for support. He found 
 himself confronted with Jim Wigson — his old enemy — 
 who had been to Castleton with a load of hay and some 
 calves, and was on his way back to Kinder again. 
 When he saw who it was clinging to the bar counter,
 
 184 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 Jim first stared and then burst into a hoarse roar of 
 laughter. 
 
 ' Coom here I coom here 1 ' he shouted to the party 
 in the back parlour. ' Here's a rum start ! I do 
 declare this beats cock-fighting I — this do. Damn my 
 eyes iv it doosn't ! Look at that yoong limb. Why 
 they towd me down at Clough End this mornin he'd 
 been took "serious" — took wi a prayin turn — they 
 did. Look at un I It ull tak 'im till to-morrow 
 mornin to know his yed from his heels. He ! he ! he ! 
 Yo're a deep un, Davy — yo are. But yo'll get a bastin 
 when Hannah sees you — prayin or no prayin.' 
 
 And Jim went off into another guffaw, pointing his 
 whip the while at Davy. Some persons from the par- 
 lour crowded in, enjoying the fun. David did not see 
 them. He reached out his hand for the glass he had 
 just emptied, and steadying himself by a mighty 
 effort, flung it swift and straight in Jim Wigson's 
 face. There was a crash of fragments, a line of blood 
 appeared on the young cartel's chin, and a chorus of 
 Avrath and alarm rose from the group behind him. 
 With a furious oath Jim placed a hand on the bar, 
 vaulted it, and fell upon the lad. David defended 
 himself blindly, but he was dazed with drink, and his 
 blows and kicks rained aimlessly on Wigson's iron 
 frame. In a second or two Jim had tripped him up, 
 and stood over him, his face ablaze with vengeance 
 and conquest. 
 
 ' Yo yoong varmint — yo cantiu yoong hypocrite ! 
 I'll teach yo to show impereuce to your betters. Yo 
 bin alius badly i' want o' soombody to tak yo down a 
 peg or two. ISTow I'll show yo. I'll not fight yo, but 
 I'll flog yo — Jiog yo — d' yo hear ? ' 
 
 And raising his carter's whip he brought it down on 
 the boy's back and legs. David tried desperately to 
 rise — in vain — Jim had him by the collar ; and four or
 
 CHAP. XI riiiLDTiorn) 185 
 
 five times more the heavy whip came down, avonj^ing 
 with each lash many a shimbering grudge in the vic- 
 tor's soul. 
 
 Then Jim f»-lt his arm firmly caught. *Xow, 
 Mister Wigson,' cried the landlord — a little man, but 
 a wiry — 'yo'll not get me into trooble. Let th' yoong 
 ri[)stitch go. Yo've gien him a taste he'll not forget 
 in a week o' .Sundays. Let him go.' 
 
 Jim, with more oaths, struggled to get free, but 
 the landlord had quelled many rows in his time, and 
 his wrists were worthy of his calling. Meanwhile his 
 wife helped up the boy. David was no sooner on 
 his feet than he made another mad rush for Wigson, 
 and it needed the combined efforts of landlord, land- 
 lady, and servant-girl to part the two again. Then 
 the landlord, seizing David from behind by ' the scuft 
 of the neck,' ran him out to the door in a twinkling. 
 
 'Go 'long wi yo ! An if yo coom raisin th' divil 
 here again, see iv I don't gie yo a souse on th' yed 
 mysel.' And he shoved his charge out adroitly and 
 locked the door. 
 
 David staggered across the road as though still 
 under the impetus given by the landlord's shove. 
 
 The servant-girl took advantage of the loud cross- 
 fire of talk which immediately rose at the bar round 
 Jim Wigson to run to a corner window and lift the 
 blind. The boy was sitting on a heap of stones for 
 mending the road, looking at the inn. Other passers- 
 by had come in, attracted by the row, and the girl 
 slipped out unperceived, opened the side door, and ran 
 across the road. It had begun to rain, and the drojjs 
 splashed in her face. 
 
 David was sitting leaning forward, his eyes fixed on 
 the lighted windows of the house opposite. The rays 
 which came from them showed her that his nose and 
 forehead were bleeding, and that the blood was drip-
 
 im TIIK HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book i 
 
 ping unheeded on the boy's clothes. He was utterly 
 powerless, and trembling all over, but his look ' gave 
 her a turn.' 
 
 'Now, luke here,' she said, bending down to him. 
 ' Yo jes go whoam. Wigson, he'll be out direckly, an 
 he'll do yo a hurt iv he iinds yo. Coom, I'll put yo 
 i' the way for Kinder.' 
 
 And before he could gather his will to resist, she 
 had dragged him up with her strong countrywoman's 
 arms and was leading him along the road to the 
 entrance of the lane he had come by. 
 
 'Lor, yo are bleedin,' she said compassionately; 
 ' he shud ha thowt as how yo wor nobbut a lad — an it 
 wor he begun aggiu fust. He's a big bully is Wigson.' 
 And impulsively raising her apron she applied it to 
 the blood, David quite passive all the while. The 
 great clumsy lass nearly kissed him for pity. 
 
 ' Now then,' she said at last, turning him into the 
 lane, ' yo know your way, an I mun goo, or they'll be 
 raisin the parish arter me. Gude neet to yo, an keep 
 out o' Wigson's sect. Best yursel a bit theer— agen 
 th' wall.' 
 
 And leaving him leaning against the wall, she 
 reluctantly departed, stopping to look back at him 
 two or three times in spite of the rain, till the angle 
 of the wall hid him from view. 
 
 The rain poured down and the wind whistled 
 through the rough lane. David presently slipped 
 down upon a rock jutting from the wall, and a fev- 
 ered, intermittent sleep seized him— the result of the 
 spirits he had been drinking. His will could oppose 
 no resistance ; he slept on hour after hour, sheltered 
 a little by an angle of tlie wall, but still soaked by 
 rain and buffeted by the wind. 
 
 When he awoke he staggered suddenly to his feet. 
 The smart of his back and legs recalled him, after a
 
 CHAP, xi CIIILDHOOD 187 
 
 few luoinents of bewilderment, to a mental torture he 
 had scarcely yet had time to feel. He — David Grieve 
 — had been beaten — thrashed like a dog — by Jim 
 Wigson ! , The remembered fact brought Avith it a 
 degradation of mind and body — a complete unstring- 
 ing of the moral libres, which made even revenge 
 seem an impossible output of energy. A nature of 
 this sort, with such capacities and ambitions, carries 
 about with it a sense of supremacy, a natural, indis- 
 pensable self-conceit which acts as the sheath to the 
 bud, and is the condition of healthy development. 
 Break it down and you bruise and jeopardise the 
 flower of life. 
 
 Jim Wigson I — the coarse, ignorant lout with whom 
 he had been, more or less, at feud since his first day in 
 Kinder, whom he had despised with all the strength 
 of his young vanity. By to-morrow all Kinder would 
 know, and all Kinder would laugh. ' What ! yo whopped 
 Beuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim ? Wal, an a good thing, 
 tool A lick now an again ud do him noa harm — 
 a cantankerous yoong rascot — pert and proud, like t' 
 passon's pig, I say.' David could hear the talk to be 
 as though it were actually beside him. It burnt into 
 his ear. 
 
 He groped his way through the lane and on to the 
 nioor — trembling with physical exhaustion, the morbid 
 frenzy within him choking his breath, the storm beat- 
 ins: in his face. What was that black mass to his 
 right ? — the Smithy ? A hard sob rose in his throat. 
 Oh, he had been so near to an ideal world of sweet- 
 ness, purity, holiness ! Was it a year ago ? 
 
 AVith great difficulty he found the crossing-place 
 in the brook, and then the gap in the wall which led 
 him into the farm fields. When he was still a couple 
 of fields off the house he heard -the dogs beginning. 
 But he heard them as though in a dream.
 
 188 THE HISTORY OF DAVID (iRIEVE book i 
 
 At last he stood at the door and fumbled for the 
 handle. Locked ! Why, what time could it be ? He 
 tried to remember what time he had left home, but 
 failed. At last he knocked, and just as he did so he 
 perceived through a chink of the kitchen shutter a 
 light on the scrubbed deal table inside, and Hannah's 
 figure beside it. At the sound of the knocker Hannah 
 rose, put away her work with deliberation, snuffed the 
 candle, and then moved with it to the door of the 
 kitchen. The boy watched her with a quickly beating 
 heart and whirling brain. She opened the door. 
 
 ' Whar yo bin ? ' she demanded sternly. ' I'd like 
 to know what business yo have to coom in this time 
 o' neet, an your uncle fro whoam. Yo've bin in 
 mischief, I'll be bound. Theer's Louie coom back wi 
 a black eye, an jes because she woan't say nowt about 
 it, I know as it's yo are at t' bottom o' 't. I'm reg'lar 
 sick o' sich doins in a decent house. Whar yo bin, 
 I say ? ' 
 
 And this time she held the candle np so as to see 
 him. She had been sitting fuming by herself, and was 
 in one of her blackest tempers. David's misdemeanour 
 was like food to a hungry instinct. 
 
 ' I went to prayer-meetin,' the lad said thickly. It 
 seemed to him as though the words came all in the 
 wrong order. 
 
 Hannah bent forward and gave a sudden cry. 
 
 ' Why, yo bin fightin ! Yo're all ower blood ! Yo 
 bin fightin, and I'll bet a thousand pund yo draw'd 
 in Louie too. And sperrits ! Why, yo smell o' sperrits ! 
 Yo're jes reekin wi 'em ! Wal, upon my word ! ' — 
 and Hannah drew herself back, flinging every slow 
 word in his face like a blow. 'Yo feature your 
 mither, yo do, boath on yovi, pretty close. I alius 
 said it ud coom out i' yo too. Prayer-meetin ! Yo 
 yoong hypocrite ! Gang your ways ! Yo may sleej)
 
 (IIAI-. xi CHILDHOOD 189 
 
 i' th' stable ; it's good enough liggin for yo tins 
 neet.' 
 
 And before he had taken in her words she had 
 slammed the door in his face, and locked it. He 
 made a feeble rush for it in vain. Hannah marched 
 back into tlie kitclieii, listening instinctively first to 
 liim left outside, and then for any sound there might 
 be from u[istairs. In a minute or two she heard 
 uneven ste[)S going away ; l)ut there was no movement 
 in the room overhead. Louie was sleeping heavily. 
 As for Hannah, she sat down again with a fierce 
 decision of gesture, which seemed to vibrate through 
 the kitchen and all it held. "Who could find fault 
 with her? It would be a lesson to him. It was not 
 a cold night, and there was straw in the stable — a 
 deal better lying than such a boy deserved. As she 
 thought of his 'religious' turn she shrugged her 
 shoulders with a bitter scorn. 
 
 The night wore on in the high Kinder valley. The 
 stormy wind and rain beat in great waves of sound 
 and flood against the breast of the mountain ; the 
 Kinder stream and the Red Brook danced under the 
 heavy drops. The grouse lay close and silent in 
 the sheltering heather ; even the owls in the lower 
 woods made no sound. Still, the night was not per- 
 fectly dark, for towards midnight a watery moon rose, 
 and showed itself at intervals between the pelting 
 showers. 
 
 In the Dawsons' little cottage on Frimley ]\Ioor 
 there were still lights showing when that pale moon 
 appeared. ^Margaret was watching late. She and 
 another woman sat by the fire talking under their 
 breaths. A kettle was beside her with a long spout, 
 \\ hieh sent the steam far into the room, keeping the 
 air of it moist and warm for the poor bronchitic old
 
 190 THE HISTOEY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 man who lay elose-curtained from the draughts on the 
 wooden bed in the corner. 
 
 The kettle sang, the fire crackled, and the wind 
 shook the windows and doors. But suddenly, through 
 the other sounds, Margaret was aware of an intermit- 
 tent knocking — a low, hesitating sound, as of some one 
 outside afraid, and yet eager, to make himself heard. 
 
 She started up, and her companion — a homely 
 neighbour, one of those persons whose goodness had, 
 perhaps, helped to shape poor Margaret's philosophy 
 of life — ^looked round with a scared expression, 
 
 ' Whoiver can it be, this time o' neet ? ' said Mar- 
 garet — and she looked at the old clock — 'why, it's 
 close on middle-neet ! ' 
 
 She hesitated a moment, then she went to the door, 
 and bent her mouth to the- chink — 
 
 ' Who are yo ? What d' yo want ? ' she asked, in 
 a distinct but low voice, so as not to disturb 'Lias. 
 
 No answer for a minute. Then her ear caught 
 some words from outside. With an exclamation she 
 unlocked the door and threw it open. 
 
 ' Davy ! Davy ! ' she cried, almost forgetting her 
 patient. 
 
 The boy clung to the lintel without a word. 
 
 ' Cooni your ways in ! ' she said peremptorily, catch- 
 ing him by the sleeve. ' We conno ha no draughts on 
 th' owd man.' 
 
 And she drew him into the light, and shut the door. 
 Then as the shaded candle and firelight fell on the tall 
 lad, wavering now to this side, now to that, as though 
 unable to support himself, his clothes dripping on the 
 flags, his face deadly white, save for the smears of 
 blood upon it, the two women fell back in terror. 
 
 ' Will yo gie me shelter ? ' said the boy, hoarsely ; 
 ' I bin lying hours i' th' wet. Aunt Hannah turned 
 me out.'
 
 CHAP. XI CHILDHOOD 191 
 
 Margaret came close to him and looked liiin all 
 over. 
 
 ' What for did she turn yo out, Davy ? ' 
 
 ' I wor late. I'd been tightin Jim Wigson, an she 
 smelt me o' drink.' 
 
 And suddenly the lad sank down on a stool near, 
 and laid his head in his hands, as though he could 
 hold it lip no longer. 
 
 Margaret's blanched old face meltetl all in a minute. 
 
 ' Howd 'un up quick ! ' she said to her companion, 
 still in a whisper. ' He hanno got a dry thread on — 
 an luke at that cut on his yed — wh}^, he'll be laid up 
 for weeks, maybe, for this. Get his cloos off, an we'll 
 put him on my bed then.' 
 
 And between them they dragged him up, and Mar- 
 garet began to strip off his jacket. As they held him 
 — David surrendering himself passively — the curtain 
 of the bed was drawn back, and 'Lias, raising himself 
 on an elbow, looked out into the room. As he caught 
 sight of the group of the boy and the two women, 
 arrested in their task by the movement of the curtain, 
 the old man's face expressed, first a weak and agitated 
 bewilderment, and then in an instant it cleared. 
 
 His dream wove the sight into itself, and 'Lias 
 knew all about it. His thin long features, with the 
 white hair hanging about them, took an indulgent 
 amused look. 
 
 'Bony — eh, Bony, is that yo, man ? Eh, but yo're 
 cold an pinched, loike ! A gude glass o' English grog 
 ud not come amiss to yo. An your coat, an your 
 boots — what is 't drippin ? Snaw? Yo make a man's 
 backbane freeze t' see yo. An there's hot wark be- 
 hind }'o, too. Moscow might ha warmed yo, I'm 
 thinkin, an ' 
 
 l)ut the weak husky voice gave way, and 'Lias fell 
 back, still holding the curtain, though, in his emaci-
 
 192 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 ated hand, and straining his dim eyes on David. 
 Margaret, with tears, ran to liim, tried to quiet him 
 and to shut out the light from him again. But he 
 pushed her irritably aside. 
 
 ' No, Margaret, — doan't intrude. What d' yo know 
 about it ? Yo know nowt, Margaret. When did yo 
 iver heer o' the Moscow campaign? Let me be, 
 woan't yo ? ' 
 
 But perceiving that he would not be quieted, she 
 turned him on his pillows, so that he could see the boy 
 at his ease. 
 
 ' He's bin out i' th' wet, 'Lias dear, has Davy,' she 
 said; 'and it's nobbut a clashy night. We mun gie 
 him sumraat hot, and a jolace to sleep in.' 
 
 But the old man did not listen to her. He lay look- 
 ing at David, his pale blue eyes weirdly visible in his 
 haggard face, muttering to himself. He was still 
 tramping in the snow with the French army. 
 
 Then, suddenly, for the first time, he seemed 
 troubled. He stared up at the pale miserable boy who 
 stood looking at him with trembling lips. His OAvn 
 face began to work painfully, his dream struggled 
 with recognition. 
 
 Margaret drew David quickly away. She hurried 
 him into the further corner of the cottage, where he 
 was out of sight of the bed. There she quickly 
 stripped him of his wet garments, as any mother 
 might have done, found an old flannel shirt of 'Lias's 
 for him, and, wrapping him close in a blanket, she 
 made him lie down on her own bed, he being now much 
 too weak to realise what was done with him. Then 
 she got an empty bottle, filled it from the kettle, and 
 13ut it to his feet ; and finally she brought a bowlful 
 of warm water and a bit of towel, and, sitting down 
 by him, she washed the blood and dirt away from his 
 face and hand, and smoothed down the tangled black
 
 CHAP. XI ClIlLDirOOD 193 
 
 hair. She, too, noticed the smell of sijirits, and shook 
 her head over it; but her raotherliness grew with 
 every act of service, and when she had made him 
 warm and comfortable, and he Avas dropping into the 
 dead sleep of exhaustion, she drew her old hand ten- 
 derly across his brow. 
 
 ' He do feature yan o' my own lads so as he lies 
 theer,' she said tremulously to her friend at the fire, 
 as though explaining herself. ' When they'd coom 
 home late fro wark, I'd use to hull 'em up so mony a 
 time. A}', I'd been woonderin what had coom to th' 
 boy. I thowt he'd been goin wrang soomhow, or he'd 
 ha coom aw these weeks to see 'Lias an me. It's a 
 poor sort o' family he's got. That Hannah Grieve's a 
 hard un, I'll uphowd yo. Theer's a deal o' her fault 
 in 't, yo may mak sure.' 
 
 Then she went to give 'Lias some brandy — he lived 
 on little else now. He dropped asleep again, and, 
 coming back to the hearth, she consented to lie down 
 before it while her friend watched. Her failing frame 
 was worn out with nursing and want of rest, and she 
 was soon asleep. 
 
 When Davy awoke the room was full of a chill day- 
 light. As he moved he felt himself stiff all over. The 
 sensation brought back memory, and the boy's whole 
 being seemed to shrink together. He burrowed first 
 under his coveriugs out of the light, then suddenly he 
 sat up in bed, in the shadow of the little staircase — or 
 rather ladder — which led to the upper story, and 
 looked about him. 
 
 The good woman who had shared IMargaret's watch 
 Avas gone back to her own home and children. ]\Iar- 
 garet had made up the fire, tidied the room, and, at 
 'Lias's request, drawn up the blinds. She had just 
 given him some beef-tea and brandy, sponged his face, 
 and lifted him on his pillows. There seemed to be a 
 
 VOL. I o
 
 194 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE hook i 
 
 revival of life in the old man, death was for the 
 moment driven back ; and Margaret hung over him in 
 an ecstasy, the two crooning together. David could 
 see her thin bent figure — the sharpened delicacy of 
 the emaciated face set in the rusty black net cap 
 which was tied under the chin, and fell in soft frills 
 on the still brown and silky hair. He saw her 
 weaver's hand folded round 'Lias's, and he could hear 
 'Lias speaking in a weak thread of a voice, but still 
 sanely and rationally. It gave him a start to catch 
 some of the words — he had been so long accustomed 
 to the visionary 'Lias. 
 
 ' Have yo rested, Margaret ? ' 
 
 ' Ay, dear love, three hours an' moor. Betsy James 
 wor here ; she saw yo wanted for nowt. She's a gude 
 creetur, ain't she, 'Lias ? ' 
 
 ' Ay, but noan so good as my Margaret,' said the 
 old man, looking at her wistfully. ' But yo'll wear 
 yorsel down, Margaret; yo've had no rest for neets. 
 Yo're alius toilin' and moilin', an' I'm no worth it, 
 Margaret.' 
 
 The tears gushed to the wife's eyes. It was only 
 with the nearness of death that 'Lias seemed to have 
 found out his debt to her. To both, her lifelong ser- 
 vice had been the natural offering of the lower to the 
 higher ; she had not been used to gratitude, and she 
 could not bear it. 
 
 ' Dear heart ! dear love ! ' David heard her say ; and 
 then there came to his half-reluctant ear caresses such 
 as a mother gives her child. He laid his head on his 
 knees, trying to shut them out. He wished with a 
 passionate and bitter regret that he had not been so 
 many weeks without coming near these two people ; 
 and now 'Lias was going fast, and after to-day he 
 would see them both no more — for ever ? 
 
 Margaret heard liim moving, and nodded back to 
 him over lier shoulder.
 
 CHAP. XI CHILDHOOD 196 
 
 *Yo've slept well, Davy, — better nor I thowt yo 
 would. Your cloos are by yo — atwixt yo an t' stairs.' 
 
 And there lie found them, dry and brushed. He 
 dressed hastily and came forward to the fire. 'Lias 
 recognised him feebly, Margaret watching anxiously 
 to see whether his fancies would take him again. In 
 this tension of death and jjarting his visions had 
 become almost more than she could bear. IJut 'Lias 
 lay quiet. 
 
 ' Davy wor caught i' th' rain, and I gave him a bed,' 
 she explained again, and the old man nodded without 
 a word. 
 
 Tlien as she prepared him a bowl of oatmeal she 
 stood by the lire giving the boy motherly advice. He 
 must go back home, of course, and never mind Han- 
 nah ; there would come a time when he would get his 
 chance like other people ; and he mustn't drink, for, 
 ' i' th' first place, drink wor a sad waste o' good wits,' 
 and David's were ' better 'n most ; ' and in the second, 
 ' it wor a sin agen the Lord.' 
 
 David sat with his head drooped in his hand appar- 
 ently listening. In reality, her gentle babble passed 
 over him almost unheeded. He was aching in mind 
 and body ; his strong youth, indeed, had but just saved 
 him from complete ph3'sical collapse ; for he had lain 
 an indefinite time on the soaking moor, till misery and 
 despair had driven him to Margaret's door. But his 
 moral equilibrium was beginning to return, in virtue 
 of a certain resolution, the one thing which now stood 
 between him and the black gulf of the night. He ate 
 his porridge and then he got up. 
 
 ' I mun goo, ^largaret.' 
 
 He would fain have thanked her, but the words 
 choked in his throat. 
 
 ' Ay, soa yo mun, Davy,' said the little body briskly. 
 ' If theer's an on pleasant thing to do it's best doon
 
 lOG THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 quickly — yo mun go back and do your duty. Coom 
 and see us when yo're passin again. An say good-bye 
 to 'Lias. He's that wick this mornin — ain't yo, 'Lias ? ' 
 
 And with a tender cheerfulness she ran across to 
 'Lias and told him Davy was going. 
 
 'Good-bye, Davy, my lad, good-bye,' murmured the 
 old man, as he felt the boy's strong fingers touching 
 his. ' Have yo been readin owt, Davy, since we saw 
 yo? It's a long time, Davy.' 
 
 'No, nowt of ony account,' said David, looking 
 away. 
 
 ' Ay, but yo mun keep it up. Coom when yo like ; 
 I've not mony books, but yo know yo can have 'em aw. 
 I want noau o' them now, do I, Marg'ret ? But I 
 want for nowt — nowt. Dyin 's long, but it's varra — 
 varra peaceful. Margaret ! ' 
 
 And withdrawing his hand from Davy, 'Lias laid it 
 in his wife's with a long, long sigh. David left them 
 so. He stole out unperceived by either of them. 
 
 When he got outside he stood for a moment under 
 the sheltering sycamores and laid his cheek against 
 the door. The action contained all he could not say. 
 
 Then he sped along towards the farm. The sun 
 was rising through the autumn mists, striking on the 
 gold of the chestnuts, the red of the cherry trees. 
 There were spaces of intense blue among the rolling 
 clouds, and between the storm past and the storm to 
 come the whole moorland world was lavishly, garishly 
 bright. 
 
 He paused at the top of the pasture-fields to look at 
 the farm. Smoke was already rising from the chimney. 
 Then Aunt Hannah was up, and he must mind him- 
 self. He crept on under walls, till he got to the 
 back of the farmyard. Then he slipped in, ran into 
 the stable, and got an old coat of his left there the day 
 before. There was a copy of a Methodist paper lying
 
 CHAP. XI CHILDHOOD 197 
 
 near it. He took it up and tore it across with passion. 
 But his rage was not so much with the paper. It was 
 his own worthless, unstable, miserable self he would 
 have rent if he could. The wreck of ideal hopes, the 
 defacement of that fair image of itself which every 
 healthy youth bears about with it, could not have been 
 more pitifully expressed. 
 
 Then he looked round to see if there was anything 
 else that he could honestly take. Yes — an ash stick 
 he had cut himself a week or two ago. Nothing else — 
 and there was Tibby moving and beginning to bark in 
 the cowhouse. 
 
 He ran across the road, and from a safe shelter in 
 the fields on the farther side he again looked back to 
 the farm. There was Louie's room, the blind still 
 down. He thought of his blow of the night before — 
 of his promises to her. Aye, she would fret over his 
 going — he knew that — in her own wild way. She 
 would think he had been a beast to her. So he had — 
 so he had ! There surged up in his mind inarticulate 
 phrases of remorse, of self-excuse, as though he were 
 talking to her. 
 
 Some day he would come back and claim her. But 
 when ! His buoyant self-dependence was all gone. It 
 had nothing to do with his present departure. That 
 came simply from the fact that it was impossible for 
 him to go on living in Kinder any longer — he did not 
 stop to analyse the whys and wherefores. 
 
 But suddenly a nervous horror of seeing anyone he 
 knew, now that the morning was advancing, startled him 
 from his hiding-place. He ran up towards the Scout 
 again, so as to make a long circuit round the Wigsons' 
 farm. As he distinguished the walls of it a shiver of 
 passion ran through the young body. Then he struck 
 off straight across the moors towards Glossop. 
 
 One moment he stood on the top of Mardale Moor.
 
 198 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book i 
 
 On one side of liim was tlie Kinder valley, Needhani 
 Farm still showing among its trees ; the white cataract 
 of the Downfall cleaving the dark wall of the Scout, 
 and calling to the runaway in that voice of storm he 
 knew so well ; the Mermaid's Pool gleaming like an 
 eye in the moorland. On the other side were hollow 
 after hollow, town beyond town, each with its cap of 
 morning smoke. There was New Mills, there was 
 Stockport, there in the far distance was Manchester. 
 The boy stood a moment poised between the two 
 worlds, his ash-stick in his hand, the old coat wound 
 round his arm. Then at a bound he cleared a low 
 stone wall beside him and ran down the Glossop 
 road. 
 
 Twelve hours later Eeuben Grieve climbed the lonsc 
 hill to the farm. His wrinkled face was happier than 
 it had been for months, and his thoughts were so 
 pleasantly occupied that he entirely failed to perceive, 
 for instance, the behaviour of an acquaintance, who 
 stopped and started as he met him at the entrance of 
 the Kinder lane, made as though he would have spoken, 
 and, thinking better of it, walked on. Reuben — the 
 mendacious Eeuben — had done very well with his 
 summer stock — very well indeed. And part of his 
 earnings was now safely housed in the hands of an old 
 chapel friend, to whom he had confided them under 
 pledge of secrecy. But he took a curious, excited 
 pleasure in the thought of the 'poor mouth' he Avas 
 going to make to Hannah. He was growing reckless 
 in his passion for restitution — always provided, how- 
 ever, that he was not called upon to brave his wife 
 openly. A few more such irregular savings, and, if an 
 opening turned up for David, he could pay the money 
 and pack off the lad before Hannah could look round. 
 He could never do it under her opposition, but he
 
 ruAV. XI CFIII-DIICK-.n 1(19 
 
 thought he could do it and take the consequences — he 
 (Iion(/ht lie could. 
 
 He oi>(,'iK'il his own gate. There on tlie house door- 
 step stood Hannah, whiter and grimmer tlian ever. 
 
 'Reuben Grieve/ she said quickly, 'your nevvy's 
 run away. An if yo doan't coom and keep your good- 
 for-notliin niece in her place, and make udder foak 
 keep a civil tongue i' their head to your wife, I'll 
 leave your house this neet, as sure as I wor born a 
 Martin ! ' 
 
 Eeuben stumbled into the house. There was a wild 
 rush downstairs, and Louie fell upon him, David's 
 blow showing ghastly plain in her white quivering 
 face. 
 
 ' Whar's Davy ? ' she said. 'Yo've got hiral — he's 
 hid soomwhere — yo know whar he is ! I'll not stay 
 here if yo conno find him I It wor her fault ' — and she 
 threw out a shaking hand towards her aunt — 'she 
 druv him out last neet — an Dawsons took him in — 
 an iverybody's cryin shame on her! An if yo doan't 
 mak her find him — she knows where he is — I'll not 
 stav in this hole !— I'll kill her !— I'll burn th' house ! 
 — I'll ' 
 
 The child stopped — panting, choked — beside her- 
 self. 
 
 Hannah made a threatening step, but at her gesture 
 Reuben sprang up, and seizing her by both wrists he 
 looked at her from a height, as a judge looks. Xever 
 had those dull eyes met her so before. 
 
 ' Woman ! ' he cried fiercely. ' "Woman ! what ba 
 yo doon wi Sandy's son ? '
 
 BOOK II 
 YOUTH
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A TALL youth carrying a parcel of books under his 
 arm was hurrying along Market Place, Manchester. 
 Beside him were covered flower stalls bordering the 
 ])avement, in front of liim the domed mass of the 
 ^fauchester Exchange, and on all sides he had to jjush 
 his way through a crowd of talking, chaffering, hurry- 
 ing humanity. Presently he stopped at the door of a 
 restaurant bearing the idyllic and altogether remark- 
 able name — there it was in gilt letters over the door 
 — of the ' Fruit and Flowers Parlour.' On the side 
 post of the door a bill of fare was posted, which the 
 young man looked up and down with careful eyes. It 
 contained a strange medley of items in all tongues — 
 
 Marrow pie 
 
 Haricots a la Lune de Miel 
 
 Vol-du-Vent a la bonne Sanle 
 
 Tomato fritters 
 
 Clieese 'Ticements 
 
 Salad saladorum 
 
 And at the bottom of the menu was printed in bold 
 red characters, ' No meat, no disease. Ergo, no meat, 
 no sin. Fellow-citizens, leave your carnal foods, and 
 try a more excellent way. I.E. Push the door and 
 walk in. The Fruit and Flowers Parlour invites 
 everybody and overcharges nobody.' 
 
 The youth did not trouble, however, to read the
 
 204 THE HISTOEY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 notice. He knew it and the ' Parlour ' behind it by 
 heart. But he moved away, pondering the menu with 
 a smile. 
 
 In his amused abstraction — at the root of which lay 
 the appetite of eighteen — he suddenly ran into a 
 passer-by, who stumbled against a shop window with 
 an exclamation of pain. The youth's attention was 
 attracted and he stopped awkwardly. 
 
 ' People of your height, young man, should look be- 
 fore them,' said the victim, rubbing what seemed to 
 be a deformed leg, while his lips paled a little. 
 
 ' Mr. Ancrum,' cried the other, amazed. 
 
 ' Davy ! ' 
 
 The two looked at each other. Then Mr. Ancrum 
 gripped the lad's arm. 
 
 ' Help me along, Davy. It's only a bruise. It'll go 
 off. Where are you going ? ' 
 
 ' Up Piccadilly way with a parcel,' said Davy, look- 
 ing askance at his companion's nether man. 'Did I 
 knock your bad leg, sir ? ' 
 
 'Oh no, nothing — never mind. Well now, Davy, 
 this is queer — decidedly queer. Pour years ! — and we 
 run against each other in Market Street at last. Tell 
 me the truth, Davy — have you long ago given me up 
 as a man who could make promises to a lad in difficul- 
 ties and forget 'em as soon as he was out of sight ? 
 Say it out, my boy.' 
 
 David flushed and looked down at his companion 
 with some embarrassment. Their old relation of 
 Tninister and pupil had left a deep mark behind it. 
 Moreover, in the presence of that face of Mr. An- 
 crum's, a long, thin, slightly twisted face, with the 
 stamp somehow of a tragic sincerity on the eyes and 
 mouth, it was difficult to think as slightingly of his 
 old friend as he had done for a good while past, appar- 
 ently with excellent reason.
 
 CHAP. I 
 
 YOUTH 205 
 
 *I supposed there was something the matter/ lie 
 blurted out at last. 
 
 'Well, never mind, Dav}-,' said the other, smiling 
 sadly. 'We can't talk here in this din. But now 
 I've got you, I keep you. Where are you ? ' 
 
 'I'm in Half Street, sir — Purcell's, the bookseller.' 
 
 ' Don't know him. I never go into a shop. I have 
 no money. Are you apprentice there ? ' 
 
 ' Well, there was no binding. I'm assistant. I do 
 a lot of business one way and another, buying and 
 selling both.' 
 
 ' How long have you been iu Manchester ? ' 
 
 'Four years, sir.' 
 
 The minister looked amazed. 
 
 'And I have been here, off and on, for the last 
 three. How have we missed each other all that time ? 
 I made inquiries at Clough End, when — ah, well, no 
 matter ; but it was too late. You had decamped, no 
 one could tell me anything.' 
 
 David walked on beside his companion, silent and 
 awkward. The explanation seemed a lame one. ]\Ir. 
 Ancrum had left Clough End in May, promising to 
 look out for a place for the lad at once, and to let him 
 know. Six whole months elapsed between that prom- 
 ise and David's own departure. Yes, it was lame; 
 but it was so long ago, and so many things had hap- 
 pened since, that it did not signify. Only he did not 
 somehow feel much effusion in meeting his old friend 
 and playfellow again. 
 
 ' Getting on, Davy ? ' said Ancrum presently, look- 
 ing the lad up and down. 
 
 David made a movement of the shoulders which the 
 minister noticed. It Avas both more free and more 
 graceful than ordinary English gesture. It reawak- 
 ened in Ancrum at once that impression of something 
 alien and unusual which both David and his sister
 
 20G THK HISTORY OF DAVTD ORTEVE hook h 
 
 had often produced iu hiia while they were still 
 children. 
 
 'I don't know,' said the boy slowly; and then, after 
 a hesitation or two, fell silent. 
 
 'Well, look here,' said Ancrum, stopping short; 
 ' this won't do for talk, as I said before ; but I must 
 know all about you, and I must tell you what I can 
 about myself. I lodge in Mortimer lioad, you know, 
 up Fallowfield way. You can get there by tram in 
 twenty minutes ; when will you come and see me ? 
 To-night ? ' 
 
 The lad thought a moment. 
 
 'Would Wednesday night do, sir? I — I believe I'm 
 going to the music to-night.' 
 
 'What, to the "Elijah," in the Free Trade Hall? 
 Appoint me a place to meet — we'll go together — and 
 you shall come home to supper with me afterwards.' 
 
 David flushed and looked straight before him. 
 
 ' I promised to take two young ladies,' he said, after 
 a moment, abruptly. 
 
 'Oh!' said Mr. Ancrum, laughing. 'I apologise. 
 Well, Wednesday night, then, — Don't you forget, 
 Davy — half-past seven ? Done. 14, Mortimer Road. 
 Good-bye.' 
 
 And the minister turned and retraced his steps 
 towards Market Place. He walked slowly, like one 
 much preoccupied, and might have run into fresh 
 risks but for the instinctive perception of most 
 passers-by that he was not a person to be hustled. 
 Suddenly he laughed out — thinking of David and his 
 'young ladies,' and comparing the lad's admission with 
 his former attitude towards ' gells.' Well, time had 
 but wrought its natural work. What a brilliant 
 noticeable creature altogether — how unlike the ordi- 
 nary run of north-country lads ! But that he had 
 been from the beginning — the strain of some nimbler 
 blood had always shown itself.
 
 CHAP. I YOUTH 207 
 
 Meanwhile, David made his way up Piccadill}- — 
 did some humourist divert himself, in days gone by, 
 with dropping a shower of London names on !Man- 
 chester streets ? — and deposited his parcel. Then the 
 great clock of the Exchange struck twelve, and the 
 Cathedral followed close upon it, the sounds swaying 
 and vibrating al)Ove the crowds hurrying through 
 Market Street. It was a damp October day. Above, 
 the sky was hidden by a dark canopy of cloud and 
 smoke ; the Cathedral on its hill rose iron-black above 
 the black streets and river ; black miul encrusted all 
 the streets, and bespattered those that walked in them. 
 Nothing more dreary than the smoke-grimed buildings 
 on either hand, than the hideous railway station across 
 the bridge, or the mud-sprinkled hoardings covered 
 with flaring advertisements, which led up to the bridge, 
 could be well imagined. ^Manchester was at its darkest 
 and grimmest. 
 
 P)Ut as David Grieve walked back along Market 
 Street his heart danced within him. iS'ei.ther mud nor 
 darkness, neither the S(pialor of the streets, nor the 
 penetrating damp of the air, affected him at all. The 
 crowd, the rush of life about him, the gas in the shops, 
 the wares on which it shone, the endless faces passing 
 him, the sense of hurry, of business, of quick living — 
 he saw and felt nothing else ; and to these his youth 
 was all atune. 
 
 Arrived in Market Place again he made his way 
 with alacrity to the 'I'arlour.' For it was dinner 
 time ; he had a free half-hour, and nine times out of 
 ten he spent it at tlie ' Parlour.' 
 
 He walked in, put his hat on its accustomed peg, 
 took his seat at a table near the door, and looked 
 round for some one. The low widespreading room 
 ■was Avell tilled, mostly with clerks and shopmen ; the 
 gas was lit because of the darkness outside, and
 
 208 THE IITSTOKY OF DAVTD GKTEVE rook ii 
 
 showed off the gay panels on tlie walls filled with 
 fruit and flower subjects, for which Adrian O'Connor 
 Lomax, commonly called ' Daddy,' the owner of the 
 restaurant, had given a commission to some students 
 at the Mechanics' Institute, and whereof he was 
 inordinately proud. At the end of the room near the 
 counter was a table occupied by about half a dozen 
 young men, all laughing and talking noisily, and 
 beside them — shouting, gesticulating, making dashes, 
 now for one, now for another — was a figure, which 
 David at once set himself to watch, his chin balanced 
 on his hand, his eyes dancing. It was the thin tall 
 figure of an oldish man in a long frock-coat, which 
 opened in front over a gaily flowered silk waistcoat. 
 On the bald crown of his head he wore a black skull- 
 cap, below which certain grotesque and scanty tails 
 of fair hair, carefully brushed, fell to his shoulders. 
 His face was long and sharply pointed, and the sur- 
 face of it bronzed and wrinkled by long exposure, out 
 of all likeness to human skin. The eyes were weirdly 
 prominent and blue ; the gestures had the deliberate 
 extravagance of an actor ; and the whole man recalled 
 a wizard of pantomime. 
 
 David had hardly time to amuse himself with the 
 ' chaffing ' of Daddy, which was going on, and which 
 went on habitually at the Parlour from morning till 
 night, when Daddy perceived a new-comer. 
 
 He turned round sharp upon his heels, surveyed the 
 room with the frown of a general. 
 
 'Ah ! ' he said with a theatrical air, as he made out 
 the lad at the further table. 'Gentlemen, I let you off 
 for the present,' and waving his hand to them Avith an 
 indulgent self-importance, which provoked a roar of 
 laughter, he turned and walked down the restaurant, 
 with a quick swaying gait, to where David sat. 
 
 David made room for him in a smiling silence.
 
 CHAP. I 
 
 YOUTH 209 
 
 Lomax sat down, and the two looked at each 
 other. 
 
 'Davy,' said Daddy severely, 'why weren't you 
 here yesterday '' ' 
 
 ' When did you begin opening on Sundays, Daddy ? ' 
 said the youth, attacking a portion of marrow pie, 
 which luul just been laid before him, his gay curious 
 eyes still wandering over Daddy's costume, whicli was 
 to-day completed by a large dahlia in the buttonhole, 
 as grotesque as the rest. 
 
 ' Ah bedad, but I'm losing my memory entirely ; — 
 and you know it, you varmint. Well tlien, it was 
 Saturday you weren't here.' 
 
 ' You're about right there. I was let off early, and 
 got a walk out Ramsbottom way with a fellow. I 
 hadn't stretched my legs for two months, and — I'll 
 confess to you, Daddy — that when we got down from • 
 the moor, I was — overtaken — as the pious people say 
 — by a mutton chop.' 
 
 The lad looked up at him laughing. Daddy sur- 
 veyed him with chagrin. 
 
 'I knew you were a worthless lukewarm sort of a 
 creature. Flesh-eating 's as bad as drink for them 
 that have got it in 'em. It '11 come out. Well, go 
 your ways ! YouHl never be Prime Minister.' 
 
 'Don't distress yourself, Daddy. As long as mar- 
 row pies are good, I shall eat "em — you may count on 
 that. What's that cheese affair down there ? ' and 
 he pointed towards the last item but one in the bill 
 of fare. Instead of answering, the old man turned on 
 his seat, and called to one of the waitresses near. In 
 a second David had a 'Cheese 'Ticement' before him, 
 at which he peered curiously. Daddy watched him, 
 not without some signs of nervousness. 
 
 'Daddy,' said David calmly looking up, 'when I 
 last saw this article it was called ■• Welsh rabbit." ' 
 
 VOL. I p
 
 210 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 'Davy, yoivve no soul for fine distinctions,' said 
 the other hastily. 'Change the subject. How have 
 my dear brother-in-law and you been hitting it off 
 lately ? ' 
 
 David went on with his ' 'Ticenient,' the corners of 
 his mouth twitching, for a minute or so, then he 
 raised his head and slowly shook it, looking Daddy in 
 the face. 
 
 ' We shall bear up when we say good-bye, Daddy, 
 and I don't think that crisis is far off. It would have 
 come long ago, only I do happen to know a provoking 
 deal more about books than any assistant he ever had 
 before. Last week I picked him up a copy of " Bells 
 and Pomegranates " for one and nine, and he sold it 
 next day for two pound sixteen. There's business for 
 you, Daddy, That put off our breach at least a fort- 
 night, but unless I discover a first folio of Shakes- 
 peare for sixpence between now and then, I don't see 
 what's to postpone the agony after that — and if I did 
 I should probably speculate in it myself. No, Daddy, 
 it's coming to the point, as the tiger said when he 
 reached the last joint of the cow's tail. And it's your 
 fault.' 
 
 ' My fault, Davy,' said Lomax, half tremulous, half 
 delighted, drawing a chair close up to the table that 
 he might lose nothing of the youth's confidences. 
 ' What d'ye mean by that, ye spalpeen ? ' 
 
 ' Well, wasn't it you took me to the Hall of Science, 
 Daddy, and couldn't keep a quiet tongue in your head 
 about it afterwards ? Wasn't it you lent me the 
 "Secularist," which got me into the worst rumpus of 
 the season ? Oh, Daddy, you're a bad un ! ' 
 
 And the handsome lad leant back in his chair, 
 stretching his long legs and studying Daddy with 
 twinkling eyes. As for Lomax, he received the 
 onslaught with a curious mixture of exjiressions, in
 
 CHAP. I 
 
 VnCTII 211 
 
 which a certain malicious pleasure, crossed by au 
 uneasy sense of responsibility, was the most promi- 
 nent. He sat drumming on the table, liis straggling 
 beard falling forward on to his chest, his mouth purs- 
 ing itself up. At last he threw back his head Avith 
 energy. 
 
 Til not excuse myself, Davy; you're well out of 
 it. You'll be a great man yet — always provided you 
 can manage yourself in the matter of flesh meat. It 
 was to come one way or the other — you couldn't put 
 up much longer with such a puke-stocking as my 
 precious brother-in-law. (That's one of the great 
 points of Shakespeare, Davy, my lad — perhaps you 
 haven't noticed it — you get such a ruck of bad names 
 out of him fur the asking ! Puke-stocking is good — 
 real good. If it wasn't made for a sanctimonious 
 hypocrite of a Baptist like Purcell it ought to have 
 been.) And " Spanish-pouch " too ! Oh, I love " Span- 
 ish-pouch " ! When I've called a man " Spanish-pouch," 
 I'm the better for it, Davy — the bile's relieved.' 
 
 ' Thank you. Daddy ; I'll remember the receipt. I 
 say, were you ever in Purcell's shop ? ' 
 
 ' Purcell's shop ? Why, of course I was, yon var- 
 mint ! Wasn't it there I met my Isabella, his sister ? 
 Ah, the poor thing ! He led her a life ; and when I 
 was his assistant I took sides with her — that was the 
 beginning of it all. At first we hadn't got on so 
 badly — 1 had a pious fit on myself in those days — but 
 one day at tea, I had been making free — taking Isa- 
 bella's part. There had been a neighbour there, and 
 the laugh had been against him. Well, after tea we 
 marched back to the shop, and says he to me, as black 
 as thunder, "I'm quite willing, Lomax, to be your 
 Christian brother in here : when we're in society I'd 
 have you remember it's different. You should know 
 your place." '•' Oh, should I ? " says I. (Isabella
 
 212 THE HTSTOEY OF DAVTD OT^IEVE book ii 
 
 had been squeezing my hand under the table and I 
 didn't care what I said.) "Well, you'd better find 
 
 some one as will, and be d d to your Christian 
 
 brotherhood." And I took my cap up and marched 
 out, leaving him struck a pillar of salt with surprise, 
 and that mad I — for we were in the middle of issuing 
 the New Year's catalogue, and he'd left most of it to 
 me. And three weeks after ' 
 
 Daddy rose qiiivering with excitement, put his 
 thumbs into his waistcoat pocket, and bent over the 
 back of his chair towards David. As he stood there, 
 on tip-toe, the flaps of the long coat falling back from 
 him like wings, his skull-cap slightly awry, two red 
 spots on either wrinkled cheek, and every feature of 
 the sharp brown face alive with the joy of his long- 
 past vengeance, he was like some strange perching 
 bird. 
 
 ' — Three weeks after, Davy, I married my Isabella 
 under his puritanical nose, at the chapel across the 
 way ; and the bit of spite in it — bedad ! — it was like 
 mustard to beef. (Pish ! what am I abont !) And I 
 set up shop almost next door to the chapel, and took 
 the trade out of his mouth, and enjoyed myself finely 
 for six months. At the end of that time he gave out 
 that the neighbourhood was too " low " for him, and 
 he moved up town. And though I've been half over 
 the Avorld since, I've never ceased to keep an eye on 
 him. I've had a finger in more pies of his than he 
 thinks for ! ' 
 
 And Daddy drew himself up, pressing his hands 
 against his sides, his long frame swelling out, as it 
 seemed, with sudden passion. David watched him 
 with a look half sympathetic, half satirical. 
 
 ' I don't see that he did you much harm. Daddy.' 
 
 'Harm!' said the little man, irascibly. 'Harm! 
 I must say you're uncommon slow at gripping a situ-
 
 ciivr. I 
 
 YOUTH 213 
 
 ation, Davy. I'd my wife's score to settle, too, I tell 
 you, as well as my own. He'd sat on his poor easy- 
 going sister till she hadn't a feature left. I knew he 
 had. He's made up of all the mean vices — and at the 
 same time, if you were to hear him at a prayer meet- 
 ing, you'd think that since Enoch went up to heaven 
 the wrong way, the world didn't hapi^en to have been 
 blessed with another saint to match Tom Purcell.' 
 And, stirred by his own eloquence. Daddy looked 
 down frowning on the youth before him. 
 
 ' What made you give up the book-trade. Daddy ? ' 
 asked David, with a smile. 
 
 It was like the pricking of a bladder. Daddy col- 
 lapsed in a moment. Sitting down again, he began 
 to arrange his coat elaborately over his knees, as 
 though to gain time. 
 
 'David, you're an inquisitive varmint,' he said at 
 last, looking up askance at his companion. 'Some 
 one's been telling you tales, by the look of you. Look 
 here — if Tom Purcell's a blathering hypocrite, that is 
 not the same thing precisely as saying that Adrian 
 O'Connor Lomax is a perfect specimen of the domes- 
 tic virtues. Never you mind, my boy, what made me 
 give up book-selling. I've chucked so many things 
 overboard since, that it's hardly worth inquiring. Try 
 any trade you like and Daddy '11 be able to give you 
 some advice in it — that's the only thing that concerns 
 yoTi. Well now, tell me — ' and he turned round and 
 • put his elbows on the table, leaning over to David — 
 ' When are you coming away, and what are your 
 prospects ? ' 
 
 ' I told you about a fortnight would see it out, 
 
 Daddy. And there's a little shop in But it's no 
 
 good. Daddy. You can't keep secrets.' 
 
 The old man turned purple, drew himself up, and 
 looked fiercely at David from behind his spectacles.
 
 214 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 But in a second Ids mood changed and he stretched 
 his hand slowly out across the table. 
 
 ' On the honour of a Lomax/ he said solemnly. 
 
 There was a real dignity about the absurd action 
 which melted David. He shook the hand and re- 
 pented him. Leaning over he whispered some infor- 
 mation in Daddy's ear. Daddy beamed. And in the 
 midst of the superfluity of nods and winks that fol- 
 lowed David called for his bill. 
 
 The action recalled Daddy to his own affairs, and 
 he looked on complacently while David paid. 
 
 ' 'Pon my word, Davy, I can hardly yet believe in 
 my own genius. Where else, my boy, in this cotton- 
 spinning hole, would you find a dinner like that for 
 sixpence ? Am I a benefactor to the species, sir, or 
 am I not ? ' 
 
 ' Looks like it. Daddy, by the help of Miss Dora.' 
 
 ' Aye, aye,' said the old man testily, — ' I'll not deny 
 that Dora's useful to the business. But the ins2)ira- 
 tion, Davy, 's all mine. You want genius, my boy, 
 to make . a tomfool of yourself like this,' and he 
 looked himself proudly up and down. 'Twenty 
 customers a week come here for nothing in the world 
 but to see Avhat new rigs Daddy may be up to. The 
 invention — the happy ideas, man, I throw into one 
 day of this place would stock twenty ordinary busi- 
 nesses.' 
 
 'All the same, Daddy, I've tasted Welsh rabbit 
 before,' said David drily, putting on his hat. 
 
 ' I scorn your remark, sir. It argues a poorly fur- 
 nished mind. Show me anything new in this used-up 
 world, eh ? but for the name and the dishing up — 
 Well, good-bye, Davy, and good luck to you ! ' 
 
 David made his way across Hanging Ditch to a 
 little row of houses bearing the baldly appropriate
 
 ruAP. I 
 
 YOUTH 215 
 
 name of Half Street. It ran along the eastern side of 
 the Cathedral close. First came the houses, small, 
 irregular, with old beams and projections here and 
 there, then a pavcMl footway, then the railings round 
 the Close. In full view of the windows of the street 
 rose the sixteenth-century church which plays as best 
 it can the part of Cathedral to Manchester. Eound it 
 stretched a black and desolate space paved with tomb- 
 stones. Not a blade of grass broke the melancholy of 
 those begrimed and time-worn slabs. The rain lay 
 among them in pools, squalid buildings overlooked 
 them, and the church, with its manifest inadequacy 
 to a fine site and a great city, did l)ut little towards 
 overcoming the moan and harsh impression made — on 
 such a day especially — by its surroundings. 
 
 David opened the door of a shop about halfway up 
 the row. A bell rang sharply, and as he shut the 
 outer door behind him, another at the back of the 
 shop opened hastily, and a young girl came in. 
 
 ' Mr. Grieve, father's gone out to Eccles to see some 
 books a gentleman Avants him to buy. If Mr. Stephens 
 comes, you're to tell him father's found him two or 
 three more out of the list he sent. You know where 
 all his books are put together, if he wants to see 
 them, father says.' 
 
 'Yes, thank you, Miss Purcell, I do. Xo other 
 message ? ' 
 
 - 'Xo.' The speaker lingered. 'What time do we 
 start for the music to-night ? lUit you'll be down to 
 tea?' 
 
 ' Certainly, if you and Miss Dora don't want it to 
 yourselves.' The s])eaker smiled. He was leaning on 
 the counter, while the girl stood liehind it. 
 
 'Oh dear, no ! ' said ]\riss Purcell Avith a half-pettish 
 gesture. 'I don't know what to talk to Dora about
 
 216 THE HISTOKY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 now. She thinks of nothing but St. Damian's and 
 her work. It's worse than father. And, of course, I 
 know she hasn't much o})inion of me. Indeed, she's 
 always telling me so — well, not exactly — but she lets 
 me guess fast enough.' 
 
 The speaker puts up two small hands to straighten 
 some of the elaborate curls and twists with which her 
 pretty head was crowned. There was a little conscious- 
 ness in the action. The thought of her cousin had 
 evidently brought with it the thought of some of 
 those things of which the stern Dora disapproved. 
 
 David looked at the brown hair and the slim fingers 
 as he was meant to look at them. Yet in his smiling 
 good humour there was not a trace of bashfulness or 
 diffidence. He was perfectly at his ease, with some- 
 thing of a proud self-reliant consciousness in every 
 movement ; nothing in his manner could have reminded 
 a spectator of the traditional apprentice making timid 
 love to his master's daughter. 
 
 'I've seen you stand up to her though,' he said 
 laughing. ' It's like all pious people. Doesn't it 
 strike you as odd that they should never be content 
 with being pious for themselves ? ' 
 
 He looked at her with bright sarcastic eyes. 
 
 ' Oh, I know what you mean ! ' she said with an 
 instant change of tone ; ' I didn't mean anything of 
 the sort. I think it's shocking of you to go to that 
 place on Sundays — so tliere, Mr. Grieve.' , 
 
 She threw herself back defiantly against the books 
 which walled the shop, her arms folded before her. 
 The attitude showed the long tliroat, the rounded bust, 
 and the slender waist compressed with some evident 
 rigour into a close-fitting brown dress. That Miss 
 Purcell thought a great deal of the fashion of her hair, 
 the style of her bodices, and the size of her waist was 
 clear ; that she was conscious of thinking about them
 
 CHAP. I 
 
 YorTir 217 
 
 to good purpose was also plain. lUit on the whole the 
 impression of artificiality, of something over-studied 
 and over-done which the first sight of her generally 
 awakened, was soon, as a rule, lost in another more 
 attractive — in one of light, tripping youth, perfectly 
 satisfied with itself and with the world. 
 
 ' I don't think you know much about the place,' he 
 said quietly, still smiling. 
 
 She flushed, her foolish little sense of natural supe- 
 riority to ' the assistant ' outraged again, as it had been 
 outraged already a hundred times since she and David 
 Grieve had met. 
 
 ' I know (piite as much as anybody need know — any 
 respectable person — ' she maintained angrily. 'It's a 
 low, disgraceful place — and they talk wicked nonsense. 
 Everyone says so. It doesn't matter a bit where 
 Uncle Lomax goes — he's mad — but it is a shame he 
 should lead other people astray.' 
 
 She was much pleased with her own harangue, and 
 stood there frowning on him, lier sharp little chin in 
 the air, one foot beating the ground. 
 
 'Well, yes, really,' said David in a reflective tone; 
 ' one would think Miss Dora had her hands full at 
 home, without ' 
 
 He looked up, significantly, smiling. Lucy Purcell 
 was enraged with him — with his hypocritical sympathy 
 as to her uncle's misdoings — his avoidance of his own 
 crime. 
 
 ' 'It's not uncle at all, it's you ! ' she cried, with more 
 logic than appeared. 'I tell you, Mr. Grieve, father 
 won't stand it.' 
 
 The young man drew himself up from the counter. 
 
 'No,' he said with great equanimity, 'I suppose not.' 
 
 And taking up a parcel of books from the counter 
 he turned away. Lucy, flurried and pouting, called 
 after him.
 
 218 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 'Mr. Grieve!' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'I — I didn't mean it. I hoxie you won't go. I know 
 father's hard. He's hard enough with me.' 
 
 And she raised her hands to her flushed face. David 
 was terribly afraid she was going to cry. Several 
 times since the orphan girl of seventeen had arrived 
 from school three months before to take her place in 
 her father's house, had she been on the point of con- 
 fiding her domestic woes to David Grieve. But though 
 under the terms of his agreement with her father, 
 which included one meal in the back parlour, the 
 assistant and she were often thrown together, he had 
 till now instinctively held her aloof. His extraordi- 
 nary good looks and masterful energetic ways had made 
 an impression on her schoolgirl mind from the begin- 
 ning. But for him she had no magnetism whatever. 
 The little self-conceited creature knew it, or partially 
 knew it, and smarted under it. 
 
 Now, he was just beginning an awkward sentence, 
 Avhen there was a sound at the outer door. With 
 another look at him, half shy, half appealing, Lucy 
 fled. Conscious of a distinct feeling of relief, David 
 went to attend to the customer. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The customer was soon content and went out again 
 into the rain. David mounted a winding iron stair 
 which connected the downstairs shop with an upper 
 room in which a large proportioa of the books were 
 stored. It was a long, low, rambling place made by 
 throwing together all the little bits of rooms on the 
 first floor of the old house. One corner of it had a
 
 CHAP. II 
 
 YOUTH 219 
 
 special attraction for David. It was the corner where, 
 ranged partly on the floor, partly on the shelves 
 which ran under the windows, lay the collection of 
 books that Purcell had been making for his customer, 
 Mr. Stephens. 
 
 Out of that collection Purcell's assistant had ex- 
 tracted a very varied entertainment. In the first place 
 it had amused him to watch the laborious pains and 
 anxiety with which his pious employer had gathered 
 together the very sceptical works of which Mr. 
 Stephens was in want, showing a knowledge of con- 
 tents, and editions, and out-of-the-way profanities, 
 under the stimulus of a paying customer, which drew 
 many a sudden laugh from David when he was left to 
 think of it in private. 
 
 In the next place the books themselves had been a 
 perpetual feast to him for weeks, enjoyed all the more 
 keenly because of the secrecy in which it had to be 
 devoured. The little gathering represented with fair 
 completeness the chief books of the French ^philo- 
 sophers,' both in the original French, and in those 
 English translations of which so plentiful a crop made 
 its appearance during the fifty years before and after 
 1800. There, for instance, lay the seventy volumes of 
 Voltaire. Close by was an imperfect copy of the 
 Encyclopaedia, which Mr. Stephens was getting cheap ; 
 on the other side a motley gathering of Diderot and 
 Eousseau ; while Holbaeh's ' System of Nature,' and 
 Helvetius 'On the Mind,' held their rightful place 
 among the rest. 
 
 Through these books, then, which had now been on 
 the premises for some time — i\Ir. Stephens being a 
 person of uncertain domicile, and unable as yet to find 
 them a home — David had been freely ranging. When- 
 ever Purcell was out of the way and customers were 
 slack, he invariably found his way to this spot in the
 
 220 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE hook ii 
 
 upper room. There, with his elbows on the top of the 
 bookcase which ran under the window, and a book in 
 front of him — or generally tAvo, the original French 
 and a translation — he had read Voltaire's tales, a great 
 deal of the Encyclopsedia, a certain amount of Diderot, 
 for w'hom he cherished a passionate admiration, and a 
 much smaller smattering of Rousseau. At the present 
 moment he was grappling with the 'Dietionnaire 
 Philosophique,' and the ' Systeme de la Nature,' forti- 
 fied in both cases by English versions. 
 
 The gloom of the afternoon deepened, and the in- 
 creasing rain had thinned the streets so much that 
 during a couple of hours David had but three sum- 
 monses from below to attend to. For the rest of the 
 time lie was buried in the second volume of the ' Die- 
 tionnaire Philosophique,' now skipping freely, now 
 chewing and digesting, his eyes fixed vacantly on the 
 darkening church outside. Above all, the article on 
 Contradict hvs had absorbed and delighted him. There 
 are few tones in themselves so fascinating to the 
 nascent literary sense as this mock humility tone of 
 Voloaire's. And in David's case all that passionate 
 sense of a broken bubble and a scattered dream, which 
 had haunted him so long after he left Kinder, had 
 entered into and helped forward his infatuation with 
 his new masters. They brought him an indescribable 
 sense of freedom — omniscience almost. 
 
 For instance : — 
 
 ' We must carefully distinguish in all writings, and especially 
 in the sacred books, between real and apparent contradictions. 
 Venturous critics have supposed a contradiction existed in that 
 passage of Scripture which narrates how Moses changed all the 
 waters of Egyjit into blood, and how immediately afterwards 
 the magicians of Pharaoli did the same thing, tlie book of Exo- 
 dus allowing no interval at all between the miracle of Moses 
 and the magical ope ration of the enchanters. Certainly it seems
 
 CHAP. II 
 
 YOUTH 221 
 
 at first sight impossible that these magicians should change into 
 blood what was already blood; but this difficulty may be 
 avoided by supposing that Moses had allowed tlie waters to re- 
 assume their proper nature, in order to give time to Pharaoh to 
 recover himself. This supposition is all the more plausible, see- 
 ing that the text, if it does not favour it expressly, is not op- 
 posed to it. 
 
 ' The same sceptics ask how when all the horses had been 
 killed by the hail in the sixth plague Pharaoh could pursue the 
 Jews with cavalry. But this contradiction is not even appar- 
 ent, because the hail, which killed all the horses in the fields, 
 could not fall upon those which were in the stables.' 
 
 And so on through a long series of paragraphs, 
 leading at last to matters specially dear to the wit of 
 Voltaire, the contradictions between St. Luke and St. 
 Matthew — in the story of the census of Quirinus, of 
 the Magi, of the massacre of the Innocents, and what 
 not — and culminating in this innocent conclusion : — 
 
 ' After all it is enough that God should have deigned to reveal 
 to us the principal mysteries of the faith, and that He should 
 have instituted a Church in the course of time to explain them. 
 All these contradictions, so often and so bitterly brought up 
 against the Gospels, are amply noticed by the wisest commen- 
 tators ; far from harming each other, one explains another ; 
 they lend each other a mutual support, both in the concordance 
 and in the harmony of the four Gospels.' 
 
 David threw back his head with a laugh which came 
 from the very depths of him. Then, suddenly, he was 
 conscious of the church standing sombrely without, 
 spectator as it seemed of his thoughts and of his mirth. 
 Instantly his youth met the challenge by a rise of pas- 
 sionate scorn ! What ! a hundred years since Vol- 
 taire, and mankiud still went on believing in all these 
 follies and fables, in the ten plagues, in Balaam's ass, 
 in the walls of Jericho, in miraculous births, and 
 Magi, and prophetic stars I — in everything that the 
 mockery of the eighteenth century had slain a thou-
 
 222 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 sand times over. Ah, well ! — Voltaire knew as well 
 as anybody that superstition is perennial, insatiable — ■ 
 a disease and weakness of the human mind which 
 seems to be inherent and ineradicable. And there 
 rose in the boy's memory lines he had opened upon 
 that morning in a small Elizabethan folio he had been 
 cataloguing with much pains as a rarity — lines which 
 had stuck in his mind — 
 
 Vast superstition! glorious style of weakness, 
 Sprung from the deep disquiet of man's passion 
 To dissolution and despair of Nature! — 
 
 He flung them out at the dark mass of building oppo- 
 site, as though he were his namesake flinging at Goli- 
 ath. Only a few months before that great church 
 had changed masters — had passed from the hands of 
 an aristocratic and inaccessible bishop of the old 
 school into those of a man rich in all modern ideas 
 and capacities, full of energy and enthusiasm, a 
 scholar and administrator both. And he believed all 
 those absurdities, David wanted to know ? Impossi- 
 ble ! No honest man could, thought the lad defiantly, 
 with a rising colour of crude and vehement feeling, 
 when his attention had been once challenged, and he 
 had developed mind enough to know what the chal- 
 lenge meant. 
 
 Except, perhaps. Uncle Reuben and Dora Lomax, 
 and people like that. He stood thinking and staring 
 out of window, one idea leading to another. The 
 thought of Reuben brought with it a certain softening 
 of mood — the softening of memory and old association. 
 Yes, he would like to see Uncle Reuben again — explain 
 to him, perhaps, that old story — so old, so distant ! — 
 of his running away. Well, he ivould see him again, 
 as soon as he got a place of his own, which couldn't 
 be long now, whether Purcell gave him the sack or not.
 
 CHAP. II YOUTH 223 
 
 Instinctively, he felt for that inner pocket, which held 
 his purse and his savings-bank book. Yes, he was 
 near freedom now, whatever happened ! 
 
 Then it occurred to him that it was unlucky he 
 should have stumbled across Mr. Ancrum just at this 
 particular juncture. The minister, of course, had 
 friends at Clough End still. And he, David, didn't 
 want Louie down upon him just yet — not just yet — 
 for a month or two. 
 
 Then the smile which had begun to play about the 
 mouth suddenly broadened into a merry triumph. 
 When Louie knew all about him and his contrivances 
 these last four years, wouldn't she be mad ! If she 
 were to appear at this moment, he could tell her that 
 she wore a pink dress at the ' wake ' last week, — when 
 she was at chapel last, — what young men were sup- 
 posed to be courting her since the summer, and a num- 
 ber of other interesting particulars 
 
 ' Mr. Grieve ! Tea ! ' 
 
 His face changed. Reluctantly shutting his book 
 and putting it into its place, he took his way to the 
 staircase. 
 
 As David opened the swing door leading to the 
 Purcells' parlour at the back of the shop he heard 
 Miss Purcell saying in a mournful voice, ' It's no good, 
 Dora ; not a hajjorth of good. Father won't let me. 
 I might as well have gone to prison as come home.' 
 
 The assistant emerged into the bright gaslight of 
 the little room as she spoke. There was another girl 
 sitting beside Lucy, who got up with a shy manner 
 and shook hands with him. 
 
 ' Will you take your tea, Mr. Grieve ? ' said Lucy, 
 with a pettish sigh, handing it to him, and then throw- 
 ing herself vehemently back in her hostess's chair, 
 behind the tea-tray. She let her hands hang over the
 
 224 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 arms of it — the picture of discontent. The gaslight 
 showed her the possessor of bright brown eyes, under 
 fine broAvs slenderly but clearly marked, of a pink and 
 white skin slightly freckled, of a small nose quite 
 passable, but no ways remarkable, of a dainty little 
 chin, and a thin-lipped mouth, slightly raised at one 
 corner, and opening readily over some irregular but 
 very white teeth. Except for the eyes and eyebrows 
 the features could claim nothing much in the way of 
 beauty. Yet at this moment of seventeen — thanks to 
 her clear colours, her small thinness, and the beautiful 
 hair so richly piled about her delicate head — Lucy 
 Purcell was undeniably a pretty girl, and since her 
 arrival in Manchester she had been much more bliss- 
 fully certain of the fact than she had ever succeeded 
 in being while she was still under the repressive roof 
 of Miss Pym's boarding-school for young ladies, Pes- 
 talozzi House, Blackburn. 
 
 David sat down, perceiving that something had gone 
 very wrong, but not caring to inquire into it. His 
 whole interest in the Purcell household was, in fact, 
 dying out. He would not be concerned with it much 
 longer. 
 
 So that, instead of investigating Miss Purcell's 
 griefs, he asked her cousin whether it had not come on 
 to rain. The girl opposite replied in a quiet, musical 
 voice. She was plainly dressed in a black hat and 
 jacket ; but the hat had a little bunch of cowslips to 
 light it up, and the jacket was of an ordinary fashion- 
 able cut. There was nothing particularly noticeable 
 about the face at first sight, excej^t its soft fairness 
 and the gentle steadfastness of the eyes. The move- 
 ments were timid, the speech often hesitating. Yet 
 the impression which, on a first meeting, this timidity 
 was apt to leave on a spectator was very seldom a 
 lasting one. David's idea of ]\Iiss Lomax, for instance,
 
 CHAP. II YOUTH 225 
 
 had radically changed during the three months since 
 he had made acquaintance with her. 
 
 Rain, it appeared, had begun, and there must be 
 umbrellas and waterproui's for the evening's excursion. 
 As the two others were settling at what time David 
 Grieve and Lucy should call for Dora in Market Place, 
 Lucy woke up from a dream, and broke in upon them. 
 
 ' And, Dora, j'ou know, I covld have worn that dress 
 with the narrow ribbons 1 showed you last week. It's 
 all there — upstairs — in the cupboard — not a crease in 
 it!' 
 
 Dora could not help laughing, and the laugh sent a 
 charming light into her grey, veiled eyes. The tone 
 was so inexpressibly doleful, the manner so childish. 
 David smiled too, and his eyes and Dora's met in a 
 sort of friendly understanding — the first time, per- 
 haps, they had so met. Then they both turned them- 
 selves to the task of consolation. The assistant 
 inquired what was the matter. 
 
 *I wanted her to go with me to the dance at the 
 Mechanics' Institute next week,' said Dora. 'Mrs. 
 Alderman Head would have taken us both. It's very 
 nice and respectable. I didn't think uncle would 
 mind. I>ut Lucy 's sure he will.' 
 
 ' Sure ! Of course, I'm sure,' said Lucy sharjDly. 
 ' I've heard him talk about dancing in a way to make 
 anybody sick. If he only knew all the dancing we 
 had at Pestalozzi House ! ' 
 
 'Does he think all dancing wrong?' inquired 
 David. 
 
 ' Yes — unless it's David dancing before the Ark, or 
 some such nonsense,' replied Lucy, with the same 
 petulant gloom. 
 
 David langhed out. Then he fell into a brown study, 
 one hand playing with his tea-cup, an irrepressible 
 smile still curving about his mouth. Dora, observing 
 
 VOL. I Q
 
 226 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book n 
 
 him across the table, could not but remember other 
 assistants of Uncle Purcell whom she had seen sitting 
 in that same place, and the airs which Miss Purcell in 
 her rare holidays had given herself towards those 
 earlier young men. And now, this young man, when- 
 ever Purcell himself was out of the way, was master 
 of the place. Anyone could see that, so long as he 
 was there, Lucy was sensitively conscious of him in 
 all that she said or did. 
 
 She did not long endure his half-mocking silence 
 now. 
 
 'You see, Dora,' she began again, with an angry 
 glance towards him, 'father's worse than ever just 
 now. He's been so aggravated.' 
 
 * Yes,' said Dora timidly. She perfectly understood 
 what was meant, but she shrank from pursuing the 
 subject. But David looked up. 
 
 ' I should be very sorry, I'm sure, Miss Purcell, to 
 get in your way at all, or cause you any unpleasant- 
 ness, if that's what you mean. I don't think you'll be 
 annoyed with me long.' 
 
 He spoke Avith a boyish exaggerated dignity. It 
 became him, however, for his fine aiid subtle physique 
 somehow supported and endorsed it. 
 
 Both the girls started. Lucy looked suddenly as 
 miserable as she had before looked angry. But in her 
 confused state of feeling she renewed her attack. 
 
 ' I don't understand anything about it,' she said, 
 with plaintive incoherence. ' Only I can't think why 
 people should always be making disturbances. Dora ! 
 Doesn't everybody you know think it wicked to go to 
 the Hall of Science ? ' 
 
 She drew herself up peremptorily. David resumed 
 the half smiling, half meditative attitude which had 
 provoked her before. Dora looked from one to the 
 other, a pure bright colour rising in her cheek.
 
 riiAi-. II YOT'Tir 227 
 
 ' I don't know anything about that,' she said in a 
 low voice. * I don't think that would matter, Lucy. 
 But, oh, I do wish father wouldn't go — and ]Mr. 
 Grieve wouldn't go.' 
 
 Her voice and hand shook. Lucy looked trium- 
 phantly at David. Instinctively she realised that, 
 especially of late, David had come to feel more re- 
 spectfully towards Dora than she had ever succeeded 
 in making him feel towards herself. In the beginning 
 of their acquaintance he had often launched into argu- 
 ment with Dora about religious matters, especially 
 about the Ritualistic i)ractices in which she delighted. 
 The lad, overflowing with his Voltaire and d'Holbach, 
 had not been able to forbear, and had apparently 
 taken a mischievous pleasure in shocking a bigot — as 
 he had originally conceived Lucy Purcell's cousin to 
 be. The discussion, indeed, had not gone very far. 
 The girl's horror and his own sense of his position 
 and its difficulties had checked them in the germ. 
 Moreover, as has been said, his conception of Dora 
 had gradually changed on further acquaintance. As 
 for her, she had now for a long time avoided arguing 
 with him, which made her outburst on the present 
 occasion the more noticeable. 
 
 He looked up quickly. 
 
 'Miss Lomax, how do you suppose one makes up 
 one's mind — either about religion or anything else ? 
 Isn't it by hearing both sides ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, no — no ! ' she said, shrinking. ' Religion isn't 
 like anything else. It's by — by growing up into it — 
 by thinking about it — and doing Avhat the Church tells 
 you. You come to K'now it's true.' 
 
 That the ^Magi and Balaam's ass are true I "What 
 folly ! But somehow even his youthful ardour could 
 not say it, so full of pure and tremulous pain was the 
 gaze fixed upon him. And, indeed, he had no time for
 
 228 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 any answer, for she had just spoken when the bell of 
 the outer door sounded, and a step came rapidly through 
 the shop. 
 
 'Father!' said Lucy, lifting the lid of the teapot 
 in a great hurry. < Oh, I wonder if the tea's good 
 enough.' 
 
 She was stirring it anxiously with a spoon, when 
 Purcell entered, a tall heavily built man, with black 
 hair, a look of command, and a step which shook tlie 
 little back room as he descended into it. He touched 
 Dora's hand with a pompous politeness, and then sub- 
 sided into his chair opposite Lucy, complaining about 
 the weather, and demanding tea, which his daughter 
 gave him Avith a timid haste, looking to see whether 
 he were satisfied as he raised the first spoonful to his 
 lips. 
 
 ' Anything worth buying ? ' said David to his em- 
 ployer. He was leaning back in his chair, with his 
 arm round the back of another. Again Dora was re- 
 minded by contrast of some of the nervous lads she 
 had seen in that room before, scarcely daring to eat 
 their tea under Purcell's eye, flying to cut him bread, 
 or pass him the sugar. 
 
 'No,' said Purcell curtly. 
 
 ' And a great price, I suppose ? ' 
 
 Purcell looked up. Apparently the ease of the 
 young man's tone and attitude put the finishing stroke 
 to an inward process already far advanced. 
 
 ' The price, I conceive, is my business,' he said, in 
 his most overbearing manner. 'When you have to 
 pay, it will be yours.' 
 
 David flushed, without, however, changing his posi- 
 tion, and Lucy made a sudden commotion among the 
 teacups. 
 
 'Father,' she said, with a hurried agitation which 
 hardly allowed her to pick up the cup she had thrown
 
 niAP. ir YorTII 229 
 
 over, 'Dora and I want to si)eak to you. You mustn't 
 talk business at tea. Oh, I know you won't let me 
 go; but I should like it, and Dora's come to ask. I 
 shouldn't want a new dress, and it will be most re- 
 spectable, everyone says ; and I did learn dancing at 
 school, though you didn't know it. Miss Georgina 
 said it was stutf and nonsense, and I must ' 
 
 ' What is she talking about ? ' said Turcell to Dora, 
 with an angry glance at Lucy. 
 
 ' I want to take her to a dance,' said Dora quietly, 
 ' if you would let her come. There's one at the Me- 
 chanics' Institute next week, given by the Unicorn 
 benefit society. 'Mrs. Alderman Head said I might 
 go with her, and Lucy too if you'll let her come. I've 
 got a ticket.' 
 
 'I'm much obliged to ^Nlrs. Alderman Head,' said 
 Purcell sarcastically. ' Lucy knows very well Avhat I 
 think of an unchristian and immodest amusement. 
 Other people must decide according to their con- 
 science, /judge nobody.' 
 
 At this point David got up, and disappeared into 
 the shop. 
 
 ' Oh yes, you do judge, uncle,' cried Dora, roused at 
 last, and colouring. 'You're always judging. You 
 call everything unchristian you don't like, whether it's 
 dancing, or — or — early celebration, or organ music, or 
 altar-cloths. But you can't be always right — nobody 
 can.' 
 
 'Purcell surveyed her with a grim composure. 
 
 ' If you suppose I make any pretence to be infal- 
 lible, you are quite mistaken,' he said, with slow 
 solemnit}' — no one in disclaiming l^apistry could have 
 been more the Pope — ' I leave that to your priests at 
 St. Damian's, Dora. But there is an infallible guide, 
 both for you and for me, and that's the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. If you can show me any place where the
 
 230 THE IIISTOKY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Bible approves of promiscuous dancing between young 
 Christian men and women, or of a woman exposing 
 her person for admiration's sake, or of such vain and 
 idle talking as is produced by these entertainments, I 
 will let Lucy go. But you can't. " Whose adorning 
 let it not be '" 
 
 And he quoted the Petrine admonition with a harsh 
 triumphant emphasis on every syllable, looking hard 
 all the time at Dora, who had risen, and stood con- 
 fronting him in a tremor of impatience and disagree- 
 ment. 
 
 •Father Russell — ' she began quickly, then changed 
 her form of expression — ' Mr. Russell says you can't 
 settle things by just quoting a text. The Bible has 
 to be explained, he says.' 
 
 Purcell's eyes flamed. He launched into a sarcastic 
 harangue, delivered in a strong thick voice, on the 
 subject of 'Sacerdotalism,' ' priestly arrogance,' 'lying 
 traditions,' ' making the command of God of no effect,' 
 and so forth. While his sermon rolled along, Dora 
 stood nervously tying her bonnet strings, or buttoning 
 her gloves. Her heart was full of a passionate scorn. 
 Beside the bookseller's muscular figure and pugna- 
 cious head she saw with her mind's eye the spare 
 forms and careworn faces of the young priests at St. 
 Damian's. Outraged by this loud-voiced assurance, 
 she called to mind the gentleness, the suavity, the 
 delicate consideration for women which obtained 
 among her friends. 
 
 'There's not a pin to choose,' Purcell wound up, 
 brutally, 'between you and that young infidel in 
 there,' and he jerked his thumb towards the shop. 
 ' It all comes of pride. He's bursting with his own 
 wisdom, — you will have the "Church" and won't have 
 the Bible. What's the Church !— a pack of sinners, 
 and a million sinners are no better than one.'
 
 CHAP, ir YOUTH 231 
 
 'Good-bj^e, Lucy,' said Dora, stooping to kiss lier 
 cousin, and not trusting herself to speak. 'Call for 
 me at the (piarter.' 
 
 Lucy hardly noticed her kiss, she sat with her 
 elbows on the table, holding her little chin disconso- 
 lately, something very like tears in her eyes. In the 
 first place, she was reflecting dolefully that it was all 
 true — she was never to have any anuisenient like 
 other girls — never to have any good of her life ; she 
 might as well be a nun at once. In the second, she 
 was certain her father meant to send young Grieve 
 away, and the pi-ospect drew a still darker pall over a 
 prospect dark enough in all conscience before. 
 
 Purcell opened the door for Dora more punctili- 
 ously than usual, and came back to the hearthrug still 
 inflated as it were with his own eloquence. INIean- 
 whilc Lucy was washing up the tea things. The lit- 
 tle servant had brought her a bowl of water and an 
 apron, and Lucy was going gingerly through an oper- 
 ation she detested. Why shouldn't ]\[ary Ann do it ? 
 What was the good of going to school and coming 
 back with Claribel's songs and Blumenthal's Deux 
 Anges lying on the top of your box, — with a social 
 education, moreover, so advanced that the dancing- 
 mistress had invariably made you waltz alone round 
 the room for the edification and instruction of the 
 assembled company, — if all you had to do at home was 
 to dust and wash up, and die with envy of girls with 
 reprobate fathers ? As she pondered the question, 
 Lucy began to handle the cups with a more and more 
 unfriendly energy. 
 
 'You'll break some of that china, Lucy ! ' said Pur- 
 cell, at last disturbed in his thoughts. ' What's the 
 matter with you ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing I ' said Luc}', taking, however, a saucer 
 from the line as she spoke so viciously that the rest
 
 232 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 of them slipped with a clatter and only just escaped 
 destruction. 
 
 ' JNIind what you're about,' cried Purcell angrily, 
 fearing for the household stuff that had been in the 
 establishment so much longer and was so much more 
 at home there than Lucy. 
 
 ' I know what it is,' he said, looking at her severely, 
 while his great black presence seemed to till the little 
 room. ' You've lost your temper because I refused to 
 let you go to the dance.' 
 
 Lucy was silent for a moment, trying to contain 
 herself; then she broke out like a child, throwing 
 down her apron, and feeling for her handkerchief. 
 
 ' It's too bad — it's too bad — I'd rather be Mary Ann 
 — she''s got friends, and evenings out — and — and par- 
 ties sometimes ; and I see nobody, and go nowhere. 
 What did you have me home for at all ? ' 
 
 And she sat down and dried her eyes piteously. She 
 was in real distress, but she liked a scene, and Purcell 
 knew her peculiarities. He surveyed her with a sort 
 of sombre indulgence. 
 
 'You're a vain child of this world, Lucy. If I 
 didn't keep a look-out on you, you'd soon go rejoicing 
 down the broad way. What do you mean about 
 amusements ? There's the missionary tea to-morrow 
 night, and the magic-lantern at the schools on Satur- 
 day.' 
 
 Lucy gave a little hysterical laugh. 
 
 'Well,' said Purcell loudly, there'll be plenty of 
 young people there. What have you got to say against 
 them ? ' 
 
 'A set ot frights and gcuvks,' said Lucy, sitting bolt 
 upright in a state of flat mutiny, and crushing her 
 handkerchief on her knee between a pair of trembling 
 hands. 'The way they do their hair, and the way 
 they tie their ties, and the way they put a chair for you
 
 ciiAi-. II YOI'TII 233 
 
 — it's enough to make one faint. At the Christmas 
 treat there was one young man asked me to trim his 
 shirt-euffs for liiin with scissors he took out of his 
 pocket. I tohl liim / wasn't his nurse, and people 
 who weren't dressed ought to stay at home. You 
 shouhl liave seen how he and his sister ghired at me 
 afterwards. I don't care ! Xone of the chai)el people 
 like me — I know they don't, and I don't Avant them 
 to, and I wouldn't marry one of them.' 
 
 The gesture of Lucy's curly head was superb. 
 
 *Jt seems to me,' said Purcell sarcastically, 'that 
 what you mostly learnt at Blackburn was envy, malice, 
 and all uncharitableness. As to marrying, child, the 
 less you tliink of it for the present the better, till you 
 get more sense.' 
 
 r>ut the eyes which studied her were not unkindly. 
 Purcell liked this slim red and white creature who 
 belonged to him, whose education had cost him hard 
 money which it gave liiiu pleasure to reckon up, and 
 who promised now to provide him with a fresh field 
 for the management and the coarse moral experiment 
 which he loved. She Avould be restive at first, but he 
 would soon break her in. The idea that under her 
 folly and eliildishness she might possibly inherit some 
 of his own tenacity never occurred to him. 
 
 'I can't imagine,' said Lucy inconsequently, with 
 eyes once more swimming, 'why you can't let me do 
 what Dora does ! She's much better than I am. She's 
 a saint, she is. She's always going to church ; she's 
 always doing things for poor people ; she never thinks 
 
 about herself, or whether she's pretty, oi* ^Yhy 
 
 shouldn't I dance if she does ? ' 
 
 Purcell laughed. 
 
 * Aye ! ' he said grimly, ' that's the Papistical way 
 all over. So many services, so much fasting, so much 
 money, so much knocking under to your priest, so much
 
 204 THE IIISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 " cliiirch vrovh " — and who cares a brass farthing what 
 you do with the rest of your time ? Do as I tell you, 
 and dance away ! But I tell you, Christianity wants a 
 new heart !' 
 
 And the bookseller looked at his daughter with a 
 frowning severity. Conversation of this kind was his 
 recreation, his accomplishment, so to speak. He had 
 been conducting a ditticult negotiation all day of the 
 diamond-cut-diamond order, and was tired out and 
 disgusted by the amount of knowledge of books which 
 even a gentleman may possess. But here was compen- 
 sation. A Avarm hearthrug, an unwilling listener, and 
 this sense of an incomparable soundness of view, — he 
 wanted nothing more to revive him, unless, indeed, it 
 were a larger audience. 
 
 As for Lucy, as she looked up at her father, even 
 her childish intelligence rose to a sense of absurdity. 
 As if Dora hadn't a new heart ; as if Dora thought it 
 was enough to go to church and give sixpences in the 
 offertory ! 
 
 But her father overawed her. She had been left 
 motherless at ten years old, and brought up since away 
 from home, except for holidays. At the bottom of 
 her, she was quite conscious that she knew nothing at 
 all about this big contemptuous person, Avho ordered 
 her about and preached to her, and never let himself 
 be kissed and played with and coaxed as other girls' 
 fathers did. 
 
 So she went on with her washing up in a crushed 
 silence, very sorry for herself in a vague passionate 
 way, the corners of her mouth drooping. Purcell too 
 fell into a reverie, the lower jaAV pushed forward, one 
 hand playing with the watch-chain which adorned his 
 black suit. 
 
 'Did you give Grieve that message?' he asked at 
 last.
 
 CIIAI-. II Yoi'Tir 235 
 
 Lucy, still sulky, nodded in reply. 
 
 '"What time did lio come in from dinner?' 
 
 ' On tlio stroke of the half-hour,' said Lucy quickly. 
 
 'I think lie keeps time bettor than anybody j-ou ever 
 
 had, father.' 
 
 * Insolent young whelp ! ' said Purcell in a slow, 
 deliberate voice. * He was at that place again yester- 
 day.' 
 
 ' Yes, I know he was,' said Lucy, with evident agita- 
 tion. ' I told him he ought to have been ashamed.' 
 
 * Oh, you talked to him, did you ? What business 
 had you to do that, I wonder ? Well, what did he 
 say ? ' 
 
 'He said — well, I don't know what he said. He 
 don't seem to think it matters to anybody where he 
 goes on Sunday ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, indeed — don't he ? I'll show him some cause 
 to doubt the truth of that proposition,' said Purcell 
 ponderously; 'or I'll know the reason why.' 
 
 Lucy looked unhappy, and said nothing for a minute 
 or two. Then she began insistently, 'Well, does it 
 matter to you ? ' 
 
 This deplorable question — viewed from the stand- 
 point of a Baptist elder — passed unnoticed, for with 
 the last words the shop-bell rang, and Purcell went off, 
 transformed on the instant into the sharp, attentive 
 tradesman. 
 
 • Lucy sat wiping her cups mechanically for a little 
 while. Then, when they were all done, and Mary Ann 
 had been loftil}' commanded to put them away, she 
 slipped upstairs to her own room, a little attic at the 
 top of the house. Here she went to a deal press, which 
 had been her mother's, opened it, and took out a dress 
 which hung in a compartment by itself, enveloped in 
 a holland wrapper, lest Manchester smuts should harm 
 it. She undid the wrapper, and laid it on the bed.
 
 236 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 It was an embroidered white muslin, adorned with lace 
 and full knots of narrow pink ribbon. 
 
 ' AVliat a trouble I had to get the ribbon just that 
 width,' she thought to herself ruefully, 'and everybody 
 said it was so uncommon. I might as well give it 
 Dora. I don't believe I shall ever wear it. I don't 
 know what'll become of me. I don't get any chances.' 
 
 And shaking her head mournfully from side to side, 
 she sat on beside the dress, in the light of her solitary 
 candle, her hands clasped round her knee, the picture 
 of girlish despair, so far as anything so daintily 
 gowned, and shoed, and curled, could achieve it. She 
 was thinking drearily of some people who were coming 
 to supper, one of her father's brother elders at the 
 chapel, Mr. Baruch Barton, and his daughter. Mr. 
 Barton had a speciality for the prophet Zephaniah, 
 and had been several times shocked because Lucy 
 could not help him out with his quotations from that 
 source. His daughter, a little pinched asthmatic crea- 
 ture, in a dress whereof every gore and seam was an 
 affront to the art of dressmaking, was certainly thirty, 
 probably more. And between thirty and the Psalm- 
 ist's limit of existence, there is the very smallest 
 appreciable difference, in the opinion of seventeen. 
 What coidd she have to say to Emmy Barton ? Lucy 
 asked herself. She began yawning from sheer dul- 
 ness, as she thought of her. If it were only time to 
 go to bed ! 
 
 Suddenly she heard a sound of raised voices in the 
 upper shop on the floor below. What could it be ? 
 She started up. ' Mr. Grieve and father quarrelling ! ' 
 She knew it must come to that I 
 
 She crept down the stairs with every precaution 
 possible till she came to the door behind which the 
 loud talk which had startled her was going on. Here 
 she listened with all her ears, but at first to very little
 
 CHAl'. i: 
 
 YOUTH 237 
 
 purpose. David was speaking, but so rapidly, and ap- 
 parently so near to the other end of the room, that she 
 could hear nothing. Then her father broke in, and by 
 dint of straining very hard, she cauglit most of what 
 he said before the whole colloquy came abruptly to an 
 end. She heard Turcell's heavy tread descending the 
 little iron spiral staircase leading from the lower shop 
 to the upper. She heard David moving about, as 
 thougli he were gathering up books and ])apers, and 
 then, with a loud childish sob which burst from her 
 unawares, she ran upstairs again to her own room. 
 
 ' Oh, he's going, he's going ! ' she cried under her 
 breath, as she stood before the glass winking to keep 
 the tears back, and biting her handkerchief hard 
 between her little white teeth. ' Oh, what shall I do '.' 
 what shall I do ? It'll be always the same ; just when 
 anyone mirjlit like me, it all stops. And he won't care 
 one little, little bit. He'll never think of me again. 
 Oh, I do think somebody might care about me — might 
 be sorry for me ! ' 
 
 And she locked her hands tight before her, and 
 stared at the glass, while the tears forced their way. 
 But all the time she was noticing how prettily she 
 stood, how slim she was. And though she smarted, 
 she would not for the world have been without her 
 smart, her excitement, her foolish secret, which, for 
 sheer lack of something to do and think about, had 
 ' suddenly grown to such magnitude in her eyes. It 
 was hard to cherish a hopeless passion for a handsome 
 youth, without a halfpenny, who despised you, but it 
 was infinitely better than to have nothing in your mind 
 but Emmy Barton and the prophet Zephaniah. Nay, 
 as she washed her hands and smoothed her dress and 
 hair with trembling fingers, she became quite friendly 
 with her pain — in a sense, even proud of it, and jealous 
 for it. It was a sign of mature life— of something
 
 238 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GKIEVE book ii 
 
 more than mere school-girlishness. Like the lover in 
 the Elizabethan sonnet, ' She had been vexed, if vexed 
 she had not been ! ' 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 'Come in, David,' said Mr. Ancrum, opening the door 
 of his little sitting-room in Mortimer Street. 'You're 
 rather late, but I don't wonder. Such a wind ! I 
 could hardly stand against it myself. But, then, I'm 
 an atomy. What, no top-coat in such weather ! What 
 do you mean by that, sir ? You're wet through. 
 There, dry yourself.' 
 
 David, with a grin at Mr. Ancrum's unnecessary 
 concern for him, deposited himself in the carpet chair 
 which formed the minister's only lounge, and held out 
 his legs and arms to the blaze. He was wet indeed, 
 and bespattered with the blackest mud in the three 
 kingdoms. But the battle with wind and rain had so 
 brought into play all the physical force of him, had 
 so brightened eye and cheek, and tossed the black hair 
 into such a fine confusion, that, as he sat there bend- 
 ing over the glow of the fire, the crippled man oppo- 
 site, sickly with long confinement and over-thinking, 
 could not take his eyes from him. The storm with 
 all its freshness, youth with all its reckless joy in 
 itself, seemed to have come in with the lad and trans- 
 formed the little dingy room. 
 
 'What do you wear trash like that for in a tem- 
 perature like this ? ' said the minister, touching his 
 guest's thin and much-worn coat. ' Don't you know, 
 David, that your health is money ? Suppose you get 
 lung trouble, who's to look after you ? ' 
 
 ' It don't do me no harm, sir. I can't get into my last 
 year's coat, and I couldn't afford a new one this winter.'
 
 CHAP. Ill YOUTH 239 
 
 'What wages do you earn?' asked Ancrum. His 
 manner was a curious mixture of melancholy gentle- 
 ness and of that terse sharpness in practical things 
 which the south country resents and the north country 
 takes for granted. 
 
 'Eighteen shillings a week, since last November, 
 sir.' 
 
 * That ought to be enough for a top-coat, you rascal, 
 with only yourself to feed,' said Mr. Ancrum, stretch- 
 ing himself in his hard armchair, so as to let his lame 
 leg with its heavy boot rest comfortably on the fender. 
 David had noticed at first sight of him that his old 
 playfellow had grown to look much older than in the 
 Clough End days. His hair was nearly white, and 
 lay in a large smooth wave across the broad brow. 
 And in that brow there were deep furrows, and many 
 a new and premature line in the hollow cheeks. Some- 
 thing withering and blighting seemed to have passed 
 over the whole man since those Sunday school lessons 
 in the Christian Brethren's upper room, which David 
 still remembered so well. But the eyes with their 
 irresistible intensity and force were the same. In 
 them the minister's youth — he was not yet thirty-five 
 — still spoke, as from a last stronghold in a failing 
 realm. They had a strange look too, the look as of a 
 secret life, not for the passer-by. 
 
 David smiled at Ancrum's last remark, and for a 
 moment or two looked into the fire without sj)eaking. 
 
 ' Well, if I'd bought clothes or anything else this 
 winter, I should be in a precious worse hole than I am,' 
 hs said reflectively. 
 
 ' Hole ? What's wrong, Davy ? ' 
 
 ' My master gave me the sack IMonday.' 
 
 'Humph!' said Ancrum, surveying him. 'Well, 
 you don't look much cast down about it, I must say.' 
 
 'Well, you see, I'd laid my plans,' said the young
 
 240 THE HISrOKY OF DAVID GKIEVP: book ii 
 
 man, an irrepressible gaiety and audacity in every 
 feature. ' It isn't as though I were taken by sur- 
 prise.' 
 
 ' Plans for a new place, I sui)pose ? ' 
 
 'Xo; I have done with that. I am going to set 
 up for myself. I know the trade, and I've got some 
 money.' 
 
 ' How old are you, Davy ? ' 
 
 'Just upon twenty,' said the lad, quietly. 
 
 The minister pursed up his lips and whistled a 
 little. 
 
 'AVell, that's bold,' he said. 'Somehow I like it, 
 though by all the laws of prudence I ought to jump 
 down your throat for announcing such a thing. But 
 how did you get your money ? and what have you 
 been doing these four years ? Come, I'm an old friend, 
 — though I dare say you don't think me much of a 
 fellow. Out with it ! Pay me anyway for all those 
 ships I made you long ago.' 
 
 And he held out his blanched hand, little more 
 now than skin and bone. David put his own into it 
 awkwardly enough. At this period of his life he was 
 not demonstrative. 
 
 The story he had to tell was, to Ancrum's thinking, 
 a remarkable one. He had come into Manchester on 
 an October evening with five shillings and threepence 
 in his pocket. From a point on the south-western 
 border of the city he took a 'bus for Deansgate and 
 Victoria Street. As he Avas sitting on tlie top feeding 
 his eyes on the lights and the crowd of the streets, but 
 wholly ignorant where to go and what first step to take, 
 he fell into talk with a decent working-man and his 
 wife sitting beside him. The result of the talk was 
 that they offered him shelter at fourpence a night. 
 He dismounted with them at Blackfriars Bridge, and 
 they made their way across the river to a street in
 
 CUAI'. Ill 
 
 YOUTH 211 
 
 Salford, where he lodged with them for a week. Dur- 
 ing that week he lived on oatmeal and an occasional 
 baked potato, paying his hostess eighteen pence addi- 
 tional for the \ise of her fire, and the riglit to sit in 
 her kitclien when he was not tramping about in search 
 of work. Jiy the end of the week he had found a 
 post as errand-boy at a large cheap bookseller's and 
 stationer's in Deausgate, at eight shillings a week, his 
 good looks, manner, and education evidently helping 
 him largely, as ^Ir. Ancrum could perceive through 
 the boy's very matter-of-fact account of himself. He 
 then made an agreement fur bed, use of fire, and 
 kitchen, with his new friends at four shillings a week, 
 and by the end of six months he was receiving a wage 
 of fourteen shillings as salesman and had saved close 
 on five pounds. 
 
 ' Well, now, come, how did you manage that, Davy ? ' 
 said Mr. Ancrum, interrupting. 'Don't run on in that 
 fashion. Details are the only interesting things in 
 life, and details I'll have. You must have found it a 
 precious tight fit to save that five pounds.' 
 
 Whereupon David, his eye kindling, ran out Benja- 
 min Franklin and the ' A'egetarian News,' his constant 
 friends from the first day of his acqviaintance Avith the 
 famous autobiograpliy till now, in spite of such occa- 
 sional lapses into carnal feeding as he liad confessed 
 to Daddy. In a few minutes Ancrum found himself 
 buried in 'details' as to 'flesh-forming' and 'bone- 
 i'orming' foods, as to nitrogen and albumen, as to the 
 saving (qualities of fruit, and Heaven knows what 
 besides. Long before the enthusiast had spent his 
 breath or his details, the minister cried ' Enough ! ' 
 
 ' Young materialist,' he said growling, ' what do you 
 mean at your age by thinking so much about your 
 body ? ' 
 
 'It Avasn't my body,, sir,' said David, simply, 'it 
 
 VOL. 1 R
 
 242 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 was just business. If I had got ill, I couldn't have 
 worked ; if I had lived like other chaps, I couldn't 
 liave saved. So I had to know something about it, 
 and it wasn't bad fun. After a bit I got the people I 
 lodged with to eat a lot of the things I eat — and that 
 was cheaper for me of course. The odd thing about 
 vegetarianism is that you come not to care a rap what 
 you eat. Your taste goes somehow. So long as 
 you're nourished and can do your work, that's all you 
 Avant.' 
 
 The minister sat studying his visitor a minute or 
 two in silence, though the eyes under the care-worn 
 brow were bright and restless. Any defiance of the 
 miserable body was in itself delightful to a man who 
 had all but slain himself many times over in the 
 soul's service. He, too, had been living on a crust for 
 months, denying himself first this, then that ingre- 
 dient of what should have been an invalid's diet. But 
 it had been for cause — for the poor — for self-mortifi- 
 cation. There was something just a little jarring to 
 the ascetic in this contact with a self-denial of the 
 purely rationalistic type, so easy — so cheerful — put 
 forward without the smallest suspicion of merit, as a 
 mere business measure. 
 
 David resumed his story. By the end of another 
 six months it appeared that he had groAvn tired of his 
 original shop, with its vast masses of school stationery 
 and cheap new books As might have been expected 
 from his childish antecedents, he had been soon laid 
 hold of by the old bookstalls, had read at them on his 
 way from work, had spent on them all that he could 
 persuade himself to spare from his hoard, and in a 
 year from the time he entered Manchester, thanks to 
 wits, reading, and chance friendships, w\as already a 
 budding bibliophile. Slates and primers became sud- 
 denly odious to a person aware of the existence of
 
 CHAi-. Ill YOUTH 243 
 
 Aldiucs ami Elzevirs, and bitten witli tlie passion, 
 then just let loose on the book-buying world, for lirst 
 editions of the famous books of the century. When- 
 ever that sum in the savings bank should have 
 readied a certain height, he would become a second- 
 hand bookseller with a stall. Till then he must save 
 more and learn his trade. So at the end of his first 
 year he left his employers, and by the help of excel- 
 lent recommendations from them got the post of assist- 
 ant in Purcell's shop in Half Street, at a rise of two 
 shillings, afterwards converted into four shillings a 
 week. 
 
 ' And I've been there three years — very near,' said 
 David, straightening himself with a little nervous 
 gesture peculiar to him. ' If you'd been anywhere 
 about, sir, you'd have wondered how I could have 
 stayed so long. But I wanted to learn the trade and 
 I've learnt it — no thanks to old Purcell.' 
 
 'What was wrong with him ?' 
 
 ' Mostly brains ! ' said the lad, with a scornful but 
 not unattractive conceit. 'He was a hard master to 
 live with — that don't matter. But he is a fool ! I 
 don't mean to say he don't know a lot about some 
 things — but he thinks he knows everything — and he 
 don't. And he'll not let anyone tell him — not he ! 
 Once, if you'll believe it, he got the Aldine Virgil of 
 1501, for twenty-five shillings — came from a gentle- 
 man out Eccles way — a fellow selling his father's 
 library and didn't know bad from good, — real fine tall 
 copy, — binding poor, — but a stuniier take it altogether 
 — worth twenty pounds to Quaritch or Ellis, any day. 
 Well, all I could do, he let a man have it for five shil- 
 lings profit next day, just to spite me, I believe, be- 
 cause I told him it was a good thing. Then he got 
 sick about that, I believe, though he never let out, and 
 the next time he found anything that looked good, —
 
 244 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 giminy ! — but he put it on. Kow you know, sir ' — 
 Mr. Ancrum smiled at the confidential eagerness of 
 the expert — 'you know, sir, it's not many of those 
 Venice or Florence Dantes that are worth anything. 
 If you get the first edition of Landino's '• Commen- 
 tary," or the other man's, Imola's, isn't it — ' 
 
 The minister lifted his eyebrows — the Italian came 
 out pat, and, so far as he knew, right — 
 
 ' Well, of course, theifre worth money — always fetch 
 their price. But the later editions are no good at all 
 — nobody but a gentleman-collector, very green, you 
 know, sir ' — the twinkle in the boy's eye showed how 
 much his subject was setting him at his ease — ' would 
 be bothered with them. Well, if he didn't get hold of 
 an edition of 1540 or so — worth about eight shillings, 
 and dear at that — and send it up to one of the London 
 men as a good thing. He makes me pack it and send 
 it and register it — you might have thought it was the 
 Mazarin Bible, bar size. And then, of course, next 
 day, down comes the book again flying, double quick. 
 I kept out of his way, post-time ! But I'd have given 
 something to see the letter he got.' 
 
 And David, rising, put his hands in his pockets, 
 and stood before the fire chuckling with irrepressible 
 amusement. 
 
 * Well, then you know there's the first editions of 
 Rousseau — not a bit rare, as rare goes — lucky if you 
 get thirty shillings for the " Contrat Social," or the 
 "Nouvelle Heloi'se," even good copies — ' 
 
 Again the host's eyebrows lifted. The French 
 names ran remarkably ; there was not the least bog- 
 gling over them. But he said nothing, and David 
 rattled on, describing, with a gusto which never failed, 
 one of Purcell's book-selling enormities after another. 
 It was evident that he despised his master with a pas- 
 sionate contempt. It was evident also that Purcell
 
 CHAP. Ill 
 
 YOUTH 245 
 
 had shown a mean and unreasoning jealousy of his 
 assistant. The English tradesman inherits a domi- 
 neering tradition towards his subordinates, and in 
 Puroell's case, as we know, the instincts of an egotis- 
 tical piety had reinforced those of the employer. Yet 
 Mr. Ancrum felt some sympathy with Purcell. 
 
 ' Well, Davy,' he said at last, ' so you were too 'cute 
 for your man, that's plain. But I don't suppose he 
 put it on that ground wlieu he gave you the sack ? ' 
 
 And he looked up, with a little dry smile. 
 
 ' No ! ' cried David, abruptly. ' No ! not he. If 
 you go and ask him he'll tell you he sent me off be- 
 cause I would go to the Secularist meetings at the 
 Hall of Science, and air myself as an atheist ; that's 
 his way of putting it. And it was doing him harm 
 with his religious customers ! As if I was going to 
 let him dictate where I went on Sundays ! ' 
 
 'Of course not,' said Ancrum, with a twist of his 
 oddly shaped mouth. ' Even the very youngest of us 
 might sometimes be the better for advice ; but, hang 
 it, let's be free — free to " make fools of ourselves," as 
 a wise man hath it. Well, Davy, no offence,' for his 
 guest had flushed suddenly. * So you go to the Hall 
 of Science ? Did you hear Holyoake and Bradlaugh 
 there the other night ? You like that kind of thing? ' 
 
 ' I like to hear it,' said the lad, stoutly, meeting his 
 old teacher's look, half nervously, half defiantly, ' It's 
 a great deal more lively than what you hear at most 
 churches, sir. And why shouldn't one hear every- 
 thing ? ' 
 
 This was not precisely the tone which the same cul- 
 prit had adopted towards Dora Lomax. The Voltairean 
 suddenly felt himself to be making excuses — shabby 
 excuses — in the presence of somebody connected, how- 
 ever distantly, with Vinfdme. He drew himself up 
 with an angry shake of his whole powerful frame.
 
 246 TTIF. TTISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 'Oh, Avliy not?' said Ancrum, with a shrug, 'if 
 life's long enough' — and he absently lifted and let 
 fall a book which lay on the table beside him ; it 
 was Newman's ' Dream of Gerontius ' — ' if life's long 
 enough, and — happy enough! Well, so you've been 
 learning French, I can hear. Teaching yourself ? ' 
 
 'Xo; there's an old Frenchman, old Barbier — do 
 you know him, sir ? He gives lessons at a shilling an 
 hour. Very few people go to him now; they want 
 younger men. And there's lots of them about. But 
 old Barbier knows more about books than any of them, 
 I'll be bound.' 
 
 'Has he introduced you to French novels ? I never 
 read any ; but they're bad, of course — must be. In all 
 those things I'm a Britisher and believe what the 
 Britishers say.' 
 
 ' We're just at the end of " Manon Lescaut," ' said 
 David, doggedly. 'And partly with him, partly by 
 myself, I've read a bit of Kousseau — and a good lot of 
 Diderot, — and Voltaire.' 
 
 David threw an emphasis into the last name, which 
 was meant to atone to himself for the cowardice of a 
 few minutes before. The old boyish feeling towards 
 Mr. Ancrum, which had revived in him when he en- 
 tered the room, had gradually disappeared again. He 
 bore the minister no real grudge for having forgotten 
 him, but he wished it to be clearly understood that 
 the last fragments of the Christian Brethren yoke had 
 dropped from his neck. 
 
 ' Ah ! don't know anything about them,' said An- 
 crum, slowly ; ' but then, as you know, I'm a very igno- 
 rant person. Well, now, was it Voltaire took you to 
 the secularists, or the secularists to Voltaire ? ' 
 
 David laughed, but did not give a reply im- 
 mediately. 
 
 ' Well, never mind,' said the minister. ' All Chris-
 
 CHAP. Ill YOT-nr 247 
 
 tians are fools, of course — that's understood. — Is that 
 all you have been learning these four years ? ' 
 
 'I work at Latin every morning,' said David, very 
 red, and on his dignity. ' I've begun Greek, and I go 
 to the science classes, mathematics and chemistry, at 
 tlie j\[echanics' Institute.' 
 
 Mr. Ancrum's face softened. 
 
 ' Why, I'll be bound you have to go to work pretty 
 early, Davy?' 
 
 ' Seven o'clock, sir, I take the shutters down. But 
 I get an hour and a half first, and three hours in the 
 evening. This winter I've got through the "yEneid," 
 and Horace's '•' Epistles " and " Ars Poetica." Do you 
 remember, sir ? ' — and the lad's voice grew sharp once 
 more, tightening as it were under the pressure of eager- 
 ness and ambition from beneath — ' do you remember 
 that Scaliger read the " Iliad " in twenty days, and was 
 a finished Greek scholar in two years ? Why can't 
 one do that now?' 
 
 'Why shouldn't you?' said Mr. Ancruni, looking 
 up at him. ' Who helps you in your Greek ? ' 
 
 ' Xo one ; 1 get translations.' 
 
 'Well, now, look here, Davy. I'm an ignorant 
 person, as I told you, but I learnt some Latin and 
 Greek at INIanchester oSTew College. Come to me in the 
 evenings, and I'll help you with your Greek, unless 
 you've got beyond me. Where are yoii ? ' 
 
 The budding Scaliger reported himself. He had 
 read the 'Anabasis,' some Herodotus, three plays of 
 Euripides, and was now making some desperate efforts 
 on J^schylus and Sophocles. Any Plato ? David 
 made a face. He had read two or three dialogues in 
 English ; didn't want to go on, didn't care about him. 
 Ah ! Ancrum supposed not. 
 
 'Twelve hours' shop,' said the minister reflecting, 
 'more or less, — two hours' work before shop, — three
 
 248 THE HISTOEY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 hours or so after shop ; that's what you ma}' call driv- 
 ing it hard. You couldn't do it, Richard Ancrum,' 
 and he shook his head with a whimsical melancholy. 
 • But you were always a poor starveling. Youth that 
 is youth "s tough. Don't tell me, sir,' and he looked 
 up sharply, 'that you don't amuse yourself. I 
 wouldn't believe it. There never was a man built 
 like you yet that didn't amuse himself.' 
 
 David smiled, but said nothing. 
 
 ' Billiards ? ' 
 
 'No, sir.' 
 
 ' Betting ? ' 
 
 ' No, sir. They cost money.' 
 
 ' Niggardly dog ! Drink ? — no, I'll answer that for 
 myself.' 
 
 The minister dropped his catechism, and sat nurs- 
 ing his lame leg and thinking. Suddenly he broke 
 out Avith, ' How many young women are you in love 
 with, David ? ' 
 
 David showed his white teeth. 
 
 ' I only know two, sir. One's my master's daughter 
 — she's rather a pretty girl, T think ' 
 
 'That'll do. You're not in love with her. Who's 
 the other ? ' 
 
 ' The other 's Mr. Lomax's daughter, — Lomax of the 
 Parlour, that queer restaurant, sir, in Market Place. 
 She — well, I don't know how to describe her. She's 
 not good-looking — at least, I don't think so,' he added 
 dubiously. ' She's very High Church, and fasts all 
 Lent. I think she does Church embroidery.' 
 
 'And doesn't think any the better of you for attend- 
 ing the Hall of Science ? Sensible girl ! Still, when 
 people mean to fall in love, they don't think twice of 
 that sort of thing. I make a note of Lomax's daughter. 
 Ah ! enter supper. David, if you let any 'ism stand be- 
 tween yon and that veal pie, I despair of your future.'
 
 CHAP. Ill YOUTH 249 
 
 David, however, in the course of the meal, showed 
 himself as superior to narrowness of view in the 
 matter of food-stutts as in other matters. The meal 
 went merrily. Mr. Ancruin dropped his half-sarcastic 
 tone, and food, warmth, and talk loosened the lad's 
 fibres, and made him more and more human, hand- 
 some, and attractive. Soon his old friend knew all 
 that he wanted to know, — the sum David had saved 
 — thirty pounds in the savings-bank — the sort of stock 
 he meant to set up, the shop he had taken — with a 
 stall, of course — no beginner need hope to prosper 
 without a stall. Customers must be delicately angled 
 for at a safe distance — show yourself too much, and, 
 like trout, they Hashed away. See everything, force 
 nothing. Let a book be turned over for nineteen 
 days, the chances were that on the twentieth you 
 would turn over the price. As to expecting the class 
 of cheap customers to commit themselves by walking 
 into a shop, it was simple madness. Of course, when 
 yon were 'established,' that was another matter. 
 
 By the help of a certain wealthy Unitarian, one Mr. 
 Doyle, with whom he had made friends in Purcell's 
 shop, and whom he had boldly asked for the use of 
 his name as a reference, the lad had taken — so it 
 appeared — a small house in Potter Street, a narrow 
 but frequented street in the neighbourhood of Deans- 
 gate and all the great banks and insurance offices in 
 King Street. His shop took up the ground floor. 
 The two floors above were let, and the tenants would 
 remain. But into the attics and the parlour kitchen 
 behind the shop, he meant, ultimately, when he could 
 afford it, to put himself and his sister. He could 
 only get the house on a yearly tenancy, as it and the 
 others near it were old, and would probably be rebuilt 
 before long. lUit meanwhile the rent was all the 
 lower because of the insecurity of tenure.
 
 250 THE HISTOEY OF DAVlD GRIEVE book ii 
 
 At the mention of the boy's sister, Ancrum looked 
 up with a start. 
 
 * Ah, to he sure ! What became of that poor child 
 after you left ? The Clough End friends vv^ho wrote 
 to me of your disappearance had more pity for her, 
 Davy, than they had for you.' 
 
 A sudden repulsion and reserve darkened the black 
 eyes opposite. 
 
 ' There was no helping it,' he said with hasty defiance. 
 There was a moment's silence. Then a wish to explain 
 himself rose in David. 
 
 ' I couldn't have stayed, sir,' he said, with a curious 
 half-reproachful accent. ' I told you about how it was 
 before you left. And there were other things. I should 
 have cut my own throat or some one else's if it had 
 gone on. But I haven't forgotten Louie. You remem- 
 ber Tom Mullins at the foundry. He's written me 
 every mouth. I paid him for it. I know all about 
 Louie, and they don't know anything about me. They 
 think I'm in America.' 
 
 His eyes lit again with the joy of contrivance. 
 
 as that kind, Davy?' 
 
 'Yes, sir ' and for the first time the minister 
 
 heard in the boy's voice the tone of a man's judgment. 
 '1 couldn't have Louie on me just yet. I was going 
 to ask you, sir, not to tell the people at Clough End 
 you've seen me. It would make it very hard. You 
 know what Louie is — and she's all right. She's learnt 
 a trade.' 
 
 ' What trade ? ' 
 
 ' Silk-weaving — from Margaret Dawson.' 
 
 ' Poor soul — poor saint ! There'd be more things 
 than her trade to be learnt from Margaret Dawson if 
 anyone had a mind to learn them. What of 'Lias ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, he died, sir, a week after I left.' The lad's 
 voice dropped. Then he added slowly, looking away.
 
 CHAP, in 
 
 YOUTH 251 
 
 'Tom said he was very quiet — he didn't suffer much — 
 not at the end.' 
 
 ' Aye, the clouds lift at sunset,' said Mr. Ancrum in 
 an altered tone ; ' the air clears before the night ! ' 
 
 His head fell forward on his breast, and he sat 
 drumming on the table. They hud finished supper, 
 the little, bustling landlady had cleared away, and 
 Davy was thinking of going. Suddenly the minister 
 sprang up and stood before the hre, looking down at 
 his guest. 
 
 ' Davy, do you want to know why I didn't write to 
 you ? I was ill first — very ill ; then — / was in hell ! ' 
 
 David started. Into the thin, ci'ooked face, with 
 the seeking eyes, there had flashed an expression — 
 sinister, indescribable, a sort of dumb rage. It changed 
 the man altogether. 
 
 ' I was in hell ! ' he repeated slowly. ' I know no 
 more about it. Other people may tell you, perhaps, 
 if you come across them — I can't. There were days 
 at Clough End — always a certain number in the year 
 — when this earth slipped away from me, and the 
 fiends came about me, but this was months. They 
 say I was overdone in the cotton famine j^ears ago 
 just before I came to Clough End. I got pneumonia 
 after I left you that May — it doesn't matter. When 
 I knew there was a sun again, I wrote to ask about 
 you. You had left Kinder and gone — no one knew 
 where.' 
 
 David sat nervously silent, not knowing what to 
 say, his mind gradually filling with the sense of some- 
 thing tragic, irreparable. Mr. Ancrum, too, stood 
 straight before him, as though turned to stone. 
 
 At last David got up and approached him. Had 
 Ancrum been looking he must have been touched by 
 the change in the lad's expression. The hard self- 
 reliant force of the face had melted into feeling.
 
 252 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 ' Are you better now, sir ? I knew you must have 
 been ill,' he stammered. 
 
 Ancrum started as though just wakened. 
 
 ' 111 ? Yes, I was pretty bad,' he said briskly, and 
 in his most ordinary tone, though with a long breath. 
 ' But I'm as fit as anything now. Good night, Davy, 
 good night. Come a walk with me some day ? Sun- 
 day afternoon ? Done. Here, write me your new 
 address.' 
 
 The tall form and curly black head disappeared, 
 the little lodging-house room, with its round rosewood 
 table, its horsehair sofa, its chiffonnier, and its prints 
 of ' Sport at Balmoral ' and ' The INIother's Kiss,' had 
 resumed the dingy formality of every day. 
 
 The minister sank into his seat and held his hands 
 out over the blaze. He was in pain. All life was to 
 him more or less a struggle with physical ill. But it 
 was not so primarily that he conceived it. The physi- 
 cal ill was nothing except as representing a philo- 
 sophical necessity. 
 
 That lad, with all his raw certainties — of himself, 
 his knowledge, his Voltaire — the poor minister felt 
 once or twice a piteous envy of him, as he sat on 
 through the night hours. Life was ill-apportioned. 
 The poor, the lonely, the feeble — it is they who want 
 certainty, want hope most. And because they are 
 lonely and feeble, because their brain tissues are dis- 
 eased, and their life from no fault of their OAvn un- 
 natural, nature who has made them dooms them to 
 despair and doubt. Is there any 'soul,' any 'person- 
 ality ' for the man wlio is afflicted and weakened Avith 
 intermittent melancholia ? Where is his identity, 
 where his responsibility ? And if there is none for 
 him, how does the accident of health bestow them on 
 his neighbour ?
 
 CHAT, in 
 
 YOUTH 2G3 
 
 Questions of this sort had beset Richard Ancrum 
 for years. On the little book-tal)le to his right lay 
 papers of Huxley's, of Clilford's, and several worn 
 volumes of inental pathology. The brooding intellect 
 was for ever raising the same problem, the same spec- 
 tre world of universal doubt, in which God, conscience, 
 faith, were words without a meaning. 
 
 But side by side with the restlessness of the intel- 
 lect there had always gone the imperious and prevail- 
 ing claim of temi)erament. Beside Huxley and Clif- 
 ford, lay Newman's 'Sermons' and 'Apologia,' and a 
 little High Church manual of self-examination. And 
 on the wall above the book-table hung a memorandum- 
 slate on which were a number of addresses and dates 
 — the addresses of some forty boys whom the minister 
 taught on Sunday in one of the Unitarian Sunday 
 schools of Manchester, and visited in tlie week. The 
 care and training of street arabs had been his passion 
 when he was still a student at Manchester Xew Col- 
 lege. Then had come his moment of utterance — a 
 thirst for preaching, for religious influence ; though 
 he could not bring himself to accept any particular 
 shibboleth or take any kind of orders. He found 
 something congenial for a time to a deep though strug- 
 gling faith in the leadership of the Christian Brethren. 
 Xow, however, something had broken in him ; he could 
 preach no more. But he could go back to his old 
 school ; he could teach his boys on Sundays and week 
 days ; he could take them out country walks in spite of 
 his lame limb ; he could deny himself even the com- 
 monest necessaries of life for their sake ; he could 
 watch over each of them with a fervour, a moral 
 intensity which wore him out. In this, in some insig- 
 nificant journalism for a religious paper, and in think- 
 ing, he spent his life. 
 
 There had been a dark page in his history. He had
 
 254 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book ii 
 
 hardly left ^lanchester New College when he married 
 suddenly a girl of some beauty, but with an unde- 
 veloped sensuous temperament. They were to live on 
 a crust and give themselves to the service of man. 
 His own dream was still fresh when she deserted him 
 in the company of one of his oldest friends. He fol- 
 lowed them, found them both in black depths of 
 remorse, and took her back. But the strain of living 
 together proved too much. She implored him to let 
 her go and earn her living apart. She had been a 
 teacher and she proposed to return to her profession. 
 He saw her established in Glasgow in the house of 
 some good people who knew her history, and who got 
 her a post in a small school. Then he returned to 
 Manchester and threw himself with reckless ardour 
 into the Avork of feeding the hungry, and nursing the 
 dying, in the cotton famine. He emerged a broken 
 man, physically and morally, liable thenceforward to 
 recurrent crises of melancholia; but they were not 
 frequent or severe enough to prevent his working. 
 He was at the time entirely preoccupied with certain 
 religious questions, and thankfully accepted the call 
 to the little congregation at Clougli End. 
 
 Since then he had visited his wife twice every year. 
 He was extremely poor. His family, who had des- 
 tined him for the Presbyterian ministry, were estranged 
 from him ; hardly anyone in Manchester knew him 
 intimately ; only in one house, far away in the Scotch 
 lowlands, were there two people, who deeply loved 
 and thoroughly understood him. There he went when 
 his dark hours came upon him ; and thence, after the 
 terrible illness which overtook him on his leaving 
 Clough End, he emerged again, shattered but indom- 
 itable, to take up the battle of life as he understood it. ■ 
 
 He was not an able nor a literary man. His mind 
 Avas a strange medley, and his mental sight far from
 
 CHAP. IV YOTJTir 250 
 
 clear. Of late the study of Newman had been a reve- 
 lation to liiin. I)Ut he did not cease for that to read 
 the books of scit'iitific psychology wliich tortured hiiu 
 — the books which seemed to make of mind a function 
 of matter, and man the slave of an immoral nature. 
 The only persistent and original gift in him — yet after 
 all it is the gift which for ever divides the sheep from 
 the goats — was tlmt of a 'liunger and thirst after 
 righteousness.' 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 It was towards noon on a November day, and Dora 
 Lomax sat working at her embroidery frame in the 
 little sitting-room overlooking ^Market Place. The 
 pale wintry sun touched her bent head, her deftly 
 moving hand, and that device of the risen Christ cir- 
 cled in golden flame on which she was at work. The 
 room in which she sat was old and low ; tlie ceiling 
 bulged here and there, the floor had unexpected slopes 
 and declivities. The furniture was of the chea})est, the 
 commonest odds and ends of a broker's shop, for 
 the most part. There was the usual horsehair suite, 
 the usual cheap sideboard, and dingy druggeting of a 
 large geometrical pattern. But amid these uninviting 
 articles tliere were a few things which gave the room 
 individuality — some old prints of places abroad, of 
 different shapes and sizes, which partly disguised the 
 blue and chocolate paper on the walls ; some bits of 
 foreign carving, Swiss and Italian ; some eggs and 
 shells and stuffed birds, some of these last from the 
 Vosges, some from the Ali)s ; a cageful of canaries, 
 singing their best against the noise of Manchester ; 
 and, lastly, an old bookcase full of miscellaneous vol- 
 umes, mostly large and worthless ' sets ' of old maga-
 
 25G THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 zines and encyclopeedias, which represented the relics 
 of Daddy's bookselling days. 
 
 The room smelt strongly of cooking, a mingled 
 odour of boiling greens and frying onions and stored 
 apples ■which never deserted it, and produced a con- 
 stant slight sense of nausea in Dora, who, like most 
 persons of sedentary occupation, was in matters of 
 eating and digestion somewhat sensitive and delicate. 
 From below, too, there seemed to sj)read upwards a 
 general sense of bustle and disquiet. Doors banged, 
 knives and plates rattled perpetually, the great swing- 
 door into the street Avas for ever opening and shutting, 
 each time shaking the old, frail house with its roughly 
 built additions through and through, and there was 
 a distant skurry of voices that never paused. The 
 restaurant indeed was in full work, and Daddy's voice 
 could be heard at intervals, shouting and chattering. 
 Dora had been at work since half-past seven, market- 
 ing, giving orders, making up accounts, writing bills 
 of fare, and otherwise organising the work of the day. 
 Kow she had left the work for an hour or two to her 
 father, and the stout Lancashire cook with her various 
 handmaidens. Daddy's irritable pride liked to get 
 her out of the way and make a lady of her as much as 
 she would allow, and in her secret heart she often felt 
 that her embroidery, for which she was well paid as a 
 skilled and inventive hand, furnished a securer basis 
 for their lives than this restaurant, which, in spite of its 
 apparent success, was a frequent source of dread and 
 discomfort to her. The money obligation it involved 
 filled her sometimes with a kind of panic. She knew 
 her father so well I 
 
 Now, as she sat absorbed in her work, sewing her 
 heart into it, for every stitch in it delighted not only 
 her skilled artistic sense but her religious feeling, 
 little waves of anxious thought swept across her one
 
 CHAP. IV 
 
 YOUTH 257 
 
 after another. She was a person of timid and brood- 
 ing temperament, and her father's eccentricities and 
 past history provided her with much just cause for 
 worry. l>ut to-day she was not tliinking much of him. 
 
 Again and again there came between her and her 
 silks a face, a face of careless pride and power, framed 
 in strong waves of black hair. It had once repelled 
 her quite as much as it attracted her. But at any rate, 
 ever since she had first seen it, it had taken a place 
 apart in her mind, as though in the yielding stuff of 
 memory and feeling one impression out of the thou- 
 sands of every day had, without warning, yet irre- 
 vocably, stamped itself deeper than the rest. The 
 owner of it — David Grieve — lilled her now, as always, 
 with invincible antagonisms and dissents. But still 
 the thought of him had in some gradual way become 
 of late part of her habitual consciousness, associated 
 always, and on the whole painfully associated, with 
 the thought of Lucy Purcell. 
 
 For Luoy was such a little goose ! To think of the 
 way in which she had behaved towards young Grieve 
 in the fortnight succeeding his notice to quit, before 
 he finally left Purcell's service, made Dora hot all 
 over. How could Lucy demean herself so ? and show 
 such tempers and airs towards a man who clearly did 
 not think anything at all about her ? And now she 
 had flung herself upon Dora, imploring her cousin to 
 help her, and threatening desperate things unless she 
 and David were still enabled to meet. And meanwhile 
 Purcell had flatly forbidden any communication be- 
 tween his household and the young reprobate he had 
 turned out, whose threatened prosperity made at this 
 moment the angry preoccupation of his life. 
 
 What was Dora to do ? Was she to aid and abet 
 Lucy, against her father's will, in pursuing David 
 Grieve ? And if in spite of all appearances the little 
 
 VOL. I s
 
 258 ' THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 self-willed creature succeeded, and Dora were the 
 means of her marrying David, how would Dora's con- 
 science stand ? Here was a young man who believed 
 in nothing, and openly said so, who took part in those 
 terrible atheistical meetings and discussions, which, 
 as Father Kussell had solemnly said, were like a 
 plague-centre in Manchester, drawing in and cor- 
 rupting soul after soul. And Dora was to help in 
 throwing her young cousin, while she was still almost 
 a child with no * Church principles ' to aid and protect 
 her, into the hands of this enemy of the Lord and His 
 Church? 
 
 Then, when it came to this point, Dora would be 
 troubled and drawn away by memories of young 
 Grieve's talk and ways, of his dashes into Market 
 Place to see Daddy since he had set up for himself, 
 of his bold plans for the future which delighted Daddy 
 and took her breath away ; of the flash of his black 
 eyes ; the triumphant energy of his youth ; and those 
 indications in him, too, which had so startled her of 
 late since they — she and he — had drojjped the futile 
 sparrings in which their acquaintance began, of an 
 inner softness, a sensitive magnetic something — in- 
 describable. 
 
 Dora's needle paused in mid-air. Then her hand 
 dropped on her lap. A slight but charming smile — 
 born of youth, sympathy, involuntary admiration — 
 dawned on her face. She sat so for a minute or two 
 lost in reminiscence. 
 
 The clock outside struck twelve. Dora with a start 
 felt along the edge of her frame under her work and 
 brought out a book. It was a little black, worn manual 
 of prayei's for various times and occasions compiled by 
 a High Church dignitary. For Dora it had a talis- 
 manic virtue. She turned now to one of tlie 'Prayers 
 for Noonday,' made the sign of the cross, and slipped
 
 CHAP. IV 
 
 YOUTH 
 
 on to her knees for an instant. Then she rose happily 
 and went back to her work. It was such acts as this 
 that made the thread on which lier life of mystical 
 emotion was strung. 
 
 But her father was a Secularist of a pronounced 
 type, and her mother had been a rigid Baptist, old- 
 fashioned and sincere, filled with a genuine horror of 
 Papistry and all its ways. 
 
 Adrian O'Connor Lomax, to give Daddy his whole 
 magnificent name, was the son of a reed-maker, of 
 Irish extraction, at Hyde, and was brought up at first 
 to follow his father's trade — that of making the wire 
 ' reed,' or frame, into which the threads of the warp 
 are fastened before weaving. But such patient drudg- 
 ery, often continued, as it was in those days, for twelve 
 and fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, was gall 
 and wormwood to a temperament like Daddy's. He 
 developed a taste for reading, fell in with Byron's 
 poems, and caught the fever of them ; then branched 
 out into politics just at the time of the first Reform 
 Bill, when all over Lancashire the memory of Peter- 
 loo was still burning, and when men like Henry Hunt 
 and Samuel Bamford were the political heroes of 
 every weaver's cottage. He developed a taste for 
 itinerant lecturing and preaching, and presently left 
 his family and tramped to Manchester. 
 
 Here after many vicissitudes — including an enthusi- 
 astic and on the whole creditable participation, as an 
 itinerant lecturer, in the movement for the founding 
 of Mechanics' Institutes, then spreading all over the 
 north — Daddy, to his ill-fortune, came across his 
 future brother-in-law, the bookseller Purcell. At the 
 moment Daddy was in a new and unaccustomed phase 
 of pietv. After a period of revolutionary spouting, in 
 which Byron, Tom Paine, and the various publica-
 
 2G0 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 tions of Eichard Carlile had formed his chief scrip- 
 tures, a certain Baptist preacher laid liokl of the 
 Irishman's mercurial sense. Daddy was awakened 
 and converted, burnt his Byron and his Tom Paine in 
 his three-pair back with every circumstance of insult 
 and contumely, and looked about for an employer 
 Avorthy of one of the elect. Purcell at the time had a 
 shop in one of the main streets connecting Manches- 
 ter and Salford ; he was already an elder at the 
 chapel Daddy frequented ; the two made acquaintance 
 and Lomax became Purcell's assistant. At the moment 
 the trade offered to him attracted Daddy vastly. He 
 had considerable pretensions to literature ; was a 
 Shakespearian, a debater, and a haunter of a certain 
 literary symposium, held for a long time at one of the 
 old Manchester inns, and attended by most of the 
 small wits and poets of a then small and homely town. 
 The gathering had nothing saintly about it; free 
 drinking went often hand in hand with free thought ; 
 Daddy's infant zeal was shocked, but Daddy's instincts 
 were invincible, and he went. 
 
 The result of the bookselling experiment has been 
 already told by Daddy himself. It was, of course, 
 inevitable. Purcell was then a young man, but in his 
 dealings Avith Daddy he showed precisely the same 
 cast-iron self-importance, the same slowness of brain 
 coupled witli the same assumptions of an unbounded 
 and righteous authority, the same unregenerate greedi- 
 ness in small matters of gain and loss which now in 
 his later life had made him odious to David Grieve. 
 Moreover, Daddy, by a happy instinct, had at once 
 made common cause with Purcell's downtrodden sis- 
 ter, going on even, as his passionate sense of opposi- 
 tion developed, to make love to the poor luimble thing 
 mainly for tlie sake of annoying the brother. The 
 crisis came ; the irritated tyrant brought down a heavy
 
 CHAP. IV Yr)u rii 261 
 
 hand, and Daddy and Isabella disappeared together 
 from the establishnient in Chapel Street. 
 
 liy the time Daddy had set up as the husband of 
 Purcell's sister in a little shop precisely opposite to 
 that of his former employer, he had again thrown over 
 all pretensions to sanctity, was, on the contrary, con- 
 vinced afresh that all religion was one vast perennial 
 im^josture, dominated, we may suppose, in this as in 
 most other matters, by the demon of hatred which 
 now possessed him towards his brother-in-law. His 
 wife, poor soul, was beginning to feel herself tied for 
 good to the tail of a comet destined to some mad career 
 or other, and quite uncontrollable by any efforts of 
 hers. Lomax had married her for the most unprom- 
 ising reasons in the world, and he soon tired of her, 
 and of the trade, which required a sustained effort, 
 which he was incapable of giving. As long as Purcell 
 remained opposite, indeed, hate and rivalry kept him 
 up to the mark. He was an attractive figure at that 
 time, with his long fair hair and his glancing greenish 
 eyes ; and his queer discursive talk attracted many a 
 customer, whom he would have been quite competent 
 to keep had his character been of the same profitable 
 stuff as his ability. 
 
 But when Purcell vanished across the river into 
 Manchester, the zest of Daddy's bookselling enter- 
 prise de})arted also. He began to neglect his shop, 
 was off here and there lecturing and debating, and 
 when he came back again it was plain to the wife 
 that their scanty money had been squandered on 
 other excesses than those of talk. At last the busi- 
 ness fell to ruins, and debts pressed. Then suddenly 
 Daddy was persuaded by a French commercial travel- 
 ler to take up his old trade of reed-making, and go 
 and seek employment across the Channel, where reed- 
 makers were said to be in demand.
 
 262 THE HISTOKY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 In ecstasy at the idea of travel thus presented to 
 him, Daddy devoured what books about France he 
 could get hold of, and tried to teach himself French. 
 Then one morning, without a Avord to his wife, he 
 stole downstairs and out of the shop, and was far on 
 the road to London before his flight was discovered. 
 His poor wife shed some tears, but he had ceased to 
 care for her she believed, largely because she had 
 brought him no children, and his habits had begun to 
 threaten to lead her with unpleasant rapidity to the 
 workhouse. So she took comfort, and with the help 
 of some friends set up a little stationery and fancy 
 business, which just kept her alive. 
 
 Meanwhile Lomax found no work in Picardy, 
 whither he had first gone, and ultimately wandered 
 across France to Alsace, in search of bread, a prey to 
 all possible hardships and privations. But nothing 
 daunted him. The glow of adventure and romance 
 was on every landscape. Cathedrals, forests, the wide 
 river-plains of central France, with their lights and 
 distances, — all things on this new earth and under 
 these new heavens 'haunted him like a passion.' He 
 travelled in perpetual delight, making love no doubt 
 here and there to some passing Mignon, and starving 
 with the gayest of hearts. 
 
 At Mulhausen he found work, and being ill and 
 utterly destitute, submitted to it for a while. But as 
 soon as he had got back his health and saved some 
 money, he set out again, walking this time, staff in 
 hand, over the whole Rhine country and into the 
 Netherlands. There in the low Dutch plains he fell 
 ill again, and the beauty of the Rhineland was no 
 longer there to stand like a spell between him and the 
 pains of poverty. He seemed to come to himself, 
 after a dream in which the world and all its forms had 
 passed him by 'apparelled in celestial light.' And
 
 CHAP. IV YOUTH 263 
 
 the process of self-finding was attended by some at 
 least of those salutary pangs which eternally belong 
 to it. lie suddenly took a resolution, crept on board 
 a coal smack going from a Dutch port to Grimsby, 
 toiled across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and appeared 
 one evening, worn to a shadow, in his wife's little 
 shop in Salford. 
 
 He was received as foolish women in wliom there is 
 no ineradicable taint of cruelty or hate will always 
 receive the prodigal who returns. And when Daddy 
 had been fed and clothed, he turned out for a time to 
 be so amiable, so grateful a Daddy, such good company, 
 as he sat in the chair by his wife's fire and told stories 
 of his travels to her and anybody else who might drop 
 in, that not only the wife but the neighbourhood was 
 appeased. His old friends came back to him, he be- 
 gan to receive overtures to write in some of the hum- 
 bler papers, to lecture on his adventures in the 
 Yorkshire and Lancashire towns. Daddy expanded, 
 harangued, grew daily in good looks and charm under 
 his wife's eyes. 
 
 At last one day the papers came in with news of 
 Louis Philippe's overthrow. Daddy grew restless, and 
 began to study the foreign news with avidity. Revo- 
 lution spread, and what with democracy abroad and 
 Chartism at home, there was more stimulus in the air 
 than such brains as Daddy's could rightly stand. One 
 May day he walked into the street, looked hesitatingly 
 up and down it, shading his eyes against the sun. 
 Then with a shake of his long hair, as of one throw- 
 ing off a weight, he drew his hat from under his arm, 
 put it on, felt in his pockets, and set off at a run, 
 head downwards, while poor Isabella Lorn ax was sweep- 
 ing her kitchen. During the next few days he was heard 
 of, rumour said, now here, now there, but one might as 
 well have attempted to catch and hold the Pied Piper.
 
 204 THE HISTORY f)F DAVTD GKIEVE hook ii 
 
 He was away for ratlier more than twenty months. 
 Then one day, as before, a lean, emaciated, sun- 
 browned figure came slowly up the Salford street, 
 looking for a familiar door. It was Daddy. He went 
 into the shop, Avhich was empty, stared, with a coun- 
 tenance in which relief and repulsion were oddly 
 mingled, at the boxes of stationery, at the dusty coun- 
 ter with its string and glass cases, when suddenly the 
 inside door, which was standing ajar, was pushed 
 stealthily inwards, and a child stood in the doorway. 
 It was a tottering baby of a year old, holding in one 
 fat hand a crust of bread which it had been suckiner. 
 When it saw the stranger it looked at him gravely for 
 a second. Then without a trace of fear or shyness it 
 came forward, holding up its crust appealingly, its 
 rosy chin and lips still covered with bread-crumbs. 
 
 Daddy stared at the apparition, which seemed to 
 him the merest witchcraft. For it was himself, dwarfed 
 to babyhood and pinafores. His eyes, his prominent 
 brow, his colour, his trick of holding the head — they 
 were all there, absurdly there. 
 
 He gave a cry, which Avas answered by another cry 
 from behind. His wife stood in the door. The stout, 
 foolish Isabella was white to the lips. Even she felt 
 the awe, the poetry of the moment. 
 
 'Aye,' she said, trembling. 'Aye! it's yourn. It 
 was born seven months after yo left us.' 
 
 Daddy, without greeting his wife, threw himself 
 down by the^babe, and burst into tears. He had come 
 back in a still darker mood than on his first return, 
 his egotistical belief in himself more rudely shaken 
 than ever by the attempts, the failures, the miseries 
 of the last eighteen months. For one illuminating mo- 
 ment he saw that he was a poor fool, and that his 
 youth was squandered and gone. But in its stead, 
 there — dropped suddenly beside him by the forgiving
 
 CHAP. IV YOUTH 265 
 
 gods — stood this new youth sprung from his, and all 
 his own, this child — Dora. 
 
 He took to her with a passion which the trembling 
 Isabella thought a great deal too excessive to last. 
 But though the natural Daddy very soon reappeared, 
 with all the aggravating peculiarities which belonged 
 to him, the passion did last, and the truant strayed 
 no more. He set up a small printing business with 
 the help of some old customers — it was always char- 
 acteristic of the man that, be his failings what they 
 might, he never lacked friends — and with lecturing 
 and writing, and Isabella's shop, they struggled on 
 somehow. Isabella's life was hard enough. Daddy 
 was only good when he was happy ; and at other 
 times he dipped recklessly into vices which would 
 have been the ruin of them all had they been persist- 
 ent. But by some kind fate he always emerged, and 
 more and more, as years went on, owing to Dora. He 
 drank, but not hopelessly ; he gambled, but not past 
 salvation ; and there was generally, as we have said, 
 some friend at hand to pick the poor besmirched 
 featherbrain out of the mire. 
 
 Dora grew up not unhappily. There were shifts 
 and privations to put up with ; there were stormy 
 days when life seemed a hurricane of words and tears. 
 But there were bright spaces in between, when Daddy 
 had good resolutions, or a little more money than 
 usual ; and with every year the daughter instinctively 
 knew that her spell over her father strengthened. 
 She was on the whole a serious child, with fair pale 
 hair, much given to straying in long loose ends about 
 her prominent brow and round cheeks. Yet at the 
 Baptist school, whither she was sent, she was certainly 
 popular. She had a passion for the little ones ; and 
 her grey-blue eyes, over which in general the fringed 
 lids drooped too much, had a charming trick of sudden
 
 266 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 smiles, when the soft soul behind looked for an instant 
 clearly and blithely out. At home she was a little 
 round-shouldered drudge in her mother's service. At 
 chapel she sat very patiently and happily under a 
 droning minister, and when the inert and despondent 
 Isabella would have let most of her religious duties 
 drop, in the face of many troubles and a scoffing 
 husband, the child of fourteen gently and persistently 
 held her to them. 
 
 At last, however, when Dora was seventeen, Isabella 
 died of cancer, and Daddy, who had been much shaken 
 and terrified by her sufferings in her last illness, fell 
 for a while into an irritable melancholy, from which 
 not even Dora could divert him. It was then that he 
 seemed for the first time to cross the line which had 
 hitherto divided him from ruin. The drinking at the 
 White Horse, where the literary circle met of which 
 Lomax had been so long an ornament, had been of late 
 going from bad to worse. The households of the wits 
 concerned were up in arms ; neighbourhood and police 
 began to assert themselves. One night the trembling 
 Dora waited hour after hour for her father. About 
 midnight he staggered in, maddened with drink and 
 fresh from a skirmish with the police. Finding her 
 there waiting for him, pale and silent, he did what he 
 had never done before under any stress of trouble — 
 struck and swore at her. Dora sank down with a 
 groan, and in another minute Lomax was dashing his 
 head against the wall, vowing that he would beat his 
 brains out. In the hours that followed, Dora's young 
 soul was stretched as it were on a rack, from which it 
 rose, not weakened, bvit with new powers and a loftier 
 statui-e. All her girlish levities and illusions seemed 
 to drop away from her. She saw her mission, and 
 took her squalid (T^dipus in charge. 
 
 Next morning she went to some of her father's
 
 CHAP. IV YOUTH 267 
 
 friends, unknown to Daddy, and came back with a light 
 in her blanched face, bearing the offer of some work on 
 a Radical paper at Leicester. Daddy, now broken and 
 miserable, submitted, and off they went. 
 
 At Leicester the change of moral and physical cli- 
 mate produced for a while a wonderful effect. Daddy 
 found himself marvellously at ease among the Secularist 
 and Radical stockingers of the town, and soon became 
 well known to them as a being half butt, half oracle. 
 Dora set herself to learn dressmaking, and did her best 
 to like the new place and the new people. It was at 
 Leicester, a place seething with social experiment in 
 its small provincial way, with secularism, Owenism, 
 anti-vaccination, and much else, that Lomax fell a 
 victim to one 'ism the more — to vegetarianism. It 
 was there that, during an editorial absence, and in the 
 first fervour of conversion, Daddy so belaboured a car- 
 nivorous world in tlie columns of the 'Penny Banner' 
 for which he worked, and so grotesquely and persist- 
 ently reduced all the problems of tlie time to terms of 
 nitrogen and albumen, that curt dismissal came upon 
 him, and for a time Dora saw nothing but her preca- 
 rious earnings between them and starvation. It was 
 then also that, by virtue of that queer charm he could 
 always exercise when he pleased, he laid hold on a 
 young Radical manufacturer and got out of him a 
 loan of 200/. for the establishment of a vegetarian 
 restaurant wherein Leicester was to be taught how to 
 feed. 
 
 But Leicester, alas ! remained unregenerate. In 
 the midst of Daddy's preparations a commercial trav- 
 eller, well known both to Manchester and Leicester, 
 repeated to him one day a remark of PurcelFs, to the 
 effect that since Daddy's migration ^Manchester had 
 been well rid of a vagabond, and he, Purcell, of a
 
 268 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 family disgrace. Daddy, bursting with fatuous rage, 
 and possessed besides of the wiklest dreams of fortune 
 on the strength of his 200Z., straightway made up his 
 mind to return to iManehester, 'pull Purcell's nose,' 
 and plant himself and his prosperity that was to be in 
 the bookseller's eyes. He broke in upon Dora at her 
 work, and poured into her astonished ears a stream of 
 talk, marked by a mad inventiveness, partly in the 
 matter of vegetarian receipts, still more in that of 
 Purcell's future discomforts. When Daddy was once 
 launched into a subject that s\iited him, he was inex- 
 haustible. His phrases flowed for ever ; of words he 
 was always sure. Like a certain French talker, ' his 
 sentences were like cats ; he showered them into air 
 and they found their feet without trouble.' 
 
 Dora sat through it, bewildered and miserable. Go 
 back to Manchester where they had been so unhappy, 
 where the White Horse and its crew Avere waiting for 
 her father, simply to get into debt and incur linal ruin 
 for the sake of a mad fancy she humoured but could 
 not believe in, and a still madder thirst for personal 
 vensreance on a man who was more than a match for 
 anything Daddy could do ! She was in despair. 
 
 But Daddy was obdurate, brutal in his determination 
 to have his way; and when she angered him with her 
 remonstrances, he turned upon her with an irritable — 
 
 'I know what it is — damn it! It's that Puseyite 
 gang you've taken up Avith — you think of nothing but 
 them. As if you couldn't find antics and petticoats 
 and priests in Manchester — they're everywhere — like 
 weeds. Wherever there's a dunghill of human credu- 
 lity they swarm.' 
 
 Dora looked proudly at her father, as though dis- 
 daining to reply, gentle creature that she was ; then 
 she bent again over her work, and a couple of tears 
 fell on the seam she was sewing.
 
 CHAP. IV YOUTH 269 
 
 Aye, it was true cnougli. In leaving Leicester, after 
 these two years, she was leaving Avhat to her had been 
 a si)iritual l)irthiilace, — tearing asunder a new and 
 tender growtli of the soul. 
 
 This was how it had come about. 
 
 On her first arrival in Leicester, in a milieu, that is 
 to say, where at the time 'Gavroche,' as M. Eenan 
 calls him — the street philosopher who is no less cer- 
 tain and no more rational than the street preacher — 
 reigned supreme, where her Secularist father and his 
 associates, hot-headed and early representatives of a 
 phase of thought which has since then found much 
 abler, though hardly less virulent, expression in such 
 a paper, say, as the • National Keformer,' were for ever 
 rending and trampling on all the current religious 
 images and ideas, Uora shrank into herself more and 
 more. She had always been a Baptist because her 
 mother was. But in her deep reaction against her 
 father's associates, the chapel which she frequented 
 did not now satisfy hei*. She hungered for she knew 
 not what, certain fastidious artistic instincts awaken- 
 ing the while in unexpected ways. 
 
 Then one Easter Eve, as she came back from an 
 errand into the outskirts of the town, she passed a 
 little iron church standing in a very poor neighbour- 
 hood, where, as she knew, a ' Puseyite ' curate in 
 charge officiated, and where a good many disturbances 
 which had excited the populace had taken place. She 
 went in. The curate, a long, gaunt figure, of a famil- 
 iar monkish type, Avas conducting 'vespers' for the 
 benefit of some twenty hearers, mostly women in 
 black. The little cliurch was half decorated for Eas- 
 ter, though the altar had still its Lenten bareness. 
 Something in the ordering of the place, in its colours, 
 its scents, in the voice of the priest, in the short ad- 
 dress he delivered after the service, dwelling in a tone
 
 270 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 of intimate emotion, the tone of the pastor to the 
 souls he guides and knows, on the preparation needful 
 for the Easter Eucharist, struck home to Dora. Next 
 day she was present at the Easter festival. Never 
 had religion spoken so touchingly to her before as 
 through these hymns, these flowers, this incense, this 
 Eucharistic ceremonial wherein — being the midday 
 celebration — the congregation were merely hushed 
 spectators of the most pathetic and impressive act in 
 the religious symbolism of mankind. In the dark 
 corner where she had hidden herself, Dora felt the 
 throes of some new birth within her. In six weeks 
 from that time she had been admitted, after instruc- 
 tion, to the Anglican communion. 
 
 Tlienceforward another existence began for this 
 child of English Dissent, in whom, however, some old 
 Celtic leaven seems to have always kept up a vague 
 unrest, till the way of mystery and poetry was 
 found. 
 
 Daddy — the infidel Daddy — stormed a good deal, 
 and lamented himself still more, when these facts 
 became known to him. Dora had become a supersti- 
 tious, priest-ridden dolt, of no good to him or anyone 
 else any more. What, indeed, was to become of him ? 
 Natural affection cannot stand against the priest. A 
 daughter cannot love her father and go to confession. 
 DoAvn with the abomination — ecrasez Vinfdme ! 
 
 Dora smiled sadly and went her way. Against her 
 sweet silent tenacity Daddy measured himself in vain. 
 She would be a good daughter to him, but she would 
 be a good churchwoman first. He began to perceive 
 in her that germ of detachment from things earthly 
 and human which all ceremonialism jDroduces, and in 
 a sudden terror gave way and opposed her no more. 
 Afterwards, in a curious way, he came even to relish 
 the change in her. The friends it brought her, the
 
 ciiAi'. IV YOUTH 271 
 
 dainty ordering of tlie little flower-decked oratory she 
 made for lierself in one corufr of her bare attic rooiii, 
 the sweet sobriety and relinenient which her new 
 loves and aspirations and self-denials brought with 
 them into the house, touched the poetical instincts 
 which were always dormant in the queer old fellow, 
 and besides flattered some strong and secret ambitions 
 which he cherished for his daughter. It appeared to 
 him to have raised her socially, to have made a lady 
 of her — this joining the Church. Well, the women 
 must have some religious bag or other to run their 
 heads into, and the Church bag perhaps Avas the most 
 seemly. 
 
 On the day of their return to Manchester, Dadd}', 
 sitting with crossed arms and legs in a corner of tlie 
 railway carriage, miglit have sat for a fairy -book illus- 
 tration of Rumpelstiltzehen. His old peaked hat, 
 which he had himself brouglit from the Tyrol, fell 
 forward over his frowning brow, his cloak was caught 
 fiercely about him, and, as the quickly-passing mill- 
 towns began to give notice of Manchester as soon as 
 the Derbyshire vales were left behind, his glittering 
 eyes disclosed an inward fever — a fever of contrivance 
 and of hate. He was determined to succeed, and 
 equally determined to make his success Purcell's 
 annoyance. 
 
 Dora sat opposite, -with her bird-cage on her knee, 
 looking sad and weary. She had left behind, perhaps 
 for ever, the dear friends who had opened to her the 
 way of holiness, and guided her first steps. Her eyes 
 filled with tears of gratitude and emotion as she 
 thought of them. 
 
 Two things only were pleasant to remember. One 
 was that the Church embroidery she had begun in her 
 young zeal at Leicester, using licr odds and ends of
 
 272 TTTE TITSTOin' OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 time, to supplement the needs of a struggling clmrcli 
 depending entirely on voluntary contributions, was 
 now probably to become her trade. Vox she had shown 
 remarkable aptitude tor it; and she carried introduc- 
 tions to a large church-furniture shop in Manchester 
 which would almost certainly employ her. 
 
 The other was the fact that somewhere in Manches- 
 ter she had a girl-cousin — Lucy Purcell — who must be 
 about sixteen. Purcell had married after his migra- 
 tion to Half Street ; his wife proved to be delicate 
 and died in a few years ; this little girl was all that 
 was left to him. I>ora had only seen her once or twice 
 in her life. The enmity between Lomax and Purcell 
 of course kept the families apart, and, after her 
 mother's early death, Purcell sent his daughter to a 
 boarding-school and so washed his hands of the trouble 
 of her bringing up. But in spite of these barriers 
 Dora well remembered a slim, long-armed schoolgirl, 
 much dressed and becurled, who once in a by-street of 
 Salford had run after her and, looking round carefully 
 to see that no one was near, had thrust an eager face 
 into hers and kissed her suddenly. ' Dora, — is your 
 mother better ? I wish I could come and see you. 
 Oh, it's horrid of people to quarrel ! P>ut I mustn't 
 stay, — some one'll see, and I should just catch it! 
 Good-bye, Dora ! ' and so another kiss, very hasty and 
 frightened, but very welcome to the cheek it touched. 
 
 As they neared. Manchester, Dora, in her loneliness 
 of soul, thought very tenderly of Lucy— wondered how 
 she had grown up, whether she was pretty and many 
 other things. She had certainly been a pretty child. 
 Of course they must know each other and be friends. 
 Dora could not let her father's feud come between her 
 and her only relation . Purcell might keep them apart ; 
 but she would show him she meant no harm ; and she 
 would bring her father round — she would and must.
 
 CHAP. TV YOUTH 273 
 
 Two years had gone by. Of Daddy's two objects in 
 leaving Leicester, one had so far succeeded better than 
 any rational being Avould have foreseen. 
 
 On the first morning alter their arrival he went out, 
 giving Dora the slip lest she might cramp him incon- 
 veniently in his decision ; and came back radiant, hav- 
 ing taken a deserted seed-shop in ]\rarket Place, which 
 had a long, irregular addition at the back, formerly a 
 warehouse, providentially suited, so Daddy declared, 
 to the purposes of a restaurant. The rent he had 
 promised to give seemed to Dora a crime, considering 
 their resources. The thought of it, the terror of the 
 servants he was engaging, the knowledge of the ridi- 
 cule and blame with which their old friends regarded 
 her father's- proceedings, these things kept the girl 
 awake night after night. 
 
 But he would hear no remonstrances, putting all 
 she had to say aside with an arrogant boastfulness, 
 which never failed. 
 
 In they went. Dora set her teeth and did her best, 
 keeping as jealous a watch on the purse-strings as 
 she could, and furnishing their three rooms above the 
 shop for as few shillings as might be, while Daddy 
 was painting and decorating, composing menus, and 
 ransacking recipes with the fever of an artist, now 
 writing letters to the Manchester papers, or lecturing 
 to audiences in the Mechanics' Institute and the dif- 
 ferent working men's clubs, and now plastering the 
 shop-front with gi-otesque labels, or posing at his own 
 doorway and buttonholing the passers-by in the Tj^ro- 
 lese brigand's costume which was his favourite garb. 
 
 The thing took. There is a certain mixture of 
 prophet and mountebank which can be generally 
 counted upon to hit the popular fancy, and Daddy 
 attained to it. IVIoreover, the moment was favourable. 
 After the terrible strain of the cotton-famine and the 
 
 VOL. I T
 
 274 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 horrors of the cholera, Manchester was prosperous 
 again. Trade was brisk, and the passage of the new 
 Reform Bill had given a fresh outlet and impulse to 
 the artisan mind which did but answer to the social 
 and intellectual advance made by the working classes 
 since '32. The huge town was growing fast, was 
 seething with life, with ambitions, with all the pas- 
 sions and ingenuities that belong to gain and money- 
 making and the race for success. It was pre-eminently 
 a city of young men of all nationalities, three-fourths 
 constantly engaged in the cJiasse for money, according 
 to their degrees — here for shillings, there for sover- 
 eigns, there for thousands. In such a milieu any man 
 has a chance who offers to deal afresh on new terms 
 with those daily needs which both goad and fetter the 
 struggling multitude at every step. Vegetarianism 
 had, in fact, been spreading in Manchester; one or 
 two prominent workmen's papers were preaching it ; 
 and just before Daddy's advent there had been a great 
 dinner in a public hall, Avhere the speedy advent of a 
 regenerate and frugivorous mankind, with length of 
 days in its right hand, and a captivating abundance of 
 small moneys in its waistcoat jjocket, had been freely 
 and ardently prophesied. 
 
 So Daddy for once seized the moment, and suc- 
 ceeded like the veriest Philistine. On the opening 
 day the restaurant was crowded from morning till 
 night. Dora, with her two cooks in the suffocating 
 kitchen behind, had to send out the pair of panting, 
 perspiring kitchen-boys again and again for fresh sup- 
 plies ; while Daddy, at his wits' end for waiters, after 
 haranguing a group of customers on the philosophy of 
 living, amid a tumult of mock cheers and laughter, 
 would rush in exasperated to Dora, to say that 7iever 
 again would he trust her niggardly ways — she would 
 be the ruin of him with her economies.
 
 CHAP. IV 
 
 YOUTH 
 
 When at night the doors were shut at last on the 
 noise and the crowd, and Daddy sat, with his full 
 cash-box open on his knee, while the solitary gaslight 
 that remained threw a fantastic and colossal shadow 
 of him over the rough floor of the restaurant, Dora 
 came up to him dropping with fatigue. He looked at 
 her, his gaunt face working, and burst into tears. 
 
 'Dora, we never had any money before, not when — 
 when — your mother was alive.' 
 
 And she knew that by a strange reaction there had 
 come suddenly upon him the memory of those ghastly 
 months when she and he through the long hours of 
 every day had been forced — baffled and helpless — to 
 Avatch her mother's torture, and when the sordid strug- 
 gle for daily bread was at its worst, robbing death 
 of all its dignity, and pity of all its poAver to help. 
 
 Do what she would, she could hardly get him to 
 give up the money and go to bed. He was utterly 
 unstrung, and his triumph for the moment lay bitter 
 in the mouth. 
 
 It was now two years since that opening day. Dur- 
 ing that time the Parlour had become a centre after 
 its sort — a scandal to some and a delight to others. 
 The native youth got his porridge, and apple pie, and 
 baked potato there ; but the place was also largely 
 haunted by the foreign clerks of Manchester. There 
 was, for instance, a company of young Frenchmen 
 who lunched there habitually, and in whose society 
 the delighted Daddy caught echoes from that unpreju- 
 diced life of Paris or Lyons, which had amazed and 
 enlightened his youth. The place assumed a stamp 
 and character. To Daddy the development of his own 
 popularity, which Avas like the emergence of a new 
 gift, soon became a passion. He deliberately ' ran ' 
 his own eccentricities as part of the business. Hence
 
 276 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 his dress, liis menus, his advertisements, and all the 
 various antics which half regaled, half scandalised the 
 neighbourhood. Dora marvelled and winced, and by 
 dint of an habitual tolerance retained the power of 
 stopping some occasional enormity. 
 
 As to finances, they were not making their fortune ; 
 far from it ; but to Dora's amazement, considering her 
 own inexperience and her father's flightiness, they 
 had paid their way and something more. She was no 
 born woman of business, as any professional account- 
 ant examining her books might have discovered. But 
 she had a passionate determination to defraud no one, 
 and somehow, through much toil her conscience did 
 the work. Meanwhile every month it astonished her 
 freshly that they two should be succeeding ! Success 
 was so little in the tradition of their tattered and 
 variegated lives. Could it last ? At the bottom of 
 her mind lay a constant presentiment of new change, 
 founded no doubt on her knowledge of her father. 
 
 But outwardly there was little to justify it. The 
 craving for drink seemed to have left him altogether 
 — a not uncommon effect of this particular change of 
 diet. And his hatred of Purcell, though in itself it 
 had j)roved quite unmanageable by all her arts, had 
 done nobody much harm. In a society dependent on 
 law and police there are difficulties in the way of a 
 man's dealing primitively with his enemy. There had 
 been one or two awkward meetings between the two 
 in the open street ; and at the Parlour, among his 
 special intimates, Daddy had elaborated a Purcell 
 myth of a Pecksniffian character which his invention 
 perpetually enriched. On the whole, however, it was 
 in his liking for young Grieve, originally a casual cus- 
 tomer at the restaurant, that Dora saw the chief 
 effects of the feud. He had taken the lad up eagerly 
 as soon as he had discovered both his connection with
 
 CHAP. IV 
 
 YOT'TTI 277 
 
 Purcell and his daring rebellious temper; had backed 
 him up in all his quarrels with his master; liad taken 
 him to the Hall of Science, and introduced him to the 
 speakers there ; and had generally paraded him as a 
 secularist convert, snatched from the very jaws of the 
 Baptist. 
 
 And now ! — now that David was in open opposition, 
 attracting Purcell's customers, taking Purcell's water, 
 Daddy was in a tumult of delight : wheeling off old 
 books of his own, such as -The Journal of Theology' 
 and the 'British Controversialist,' to fill up David's 
 stall, running down whenever business was slack to 
 see how the lad was getting on ; and meanwhile ad- 
 vertising him with his usual extravagance among the 
 frequenters of the Parlour. 
 
 All through, however, or rather since Miss Purcell 
 had returned from school, Dora and her little cousin 
 Lucy had been allowed to meet. Lomax saw his 
 daughter depart on her visits to Half Street, in 
 silence ; Purcell, when he first recognised her, hardly 
 spoke to her. Dora believed, what was in fact the 
 truth, that each regarded her as a means of keeping 
 an eye on the other. She conveyed information from 
 the hostile camp — therefore she was let alone. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ' Wiiv — Lucy !' 
 
 Dora was still bending over her work when a well- 
 known tap at the door startled her meditations. 
 
 Lucy put her head in, and, finding Dora alone, came 
 in with a look of relief. Settling herself in a chair 
 opposite Dora, she took off her hat, smoothed the coils 
 of liair to which it had been pinned, unbuttoned the 
 smart little jacket of pilot cloth, and threw back the silk
 
 278 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 handkerchief inside ; and all with a feverish haste and 
 irritation as though everything she touched vexed her. 
 
 '"What's the matter, Lucy?' said Dora, after a 
 little pause. At the moment of Lucy's entrance she 
 had been absorbed in a measurement. 
 
 'Nothing!' said Lucy quickly. ' Dora, you've got 
 your hair loose ! ' 
 
 Dora put up her hand patiently. She was accus- 
 tomed to be put to rights. It was characteristic at 
 once of her dreaminess and her powers of self-disci- 
 pline that she was fairly orderly, though she had 
 great difficulty in being so.' Without a constant 
 struggle, she would have had loose plaits and hanging 
 strings about her always. Lucy's trimness was a 
 perpetual marvel to her. It was like the contrast 
 between the soft indeterminate lines of her charming 
 face and Lucy's small, sharply cut features. 
 
 Lucy, still restless, began tormenting the feather 
 in her hat. 
 
 'When are you going to finish that, Dora?' she 
 asked, nodding towards the frame. 
 
 ' Oh it won't be very long now,' said Dora, putting 
 her head on one side that she might take a general 
 survey, at once loving and critical, of her work. 
 
 'You oughtn't to sit so close at it,' said Lucy 
 decidedly; 'you'll spoil your complexion.' 
 
 ' I've none to spoil.' 
 
 'Oh, yes, you have, Dora — that's so silly of you. 
 You aren't sallow a bit. It's pretty to be pale like 
 that. Lots of people say so — not quite so pale as you 
 are sometimes, perhaps — but I know why that is,' said 
 Lucy, with a half-malicious emphasis. 
 
 A slight pink rose in Dora's cheeks, but she bent 
 over her frame and said nothing. 
 
 ' Does your clergyman tell you to fast in Lent, Dora 
 — who tells you ? '
 
 ciiAT. V YOUTH 279 
 
 ' The Church I ' replied Dora, scandalised and look- 
 ing up with bright eyes. ' I wish you understood 
 things a little more, Lucy.' 
 
 * I can't,' said Lucy, with a pettish sigh, ' and I 
 don't care twopence ! ' 
 
 She threw herself back in her rickety chair. Her 
 arm dropped over the side, and she lay staring at the 
 ceiling. Dora went on with her work in silence for a 
 minute, and then looked up to see a tear dropping 
 from Lucy's cheek on to the horsehair covering of 
 the chair. 
 
 ' Lucy, what is the matter ? — 1 knew there was 
 something wrong I ' 
 
 Lucy sat up and groped energetically for her hand- 
 kerchief. 
 
 ' You wouldn't care,' she said, her lips quivering — 
 ' nobody cares I ' 
 
 And, sinking down again, she liid her face and 
 fairly burst out sobbing. Dora, in alarm, pushed aside 
 her frame and tried to caress and console her. But 
 LiTcy held her off. and in a second or two was angrily 
 drying her e3'es. 
 
 'Oh, you can't do any good, Dora — not the least 
 good. It's father — you know well enough what it is 
 — I shall never get on with father if I live to be a 
 hundred I ' 
 
 ' Well, you haven't had long to try in,' said Dora, 
 smiling. 
 
 ' Quite long enough to know,' replied Lucy, drearily. 
 ' I know I shall have a horrid life — I must. Nobody 
 can help it. Do you know we've got another shop- 
 man, Dora ? ' 
 
 The tone of childish scorn she threw into the ques- 
 tion was inimitable. Dora with difficulty kept from 
 laughing. 
 
 •AVeli, what's he like?'
 
 280 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 ^ Like? He's like — like nothing,' said Lucy, whose 
 vocabulary Avas not extensive. ' He's fat and ugly — 
 wears spectacles. Father says he's a treasure — to me 
 — and then when they're in the shop I hear him going 
 on at him like anything for being a stupid. And I 
 have to give the creature tea when father's away. He's 
 so shy he always upsets something. Mary Ann and I 
 have to clear up after him as though he were a school- 
 child. — And father gets in a regular passion if I ask 
 him about the dance — and there's a missionary tea next 
 week, and he's made me take a table — and he wants 
 me to teach in Sunday School — and the minister's 
 wife has been talking to him about my dress — and — 
 and — Xo, I canH stand it, Dora — I can't and I won't !' 
 
 And Lucy, gulping down fresh tears, sat intensely 
 upright, and looked frowningly at Dora as though 
 defying her to take the matter lightly. 
 
 Dora was perplexed. Deep in her dove-like soul 
 lay the fiercest views about Dissent — that rent in the 
 seamless vesture of Christ, as she had learnt to con- 
 sider it. Her mother had been a Baptist till her death, 
 she herself till she was grown up. But now she had 
 all the zeal — nay, even the rancour — of the convert. 
 It was one of her inmost griefs that her own change 
 had not come earlier — before her mother's death. 
 Then perhaps her mother, her poor — poor — mother, 
 might have changed with her. It went against her to 
 urge Lucy to make herself a good Baptist. 
 
 ' It's no wonder Uncle Tom want? you to do what 
 he likes,' she said slowly. 'But if you don't take to 
 chapel, Lucy — if you want something different, per- 
 haps ' 
 
 'Oh, I don't want any church, thank you,' cried 
 Lucy, up in arms. '■ I don't w^ant anybody ordering- me 
 about. Why can't I go my own way a bit, and amuse 
 myself as I please ? It is too, too bad ! '
 
 CHAP. V 
 
 YOUTH 281 
 
 Dora did not know what more to say. She went on 
 with lier work, thinking about it all. Suddenly Lucy 
 astonished her by a question in another voice. 
 
 ' Have you seen Mr. Grieve's shop, Dora? ' 
 
 Dora looked up. 
 
 * No. Father's been there a good many times. He 
 says it's capital for a beginning and he's sure to get 
 on fast. There's one or two very good sort of cus- 
 tomers been coming lately. There's the Earl of Drif- 
 field, I think it is — don't you remeniber, Lucy, it was 
 he gave that lecture with the magic lantern at the In- 
 stitute you and I went to last summer. He's a queer 
 sort of gentleman. Well, he's been coming several 
 times and giving orders. And there's some of the 
 college gentlemen ; oh, and a lot of others. They all 
 seem to think he's so clever, father says ' 
 
 ' i know the Earl of Driffield quite well,' said Lucy 
 loftily. ' He used to be always coming to our place, 
 and I've tied up his books for him sometimes. I don't 
 see what's the good of being an earl — not to go about 
 like that. And father says he's got a grand place near 
 Stalybridge too. Well, if he's gone to Mr. Grieve, 
 father'U be just mad.' Lucy pursed up her small 
 mouth with energy. Dora evaded the subject. 
 
 ' He says when he's quite settled,' she resumed pres- 
 ently, * we're to go and have supper with him for a 
 house-warming.' 
 
 Lucy looked ready to cry again. 
 
 'He couldn't ask me — of course he couldn't,' she 
 said, indistinctly. ' Dora — Dora ! ' 
 
 ' Well ? Oh, don't mix up my silks, Lucy ; I shall 
 never get them right again.' 
 
 Lucy reluctantly put them down. 
 
 * Do you think, Dora, Mr. Grieve cares anything at 
 all about me ? ' she said at last, hurrying out the 
 words, and looking Dora in the face, very red and bold.
 
 282_ THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Dora laughed outright. 
 
 ' I knew you were going to ask that ! ' she said. 
 ' Perhaps I've been asking myself ! ' 
 
 Lucy said nothing, but the tears dropped again 
 down her cheeks and on to her small quivering hands 
 — all the woman awake in her. 
 
 Dora pushed her frame away, and put her arm 
 round her cousin, quite at a loss what to say for the 
 best. 
 
 Another woman would have told Lucy plumply that 
 she was a little fool ; that in the first place young 
 Grieve had never shown any signs of making love to 
 her at all ; and that, in the second, if he had, her 
 father would never let her marry him without a strug- 
 gle Avhich nobody could suppose Lucy capable of wag- 
 ing with a man like Purcell. It was all a silly fancy, 
 the whim of a green girl, which would make her mis- 
 erable for nothing. Mrs. Alderman Head, for in- 
 stance, Dora's chaperon for the Institute dance, the 
 sensible, sharp-tongued wife of a wholesale stationer 
 in Market Street, would certainly have taken this 
 view of the matter, and communicated it to Lucy with 
 no more demur than if you had asked her, say, for her 
 opinion on the proper season for bottling gooseberries. 
 But Dora, whose inmost being was one tremulous 
 surge of feeling and emotion, could not approach any 
 matter of love and marriage without a thrill, without 
 a sense of tragedy almost. Besides, like Lucy, she 
 Avas very young still — just twenty — and youth an- 
 swers to youth. 
 
 'You know Uncle Tom wouldn't like it a bit, Lucy,' 
 she began in her perplexity. 
 
 '1 don't care!' cried Lucy, passionately. 'Girls 
 can't marry to please their fathers, I should have to 
 wait, I suppose. I would get my own way somehow. 
 But what's the good of talking about it, Dora ? I'm
 
 CHAP. V 
 
 YOUTH 283 
 
 sick of thinking about it — sick of everything. He'll 
 marry somebody else — I know he will — and I shall 
 break my heart, or ' 
 
 ' Marry somebody else, too,' suggested Dora slyly. 
 
 Lucy drew herself angrily away, and had to be 
 soothed into forgiving her cousin. The child had, in 
 fact, thought and worried herself by now into such a 
 sincere belief in her own passion, that there was 
 nothing for it but to take it seriously. Dora yielded 
 herself to Lucy's tears and her own tenderness. She 
 sat pondering. 
 
 Then, suddenly, she said something very different 
 from what Lucy expected her to say. 
 
 ' Oh ! if I could get him to go and talk to Father 
 Russell ! He's so wonderful with young men.' 
 
 Her hand dropped on to her knee ; she looked 
 away from Lucy out of the window, her sweet face 
 one longing. 
 
 Lucy was startled, and somewhat annoyed. In her 
 disgust with her father and her anxiety to attract 
 David's notice, she had so entirely forgotten his relig- 
 ious delinquencies that it seemed fussy and intrusive 
 on Dora's part to make so much of them. She in- 
 stinctively resented, too, what sounded to her like a 
 tone of proprietary interest. It was not Dora that 
 was his friend — it was she I 
 
 ' I don't see what you have to do with his opinions, 
 Dora,' she said stiffly ; ' he isn't rude to you now as he 
 used to be. Young men are always wild a bit at first.' 
 
 And she tossed her head with all the worldly wis- 
 dom of seventeen. 
 
 Dora sighed and was silent. She fell to her work 
 again, while Lucy wandered restlessly about the 
 room. Presently the child stopped short. 
 
 * Oh ! look here, Dora ' 
 
 ' Yes.'
 
 284 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book ii 
 
 ' Do come round with me and look at some spring 
 patterns I've got. You might just as welL I know 
 you've been shaving your eyes out, and it's a nice day.' 
 
 Dora hesitated, but finally consented. She had 
 been at work for many hours in hot rooms, and meant 
 to work a good many more yet before night. A break 
 would revive her, and there was ample time before 
 the three o'clock dinner which she and her father took 
 together after the midday rash of the restaurant was 
 over. So she put on her things. 
 
 On their way Dora looked into the kitchen. Every- 
 thing was in full work. A stout, red-faced woman 
 was distributing and superintending. On the long 
 charcoal stove which Daddy under old Barbier's advice 
 had just put up, on the hot plates near, and the glow- 
 ing range in the background, innumerable pans were 
 simmering and steaming. Here was a table covered 
 with stewed fruits ; there another laden with round 
 vegetable pies just out of the oven — while a heap of 
 tomatoes on a third lent their scarlet to the busy 
 picture. Some rays of wintry sun had slipped in 
 through the high windows, and were contending with 
 the steam of the pies and the smoke from the cooking. 
 And in front of all on an upturned box sat a pair of 
 Lancashire lasses, peeling apples at lightning speed, 
 yet not so fast but they could laugh and chat the 
 while, their bright eyes wandering perpetually through 
 the open serving hatches which ran along one side of 
 the room, to the restaurant stretching beyond, with 
 its rows of well-filled tables, and its passing waitresses 
 in their white caps and aprons. 
 
 Dora slipped in among them in her soft deprecating 
 way, smiling at this one and that till she came to the 
 stout cook. There she stopped and asked something. 
 Lucy, standing at the door, saw the huge woman draw 
 a corner of her apron across her eyes.
 
 CHAi". V 
 
 YOUTH 285 
 
 ' What did you want, Dora ? ' she inquired as her 
 cousin rejoined her. 
 
 ' It's her poor boy. He's in the Infirmary and very 
 bad. I'm sure they think he's dying. I wanted to 
 send her there this morning and do her work, but she 
 wouldn't go. There's no more news — but we mustn't 
 be long.' 
 
 She walked on, evidently thinking with a tender 
 absorption of the mother and son, while Luey was con- 
 scious of her usual impatience with all this endless 
 concern for unknown peojjle, which stood so much in 
 the way of Dora's giving her full mind to her cousin's 
 affairs. 
 
 Yet, as she knew well, Sarah, the stout cook, had 
 been the chief prop of the Parlour ever since it opened. 
 No other servant had stayed long with Daddy. He 
 Avas too fantastic and exacting a master. She had 
 stayed — for Dora's sake— and, from bearing with him, 
 had learnt to manage him. When she came she brought 
 with her a sickly, overgrown lad, the only son of her 
 widowhood, to act as kitchen-boy. He did his poor 
 best for a while, his mother in truth getting through 
 most of his work as well as her own, while Dora, who 
 had the weakness for doctoring inherent in all good 
 women, stuffed him with cod-liver oil and ' strengthen- 
 ing mixtures.' Then symptoms of acute hip-disease 
 showed themselves, and the lad was admitted to the 
 big Infirmary in Piccadilly. There he had lain for 
 some six or eight weeks now, toiling no more, fretting 
 no more, living on his mother's and Dora's visits, and 
 quietly loosening one life-tendril after another. Dur- 
 ing all this time Dora had thought of him, prayed for 
 him, taught him — the wasted, piteous creature. 
 
 When they arrived at Half Street, they let them- 
 selves in by the side-door, and Lucy hurried her cousin
 
 286 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 into the parlour that there might be no meeting with 
 her father, with whom she was on decidedly uncom- 
 fortable terms. 
 
 The table in the parlour was strewn with patterns 
 from several London shops. To send for them, ex- 
 amine them, and imagine what they would look like 
 when made up was now Lucy's chief occupation. To 
 which might be added a little strumming on the piano, 
 a little visiting — not much, for she hated most of her 
 father's friends, and was at present too closely taken 
 up with self-pity and speculations as to what David 
 Grieve might be doing to make new ones — and a great 
 deal of ordering about of Mary Ann. 
 
 Dora sat down, and Lucy pounced on one pattern 
 after another, folding them between her fingers and 
 explaining eagerly how this or that would look if it 
 were cut so, or trimmed so. 
 
 ' Oh, Dora, look — this pink gingham with white 
 spots ! Don't you think it's a love ? And, you know, 
 pink always suits me, except when it's a blue-pink. 
 But you don't call that a blue-pink, do you ? And 
 yet it isn't salmon, certainly — it's something between. 
 
 It ougld to suit me, but I declare ' and suddenly, 
 
 to Dora's dismay, the child flung down the patterns 
 she held with a passionate vehemence — ' I declare 
 nothing seems to suit me now ! Dora ! ' — in a tone of 
 despair — 'Dora! don't you think I'm going off ? My 
 complexion's all dull, and — and — why I might be 
 thirty 1 ' and running over to the glass, draped in green 
 cut-paper, which adorned the mantelpiece, Lucy stood 
 before it examining herself in an agony. And, indeed, 
 there was a change. A touch of some withering blight 
 seemed to have swept across the whole dainty face, 
 and taken the dewy freshness from the eyes. There 
 was fever in it — the fever of fret and mutiny and of 
 a starved self-love.
 
 CHAP. V YOUTH 287 
 
 Dora looked at her cousin with less patience than 
 usual — perhaps because of the inevitable contrast 
 between Lucy's posings and the true heartaches of the 
 world. 
 
 ' Lucy, what nonsense ! You're just a bit -worried, 
 and you make such a lot of it. Why can't you be 
 patient ? ' 
 
 ' Because T can't ! ' said Lucy, sombrely, dropping 
 into a chair, and letting her arm fall over the back. 
 ' It's all very well, Dora. You aren't in love with a 
 man whom you never see, and whom your father has 
 a spite on ! And you won't do anything to help me 
 — you won't move a finger. And, of course, you 
 might ! ' 
 
 * What could I do, Lucy ? ' cried Dora, exasperated. 
 * I can't go and ask young Grieve to marry you. I do 
 wish you'd try and put him out of your head, that I 
 do. You're too young, and he's got his business to 
 think about. And while Uncle Tom's like this, I can't 
 be always putting myself forward to help you meet 
 him. It would be just the way to make him tliink 
 something bad — to make him suspect ' 
 
 ' Well, and why shouldn't he suspect ? ' said Lucy, 
 obstinately, her little mouth set and hard ; * it's all 
 rubbish about girls leaving it all to the men. If a girl 
 doesn't show she cares about a man, how's he to know 
 — and when she don't meet him — and when her father 
 keeps her shut up — shanipfid!' 
 
 She flung the word out through her small, shut 
 teeth, the brows meeting over her flashing eyes. 
 
 ' Oh ! it's shameful, is it — eh, Miss Purcell ? ' said 
 a harsh, mimicking voice coming from the dark pas- 
 sage leading into the shop. 
 
 Lucy sprang up in terror. There on the steps 
 stood her father, bigger, blacker, more formidable than 
 he had ever been in the eyes of the two startled girls.
 
 288 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 All unknown to them, the two doors whicli parted 
 them from the shop had been slightly ajar, and Pur- 
 cell, catching their voices as they came in, and already 
 on the watch for his daughter, had maintained a 
 treacherous quiet behind them. Now he was entirely 
 in his element. He surveyed them both with a dark, 
 contemptuous triumph. What fools women were to 
 be sure ! 
 
 As he descended the two steps into the parlour the 
 floor shook under his heavy tread. Dora had instinc- 
 tively thrown her arm round Lucy, who had begun to 
 cry hysterically. She herself was very pale, but after 
 the first start she looked her uncle in the face. 
 
 ' Is it 3'ou that's been teaching Lucy these hemitiful 
 sentiments ? ' said Purcell, with ironical emphasis, 
 stopping a yard from them and pointing at Dora, 
 ' and do you get 'em from St. Damian's ? ' 
 
 Dora threw up her head, and flushed. ' I get noth- 
 ing from St. Damian's that I'm ashamed of,' she said 
 in a proud voice, ' and I've done nothing with Lucy 
 that I'm ashamed of.' 
 
 'No, I suppose not,' said Purcell dryly; <the devil 
 don't deal much in shame. It's a losing article.' 
 
 Then he looked at Lucy, and his expression sud- 
 denly changed. The flame beneath leapt to sight. 
 He caught her arm, dragged her out of Dora's hold, 
 and shook her as one might shake a kitten. 
 
 'Who were you talking of just now?' he said to 
 her, holding her by both shoulders, his eyes blazing 
 down upon her. 
 
 Lucy was much too frightened to speak. She stood 
 staring back at him, her breast heaving violently. 
 
 Dora came forward in indignation. 
 
 ' You'll get nothing out of her if you treat her like 
 that,' she said, with spirit, ' nor out of me either.' 
 
 Purcell recovered himself with difSculty. He let
 
 CHAP. V YOUTH 289 
 
 Lucy go, and walking up to tlie mantelpiece stood 
 there, leaning his arm upon it, and looking at the girls 
 from under his hand. 
 
 'What do I w;uit to get out of you ? ' he said, with 
 scorn. ' As if I didn't know already everything that's 
 in your silly minds ! 1 guessed already, and now that 
 you have been so obliging as to let your secrets out 
 under my very nose — I knoic! That chit there' — he 
 pointed to Lucy — all his gestures had a certain theat- 
 rical force and exaggeration, springing, perhaps, from 
 his habit of lay preaching — ' imagines she's going to 
 marry the young infidel I gave the sack to a while 
 ago. Now don't she ? Are you going to say no to 
 that ? ' 
 
 His loud challenge pushed Dora to extremities, and 
 it was all left to her. Lucy was sobbing on the sofa. 
 
 ' I don't know what she imagines,' said Dora, 
 slowly, seeking in vain for words ; the whole situation 
 was so ridiculous. ' Are you going to prevent her fall- 
 ing in love with the man she chooses ? ' 
 
 'Certainly!' said Purcell, with mocking emphasis. 
 ' Certaiiily — since she chooses wrong. The only con- 
 cern of the godly in these matters is to see that their 
 children are not yoked with unbelievers. Whenever 
 I see that young reprobate in the street now, I smell 
 the pit. And it'll not be long before the Lord tumbles 
 him into it; there's an end comes to such devil's fry 
 as that. Uh, they may prosper and thrive, they may 
 revile the children of the Lord, they may lift up the 
 hoof against the poor Christian, but the time comes — 
 the time comes.'' 
 
 His solemnity, at once unctuous and full of vicious 
 meaning, only irritated Dora. IJut Lucy raised her- 
 self from the sofa, and looked suddenly round at her 
 father. Her eyes were streaming, her hair in disor- 
 der, but there was a suspicion and intelligence in her 
 
 VOL. I u
 
 290 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 look which seemed to give her back self-control. She 
 watched eagerly for what her father might say or do 
 next. 
 
 As soon as he saw her sitting up he walked over to 
 her and took her again by the shoulder. 
 
 'Now look here/ he said to her, holding her tight, 
 'let's finish with this. That young man's the Lord's 
 enemy — he's my enemy — and I'll teach him a lesson 
 before I've done. But that's neither here nor there. 
 You understand this. If you ever walk out of this 
 door with him, you'll not walk back into it, with him 
 or without him. I'd have done with you, and my 
 money 'Id have done with you. But there ' — and Pur- 
 cell gave a little scornful laugh, and let her go with a 
 push — 'Ae don't care twopence about you — I'll say 
 that for him.' 
 
 Lucy flushed fiercely, and getting up began me- 
 chanically to smooth her hair before the glass, with 
 wild tremulous movements, will and defiance settling 
 on her lip, as she looked at herself and at the reflec- 
 tion of her father. 
 
 'And as for you. Miss Lomax,' said Purcell de- 
 liberately, standing opposite Dora, ' you've been aid- 
 ing and abetting somehow — I don't care how. I 
 don't complain. There was nothing better to be ex- 
 pected of a girl with your parentage and bringing 
 up, and a Puseyite into the bargain. But I warn you 
 you'll go meddling here once too often before you've 
 done. If you'll take my advice you'll let other peo- 
 ple's business alone, and mind your own. Them that 
 have got Adrian Lomax on their hands needn't go 
 ]3oaehing on their neighbours for something to do.' 
 
 He spoke with a slow, vindictive emphasis, and 
 Dora shrank and quivered as though he had struck 
 her. Then by a great effort — the effort of one who 
 had not gone through a close and tender training of
 
 CHAP. V YOUTH 291 
 
 the soul for nothing — she put from her botli lier 
 anger and her fear. 
 
 ' You're cruel to father,' she said, her voice flutter- 
 ing ; ' you niiglit be thinking sometimes how straight 
 he's kept since he took the Parlour. And I don't 
 believe young Grieve means any harm to you or any- 
 body — and I'm sure I don't.' 
 
 A sob rose in her tliroat. Anybody less crassly 
 armoured in self-love tlian Purcell must have been 
 touched. As for him, he turned on his heel. 
 
 ' I'll protect myself, thank you,' he said dryly ; ' and 
 I'll judge for myself. You can do as you like, and 
 Lucy too, so long as she takes the consequences. Do 
 you understand, Lucy ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Lucy, facing round upon him, all tremu- 
 lous passion and rebellion, but she could not meet his 
 fixed, tyrannical eye. Her own wavered and sank. 
 Purcell enjoyed the spectacle of her for a second or 
 two, smiled, and went. 
 
 As soon as he was gone, Lucy dragged her cousin 
 to the stairs, and never let her go till Dora was safe 
 in her room and the door bolted. 
 
 Dora implored to be released. How could she stay 
 in her uncle's house after such a scene ? and she must 
 get home quickly anyway, as Lucy knew. 
 
 Lucy took no notice at all of what she was saying. 
 
 ' Look here,' she said, breaking into the middle of 
 Dora's ai)i)eal, and speaking in an excited whisper — 
 'he's going to do him a mischief. I'm certain he is. 
 That's how he looks when he's going to pay some one 
 out. Now, what's he going to do ? I'll know some- 
 how — trust me ! ' 
 
 She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her arms 
 behind her, supporting her, her little feet beating each 
 other restlessly — a hot, vindictive anger speaking from 
 every feature, every movement. The pretty chit of
 
 292 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 seventeen seemed to have disappeared. Here was 
 every promise of a wilful and obstinate woman, with 
 more of her father's stuff in her than anyone could 
 have yet surmised. 
 
 A pang rose in Dora. She rose impulsively, and 
 throwing herself down by Lucy, drew the ruffled, pal- 
 pitating creature into her arms. 
 
 ' Oh, Lucy, isn't it only because you're angry and 
 vexed, and because you want to fight Uncle Furcell ? 
 Oh, don't go on just for that! When we're — we're 
 Christians, we mustn't want our own way — we must 
 give it up — ive must give it up.' Her voice sank in a 
 burst of tears, and she drooped her head on Lucy's, 
 kissing her cousin's brown hair. 
 
 Lucy extricated herself with a movement of impa- 
 tience. 
 
 ' When one loves anybody,' she said, sitting very 
 upright and twisting her fingers together, ' one must 
 stick to him ! ' 
 
 Dora started at the word ' love.' It seemed to her 
 a profanation. She dried her eyes, and got up to go 
 Avithout another word. 
 
 ' Well, Dora,' said Lucy, frowning, ' and so you'll 
 do nothing for me — nothing ? ' 
 
 Dora stood a moment in a troubled silence. Then 
 she turned, and took gentle hold of her cousin. 
 
 ' If I get a chance, Lucy, I'll try and find out whether 
 he's thinking of marrying at all. And if he isn't — 
 and I'm sure he isn't — will you give it all up, and try 
 and live comfortable with Uncle Purcell, and think of 
 something else ? ' 
 
 Her eyes had a tender, nay a passionate entreaty in 
 them. 
 
 ' No ! ' said Lucy with energy ; ' but I'll very likely 
 drown myself in the river some fine night.' 
 
 Dora still held her, standing above her, and looking
 
 CHAP. V YOUTH 293 
 
 down at her, trying hard to read her true mind. 
 Lucy bore it defiantly for a minute ; then suddenly 
 two large tears rose. A quiver passed over Dora's 
 face ; she kissed her cousin quickly, and went towards 
 the door. 
 
 ' And I'll find out what father's going to do, or my 
 name isn't what it is ! ' said the girl behind her, in a 
 shrill, shaking voice, as she closed the door. 
 
 Dora ran back to Market Place, filled with a pre- 
 sentiment that she was late, though the hand of the 
 Cathedral clock was still far from three. 
 
 At the side door stood a woman with a shawl over 
 her head, looking distractedly up the street. 
 
 'Oh, JNliss Dora! Miss Dora! they've sent. He's 
 gooin — gooin quick. An' he keeps weary in' for 
 " mither an' Miss Dora." ' 
 
 The powerful scarred face had the tremulous help- 
 lessness of grief. Dora took her by the arm. 
 
 'Let us run, Sarah — at once. Oh, never mind the 
 work ! ' 
 
 The two women hurried through the crowded Satur- 
 day streets. But halfway up iVIarket Street Sarah 
 stopped short, looking round her in an agony. 
 
 ' Theer's his feyther, Miss Dora. Oh, he wor a bad 
 'un to me, but he had alius a soft spot for t' lad. I'd 
 be reet glad to send worrud. He wor theer in the 
 ward, they tell't me, last week.' 
 
 Three years before she had separated from her hus- 
 band, a sawyer, by mutual consent. He was younger 
 than she, and he had been grossly unfaithful to her ; 
 she came of a good country stock and her dales woman's 
 self-respect could put up with him no longer. But she 
 had once been passionately in love with him, and, as 
 she said, he had been on the whole kind to the boy. 
 
 ' Where is he ? ' said Dora.
 
 294 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 'At Mr. Whitelaw's yard, Edgell Street, Great 
 Ancoats.' 
 
 They had just entered the broad Infirmary Square. 
 Dora, looking round her in perplexity, suddenly saw 
 coming towards them the tall figure of David Grieve. 
 The leap of the heart of which she was conscious 
 through all her preoccupation startled her. But she 
 went up to him without a moment's hesitation. 
 David, swinging along as though Manchester belonged 
 to him, found himself arrested and, looking down, saw 
 Dora's pale and agitated face. 
 
 ' Mr. Grieve, will you help me ? ' 
 
 She drew him to the side and explained as quickly 
 as she could. Sarah stood by, and threw in directions. 
 
 'He'll be to be found at IVfr. Whitelaw's yard — 
 Edgell Street — an' whoever goos nam just say to him, 
 " Sarah says to tha — Wilt tha coom, or wilt tha not 
 coom ? — t' lad's deein." ' 
 
 She threw out the words with a sombre simplicity 
 and force, then, her whole frame quivering with, impa- 
 tience, she crossed the road to the Infirmary without 
 waiting for Dora. 
 
 ' Can you send some one ? ' said Dora. 
 
 ' I will go myself at once. I'll find the man if he's 
 there, and bring him. You leave it to me.' 
 
 He turned without more ado, broke into a run, and 
 disappeared round the corner of Oldham Street. 
 
 Dora crossed to the Infirmary, her mind strangely 
 divided for a moment between the solemn image of 
 what was coming, and the vibrating memory of some- 
 thing just past. 
 
 But, once in the great ward, pity and death possessed 
 her wholly. He knew them, the poor lad — made, as 
 it seemed, two tremulous movements, — once, when his 
 mother's uncontrollable crying passed into his failing 
 ear — once when Dora's kiss was laid upon liis hollow
 
 CHAP. V YOUTH 205 
 
 temple. Then again lie lay unconscious, drawing 
 gently to the end. 
 
 Dora knelt beside liim praying, his mother on the 
 other side, and the time passed. Then there were 
 sounds about the bed, and looking up, Dora saw two 
 figures approaching. In front was a middle-aged man, 
 with a stui)i(l, drink-stained face. He came awkwardly 
 and unsteadily up to the bedside, almost stumbling 
 over his wife, and laying his hand on the back of a 
 chair to support himself. He brought with him an 
 overpowering smell of beer, and Dora thought as she 
 looked at him that he had only a very vague idea of 
 what was going on. His wife took no notice of him 
 whatever. 
 
 Behind at some little distance, his hat in his hand, 
 stood David Grieve. Why did he stay ? Dora could 
 not get him out of her mind. Even in her praying 
 she still saw the dark, handsome head and lithe figure 
 thrown out against the whiteness of the hospital walls. 
 
 There was a slight movement in the bed, and the 
 nurse, standing beside the boy, looked up and made a 
 quick sign to the mother. What she and Dora saw 
 was only a gesture as of one settling for sleep. With- 
 out struggle and without fear, the little lad who had 
 never lived enough to know the cost of dying, went 
 the way of all flesh. 
 
 ' They die so easily, this sort,' said the nurse to 
 Dora, as she tenderly closed the patient eyes ; * it's 
 like a plant that's never rooted.' 
 
 A few minutes later Dora was blindly descending 
 the long stairs. The mother was still beside her dead, 
 making arrangements for the burial. The father, 
 sobered and conscious, had already slouched away. 
 But at the foot of the stairs Dora, looking round, saw 
 that David was just behind her.
 
 296 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 He came out with her, 
 
 ' He was drunk Avlien I found him,' he explained, 
 ' he had been drinking in the dinner hour. I had him 
 by the arm all the way, and thought I had best bring 
 him straight in. And then — I had never seen anyone 
 die,' he said simply, a curious light in his black eyes. 
 
 Dora, still choked with tears, could not speak. 
 With shaking hands' she searched for a bit of veil she 
 had with her to hide her eyes and cheeks. But she 
 could not find it. 
 
 ' Don't go down Market Street,' he said, after a shy 
 look at her. ' Come this way, there isn't such a 
 crowd.' 
 
 And turning down Mosley Street, all the way he 
 guided her through some side streets where there 
 were fewer people to stare. Such forethought, such 
 gentleness in him were quite new to her. She gradu- 
 ally recovered herself, feeling all the while this young 
 sympathetic presence at her side — dreading lest it 
 should desert her. 
 
 He meanwhile was still under the tremor and awe 
 of the new experience. So this was dying ! He 
 remembered 'Lias holding Margaret's hand. ' Deein's 
 long — but Ws varra, varra peaceful.' Not always, 
 surely ! There must be vigorous, tenacious souls that 
 went out with tempests and agonies ; and he was con- 
 scious of a pang of fear, feeling himself so young and 
 strong. 
 
 Presently he led her into St. Ann's Square, and 
 then they shook hands. He hurried off to his busi- 
 ness, and she remained standing a moment on the 
 pavement outside the church which makes one side of 
 the square. An impulse seized her — she turned and 
 went into the church instead of going home. 
 
 There, in one of the old oak pews where the little 
 tarnished plates still set forth the names of their
 
 CHAP. VI YOUTH 297 
 
 eighteenth-century owners, she fell on her knees and 
 v/restled with herself and God. 
 
 She was very simple, very ignorant, but religion, as 
 religion can, had dignified and refined all the elements 
 of character. She said to herself iu an agony — that 
 he must love her — that she had loved him in truth all 
 along. And then a great remorse came upon her — 
 the spiritual glory she had just passed through closed 
 round her again. What I she could see the heaven 
 opened — the Good Shepherd stoop to take His own — 
 and then come away to feel nothing but this selfish, 
 passionate craving ? Oh, she was ashamed, she loathed 
 herself ! 
 
 Lucy ! — Lucy had no claim ! should have no claim I 
 He did not care for her. 
 
 Then again the pale dead face would flash upon her 
 with its submissive look, — so much gratitude for so 
 little, and such a tender ease in dying! And she 
 possessed by all these bad and jealous feelings, these 
 angry desires, fresh from such a presence I 
 
 ' Oh ! Lamb of God — Lamb of God — that takest away 
 the sins of the ivorkl ! ' 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 And David, meanwhile, was thinking of nothing in 
 the world but the fortunes of a little shop, about 
 twelve feet square, and of the stall outside that 
 shop. The situation — for a hero — is certainly one 
 of the flattest conceivable. iSTevertheless it has to be 
 faced. 
 
 If, however, one were to say that he had marked 
 none of Lucy Purcell's advances, that would be to deny 
 him eyes as well as susceptibilities. He had, indeed.
 
 298 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 said to himself in a lordly wa}- tliat Lucy Purcell was 
 a regular little flirt, and was beginning those ways 
 early. But a certain rough young modesty, joined 
 with a sense of humour at his own expense, prevented 
 him from making any more of it, and he was no sooner 
 in his own den watching for customers than Lucy 
 vanished from his mind altogether. He thought much 
 more of Purcell himself, with much vengeful chuck- 
 ling and speculation. 
 
 As for Dora, he had certainly begun to regard her 
 as a friend. She had sense and experience, in spite of 
 her Ritualism, whereas Lucy in his eyes had neither. 
 So that to run into the Parlour, after each new day 
 was over, and discuss with Daddy and her the ups and 
 downs, the fresh chances and prospects of his infant 
 business, was pleasant enough. Daddy and he met on 
 the common ground of wishing to make the world 
 uncomfortable for Purcell ; while Dora supplied the 
 admiring uncritical wonder, in which, like a warm en- 
 vironment, an eager temperament expands, and feels 
 itself under the stimulus more inventive and more 
 capable than before. 
 
 But marrying ! The lad's careless good-humoured 
 laugh under Ancrum's probings was evidence enough 
 of how the land lay. Probably at the bottom of him, 
 if he had examined, there lay the instinctive assump- 
 tion that Dora was one of the girls who are not likely 
 to marry. Men want them for sisters, daughters, 
 friends — and then go and fall in love with some minx 
 that has a way with her. 
 
 Besides, who could be bothered with ' gells/ when 
 there was a stall to be set out and a career to be made ? 
 With that stall, indeed, David was truly in love. 
 How he fingered and meddled with it ! — setting out 
 the cheap reprints it contained so as to show their 
 frontispieces, and strewing among them, in an artful
 
 CHAP. VI 
 
 YOUTH 299 
 
 disorder, a few rare local pamphlets, on which he kept 
 a careful watch, either from the door or from inside. 
 Behind these, again, within the glass, was a precious 
 shelf, containing in the middle of it about a dozen 
 volumes of a kind dear to a collector's eye — thin vol- 
 umes in shabby boards, then just beginning to be 
 sought after — the first editions of nineteenth-century 
 poets. For months past David had been hoarding up 
 a few in a corner of his little lodging, and on his open- 
 ing day they decoyed him in at least five inquiring 
 souls, all of whom stayed to talk a bit. There was a 
 ' Queen Mab,' and a ' Lyrical Ballads ; ' an ' Endymion ; ' 
 a few Landors thrown in, and a ' Bride of Abydos ' — 
 this last not of much account, for its author had the 
 indiscretion, from the collector's point of view, to be 
 famous from the beginning, and so to flood the world 
 with large editions. 
 
 Round and about these dainty morsels were built in 
 with solid rubbish, with Daddy's 'Journals of Theol- 
 ogy,' ' British Controversialist,' and the rest. In one 
 top corner lurked a few battered and ciit-down Elzevirs, 
 of no value save to the sentiment of the window, while 
 a good many spaces were filled up with some new and 
 attractive editions of standard books just out of copy- 
 right, contributed, these last, by the enterprising trav- 
 eller of a popular firm, from whom David had them 
 on commission. 
 
 Inside, the shop was of the roughest : a plank or 
 two on a couple of trestles served for a counter, and 
 two deal shelves, put up by David, ran along the wall 
 behind. The counter held a few French scientific 
 books, very fresh, and ' in the movement,' the result of 
 certain inquiries put by old Barbier to a school friend 
 of his, now professor at the Sorbonne — meant to catch 
 the 'college people ; ' while on the other side lay some 
 local histories of neighbouring towns and districts,
 
 300 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 a sort of commodity always in demand in a great 
 expanding city, where new men have risen rapidly 
 and families are in the making. For these local books 
 the lad had developed an astonishing flair. He had the 
 geographical and also the social instincts which the 
 pursnit of them demands. 
 
 On his first day David netted in all a profit of seven- 
 teen shillings and twopence, and at night he curled 
 himself up on a mattress in the little back kitchen, 
 with an old rug for covering and a bit of fire, and 
 slept the sleep of liberty. 
 
 In a few days more several of the old-established 
 book-buyers of the town, a more numerous body, per- 
 haps, in Manchester than in other northern centres, 
 had found him out ; a certain portly and wealthy 
 lady, connected with one of the old calico-printing 
 families, a person of character, who made a hobby of 
 Lancashire Nonconformity, had walked into the shop, 
 and given the boyish owner of it much good advice 
 and a few orders ; the Earl of Driffield had looked 
 in, and, caught by the lures of the stall, customers had 
 come from the most unlikely quarters, desiring the 
 most heterogeneous wares. The handsome, intelligent 
 young fellow, with his out-of-the-way strains of knowl- 
 edge, with his frank self-conceit and his equally frank 
 ignorance, caught the fancy of those who stayed to 
 talk with him. A certain number of persons had 
 been already taken with him in Purcell's shop, and 
 were now vastly amused by the lad's daring and the 
 ambitious range of his first stock. 
 
 As for Lord Driffield, on the first occasion when he 
 had dropped in he had sat for an hour at least, talk- 
 ing and smoking cigarettes across David's primitive 
 counter. 
 
 This remarkable person, of whom Lucy thought so 
 little, was well known, and had been well known, for
 
 (.11 A I'. \'I 
 
 YOUTH 301 
 
 a good many years, to the booksellers of Manchester 
 and Liverpool. As soon us the autumn shooting 
 season began, Purcell, for instance, remembered Lord 
 Driffield, and began to put certain books aside for 
 him. He possessed one of the famous libraries of 
 England, and he not only owned but read. Scholars 
 all over Eurojje took toll both of his books and his 
 brains. He lived to collect and to be consulted. 
 There was almost n(jthing he did not know, except 
 how to make a book for himself. He was so learned 
 that he had, so to speak, worked through to an extreme 
 modesty. His friends, however, found nothing in 
 life so misleading as Lord Driffield's diffidence. 
 
 At the same time rrovidence had laid upon him a 
 vast family estate, and an aristocratic wife, married in 
 his extreme youth to please his father. Lady Driffield 
 had the ideas of her caste, and when they came to 
 their great house near Staly bridge, in the aiitumn, 
 she insisted on a succession of proper guests, whu 
 would shoot the grouse in a proper manner, and amuse 
 her in the evenings. For, as she had no children, life 
 was often monotonous, and when she was bored she 
 had a statel}' way of making herself disagreeable to 
 Lord Driffield. He therefore did his best to content 
 her. He received her guests, dined with them in the 
 evenings, and despatched them to the moors in the 
 morning. But between those two functions he was 
 his own master ; and on the sloppy November after- 
 noons he might as often as not be seen trailing 
 about Manchester or Liverpool, carrying his slouching 
 shoulders and fair spectacled face into every book- 
 seller's shop, good, bad, and indifferent, or giving lec- 
 tures, mostly of a geographical kind, at popular insti- 
 tutions — an occupation in which he was not particu- 
 larly effective. 
 
 David had served him, once or twice, in Half Street,
 
 302 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE hook h 
 
 and had sent a special notice of his start and his 
 intentions to Benet's Park, tlie Driflftekls' 'place.' 
 Lord Driffield's first visit left him quivering with 
 excitement, for the earl had a way of behaving as 
 though everybody else were not only his social, but 
 his intellectual equal — even a lad of twenty, with his 
 business to learn. He would sit pleasantly smoking 
 and asking questions — a benevolent, shabby person, 
 eager to be informed. Then, when David had fallen 
 into the trap, and was holding forth — proud, it might 
 be, of certain bits of knowledge which no one else in 
 Manchester possessed — Lord Driffield would throw in 
 a gentle comment, and then another and another, till 
 the trickle became a stream, and the young man 
 would fall blankly listening, his mouth opening wider 
 and wider. When it was over, and the earl, with 
 his draggled umbrella, had disappeared, David sat, 
 crouched on his wooden stool, consumed with hot 
 ambition and wonder. How could a man know so 
 much — and an earl, wdio didn't want it ? For a few 
 hours, at any rate, his self-conceit was dashed. He 
 realised dimly what it might be to know as the scholar 
 knows. And that night, when he had shut the shut- 
 ters, he vowed to himself, as he gathered his books 
 about him, that five hours was enough sleep for a 
 strong man ; that learn he must and should, and that 
 some day or other he would hold his own, even with 
 Lord Driffield. 
 
 How he loved his evenings — the paraffin lamp glar- 
 ing beside him, the crackling of the coal in his own 
 fire, the book on his knee ! Ancrum had kept his 
 promise, and was helping him with his Greek ; but 
 his teaching hardly kept pace with the boy's enthusi- 
 asm and capacity. The voracity with which he worked 
 at his Thucydides and Homer left the lame minister 
 staring and sighing. The sound of the lines, the roll
 
 CHAP. VI YOUTH 303 
 
 of the oi's and oil's was in David's ear all day, and to 
 learn a dozen irregular verbs in the interval between 
 two customers was like the gulping of a dainty. 
 
 Meanwhile, as he collected his English poets he 
 read them. And here was a whole new world. For 
 in his occupation with the Encyclopaedists he had 
 cared little for jioetry. The reaction against his 
 Metliodist lit had lasted long, had developed a certain 
 contempt for sentiment, a certain love for all sharp, 
 dry, calculable things, and for the tone of irony in 
 particular. But in such a nature such a phase was 
 sure to pass, and it was passing. Burns, Byron, Shel- 
 ley, Keats, Tennyson — now he was making acquaint- 
 ance piecemeal with them all, as the precious volumes 
 turned up, which he was soon able to place with a pre- 
 cision which tore them too soon out of his hands. 
 The Voltairean temper in him was melting, was pass- 
 ing into something warmer, subtler, and more restless. 
 
 But he was not conscious of it. He was as secular, 
 as cocksure, as irritating as ever, when Ancrum probed 
 him on the subject of the Hall of Science or the vari- 
 ous Secularist publications which he supported. 
 
 * Do you call yourself an atheist now, David ? ' said 
 Ancrum one day, in that cheerful, half-ironic tone 
 which the young bookseller resented. 
 
 *I don't call myself anything,' said David, stoutly. 
 ' I'm all for this world ; we can't know anything about 
 another. At least, that's my opinion, sir — no offence 
 to you.' 
 
 ' Oh, dear me, no offence ! There have been a feiv 
 philosophers, you know, Davy, since Voltaire. There's 
 a person called Kant ; I don't know anything about 
 him, but they tell me he made out a very pretty case, 
 on the practical side anyway, for a God and immor- 
 tality. And in England, too, there have been two or 
 three persons of consequence, you remember, like
 
 304 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 Coleridge and Jolm Henry Newman, who have 
 thonght it worth while to believe a little. But you 
 don't .care about that ? ' 
 
 The lad stood silent a moment, his colour rising, his 
 fine lip curling. Then he burst out : 
 
 * What's the good of thinking about things by the 
 wrong end ? There's such a lot to read ! ' 
 
 And with a great stretch of all his young frame he 
 fell back on the catalogue he was looking through, 
 while Ancrum went on turning over a copy of ' The 
 Keasoner,' a vigorous Secularist paper of the day, 
 which he had found on the counter, and which had 
 suggested his question. 
 
 Knowledge — success: it was for these that David 
 burned, and he laid rapid hands upon them. He had 
 a splendid physique, and at this moment of his youth 
 he strained it to the utmost. He grudged the time 
 for sleep and meals, and on Saturday afternoons, the 
 early-closing day of Manchester, he would go out to 
 country sales, or lay plans for seeing the few consid- 
 erable libraries — Lord Driffield's among them — which 
 the neighbouring districts possessed. On Sunday he 
 read from morning till night, and once or twice his 
 assistant John, hammering outside for admittance in 
 the winter dark, wakened tlie master of the shop from 
 the rickety chair where he had fallen asleep over his 
 books in the small hours of the morning. 
 
 His assistant ! It may well be asked what a youth 
 of twenty, setting up on thirty pounds capital in a 
 small shop, wanted with an assistant before he had 
 any business to speak of. The story is a curious one. 
 
 Some time in the previous summer Daddy had 
 opened a smoking and debating room at the Parlour, 
 by way of keeping his clientele together and giving a 
 special character to the place. He had merely boarded 
 off a bit of the original seed warehouse, put in some
 
 CHAP. VI YOUTH 306 
 
 rough tables and chairs, and a few newspapers. But 
 by a conjuneticjii of circumstances the place liad taken 
 a Secularist character, and the weekly debates which 
 Daddy inaugurated were, for a time at least, well 
 attended. Secularism, like all other forms of mental 
 energy, had lately been active in Manchester; there 
 had been public discussions between ]\Ir. Holyoake 
 and Mr. Bradlaugh as to whether Secularism were 
 necessarily atheistic or no. Some of the old news- 
 papers of the movement, dating from Chartist daj's, 
 had recently taken a new lease of life ; and combined 
 with the protest against theology was a good deal of 
 co-operative and repuV)lican enthusiasm. Lomax, who 
 had been a Secularist and an Owenite for twenty years, 
 and who was a republican to boot, threw himself into 
 the m^Ue, and the Parlour debates during the whole 
 of the autumn and winter of '69-70 were full of life, 
 and brought out a good niany young speakers, David 
 Grieve among them. Indeed, David was for a time 
 the leader of the place, so ready was his gift, so con- 
 fident and effective his personality. 
 
 On one occasion in October he was holding forth on 
 ' Science — the true Providence of Life.' The place 
 was crowded. A well-known Independent had been 
 got hold of to answer the young Voltairean, and David 
 was already excited, for his audience was plying him 
 with interruptions, and taxing to the utmost a natural 
 debating power. 
 
 In the midst of it a printer's devil from the res- 
 taurant outside, a stout, stupid-looking lad, found his 
 way in, and stood at the door listening. The fine 
 classical head of the speaker, the beautiful voice, the 
 gestures so free and flowing, the fire and fervour of 
 the whole performance — these things left him gaping. 
 
 ' Who's that ? ' he ventured to inquire of a man 
 near him, a calico salesman, well known in the Sal ford 
 
 VOL. 1 X
 
 306 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Conservative Association, who had come to support 
 the Independent speaker. 
 
 The man laughed. 
 
 '■ That's young Grieve, assistant to old Purcell, Half 
 
 Street. He talks a d d lot of stuff — blasphemous 
 
 stuff, too ; but if somebody'd take and teach him and 
 send him into Parliament, some day he'd make em 
 skip, I warrant yo. I never- heard onybody frame 
 better for public speaking, and I've heard a lot.' 
 
 The printer's devil stayed and stared through the 
 debate. Then, afterwards, he began to haunt the paths 
 of this young Satan, crept up to him in the news- 
 room, skulked about him in the restaurant. At last 
 David took notice of him, and they made friends. 
 
 ' Have you got anybody belonging to you ? ' he 
 asked him, shortly. 
 
 ' No,' said the boy. ' Father died last spring ; 
 mother was took with pleurisy in November ' 
 
 But the words stuck in his throat, and he coughed 
 over them. 
 
 'All right,' said David; 'come for a walk Sunday 
 afternoon ? ' 
 
 So a pretty constant companionship sprang up be- 
 tween them. John Dalby came of a decent stock, and 
 was still, as it were, under the painful and stupefying 
 surprise of those bereavements which had left him an 
 orphan. His blue eyes looked bewilderment at the 
 world ; he was bullied by the compositors he worked 
 under. Sometimes he had violent fits of animal spirits, 
 but in general he was dull and silent, and no one could 
 have guessed that he often read poetry and cried him- 
 self to sleep in the garret where he lodged. Physically 
 he was a great, overgrown creature, not, in truth, 
 much younger than David, But while David was 
 already the man, John was altogether in the tadpole- 
 stage — a being of large, ungainly frame, at war with
 
 CHAP. VI 
 
 Y(JUTII 307 
 
 his own hands and feet, his small eyes lost in his pink, 
 spreading checks, his speech shy and scanty. Yet, 
 sucli as he was, David found a use for him. Tempera- 
 ments of the fermenting, expansive sort want a listener 
 at the moment of early maturity, and almost any two- 
 legged thing with the listener's gift will do. Daviil 
 Avorked off much steam on the Saturday or Sunday- 
 afternoons, when the two would push out iuto the 
 country, walking some twenty miles or so for the sheer 
 joy of movement. While the one talked and declaimed, 
 ploughing his violent way through the soil of his 
 young thought, the other, fat and silent, puffed along- 
 side, and each in his own way was happy. 
 
 Just about the time David was dismissed by Purcell, 
 John's apprenticeship came to an end. When he heard 
 of the renting of the shop in Potter Street, ho promptly 
 demanded to come as assistant. 
 
 ' Don't be a fool ! ' said David, turning upon him ; 
 ' what should I want with an assistant in that bit of a 
 place ? And I couldn't pay you, besides, man.' 
 
 ' Don't mind that,' said John, stoutly. ' I'd like to 
 learn the trade. Perhaps you'll set up a printing busi- 
 ness by-and-by. Lots of booksellers do. Then I'll be 
 handy.' 
 
 ' And how the deuce are you going to live ? ' cried 
 David, somewhat exasperated by these unpractical pro- 
 posals. ' You're not exactly a grasshopper ; ' and his 
 eye, half angry, half laughing, ran over John's plump 
 person. 
 
 To which John replied, undisturbed, that he had 
 got four pounds still of the little hoard his mother 
 had left him, and, judging by what David had told him 
 of his first months in IVIanchester, he could make that 
 last for living a good while. When he had learnt some- 
 thing of the business with David, he would move on — 
 trust him.
 
 308 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Whereupon David told him flatly that he wasn't 
 going to help him waste his money, and sent him about 
 his business. 
 
 On the very day, however, that David opened, he was 
 busy in the shop, when he saw John outside at the 
 stall, groaning under a bundle. 
 
 'It's Mr. Lomax ha s6nt you this,' said the lad, 
 calmly, 'and V\\\ to put it up, and tell him how your 
 stock looks.' 
 
 The bundle contained Daddy's contributions to 
 young Grieve's window, which at the moment were 
 very welcome ; and David in his gratitude instructed 
 the messenger to take back a cordial message. The 
 only notice John took was to lift up two deal shelves 
 that were leaning against the wall of the shop, and to 
 ask where they were to go. 
 
 And, say what David would, he stuck, and would 
 not be got rid of. With the Lancashire accent he had 
 also the Lancashire persistence, and David after a 
 while gave in, consented that he should stay for some 
 weeks, at any rate, and then set to work to teach him, 
 in a very impatient and intermittent way. For watch- 
 ing and bargaining at the stall, at any rate, for fetch- 
 ing and carrying, and for all that appertains to the 
 carrying and packing of parcels, John presently de- 
 veloped a surprising energy. David's wits were there- 
 by freed for the higher matters of his trade, while 
 John was beast of burden. The young master could 
 work up his catalogues, study his famous collections, 
 make his own bibliographical notes, or run off here 
 and there by 'bus or train in quest of books for a cus- 
 tomer; he could swallow down his Greek verbs or 
 puzzle out his French for Barbier in the intervals of 
 business ; the humbler matters of the shop prospered 
 none the less. 
 
 Meanwhile both lads were vegetarians and teeto-
 
 CHAP. VI YOl'TII 309 
 
 talers ; both lived as near as might be on sixpence a 
 clay ; and an increasing portion of the ]\ranchester 
 world — of that world, at aii}' rate, which buys books 
 — began, as the weeks rolled on, to take interest in the 
 pair and their venture. 
 
 Christmas came, and David made up his accounts. 
 He had turned over the whole of his capital in six 
 weeks, had lived and paid his rent, and was very 
 nearly ten pounds to the good. On the evening when 
 he made this out he sat jubilantly over the fire, think- 
 ing of Louie. Certainly it would be soon time for him 
 to send for Louie at this rate. Yet there were jjros 
 and cons. He would have to look after her when she 
 did come, and there would be an end of his first free- 
 dom. And what would she find to do ? Silk-weaving 
 had been decaying year by year in Manchester, and 
 for liand-loom weaving, at any rate, there was no open- 
 ing at all. 
 
 No matter I With his prosperity there came a 
 quickening of the sense of kinship, which would not 
 let him rest. For the first time for many years he 
 thought often of his father. Who and what had his 
 mother been ? Why had Lhicle Reuben never spoken 
 of his parents, save that one tormented word in the 
 dark ? Why, his father could not have been thirty 
 when he died I Some day he would make Uncle 
 Reuben tell all the story — he would know, too, where 
 his father was buried. 
 
 " And meanwhile, in a few more weeks, he would 
 write to Kinder. He would be good to Louie — he 
 decidedly meant that she should have a good time. 
 Perhaps she had grown out of her tricks by now. 
 Tom said she was thought to be uncommon handsome. 
 David made a little face as he remembered that. She 
 would be all the more difficult to manage.
 
 .310 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Yet all the time David Grieve's prosperity was the 
 most insecure growth imaginable. 
 
 One evening Lucy rushed in late to see Dora. 
 
 ' Oh, Dora I Dora ! Put down your work at once 
 and listen to me.' 
 
 Dora looked up in amazement, to see Lucy's little 
 face all crimson with excitement and resolution. 
 
 ' Dora, I've found it all out : he's going to buy the 
 house over Mr. Grieve's head, and turn him into the 
 street, just as he's got nicely settled. Oh ! he's done 
 it before, I can tell you. There was a man higher up 
 Half Street he served just the same. He's got the 
 money, and he's got the spite. Well now, Dora, it's' 
 no good staring. Has JVIr. Grieve been up here lately? ' 
 
 'No; not lately,' said Dora, with an involuntary 
 sigh. 'Father's been to see him. He says he's that 
 bus}^ he can't come out. But, Lucy, how do you knoAV 
 all tliis ? ' 
 
 AYhereupon, at first, Lucy wouldn't tell ; but being 
 at bottom intensely proud of her own cleverness at 
 last confessed. She had been for long convinced that 
 her father meant mischief to young Grieve, and had 
 been on the Avatch. A little listening at doors here, 
 and a little prying into papers there, had presently 
 given her the clue. In a private drawer, unlocked by 
 chance, she had found a solicitor's letter containing 
 the full description of No. 15 Potter Street, and of 
 some other old houses in the same street, soon to be 
 sold and rebuilt. The description contained notes of 
 price and date in her father's hand. That very even- 
 ing the solicitor in question had come to see her 
 father. She had been sent upstairs, but had managed 
 to listen all the same. The purchase — whatever it 
 was — was to be concluded ' shortly.' There had been 
 much legal talk, and her father had seemed in a par- 
 ticularly good temper when Mr. Vance went away.
 
 CHAP. VI YOUTH 311 
 
 * Well now, look here,' said Lucy, frowning and bit- 
 ing her lips; 'I shall just go right on and see him. 
 I thought I might have found him here. But there's 
 no time to lose.' 
 
 Dora had bent over her frame again, and her face 
 was hidden. 
 
 ' Why, it's quite late,' she said, slowly ; * the shop 
 will be shut up long ago.' 
 
 ^ I don't care — 1 don't care a bit,' cried Lucy. ' One 
 can't think about what's proper. I'm just going 
 straight away.' 
 
 And she got up feverishly, and put on her liat 
 again. 
 
 ' Why can't you tell father and soud him ? He's 
 downstairs in the reading-room,' said Dora. 
 
 'I'll go myself, Dora, thank you,' said Lucy, with 
 an obstinate toss of her head, as she stood before the 
 old mirror over the mantelpiece. ' I dare say you 
 think I'm a very bold girl. It don't matter.' 
 
 Then for a minute she became absorbed in putting 
 one side of her hair straight. Dora, from behind, sat 
 looking at her, needle in hand. The gaslight fell on 
 her pale, disturbed face, showed for an instant a sort 
 of convulsion pass across it which Lucy did not see. 
 Then she dyew her hand along her eyes, with a low, 
 quivering breath, and went back to her work. 
 
 As Lucy opened the door, however, a movement of 
 anxiety, of conscience, rose in Dora. 
 
 ' Lucy, shall I go with you ? ' 
 
 'Oh, no,' said Lucy, impatiently. 'I know what's 
 what, tliank you, Dora. I'll take care of myself. 
 Perhaps I'll come back and tell you what he says.' 
 
 And she closed the door behind her. Dora did not 
 move from her Avork ; but her hand trembled so that 
 she made several false stitches and had to undo them. 
 
 Meanwhile Lucy sped along across Market Street
 
 312 THE III8T0KY OF DAVID GIUEVE book ii 
 
 and through St. Ann's Square. Her blood was up, 
 and she could have done anything, braved anybody, to 
 defeat her lather and win a smile from David Grieve. 
 Yet, as she entered Potter Street, she began to quake 
 a little. The street was narrow and dark. On one 
 side the older houses had been long ago pulled down 
 and replaced by tall warehouses, which at night were 
 a black and towering mass, without a light anywhere. 
 The few shops opposite closed early, for in the office 
 quarter of Manchester there is very little doing after 
 office hours, when the tide of life ebbs outwards. 
 
 Lucy looked for ISTo. 15, her heart beating fast. 
 There was a light in the first floor, but the shop-front 
 was altogether dark. She crossed the street, and, 
 lifting a shaking hand, rang the bell of the very nar- 
 row side door. 
 
 Instantly there were sounds inside — a step — and 
 David stood on the threshold. 
 
 He stared in amazement at his unwonted visitor. 
 
 ' Oh, Mr. Grieve — please — I've got something to tell 
 you. Oh, no, I won't come in — we can stand here, 
 please, out of the wind. But father's going to buy 
 this place over your head, and I thought I'd better 
 come and tell you. He'll be pretty mad if he thinks 
 I've let out; but I don't care.' 
 
 She was leaning against the wall of the passage, 
 and David could just see the defiance and agitation on 
 her face by the light of the gas-lamp outside. 
 
 He himself gave a low whistle. 
 
 ' Well, that's rather strong, isn't it. Miss Purcell ? ' 
 
 'It's mean — it's abominable,' she cried. 'I vowed 
 I'd stop it. But I don't know what he'll do to me — 
 kill me, most likely.' 
 
 'Nobody shall do anything to you,' said David, 
 decidedly. ' You're a brick. But look here — can you 
 tell me anything more ? '
 
 CHAP. VI YOUTH 313 
 
 She commanded herself with great difRculty, and 
 told all she knew. David leant against the wall be- 
 side her, twisting a meditative lip. The situation w;is 
 ominous, certainly. He had always known tliat his 
 tenure was precarious, but from various indications he 
 had supposed that it would be some years yet befoi-e 
 his side of the street was much meddled with. That 
 old fox ! He must go and see Mr. Ancrum. 
 
 A passion of hate and energy rose within him. 
 Somehow or other he would pull through. 
 
 When Lucy had finished the tale of her eavesdrop- 
 pings, the young fellow shook himself and stood erect. 
 
 ' Well, I am obliged to you, Miss Purcell. And 
 now I'll just go straight off and talk to somebody that 
 I think'll help me. But I'll see you to Market Street 
 first.' 
 
 * Oh ! — somebody will see us ! ' she cried in a fever, 
 'and tell father.' 
 
 ' Not they ; I'll keep a look out.' 
 
 Then suddenly, as they walked along together, a 
 great shyness fell upon them both. Why had she 
 done this thing, and run the risk of her father's 
 wrath ? As David walked beside her, he felt for an 
 instant, through all his gratitude, as though some one 
 had thrown a lasso round him, and the cord were 
 tightening. He could not have explained the feeling, 
 but it made him curt and restive, absorbed, appar- 
 ently, in his own thoughts. Meanwhile Lucy's' heart 
 swelled and swelled. She did think he would have 
 taken her news differently — have made more of it and 
 her. She wished she had never come — she wished she 
 had brought Dora. The familiar consciousness of 
 failure, of insignificance, returned, and the hot tears 
 rose in her eyes. 
 
 At Market Street she stopped him hurriedly. 
 
 'Don't come any farther. I can get home.'
 
 314 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 David, meanwhile, was saying to himself that he 
 was a churlish brute ; but for the life of him he could 
 not get out any pretty speeches worthy of the 
 occasion. 
 
 ' I'm sure I take it most kind of you, Miss Purcell. 
 There's nothing could have saved me if you hadn't 
 told. And I don't know whether I can get out of it 
 now. But if ever I can do anything for you, you 
 know ' 
 
 ' Oh, never mind ! — never mind ! ' she said, incohe- 
 rently, stabbed by his constraint. ' Good-night.' 
 
 And she ran away into the darkness, choked by the 
 sorest tears she had ever shed. 
 
 David, meanwhile, went on his way to AncrUm, 
 scourging himself. If ever there was an ungrateful 
 cur, it Avas he ! Why could he find nothing nice to 
 say to that girl in return for all her pluck? Of 
 course she would get into trouble. Coming to see him 
 at that time of night, too I Why, it was splendid I 
 
 Yet, all the same, he knew perfectly well that if 
 she had been there beside him again, he would have 
 been just as tongue-tied as before. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 On the following night David walked into the Parlour 
 about eight o'clock, hung up his hat with the air of an 
 emperor, and looked round for Daddy. 
 
 ' Look here. Daddy ! I've got something to say to 
 you, but not down here : you'll be letting out my pri- 
 vate affairs, and I can't stand that.' 
 
 ' Well, come upstairs, then, you varmint ! You're 
 a poor sort of fellow, always suspecting your friends. 
 Come up — come up with you ! I'll humour you ! '
 
 CHAP, vii YOUTH 315 
 
 And Daddy, bursting with curiosity, led the way 
 upstairs to Dora's sitting-room. Dora was moving 
 about amid a mass of silks, which lay carefully spread 
 out on the table, shade melting into shade, awaiting 
 their transference to a new silk case she had been busy 
 upon. 
 
 As the door opened she looked up, and when she 
 saw David her face flushed all over. 
 
 Daddy pushed the lad in. 
 
 'Dora, he's got some news. Out with it, sir ! ' 
 
 And he stood opposite the young fellow, on tiptoe, 
 quivering with impatience. 
 
 David put both hands in his pockets, and looked 
 out upon them, radiant. 
 
 'I think,' he said slowly, ' I've scotched old Purcell 
 this time. But perhaps you don't know what he's 
 been after ? ' 
 
 'Lucy was in here last night,' said Dora, hesitating ; 
 ' she told me about it.' 
 
 ' Lucy ! ' cried Daddy, exasperated. ' What have you 
 been making secrets about ? I'll have no secrets from 
 me in this house, Dora. Why, when Lucy tells you 
 something important, is it all hidden up from me ? 
 Nasty close ways ! ' 
 
 And he looked at her threateningly. 
 
 Nothing piqued the old Bohemian so much as the 
 constant assumption of the people about him that he 
 was a grown-up baby, of no discretion at all. That 
 the assumption was true made no difference whatever 
 to the irritating quality of it. 
 
 Dora dropped her head a little, but said nothing. 
 David interposed : 
 
 'Well, now ril tell you all about it.' 
 
 Ilis tone was triumph itself, and he plunged into 
 his story. He described what Purcell had meant to 
 do, and how nearly he had done it. In a month, if
 
 316 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 the bookseller had had his way, his young rival would 
 have been in the street, with all his connection to make 
 over again. At the moment there was not another 
 corner to be had, within David's means, anywhere near 
 the centre of the town. It would have meant a com- 
 pletely fresh beginning, and temporary ruin. 
 
 But he had gone to Ancrum. And Ancrum and he 
 had bethought them of the rich Unitarian gentleman 
 who had been David's sponsor when he signed his 
 agreement. 
 
 There and then, at nine o'clock at night, Ancrum 
 had gone off to Higher Broughton, where the good 
 man lived, and laid the case before him. Mr. Doyle 
 had taken the night to think it over, and the following 
 morning he had paid a visit to his lawyer. 
 
 ' He and his wife thought it a burning shame, he 
 told Mr. Ancrum ; and, besides, he's been buying up 
 house property in Manchester for some time past, only 
 we couldn't know that — that was just luck. He 
 looked upon it as a good chance both for him and for 
 me. He told his lawyer it must be all settled in three 
 hours, and he didn't mind the price. The lawyer 
 found out that Purcell was haggling, went in to win, 
 put the cash down, and here in my pocket I've got the 
 fresh agreement between me and Mr. Doyle — three 
 months' notice on either side, and no likelihood of my 
 being turned out, if I want to stay, for the next three 
 or four years. Hurrah ! ' 
 
 And the lad, quite beside himself with jubilation, 
 raised the blue cap he held in his hand, and flung it 
 round his head. Dora stood and looked at him, lean- 
 ing lightly against the table, her arms behind her. 
 His triumph carried her away ; her lips parted in a 
 joyous smile ; her whole soft, rounded figure trembled 
 with animation and sympathy. 
 
 As for Daddy, he coidd not contain himself. He
 
 CHAP. Til 
 
 YOUTH 317 
 
 ran to the top of the stairs, and sent a kitchen-boy 
 flying for a bottle of champagne. 
 
 ' Drink, you varmint, drink ! ' he said, when the 
 liquor eanic, ' or I'll be the death of you ! Hold your 
 tongue. Dura I Do you think a man can put up with 
 temperance drinks when his enemy's smitten hip and 
 thigh ? Uh, you jewel, David, but you'll bring him 
 low, lad — you'll bring him low before you've done- 
 promise me that. I shall see him a beggar yet, lad, 
 shan't I '.' Oh, nectar ! ' 
 
 And Daddy poured down his champagne, apostro- 
 phising it and David's vengeance together. 
 
 Dora looked distressed. 
 
 < Father — Lucy ! How can you say such things ? ' 
 
 • Lucy— eh ?— Lucy ? She won't be a beggar. 
 She'll marry ; she's got a bit of good looks of her own. 
 But, David, my lad, what was it you were saying? 
 How was it you got wind of this precious business ? ' 
 
 David hesitated. 
 
 'Well, it was Miss Purcell told me,' he said. 'She 
 came to see me at my place last evening.' 
 
 He drew himself together with a little nervous 
 dignity, as though foreseeing that Daddy would make 
 remarks. 
 
 ' Miss Purcell !— what, Lucy ?—Lucy ? Upon my 
 word, Davy ! Why, her father'll wring her neck 
 when he finds it out. And she came to warn 
 
 you ? ' 
 
 Daddy stood a moment taking in the situation, 
 then, with a queer grin, he walked up to David and 
 poked him in the ribs. 
 
 'So there were passages— eh, young man— when 
 you were up there ? ' 
 
 The young fellow straightened himself, with a look 
 of annoyance. 
 
 'Nothing of the sort. Daddy; there were no pas-
 
 318 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 sages. But Miss Lucy's done me a real friendly act, 
 and I'd do the same for her any day.' 
 
 Dora had sat down to her silks again. As David 
 spoke she bent closely over them, as though the lamp- 
 light puzzled her usually quick perception of shade 
 and quality. 
 
 As for Daddy, he eyed the lad doubtfully. 
 
 ' She's got a pretty waist and a brown eye, Davy, 
 and she's seventeen.' 
 
 ' She may be for me,' said David, throwing his head 
 back and speaking witli a certain emphasis and ani- 
 mation. 'But she's a little brick to have given me 
 notice of this thing.' 
 
 The warmth of these last words produced more 
 effect on Daddy than his previous denials. 
 
 'Dora,' he said, looking round — 'Dora, do you be- 
 lieve the varmint ? All the same, you know, he'll be 
 for marrying soon. Look at him ! ' and he pointed a 
 thin theatrical finger at David from across the room. 
 ' When I was his make I was in love with half the 
 girls in the place. Blue eyes here — brown eyes there 
 — nothing came amiss to me.' 
 
 ' Marrying ! ' said David, with an impatient shrug 
 of the shoulders, but flushing all over. ' You might 
 wait, I think, till I've got enough to keep one on, let 
 alone two. If you talk such stuff. Daddy, I'll not tell 
 you my secrets when there are any to tell.' 
 
 He tried to laugh it off ; but Dora's grey eye, glanc- 
 ing timidly round at him, saw that he was in some 
 discomfort. There was a bright colour in her cheek 
 too, and her hand touched her silks uncertainly. 
 
 ' Thank you for nothing, sir,' said Daddy, unabashed. 
 ' Trust an old hound like me for scenting out what he 
 wants. But, go along with you ! I'm disappointed 
 in you. The young men nowadays have got no blood! 
 They're made of sawdust and brown paper. The
 
 CHAP. VII YOUTH 819 
 
 world was our orange, and we sucked it. Bedad, we 
 did ! But you — cold-blooded cubs — go to the devil, I 
 tell you, and read your Byron I ' 
 
 And, striking an attitude which was a boisterous 
 reminiscence of Macready, the old wanderer flung out 
 the lines : 
 
 ' Alas ! when mingling souls forget to blend, 
 Death hath but little left him to destroy. 
 Ah ! happy years ! Once more, who would not be a boy ? ' 
 
 David laughed out. Daddy turned petulantly away, 
 and looked out of window. The night was dreary, 
 dark, and wet. 
 
 'Dora!' 
 
 'Yes, father.' 
 
 ' Manchester's a damned dull hole. I'm about tired 
 of it.' 
 
 Dora started, and her colour disappeared in an 
 instant. She got up and went to the window. 
 
 ' Father, you know they'll be waiting for you down- 
 stairs,' she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. 
 ' They always say they can't get on without you on 
 debating nights.' 
 
 'Stuff and nonsense ! ' said Daddy, throwing off the 
 hand. But he looked mollified. The new readin"-- 
 room was at present his pet hobb}- ; his interest in 
 the restaurant proper had dropped a good deal of late, 
 or so Dora's anxiety persuaded her. 
 
 ' It's quite true,' said David. ' Go and start 'em. 
 Daddy, and I'll come down soon and cut in. I feel as 
 if I could speak the roof off to-night, and I don't care 
 a hang about what I But first I've got something to 
 say to Miss Dora. I want to ask her a favour.' 
 
 He came forward smiling. She gave liiin a startled 
 look, but her eyes — poor Dora I — could not light on 
 liiiii now without takinir a new briglitncss. How well 
 
 o'
 
 320 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 his triumph sat on him ! How crisply and hand- 
 somely his black hair curled above his open brow ! 
 
 ' Move secrets,' growled Daddy. 
 
 'Nothing of any interest, Daddy. Miss Dora can 
 tell you all about it, if she cares. Now go along ! 
 Start 'em on the Bishop of Peterborough and the 
 Secularists. I've got a lot to say about that.' 
 
 He pushed Daddy laughingly to the door, and came 
 back again to where Dora was once more grappling 
 with her silks. Her expression had changed again. 
 Oh ! she had so many things to open to him, if only 
 she could find the courage. 
 
 He sat down and looked at a bit of her embroidery, 
 which la}^ uncovered beside her on the frame. 
 
 * I say, that is fine work ! ' he said, wondering. * I 
 hope you get well paid for it, Miss Dora. You ought. 
 Well, now, I do want to ask your advice. This busi- 
 ness of the house has set me thinking about a lot of 
 things.' 
 
 He lay back in his chair, with his hands in his 
 pockets, and threw one leg over the other. He was 
 in such a state of nervous excitement, Dora could see, 
 that he could hardly keep himself still. 
 
 ' Did I ever tell you about my sister ? No, I know 
 I haven't. I've kept it dark. But now I'm settled I 
 want to have her to live with me. There's no one but 
 us two, except the old uncle and aunt that brought us 
 up. I must stick to her — and I mean to. But she's 
 not like other girls. She's a queer one.' 
 
 He stopped, frowning a little as the recollections of 
 Louie rushed across him, seeking for words in which 
 to draw her. And directly he paused, Dora, who had 
 dropped her silks again in her sudden astonishment, 
 burst into questions. How old was his sister ? Was 
 she in Manchester ? Had she a trade ? Her soul 
 was full of a warm, unexpected joy, her manner was
 
 CHAP. VII YOUTH 321 
 
 eager — receptive. He took up his parable and told 
 the story of his childhood and Louie's at the farm. 
 His black eye kindled as he looked past Dora into the 
 past — into the bosom of the Scout. Owing partly to 
 an imaginative gift, partly to his reading habit, wlien 
 he was stinnilated — when he was,, as it were, talking 
 at large, trying to present a subject as a whole, to 
 make a picture of it — he rose into ways of speech 
 quite different from those of his class, and different 
 from his own dialect of every day. This latent 
 capacity for line expression was mostly drawn out at 
 this time by his attempts at public speaking. But 
 to-night, in his excitement, it showed in his talk, and 
 Dora was bewildered. Oh, how clever he was ! He 
 talked like a book — just like a book. She pushed her 
 chair back from the silks, and sat absorbed in the 
 pleasure of listening, environed too by the happy 
 thought that he was making a friend of her, giving 
 her — plain, insignificant, humble Dora Loinax — his 
 confidence. 
 
 As for him, the more he talked the more he enjoyed 
 talkincr. Xever since he came to Manchester had he 
 fallen into such a moment of unburdenment, of inti- 
 macy, or something like it, with any human being. 
 He had talked to Ancrum and to John. But that was 
 quite different. Xo man confides in a woman as he 
 confides in a man. The touch of difference of sex 
 gives charm and edge, even when, as was the case 
 here, the man has no thrill whatever in his veins, and 
 no thought of love-making in his head. 
 
 ' You must have been very fond of your sister,' Dora 
 said at last, tremulously. ' You two all alone — and no 
 mother.' 
 
 Somehow the soft sentiment in her words and tone 
 struck him suddenly as incongruous. His expression 
 changed. 
 
 VOL. I T
 
 322 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know/ he said, with a sort of laugh, 
 not a very bright one. ' Don't you imagine I was a 
 pattern brother ; I was a brute to her lots of times. 
 And Louie — ah, well, you'll see for yourself what 
 she's like ; she's a queer customer sometimes. And 
 now I'll tell you what I wanted to ask you, Miss 
 Dora. You see, if Louie comes it won't do for her to 
 have no emj^loyment, after she's had a trade all day ; 
 and she won't take to mine — she can't abide books.' 
 
 And he explained to her his perplexities — the 
 ebbing of the silk trade from Manchester, and so on. 
 He might hire a loom, but Louie Avould get no work. 
 All trades have their special channels, and keep to 
 them. 
 
 So it had occurred to him, if Louie was willing, 
 would Dora take her as an apprentice, and teach her 
 the church work ? He would be quite ready to pay 
 for the teaching ; that would be only fair. 
 
 ' Teach her my work ! ' cried Dora, instinctively 
 drawing back. ' Oh, I don't think I could.' 
 
 He coloured, and misunderstood her. In a great 
 labour-hive like Lancashire, with its large and small 
 industries, the native ear is very familiar with the 
 jealous tone of the skilled worker, threatened with 
 competition in a narrow trade. 
 
 ' I didn't mean any offence,' he said, with a little 
 stiffness. ' I don't want to take the bread out of any- 
 body's mouth. If there isn't work to be had, you've 
 only to say so. Miss Dora.' 
 
 ' Oh, I didn't mean that,' she cried, wounded in her 
 turn. 'There's plenty of work. At the shop last 
 week they didn't know what to do for hands. If she 
 Avas clever at it, she'd get lots of work. But ' 
 
 She laid her hand on her frame lovingly, not know- 
 ing how to explain herself, her gentle brows knitting 
 in the effort of thought.
 
 CHAP. VII 
 
 YOUTH 323 
 
 Her work was so much more to her than ordinary 
 work paid for in ordinary coin. Into these gorgeous 
 altar-cloths, or these delicate wrappings for chalice 
 and paten, she stitched her heart. To work at them 
 was prayer. Jesus, and His Mother, and the Saints : 
 it was with them she communed as her stitches flowed. 
 She sat in a mystic, a heavenly world. And the 
 silence and solitude of her work made one of its 
 chief charms. And now to be asked to share it with 
 a strange girl, who could not love it as she did, who 
 would take it as hard business — never to be alone any 
 more with her little black book and her prayers ! 
 
 And then she looked up, and met a young man's 
 half-offended look, and a shy, proud eye, in which the 
 nascent friendship of hve minutes before seemed to be 
 sinking out of sight. 
 
 <0h yes, I will,' she cried. 'Of course I will. It 
 just sounded a bit strange to me at first. I've been so 
 used to be alone always.' 
 
 But he demurred now — wished stiffly to take back 
 his proposal. He did not want to put upon her, and 
 perhaps, after all, Louie would have her own notions. 
 
 But she could not bear it, and as he retreated she 
 pressed forward. Of course there was work. And it 
 would be very good for her, it would stir her up to 
 take a pupil ; it was just her old-maidish ways — it had 
 startled her a bit at first. 
 
 And then, her reserve giving way more and more 
 as her emotion grew, she confessed herself at last 
 completely. 
 
 ' You see, it's not just tvork to me, and it's not the 
 money, though I am glad enough for that ; but it's for 
 the church ; and I'd live on a crust, and do it for noth- 
 ing, if I could I ' 
 
 She looked up at him — that ardent dream-life of 
 hers leaping to the eyes, transforming the pale face.
 
 324 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book ii 
 
 David sat silent and embarrassed. He did not 
 know what to say — how to deal with this turn in the 
 conversation. 
 
 'Oh, I know you think I'm just foolish,' she said, 
 sadly, taking up her needle. ' You always did ; but I'll 
 take your sister — indeed I will.' 
 
 ' Perhaps you'll turn her your way of thinking,' said 
 David, with a little aAvkward laugh, looking round for 
 his hat. 'But Louie isn't an easy one to drive.' 
 
 ' Oh, you can't drive people ! ' cried Dora, flushing ; 
 ' you can't, and you oughtn't. But if Father Russell 
 talked to her she might like him — and the church. 
 Oh, Mr. Grieve, won't you go one Sunday and hear 
 him — Avon't you — instead of ' 
 
 She did not finish her sentence, but David finished 
 it for her : ' Instead of going to the Hall of Science ? 
 Well, but you know. Miss Dora, I being what I am, I 
 get more good out of a lecture at the Hall of Science 
 than I should out of Father Eussell. I should be 
 quarrelling with him all the time, and wanting to 
 answer him.' 
 
 'Oh, you couldn't,' said Dora eagerly, 'he's so 
 good, and he's a learned man — I'm sure he is. Mr. 
 Foss, the curate, told me they think he'll be a bishop 
 some day.' 
 
 ' All the better for him,' said David, unmoved. ' It 
 don't make any difference to me. ' Xo, Miss Dora, 
 don't you fret yourself about me. Books are my 
 priests.' 
 
 He stood over her, his hands on his sides, smiling. 
 
 'Oh, no ! ' cried Dora, involuntarily. 'You mustn't 
 say that. Books can't bring us to God.' 
 
 ' Xo more can priests,' he said, with a sudden flash 
 of his dark eyes, a sudden dryness of his tone. ' If 
 there is a God to bring us to — prove me that first. 
 Miss Dora. But it's a shame to say these things to
 
 CHAP. VII 
 
 YOUTH 325 
 
 you — that it is — and I've been worrying you a deal 
 too much about my stupid affairs. Good night. We'll 
 talk about Father Russell again another time.' 
 
 He ran downstairs. Dora went back to her frame, 
 then pushed it way again, ran eagerly to the window, 
 and pulled the blind aside. Down below in the lighted 
 street, now emptying fast, she saw the tall figure 
 emerge, saw it run down the street, and across St. 
 Mary's Gate. She watched it till it disappeared ; then 
 she put her hands over her face, and leant against the 
 window-frame Aveeping. Oh, what a sudden descent 
 from a moment of pure joy ! How had the jarring 
 note come ? They had been put wrong with each 
 other ; and perhaps, after all, he would be no more to 
 her now than before. And she had seemed to make 
 such a leap forward — to come so near to him. 
 
 ' Oh ! I'll just be good to his sister,' she said to 
 herself drearily, with an ache at her heart that was 
 agony. 
 
 Then she thought of him as he had sat there beside 
 her; and suddenly in her pure thought there rose a 
 vision of herself in his arms, her head against his 
 broad shoulder, her hand stealing round his neck. 
 She moved from the window and threw herself down 
 in the darkest corner of the room, wrestling desper- 
 ately with what seemed to her a sinful imagination. 
 She oucrht not to think of him at all ; she loathed her- 
 self. Father Russell would tell her she was wicked. 
 He had no faith — he was a hardened unbeliever — and 
 she could not make herself think of that at all — could 
 not stop herself from wanting — ivanting him for her 
 own, whatever happened. 
 
 And it was so foolish too, as well as bad ; for he 
 hadn't an idea of falling in love with anybody — any- 
 one could see that. And she who was not pretty, and 
 not a bit clever — it was so likely he would take a
 
 326 THE HISTORY OF DAVIT) GRIEVE book ii 
 
 fancy to her ! Why, in a few years he would be a big 
 man, he would have made a fortune, and then he 
 could take his pick. 
 
 ' Oh ! and Lucy — Lucy would hate me.' 
 But the thought of Lucy, instead of checking her, 
 brought with it again a wild gust of jealousy. It 
 was fiercer than before, the craving behind it stronger. 
 She sat up, forcing back her tears, her whole frame 
 tense and rigid. Whatever happened he would never 
 marry Lucy ! And who could wish it ? Lucy was 
 just a little, vain, selfish thing, and when she found 
 David Grieve wouldn't have her, she would soon for- 
 get him. The surging longing within refused, proudly 
 refused, to curb itself — for Lucy's sake. 
 
 Then the bell of St. Ann's slowly began to strike 
 ten o'clock. It brought home to her by association 
 one of the evening hymns in the little black book she 
 was frequently accustomed to croon to herself at night 
 as she put away her work : 
 
 O God who canst not change nor fail, 
 
 Guiding the hours as they roll by, 
 Brightening with beams the morning pale, 
 
 And burning in the mid-day sky ! 
 
 Quench thou the fires of hate and strife, 
 
 The wasting fever of the heart ; 
 From perils guard our feeble life, 
 
 And to our souls thy peace impart. 
 
 The words flowed in upon her, but they brought no 
 comfort, only a fresh sense of struggle and effort. 
 Her Christian peace was gone. She felt herself 
 wicked, faithless, miserable. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the stormy night outside, David was 
 running and leaping through the streets, flourishing 
 his stick from side to side in cut and thrust with an
 
 CHAP, vii YOUTH 327 
 
 imaginary enemy whenever the main thoroughfares 
 were left behind, and he found himself in some dark 
 region of warehouses, where his steps echoed, and he 
 was king alike of roadway and of pavement. 
 
 The wind, a stormy north-easter, had risen since the 
 afternoon. David fought with it, rejoiced in it. After 
 the little hot sitting-room, the stinging freshness, the 
 rough challenge of the gusts, were d<dicious to him. 
 He was overflowing with spirits, with health, with 
 exultation. 
 
 As he thought of Purcell he could hardly keep 
 himself from shouting aloud. If he could only be 
 there to see when Turcell learnt how he had been 
 foiled ! And trust Daddy to spread a story which 
 would certainly do Purcell no good ! No, in that di- 
 rection he felt that he was probably safe from attack 
 for a long time to come. Success beckoned to him ; 
 his enemy was under foot ; his will and his gifts had 
 the world before them. 
 
 Father Russell indeed! Let Dora Lomax set him 
 on. His young throat filled with contemptuous laugh- 
 ter. As a bookseller, he knew what the clergy read, 
 what they had to say for themselves. How much 
 longer could it go on, this solemn folly of Christian 
 superstition? 'Just give us a good Education Bill, 
 and we shall see ! ' 
 
 Then, as he fell thinking of his talk with Dora and 
 Lomax, he wished impatiently that he had been even 
 plainer with Daddy about Lucy Purcell. With regard 
 to her he felt himself caught in a tangled mesh of 
 obligation. He must, somehow, return her the service 
 she had done him. And then all the world would 
 think he was making up to her and wanted to marry 
 her. Meanwhile— in the midst of real gratitude, a 
 strong desire to stand between her and her father, and 
 much eager casting about for some means of paying
 
 328 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 her back — his inner mind was in reality pitilessly 
 critical towards her. Her overdone primness and 
 neatness, her fashionable frocks, of which she was so 
 conscious, her horror of things and people that were 
 not * nice,' her contented ignorance and silly chatter- 
 ing ways — all these points of manner and habit were 
 scored against her in his memory. She had become 
 less congenial to him rather than more since he knew 
 her first. All the same, she was a little brick, and he 
 would have liked one minute to kiss her for her pluck, 
 make her some lordly present, and the next — never to 
 see her again ! 
 
 In reality his mind at this moment was filling with 
 romantic images and ideals totally remote from an}'- 
 thing suggested by his own everyday life. A few 
 weeks before, old Barbier, his French master, had for 
 the first time lent him some novels of George Sand's. 
 David had carried them off, had been enchanted to 
 find that he could now read them with ease and 
 rapidity, and had plunged straightway into the new 
 Avorld thus opened to him with indescribable zest and 
 passion. His Greek had been neglected, his science 
 laid aside. Night after night he had been living with 
 Valentine, with Consuelo, Avith Caroline in 'Le Mar- 
 quis de Villemer.' His poetical reading of the winter 
 had prepared the way for what was practically his 
 first introduction to the modern literature of passion. 
 The stimulating novelty and foreignuess of it was 
 stirring all his blood. George Sand's problems, her 
 situations, her treatment of the great questions of sex,' 
 her social and religious enthusiasms — these things 
 were for the moment a new gospel to this provincial 
 self-taught lad, as they had been forty years before to 
 the youth of 1830. Under the vitalising touch of 
 them the man was fast developing out of the boy ; the 
 currents of the nature were setting in fresh directions.
 
 CHAP. VII 
 
 YOUTH 320 
 
 And in such a mood, and with such preoccupations, 
 how was one to bear patiently with foolish, friendly 
 fingers, or with uncomfortable thoughts of your 
 own, pointing you to Lacij rarcell / With the great 
 marriage-night scene from ' Valentine ' thrilling in 
 your mind, how was it possible to think of the prim 
 self-conceit, the pettish tem[)er and mincing airs of 
 that little person in Half Street without irritation? 
 
 No, no! The Hnknown, the unforeseen! The young 
 man plunged through the rising storm, and through 
 the sleety rain, which had begun to beat upon him, 
 with face and eyes uplifted to the night. It was as 
 though he searched the darkness for some form which, 
 even as he looked, began to take vague and luminous 
 shape there. 
 
 Next morning Daddy, in his exultation, behaved 
 himself with some grossness towards his enemy. About 
 eleven o'clock he became restless, and began patrolling 
 Market Place, passing every now and then up the 
 steps into the narrow passage of Half Street, and so 
 round by the cathedral and home. He had no definite 
 purpose, but 'have a squint at Tom,' under the cir- 
 cumstances, he must, some way or other. 
 
 And, sure enough, as he was coming back through 
 Half Street on one of his rounds, and Avas within a few 
 yards of Purcell's window, the bookseller came out 
 Avith his face set in Daddy's direction. Purcell, Avhose 
 countenance, so far as Daddy could see at first sight, 
 was at its blackest and sourest, and whose eyes were 
 on the ground, did not at once perceive his adversary, 
 and came stem on. 
 
 The moment was irresistible. Laying his thumbs 
 in his waistcoat pocket, and standing so as to bar his 
 brother-in-law's path. Daddy launched a few unctuous 
 words in his smoothest voice.
 
 330 THE HISTOKY OF DAVID GKIEVE book ii 
 
 ' Tom, me boy, thou hast imagined a device which 
 thou wast not able to perform. But the Lord, Tom, 
 hath made thee turn thy back. And they of th}^ own 
 household, Tom, have lifted up the heel against thee.' 
 
 Purcell, strong, dark-browed fellow that he was, 
 wavered and blenched for a moment under the sur- 
 prise of this audacious attack. Then with an oath he 
 put out his hand, seized Daddy's thin shoulder, flung 
 him violently round, and })assed him. 
 
 * Speak to me again in the street, you scoundrel, 
 and I'll give you in charge ! ' he threw behind him, as 
 he strode on just in time to avoid a flight of street- 
 arabs, who had seen the scuffle from a distance and 
 Avere bearing down eagerly upon him. 
 
 Daddy went home in the highest spirits, stepping 
 jauntily along like a man who has fulfilled a mission. 
 But when he came to boast himself to Dora, he found 
 to his chagrin that he had only earned a scolding. 
 Dora flushed up, her soft eyes all aflame. 
 
 'You've done nothing but mischief, father,' said 
 Dora, bitterly. ' How could you say such things ? 
 You might have left Uncle Tom to find out for him- 
 self about Lucy. He'll be mad enough without your 
 stirring him up. Now he'll forbid her to come here, 
 or see me at all. I don't know what '11 become of that 
 child ; and whatever possessed you to go aggravating 
 him Avorse and worse I can't think.' 
 
 Daddy blinked under this, but soon recovered him- 
 self. No one, he vowed, could be expected to put up 
 for ever Avith Purcell's mean tricks. He had held his 
 tongue for tAventy-one years, and noAv he had paid 
 back one little text in exchange for the hundreds Avhere- 
 Avith Purcell had been Avont to break his bones for 
 him in past days. As for Dora, she hadn't the spirit 
 of a fly. 
 
 ' Well, I dare say I am afraid/ said Dora, despond-
 
 riiAr. rii YOUTH 331 
 
 ently. 'I saw Uncle Tom yesterrlay, too, and he 
 gave me a look made me feel eold down my back. I 
 don't like anybody to hate us like that, father. Wlio 
 knows ' 
 
 A tremor ran through her. She gave her father a 
 piteous, childish look. She had the timidity, the lack 
 of self-confidence which seems to cling through life to 
 those wlio have been at a disadvantage with the world 
 in their childhood and youth. The anger of a man like 
 Purcell terrilied her, lay like a nightmare on a sensitive 
 and introspective nature. 
 
 'Pish ! ' said Daddy, contemptuously ; ' I should like 
 to know what liarm he can do us, now that I've turned 
 
 so d d respectable. Though it is a bit hard on a 
 
 man to have to keep so in order to spite his brother- 
 in-law.' 
 
 Dora laughed and sighed. She came up to her 
 father's chair, put his hair straight, re-tied his tie, and 
 then kissed him on the cheek. 
 
 'Father, you're not getting tired of the Parlour?' 
 she said, unsteadily. He evaded her downward look, 
 and tried to shake her off. 
 
 ' Don't I slave for vou from morninsc till ni^ht, vou 
 thankless chit, you ? And dun't you begrudge me all 
 the little amusements which turn the tradesman into 
 the man and sweeten the pill of bondage — eh, you 
 poor-souled thing ? ' 
 
 Her eyes, however, drew his after them, whether he 
 would or no, and they surveyed each otlier — he uneasily 
 hostile ; she sad. She slowly shook her head, and he 
 perfectly undei-stood what was in her mind, though she 
 did not speak. He had been extremely slack at busi- 
 ness lately ; the month's accounts made iip that morn- 
 ing had been unusually disappointing; and twice dur- 
 ing the last ten days Dora had sat up till midnight to 
 let her father in, and had tried with all the energy of
 
 332 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 a sinking heart to persuade herself that it was accident, 
 and that he was only excited, and not drunk. 
 
 Now, as she stood looking at him, suddenly all the 
 horror of those long-past days came back upon her, 
 thrown up against the peace of the last few years. 
 She locked her liands round his neck with a vehement 
 pathetic gesture. 
 
 ' Father, be good to me ! don't let bad people take 
 you away from me — don't, father — you're all I have — 
 all I ever shall have.' 
 
 Daddy's green eyes wavered again uncomfortably. 
 
 'Stuff!' he said, irritably. 'You'll get a husband 
 directly, and think no more of me than other girls do 
 when the marrying fit takes 'em. What are you grin- 
 ning at now, I should like to know ? ' 
 
 For she was smiling — a light tremulous smile which 
 puzzled him. 
 
 ' At you, father. You'll have to keep me whether 
 you like it or no. For I'm not a marrying sort.' 
 
 She looked at him with a curious defiance, her lip 
 twitching. 
 
 ' Oh, we know all about that ! ' said Daddy, im- 
 patiently, adding in a mincing voice, ' " I will not 
 love; if I do hang me: i' faith I Avill not." No, my 
 pretty dear, not till the "wimpled, winning, pur-blind, 
 wayward boy " comes this road — oh, no, not till next 
 time ! Quite so.' 
 
 She let him rail, and said nothing. She sat down 
 to her work ; he faced round upon her suddenly, and 
 said, frowning : 
 
 ' What do you mean by it, eh ? You're as good- 
 looking as anybody ! ' 
 
 ' Well, I want you to think it. father,' she said, 
 affectionately, raising her eyes to his. A mother must 
 have seen the shrinking, sadness beneath the smile. 
 What Daddy saw was simply a rounded girlish face,
 
 CHAP. VII YOUTH 333 
 
 with soft cheeks and lips which seemed to him made 
 for kissing ; nothing to set the Thames ou tire, per- 
 haps, but why shouhl she run herself down ? It 
 annoyed him, touched his vanity. 
 
 'Oh, I dare say I ' he said to her, roughly, with an 
 affected brutality. ' But you'll be precious disap- 
 I)ointed if some one else doesn't think so too. Don't 
 tell me ! ' 
 
 She bent over her frame without speaking. lUit 
 her heart filled with bitterness, and a kind of revolt 
 against her life. 
 
 Meanwhile her conscience accused her about Lucy. 
 Lucy must have got herself into trouble at liome, that 
 she was sure of. And it was unlike her to keep it to 
 herself — not to come and complain. 
 
 Some days — a week — passed. But Dora dared not 
 venture herself into her uncle's house after Daddy's 
 escapade, and she was, besides, nuich pressed with her 
 work. A whole set of altar furniture for a new church 
 at Blackburn had to be finished by a given day. 
 
 The affairs of the Parlour troubled her, and she got 
 up long before it was light to keep the l)ooks in order 
 and to plan for the day. Daddy had no head for fig- 
 ures, and he seemed to her to be growing careless 
 about expenses. Her timid, over-anxious mind con- 
 jured up the vision of a slowly rising tide of debt, and 
 it haunted her all day. When she went to her frame 
 she was already tired out, and yet there she sat over 
 it hour after hour. 
 
 Daddy was blind. But Sarah, the stout cook, who 
 worshipped her, knew well enough that she was grow- 
 ing thin and white. 
 
 *If yo doan't draw in yo'U jest do yorsel a mischief,' 
 she said to her, angrily. 'Yo're nowt but a midge 
 onyways, and a body '11 soon be able to see through yo.'
 
 334 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 *I shall be all riglit, Sarah/ Dora would say. 
 
 'Aye, we'st aw on us be aw reet in our coffius/ 
 returned the irate Sarali. Then, melting into affec- 
 tion, 'Neaw, honey, be raysonable, an' I'st just run 
 round t' corner, an' cook you up a bit o' meat for your 
 supper. Yo git no strength eawt i' them messin 
 things yo eat. Theer's nowt but wind in em.' 
 
 But not eveii the heterodox diet with which, every 
 now and then, Dora for peace' sake allowed herself to 
 be fed, behind Daddy's back, put any colour into her 
 cheeks. She went heavily in these days, and the 
 singularly young and childish look which she had 
 kept till now went into gradual eclipse. 
 
 David Grieve dropped in once or twice during the 
 week to laugh and gossip about Purcell with Daddy. 
 Thanks to Daddy's tongue, the bookseller's plot 
 against his boy rival was already known to a large 
 circle of persons, and was likely to cost him cus- 
 tomers. 
 
 Whenever she heard the young full voice below or 
 on the stairs, Dora would, as it were, draw herself 
 together — stand on her defence. Sometimes she asked 
 him eagerly about his sister. Had he written ? No ; 
 he thought he would still wait a week or two. Ah, 
 well, he must let her know. 
 
 And, on the whole, she was glad when he went, 
 glad to get to bed and sleep. Being no sentimental 
 heroine, she was prosaically thankful that she kept 
 her sleep. Otherwise she must have fallen ill, and 
 the accounts would have gone wrong. 
 
 At last one evening came a pencil note from Lucy, 
 in these terms : 
 
 ' You may come and see me, father says. I've been 
 ill. — Lucy.' 
 
 In a panic Dora put on her things and ran. Mary 
 Ann, the little hunted maid, let her in, looking more
 
 CHAP. VII 
 
 YOUTH 335 
 
 hunted and scared than usual. IMiss Lucy was better, 
 she said, but she had been • tevr ble bad.' No, she 
 didn't know what it was took her. Tliey'd got a nurse 
 for her two nights, and she, :\lary Ann, had been run 
 off her h^gs. 
 
 ' Why didn't you send for nie ? ' cried Dora, anil 
 hurried up to the attic. Turcell did not appear, 
 
 Lucy was waiting for lier, looking out eagerly from 
 a bank of pillows. 
 
 Dora could not restrain an exclamation which was 
 almost a cry. She could not have believed that any- 
 one could have changed so in ten days. Evidently the 
 acute stage — whatever had been the illness — was past. 
 There was already a look of convalescence in the white 
 face, with its black-rimmed eyes and peeling lips. But 
 the loss of flesh was extraordinary for so short a time. 
 The small face was so thinned and blanched that the 
 tangled masses of golden-brown hair in which it was 
 framed seemed ridiculously out of proportion to it ; 
 the liand playiug with some grapes on the counterpane 
 was of a ghostly lightness. 
 
 Dora was shocked almost beyond speaking. She 
 stood holding Lucy's hand, and Lucy looked up at her, 
 evidently enjoying her consternation, for a smile 
 danced in her hollow eyes. 
 
 ' Lucy, tohy didn't you send for me ? ' 
 
 ' Because I was so feverish at first. I was all light- 
 headed, and didn't know where I was ; and then I was 
 so weak I didn't care about anything,' said Lucy, in a 
 small thread of a voice. 
 
 ' What was it ? ' 
 
 ' Congestion of the lungs,' said the girl, with pride. 
 ' They just stopped it, or you'd be laying me out now, 
 Dora. Dr. Alford told father I was dreadful run-down 
 or I'd never have taken it. I'm to go to Hastings. 
 Father's got a cousin there that lets lodgings.'
 
 336 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 • Hut liow did you get so ill, Lucy ? ' 
 Lucy was silent a bit. Then she said : 
 ' Sit down close here. M}^ voice is so bad still.' 
 Dora sat close to her pillow, and bent over, stroking 
 her hands with emotion. The fright of her entrance 
 was still upon her. 
 
 'Well, you know,' she said in a hoarse whisper, 
 ' father found out about me and Mr. Grieve — I don't 
 know how, but it was one morning. I was sitting in 
 here, and he came in all white, with his eyes glaring. 
 I thought he was going to kill me, and I was that 
 frightened, I watched my chance, and ran out of the 
 door and along into Mill Gate as fast as I could to get 
 away from him ; and then I thought I saw him coming 
 after me, and I ran on across the bridge and up Chapel 
 Street a long, long way. I was in a terrible fright, 
 and mad with him besides. I declared to myself I'd 
 never come back here. Well, it was pouring with 
 rain, and I got wet through. Then I didn't know where 
 to go, and what do you think I did ? I just got into 
 the Broughton tram, and rode up and down all day! I 
 had a shilling or two in my pocket, and I waited and 
 dodged a bit at either end, so the conductor shouldn't 
 find out. And that was what did it — sitting in my 
 wet things all day. I didn't think anything about 
 dinner, I Avas that mad. But Avhen it got dark, I 
 thought of that girl — you know her, too — Minnie Park, 
 that lives with her brother and sells fents, up Cannon 
 Gate. And somehow I dragged up there — I thought 
 I'd ask her to take me in. And what happened I 
 don't rightly know. I suppose I was took with a 
 faint before I could explain anything, for I was 
 shivering and pretty bad when I got there. Anyway, 
 she put me in a cab and brought me home ; and 
 I don't remember anything about it, for I was 
 queer in the head very soon after they got me to
 
 CHAP. Ml YOUTH 337 
 
 bed. Oh, I was bad! It was just a squeak/ — said 
 Lucy, her voice dropping from exhaustion; but hf-r 
 eyes glittered in lier pinched face Avith a curious 
 triumph, difficult to decipher. 
 
 Dora kissed her tenderly, and entreated her not to 
 talk ; she was sure it was bad for her. But Lucy, as 
 usual, would not be managed. She held herself quite 
 still, gathering breath and strength ; then she began 
 again : 
 
 'If I'd died, perhaps /le'd have been sorry. You 
 know who I mean. It was all along of him. And 
 father '11 never forgive me — never. He looks quite 
 different altogether somehow. Dora ! you're not to 
 tell him anything till I've got right away. I think — 
 I think — I hate him !' 
 
 And suddenly her beautiful brown eyes opened wide 
 and fierce. 
 
 Dora hung over her, a strange, mingled passion in 
 her look. ' You poor little thing I ' she said slowly, 
 with a deep emphasis, answering not the unreal Lucy 
 of those last words, but the real one, so pitifully evi- 
 dent beneath. 
 
 'But look here, Dora; when I'm gone away, you 
 may tell him — you must tell him, Dora,' said the 
 child, imperiously. ' I'd not have him see me now for 
 anything. I made INIary Ann put all the glasses 
 away. I don't want to remember what a fright I am. 
 But at Hastings I'll soon get well ; and — and remem- 
 ber, Dora, you are to tell him. I'd like him to know 
 I nearly caught my death that day, and that it was 
 all along of him ! ' 
 
 She laid her hands across each other on the sheet 
 with a curious sigh of satisfaction, and was quiet for 
 a little, while Dora held her hand. But it was not 
 long before the stillness broke up in sudden agitation. 
 A tremor ran through her, and she caught Dora's fin- 
 
 VOL. 1 z.
 
 338 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 gers. In her weakness she could not control herself, 
 and her inmost trouble escaped her. 
 
 ' Oh, Dora, he Avasn't kind to me, not a bit — when I 
 went to tell him that night. Oh ! I cried when I 
 came home. I did think he'd have taken it different.' 
 
 ' What did he say ? ' asked Dora, quietly. Her 
 face was turned away from Lucy, but she still held 
 her hand. 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know ! ' said Lucy, moving her head 
 restlessly from side to side and gulping down a sob. 
 'I believe he was just sorry it was me he'd got to 
 thank. Oh, I don't know ! — I don't know ! — very 
 likely he didn't mean it.' 
 
 She waited a minute, then she began again : 
 
 ' Oh of course you think I'm silly ; and that I'd 
 have much more chance if I turned proud, and pre- 
 tended I didn't care. I know some girls say they'd 
 never let a man know they cared for him first. I 
 don't believe in 'em ! But I don't care. I can't help 
 it. It's my way. But, Dora, look here ! ' 
 
 The tears gathered thick in her eyes. Dora, bend- 
 ing anxiously over her, was startled by the change of 
 expression in her. From what depths of new emo- 
 tion had the silly Lucy caught the sweetness which 
 trembled for a moment through every line of her lit- 
 tle trivial face ? 
 
 ' You know, Dora, it was all nonsense at the begin- 
 ning. I just wanted some one to amuse myself with 
 and pay me attentions. But it isn't nonsense now. 
 And I don't want him all for myself. Friday night I 
 thought I was going to die. I don't care whether the 
 doctor did or not ; / did. And I prayed a good deal. 
 It Avas queer praying, I dare say. I was very light- 
 headed, but I thanked God I loved him, though — 
 though — he didn't care about me ; and I thought if I 
 did get well, and he were to take a fancy to me, I'd
 
 cii.u'. VII YOUTH 339 
 
 show hiin I could be as nice as other girls. I wouldn't 
 want everything lor myself, or spend a lot of money 
 on dress.' 
 
 She broke off for want of breath. This moral ex- 
 perience of liers was so new and strange to her that 
 she could hardly find words in which to clothe it. 
 
 Dora had slipped down beside her and buried her 
 face in the bed. When Lucy stopped, she still knelt 
 there in a quivering silence. But Lucy could not bear 
 her to be silent — she must have sympathy. 
 
 ' Aren't you glad, Dora ? ' she said presently, when 
 she had gathered strength again. ' I thought you'd be 
 glad. You've always wanted me to turn religious. 
 And — and — perhaps, when I get well and come back, 
 I'll go with you to St. Damian's, Dora. I don't know 
 what it is. 1 suppose it's caring about somebody — and 
 being ill — makes one feel like this.' 
 
 And, drawing herself from Dora's hold, she turned 
 on her side, put both her thin hands under her cheek, 
 and lay staring at tlie window with a look which had 
 a certain dreariness in it. 
 
 Dora at last raised herself. Lucy could not see her 
 face. There was in it a sweet and solemn resolution 
 — a new light and calm. 
 
 ' Dear Lucy,' she said, tremulously, laying her cheek 
 against her cousin's shoulder, ' God speaks to us when 
 we are unhappy — that was what you felt. He makes 
 everything a voice to call unto Himself.' 
 
 Lucy did not answer at once. Then suddenly she 
 turned, and said eagerly : 
 
 ' Dora, did you ever ask him — did you ever find out 
 — whether he was thinking about getting married ? 
 You said you would.' 
 
 'He isn't, Lucy. He was vexed with father for 
 speaking about it. T think he feels he must make his 
 way first. His business takes him up altogether.'
 
 340 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Lucy gave an irritable sigh, closed her eyes, and 
 would talk no more. Dora stayed with her, and nursed 
 her through the evening. When at last the nurse 
 arrived who was to take charge of her through the 
 niglit, Lucy pulled Dora down to her and said, in a 
 hoarse, excitable whisper : 
 
 ' Mind you tell him — that I nearly died — that father 
 '11 never 'be the same to me again — and it was all for 
 him! You needn't say /said so.' 
 
 Late that night Dora stood long at her attic-window 
 in the roof looking out at the April night. From a 
 great bank of clouds to the east the moon was just 
 appearing, sending her light along the windy streamers 
 which, issuing from the main mass, spread like wide 
 open fingers across the inner heaven. Opposite there 
 was an old timbered house, one of the few relics of an 
 earlier Manchester, which still, in the very centre of 
 the modern city, thrusts out its broad eaves and over- 
 hanging stories beyond the line of the street. Above 
 and behind it, roof beyond roof, to the western limit 
 of sight, rose block after block of warehouses, vast 
 black masses, symbols of the great town, its labours 
 and its wealth ; far to the right, closing the street, the 
 cathedral cut the moonlit sky ; and close at hand was 
 an old inn, with a wide archway, under which a huge 
 dog lay sleeping. 
 
 Town and sky, the upper clouds and stars, the 
 familiar streets and buildings below — to-night they 
 were all changed for Dora, and it was another being 
 that looked at them. In all intense cases of religious 
 experience the soul lies open to 'voices' — to impres- 
 sions which have for it the most vivid and, so to speak, 
 physical reality. Jeanne d'Arc's visions were but an 
 extreme instance of what humbler souls have known in 
 their degree in all ages. The heavenly voices speak,
 
 CHAP. VII YOUTH 341 
 
 and the ear actually hears. So it was with Dora. It 
 seemed to her that she had been walking in a feverish 
 loneliness through the valley of the shadow of death ; 
 that one like unto the Son of Man had drawn her 
 thence with warning and rebuke, and she was now at 
 His feet, clothed and in her right miiul. Words were 
 in her ear, repeated again and again — peremptory 
 words which stabbed and healed at once: 'DcKighter, 
 thou shdlt not covet. I hare refused thee this gift. If 
 it he Mij icill to give it to another, ivhat is that to thee ? 
 Folloio thou J/i?.' 
 
 As she sank upon her knees, she thought of the 
 confession she would make on Sunday — of the mys- 
 terious sanctity and sweetness of the single life — of 
 the vocation of sacrifice laid upon her. There rose in 
 her a kind of ecstasy of renunciation. Her love — al- 
 ready so hopeless, so starved ! — was there simply that 
 she might offer it up — burn it through and through 
 with the tires of the spirit. 
 
 Lucy should never know, and David should never 
 know. Unconsciously, sweet soul, there was a curious 
 element of spiritual arrogance mingled with this abso- 
 lute surrender of the one passionate human desire her 
 life was ever to wrestle with. The baptized member 
 of Christ's body could not pursue the love of David 
 Grieve, could not marry him as he was now, without 
 risk and sin. But Lucy — the child of schism, to whom 
 the mysteries of Church fellowship and sacramental 
 grace were unknown — for hor, in her present exalta- 
 tion, Dora felt no further scruples. Lucy's love was 
 clearly ' sent ' to her ; it was right, whether it were ul- 
 timately happy or no, because of the religious effect 
 it had already had upon her. 
 
 The human happiness Dora dared no longer grasp 
 at for herself she yearned now to pour lavishly, quickly, 
 into Lucy's hands. Only so — such is our mingled life 1
 
 342 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE boor h 
 
 — could she altogether still, violently and by force, a 
 sort of upward surge of the soul which terrified her 
 now and then. A mystical casuistry, bred in her 
 naturally simple natiire by the subtle influences of a 
 long-descended Christianity, combined in her with a 
 piteous human instinct. When she rose from her 
 knees she was certain that she would never win and 
 marry David Grieve ; she was equally certain that she 
 would do all in her power to help little Lucy to win 
 and marry him. 
 
 So, like them of old, she pressed the spikes into her 
 flesh, and found a numbing consolation in the pain. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Some ten days more elapsed before Lucy was pro- 
 nounced fit to travel south. During this time Dora 
 saw her frequently, and the bond between the two 
 girls grew much closer than before. On the one hand, 
 Lucy yielded herself more than she had ever done yet 
 to Dora's example and persuasion, promised to go to 
 church and see at least what it was like when she got 
 to Hastings, and let Dora provide her with some of 
 her favourite High Church devotional books. On the 
 other, it was understood between them that Dora 
 would look after Lucy's interests, and keep her in- 
 formed how the land lay while she was in the south, 
 and Lucy, with the blindness of self-love, trusted her- 
 self to her cousin without a suspicion or a qualm. 
 
 While she was tending Lucy, Dora never saw Pur- 
 cell but twice, when she passed him in the little dark 
 entry leading to the private part of the house, and on 
 those occasions he did not, so far as she could per- 
 ceive, make any answer whatever to her salutation.
 
 CHAP. VIII 
 
 YOUTH 043 
 
 He was changed, she thought. He had always been a 
 morose-looking man, with an iron jaw ; but now there 
 was a fixed venom and disi^uiet, as well as a new look 
 of age, in the sallow face, which made it doubly 
 unpleasing. She would have been sorry for his loneli- 
 ness and liis disappointment in Lucy but for the 
 remembrance of his mean plot against David Grieve, 
 and for a certain other little fact. A middle-aged 
 Avoman, in a dowdy brown-stuff dress and black mantle, 
 had begun to haunt the house. She sat with Purcell 
 sometimes in the parlour downstairs, and sometimes 
 he accompanied her out of doors. ^Mavy Ann reported 
 that she was a widow, a Mrs. Whymper, who belonged 
 to the same chapel that Purcell did, and who was sup- 
 l)Osed by those who knew to have been making up to 
 him for some time. 
 
 ' And perhaps she'll get him after all,' said the little 
 ugly maid, with a grin. 'Catch me staying then, 
 Miss Dora ! It's bad enough as it is.' 
 
 On one occasion Dora came across the widow, wait- 
 ing in the little sitting-room. She was an angular 
 person, with a greyish-brown complexion, a prominent 
 mouth and teeth, and a generally snappish, alert look. 
 After a few coujuionidaces, in which Mrs. Whymper 
 was clearly condescending, she launched into a denun- 
 ciation of Lucy's ill behaviour to her father, which at 
 last roused Dora to defence. She waxed bold, and 
 pointed out that Lucy might have been managed if 
 her father had been a little more patient with her, 
 had allowed her a few ordinary amusements, and had 
 not insisted in forcing her at once, fresh from school, 
 into ways and practices she did not naturally like, 
 while she had never been trained to them by force of 
 habit. 
 
 *Hoity toity, Miss!' said the widow, bridling, 
 ' young people are very uppish nowadays. They never
 
 SU THE HISTORY Or DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 seem to remember there is such a thing as the filth 
 commandment. In mi/ young days what a father said 
 was law, and no questions asked ; and I've seen many 
 a Lancashire man take a stick to his gell for less 
 provocation than this gell's given her feyther ! 1 
 wonder at you, Miss Lomax, that I do, for backing 
 her up. But I'm afraid from what I hear you've been 
 taking up with a lot of Popish ways.' 
 
 And the woman looked her up and down with an 
 air which plainly said that she was on her own ground 
 in that parlour, and might say exactly what she 
 pleased there. 
 
 < If I have, I don't see that it matters to you,' said 
 Dora quietly, and retreated. 
 
 Yes, certainly, a stepmother looked likely ! Lucy 
 in her bedroom upstairs knew nothing, and Dora 
 decided to tell her nothing till she was stronger. But 
 this new development made the child's future more 
 uncertain than ever. 
 
 On the day before her departure for Hastings, Lucy 
 came out for a short walk, by Avay of hardening her- 
 self for the journey. She walked round the cathedral 
 and up Victoria Street, and then, tired out with the 
 exertion, she made her way in to Dora, to rest. Her 
 face was closely hidden by a thick Shetland veil, for, 
 in addition to her general pallor and emaciation, her 
 nsually clear and brilliant skin was roughened and 
 blotched here and there by some effect of her illness ; 
 she could not bear to look at herself in the glass, and 
 shrank from meeting any of her old acquaintances. 
 It was, indeed, curious to watch the effect of the 
 temporary loss of beauty upon her; her morbid impa- 
 tience under it showed at every turn. But for it, 
 Dora was convinced that she must and would have 
 pvit herself in David Grieve's way again before leaving 
 jSIanchester. As it was, she was still determined not 
 to let him see her.
 
 CHAP, vin YOUTH 345 
 
 She caine in, much exhausted, and threw herself 
 into Daddy's arm-chair with groans of self-pity. Did 
 Dora think she would ever be strong again — ever be 
 anything but an ugly fright ? It was hard to have all 
 this come upon you, just through doing a service to 
 some one who didn't care. 
 
 ' Hasn't he heard yet that I've been ill ? ' she 
 inquired petulantly. 
 
 Xo ; Dora did not think he had. Neither she nor 
 Daddy had seen him. He must have been extra busy. 
 But she would get Daddy to ask him up to supper 
 directly, and tell him all about it. 
 
 'And then, perhaps,' she said, looking up with a 
 sweet, intense look — how little Lucy was able to 
 decipher it I — ' perhaps he may write a letter.' 
 
 Lucy was cheered by this suggestion, and sat look- 
 ing out of window for a while, idly watching the 
 passers-by. But she could not let the one topic that 
 absorbed her mind alone for long, and soon she was 
 once more questioning Dora in close detail about 
 David Grieve's sister and all that he had said about 
 her. For, by way of obliging the child to realise some 
 of the inconvenient burdens and obligations which 
 were at that moment hanging round the young book- 
 seller's neck, and making the very idea of matrimony 
 ridiculous to him, Dora had repeated to her some of 
 his confidences about himself and Louie. Lucy had 
 not taken them very happily. Everything that turned 
 up now seemed only to push her further out of sight 
 and make her more insignificant. She was thirsting, 
 with a woman's nascent passion and a schoolgirl's 
 vanity, to be the centre and heroine of the play ; and here 
 she was reduced to the smallest and meanest of parts 
 — a part that caught nobody's eye, do what she would. 
 
 Suddenly she broke off what she was saying, and 
 called to Dora :
 
 346 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 ' Do you see that pair of people, Dora ? Come — 
 come at once ! What an extraordinary-looking girl ! ' 
 
 Dora turned unwillingly, being absorbed in a golden 
 halo which she had set herself to finish that day ; then 
 she dropped her needle, and pushed her stool back 
 that she might see better. From the cathedral end of 
 Market Place an elderly grey-haired man and a young 
 girl were advancing along the pavement towards the 
 Parlour. As they passed, the flower-sellers at the 
 booths were turning to look at them, some persons in 
 front of them were turning back, and a certain number 
 of errand-boys and other loungers were keeping pace 
 with them, observing them. The man leant every 
 now and then on a thick stick he carried, and looked 
 uncertainly from house to house. He had a worn, 
 anxious expression, and the helpless movements of 
 short sight. AVhenever he stopped the girl moved on 
 alone, and he had to hurry after her again to catch 
 her up. She, meanwhile, was perfectly conscious 
 that she was being stared at, and stared in return 
 with a haughty composure which seemed to draw the 
 eyes of the passers-by after it like a magnet. She 
 was very tall and slender, and her unusual height 
 made her garish dress the more conspicuous. The 
 small hat perched on her black hair was all bright 
 scarlet, both the felt and the trimming; under her 
 jacket, which was purposely thrown back, there was 
 a scarlet bodice, and there was a broad band of scarlet 
 round the edge of her black dress. 
 
 Lucy could not take her eyes off her. 
 ' Did you ever see anybody so handsome, Dora ? 
 But what a fast, horrid creatvire to dress like that ! 
 And just look at her ; she won't wait for the old man, 
 though he's calling to her — she goes on staring at 
 everybody. They'll have a crowd, presently ! Why, 
 they're coming here I '
 
 CHAP. VIII 
 
 YOUTH 347 
 
 For suddenly the girl stopped outside the doorway 
 below, and beckoned imperiously to her companion. 
 She said a few sharp words to him, and the pair up- 
 stairs feltthe swing-door of the restaurant open andshut. 
 
 Lucy, forgetting her weakness, ran eagerly to the 
 sitting-room door and listened. 
 
 There was a sound of raised voices below, and then 
 the door at the foot of the stairs opened, and Daddy 
 was heard shouting. 
 
 'There — go along upstairs. My daughter, she'll 
 speak to you. And don't you come back this way — a 
 man can't be feeding jManchester and taking strangers 
 about, all in the same twinkling of an eye, you know, 
 not unless he happens to have a few spare bodies 
 handy, which ain't precisely my case. i\Iy daughter 
 '11 tell you what you want to know, and show you out 
 by the private door. Dora I ' 
 
 Dora stood waiting rather nervously at the sitting- 
 room door. Tlie girl came up first, the old man be- 
 hind her, bewildered and groping his way. 
 
 ' We're strangers here — we want somebody to show 
 us the way. We've been to the book-sho}) in Half 
 Street, and they sent us on here. They were just 
 brutes to us at that book-shop,' said the girl, with a 
 vindictive emphasis and an imperious self-possession 
 which fairly paralysed Lucy and Dora. Lucy's eyes, 
 moreover, were riveted on her face, on its colour, its 
 fineness of feature, its brilliance and piercingness of 
 expression. And what was the extraordinary likeness 
 in it to something familiar ? 
 
 'Why!' said Dora, in a little cry, 'aren't you ]\Ir. 
 David Grieve's sister ? ' 
 
 For she had traced the likeness before Lucy. ' Oh, 
 it must be I ' 
 
 ' Well, I am his sister, if you want to know,' said 
 the stranger, looking astonished in her turn. 'He
 
 348 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 wrote to me to come up. And I lent the letter to 
 uncle to read — that's his uncle — and he went and lost 
 it somehow, fiddling about the fields while I was put- 
 ting my things together. And then we couldn't think 
 of the proper address there was in it — only the name 
 of a man Purcell, in Half Street, that David said he'd 
 been with for two years. So we went there to ask ; 
 and, my ! — weren't they rude to us ! There was an 
 ugly black man there chivied us out in no time — 
 wouldn't tell us anything. But as I was shutting the 
 door the shopman whispered to me, " Try the Parlour 
 — Market Place." So we came on here, you see.' 
 
 And she stared about her, at the room, and at the 
 girls, taking in everything with lightning ra})idity — 
 the embroidery frame, Lucy's veil and fashionably cut 
 jacket, the shabby furniture, the queer old pictures. 
 
 'Please come in,' said Dora civilly, 'and sit down. 
 If you're strangers here, I'll just put on my hat and 
 take you round. Mr. Grieve's a friend of ours. He's 
 in Potter Street. You'll find him nicely settled by 
 now. This is my cousin, ]\Ir. Purcell's daughter.' 
 
 And she ran upstairs, leaving Lucy to grapple with 
 the new-comers. 
 
 The two girls sat down, and eyed each other. 
 Reuben s'tood patiently waiting. 
 
 ' Is the man at Half Street your father ? ' asked the 
 new-comer, abruptly. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Lucy, conscious of the strangest mingling 
 of admiration and dislike, as she met the girl's won- 
 derful eyes. 
 
 'Did he and Davy fall out ? ' 
 
 ' They didn't get on about Sundays,' said Lucy, 
 unwillingly, glad of the sheltering veil which enabled 
 her to hold her oAvn against this masterful creature. 
 
 ' Is your father strict about chapel and that sort of 
 thiuL^ ': '
 
 CHAP, vin YOUTH 349 
 
 Lucy nodded. She felt an ungracious wish to say 
 as little as possible. 
 
 David's sister laughed. 
 
 ' Davy was that way once — just for a bit — afore lie 
 ran away. / knew he wouldn't keep it on.' 
 
 Then, with a queer look over her shoulder at her 
 uncle, slie relapsed into silence. Her attention was 
 drawn to Dora's frame, and she moved up to it, bend- 
 ing over it and lifting the handkerchief that Dora had 
 thrown across it. 
 
 ' You mustn't touch it ! ' said Lucy, hastily, pro- 
 voked, she knew not wh}-, by every movement the 
 girl made. 'It's very particular work.' 
 
 ' I'm used to fine things,' said the other, scornfully. 
 ' I'm a silk-weaver — that's my trade — all the best bro- 
 cades, drawing-room trains, that style of thing. If 
 you didn't handle them carefully, you'd know it. Yes, 
 she's doing it well,' and the speaker put her head 
 down and examined the work critically. 'But it 
 must go fearful slow, compared to a loom.' 
 
 ' She does it splendidlv,' said Lucy, annoyed ; ' she's 
 getting quite famous for it. That's going to a great 
 church u}) in Loudon, and she's got more orders than 
 she can take.' 
 
 ' Does she get good pay ? ' asked the girl eagerly. 
 
 'I don't know,' replied Luc}^ shortly. 
 
 'Because, if there's good pay,' said the other, ex- 
 amining the Avork again closely, 'I'd soon learn it — 
 why I'd learn it in a week, you see ! If I stay here I 
 shan't get no more silk-weaving. And of course I'll 
 stay. I'm just sick of the country. I'd have come 
 up long ago if I'd known where to find Davy.' 
 
 'I'm ready,' said Dora in a constrained voice beside 
 her. 
 
 Louie Grieve looked up at her. 
 
 'Oh, vou needn't look so glum I — T haven't luu't it.
 
 350 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 I'm used to good things, stuffs at two guineas a yard, 
 and the like of that. What money do you take a 
 week ? ' and she pointed to the frame. 
 
 Something in the tone and manner made the ques- 
 tion specially offensive. Dora pretended not to hear it. 
 
 'Shall we go now? she said, hurriedly covering her 
 precious work up from those sacrilegious fingers and 
 putting it away. ' Lucy, you ought to be going home.' 
 
 'Well, I Avill directly/ said Lucy. 'Don't you 
 bother about me.' 
 
 They all went downstairs. Lucy put up her veil, ' 
 and pressed her face against the window, watching 
 for them. As she saw them cross ^larket Street, she 
 was seized with hungry longing. She wanted to be 
 going with them, to talk to him herself — to let him 
 see what she had gone through for him. It would be 
 months and months, perhaps, before they met again. 
 And Dora Avould see him — his horrid sister — everyone 
 but she. He would forget all about her, and she 
 would be dull and wretched at Hastings. 
 
 But as she turned away in her restless pain, she 
 caught sight of her changed face in the cracked look- 
 ing-glass over the mantelpiece. Her white lips tight- 
 ened. She drew down her veil, and went home. 
 
 Meanwhile Dora led the way to Potter Street. 
 Louie took little notice of any attempts to talk to her. 
 She was wholly engaged in looking about her and at 
 the shops. Especially was she attracted by the drapers' 
 windows in St. Ann's Square, pronouncing her opinion 
 loudly and freely as to their contents. 
 
 Dora fell meditating. Young Grieve would have 
 his work cut out for him, she thought, if this extraor- 
 dinary sister were really going to settle with him. 
 She was very like him — strangely like him. And yet 
 in the one face there was a (juality which was com-
 
 CHAP. Mil YOUTH 361 
 
 pletely lacking in the other, and which seemed to make 
 all the difference. Dora tried to explain what she 
 meant to herself, and failed. 
 
 * Here's Potter Street,' she said, as they turned into 
 it. * And that's his shop — that one with the stall out- 
 side. Oh, there he is ! ' 
 
 David was in fact standing on his step talking to a 
 customer who was turning over the books outside. 
 
 Louie looked at him. Then she began to run. Old 
 Grieve too, crimson all over, and evidently much 
 excited, hurried on. Dora fell behind, her quick sym- 
 pathies rising. 
 
 ' They won't want me interfering,' she said, turning 
 round. ' I'll just go back to my work.' 
 
 ^Meanwhile, in David's little back room, which he 
 had already swept and garnished — for after his letter 
 of the night before, he had somehow expected Louie to 
 rush upon him by the earliest possible train — the meet- 
 ing of these long-sundered persons took place. 
 
 David saw Reuben come in with amazement. 
 
 ' Why, L^ncle Reuben ! Well, I'm real glad to see 
 you. I didn't think you'd have been able to leave the 
 farm, "Well, this is my bit of a place, you see. What 
 do you think of it ? ' 
 
 And, holding his sister by the hand, the young- 
 fellow looked joyously at his uncle, pride in his new 
 possessions and the recollection of his destitute child- 
 hood rushing upon him together as he spoke. 
 
 'Aye, it's a fine beginning yo've made, Davy,' said 
 the old man, cautiously looking round, first at the little 
 room, with its neat bits of new furniture in Louie's 
 honour, and then through the glass door at the shoi), 
 Avhich was now heavily lined with books. ' Yo wor 
 alius a cliver lad, Davy. A' think a'll sit down.' 
 
 And Reuben, subsiding into a chair, fell forthwith
 
 352 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 into an abstraction, his old knotted hands trembling a 
 little on his knees. 
 
 Meanwhile David was holding Louie at arm's- 
 length to look at her. He had kissed her heartily 
 when she came in lirst, and now he was all pleasure 
 and excitement. 
 
 ''Pon my word, Louie, you've grown as high as the 
 roof! I say, Louie, what's become of that smart pink 
 dress you wore at last " wake," and of that overlooker, 
 with the moustaches, from New Mills, you walked 
 about with all day ? ' 
 
 She stared at him open-mouthed. 
 
 ' What do you mean by that ? ' she said, quickly. 
 
 David laughed out. 
 
 'And who was it gave Jim Wigson a box on the 
 ears last fifth of November, in the lane just by the 
 Dye-works, eh, Miss Louie ? — and danced with young 
 Eedway at the Upper Mill dance, New Year's Day ? — 
 and had words with Mr. James at the office about her 
 last "cut," a fortnight ago — eh, Louie ? ' 
 
 ' What ever do you mean ? ' she said, half crossly, 
 her colour rising. ' You've been spying on me.' 
 
 She hated to be mystified. It made her feel herself 
 in some one else's power; and the wild creature in 
 her blood grew restive. 
 
 ' Why, I've known all about you these four years ! ' 
 the lad began, with dancing eyes. Then suddenly his 
 voice changed, and dropped : ' I say, look at Uncle 
 Eeuben ! ' 
 
 For Eeuben sat bent forward, his light blurred 
 eyes looking out straight before him, with a singular 
 yet blind intentness, as though, while seeing nothing 
 round about him, they passed beyond the walls of the 
 little room to some vision of their own. 
 
 'I don't know whatever he came for,' began Louie, 
 as they both examined him.
 
 CHAP, vm YOUTH 353 
 
 'Uncle Reuben," said David, going up to him and 
 touching him on the shoulder, 'you look tired. You'll 
 be wanting some dinner. I'll just send my man, John 
 Dalby, round the corner for something.' 
 
 And he made a step towards the door, but Eeuben 
 raised his hand. 
 
 'Xoa, noa, Davy ! Shut that door, wiltha? ' 
 
 David wondered, and shut it. 
 
 Then Keuben gave a long sigh, and put his hand 
 deep into his coat pocket, witli the quavering, uncer- 
 tain movement characteristic of him. 
 
 'Davy, my lad, a've got summat to say to tha.' 
 
 And witli many hitches, while the others watched 
 him in astonishment, he pulled out of his pocket a 
 canvas bag and put it down on an oak stool in front 
 of him. Then he undid the string of it with his large 
 awkward fingers, and pushed the stool across to David. 
 
 ' Theer's sixty pund tlieer, Davy — sixty pund I Yo 
 can keawnt it — it's aw reet. A've saved it for yo, 
 this four year — four year coom lasst Michaelmas Day. 
 Hannah nor nobory knew owt abeawt it. But it's 
 yourn — it's yor share, being t' half o' Mr. Gurney's 
 money. Louie's share — that wor different ; we had a 
 reet to that, she bein a growin girl, and doin nowt 
 mich for her vittles. Fro the time when 5-0 should ha 
 had it — whether for wages or for 'prenticin — an yo 
 couldna, ha it, because Hannah had set hersen agen it, 
 — a saved it for tha, owt 0' t' summer cattle moastly, 
 without tellin nobory, so as not to mak words.' 
 
 David, bewildered, had taken the bag into his hand. 
 Louie's eyes were almost out of her head with curiosity 
 and amazement. ' 3/r. Gurney's money." What did 
 he mean ? It was all double-Dutch to them. 
 
 David, with an effort. eontr6lled himself, being now 
 a man and a householder. He stood with his back 
 against the shop door, his gaze fixed on Eeuben. 
 
 VOL. I 2 a
 
 354 THE HISTORY or DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 'Now, Uncle Reuben, I don't understand a bit of 
 what you've been saying, and Louie don't either. 
 Who's Mr. Gurney ? and what's his nioney ?' 
 
 Unconsciously the young man's voice took a sharp, 
 magisterial note. Reuben gave another long sigh. 
 He was now leaning on his stick, staring at the floor. 
 
 'Noa, — a' know yo doan't understan; a've got to 
 tell tha — 'at's t' worst part on 't. An I'm soa bad at 
 tellin. Do yo mind when yor feyther deed, Davy ? ' 
 he said suddenly, looking up. 
 
 David nodded, — a red flush of presentiment spread 
 itself over his face — his whole being hung on Reuben's 
 words. 
 
 ' He sent for me afore he deed,' continued Reuben, 
 slowly ; ' an he towd me aw about his affairs. Six 
 liunderd pund he'd got saved — six-lmnderd-pund ! Aye, 
 it wor a lot for a yoong mon like him, and after 
 sich a i^eck o' troobles ! An he towd me Mr. Gurne}^ 
 ud pay us th' interest for yor bringin-up — th' two 
 on yo ; an whan yo got big, Davy, I wor to tak 
 keawnsel wi Mr. Gurney, an, if yo chose for t' land, 
 yo were to ha yor money for a farm, when yo wor 
 big eneuf, an if yo turned agen th' land, yo wor to 
 be 'prenticed to soom trade, an ha yor money when 
 yo wanted it, — Mr. Gurney bein willin. An I prom- 
 ised him I'd deal honest wi his childer, an ' 
 
 Reuben paused painfully. He was wrestling with 
 his conscience, and groping for words about his wife. 
 The brother and sister sat open-mouthed, pale with 
 excitement, afraid of losing a single syllable. 
 
 ' An takkin it awthegither,' he said, bringing each 
 word out with an effort, ' I doan't think, by t' Lord's 
 mercy, as I've gone soa mich astray, though I ha been 
 micli troobled this four ^'ear wi thowts o' Sandy — my 
 brither Sandy — an wi not knowin wheer yo wor gone, 
 Davy. Bit yo seem coom to an honest trade — an
 
 CHAP. VIII Yori'II 350 
 
 Louie theer ha lanit a trade too, — an addle't a bit 
 money, — an she's a fine-grown lass ' 
 
 He turned a slow, searching look upon her, as 
 though he were pleading a cause before some unseen 
 judge. 
 
 ' An theer's yor money, Davy. It's aw th' same, 
 a'm thinkin, whether yo get it fro me or fro Mr. Gur- 
 ney. An here ' 
 
 He rose, and unbuttoning his inner coat, fumbled 
 in the pocket of it till he found a letter. 
 
 'An here is a letter for Mr. Gurney. If yo gie me 
 a pen, I)avy, I'll write in to 't yor reet address, an 
 put it in t' post as I goo to t' station. I took noatice 
 of a box as I coom along. An then ' 
 
 He stood still a moment pondering, one outspread 
 hand on the letter. 
 
 ' An then theer's nowt moor as a can remember, — 
 an your aunt ull be wearyiu ; an it's but reet she 
 should know now, at wonst, abeawt t' money a've 
 saved this four year, an t' letter to 'Mv. Gurney. Yo 
 understan — when yor letter came this niornin^- — t' 
 mon browt it up to Louie abeawt eight o'clock — she 
 towd me fust out i' th' yard — an I said to her, 
 ••Doan't 30U tell yor aunt nowt abeawt it, an we'st 
 meet at t' station." An I made soom excuse to Han- 
 nah abeawt gooin ower t' Scout after soom beeasts — 
 an — an — Louie an me coom thegither.' 
 
 He passed his other hand painfully across his brow. 
 Tlxe travail of expression, the nu)ral struggle of the 
 last twenty-four hours, seemed to have aged him before 
 them. 
 
 David sat looking at him in a stupefied silence. A 
 light was breaking in upon him, transfiguring, com- 
 bining, interpreting a hundred scattered remembrances 
 of his boyhood. lUit Louie, the instant her uncle 
 stopped, broke into a string of questions, shrill and
 
 350 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 breathless, her face quite white, her eyes glittering. 
 Reuben seenaed hardly to hear her, and in the middle 
 of them David said sharply, 
 
 ' Stop that, Louie, and let me talk to Uncle Reu- 
 ben ! ' 
 
 He drew the letter from under Reuben's fingers, 
 and went on, steadily looking up into his uncle's face : 
 
 'You'll let me read it, uncle, and I'll get you a pen 
 directly to put in the address. But first will you tell 
 us about father ? You never did — you nor Aunt 
 Hannah. And about mother, too ? ' 
 
 He said the last words with difficulty, having all 
 his life been pricked by a certain instinct about his 
 mother, which had, however, almost nothing definite 
 to work upon. Reuben thought a minute, then sat 
 down again patiently. 
 
 'Aye, a'll tell tha. Theer's nobody else can. An 
 tha ought to know, though it'll mebbe be a shock to 
 tha.' 
 
 And, with his head resting against his stick, he 
 began to tell the story of his brother and his brother's 
 marriage as he remembered it. 
 
 First came the account of Sandy's early struggles, 
 as Sandy himself had described them on that visit 
 which he had paid to the farm in the first days of his 
 prosperity ; then a picture of his ultimate success in 
 business, as it had appeared to the dull elder brother 
 dazzled by the younger's ' cliverness.' 
 
 ' Aye, he might ha been a great mon ; he might ha 
 coom to varra high things, might Sandy,' said Reuben 
 solemnly, his voice suddenly rising, ' bit for th' hizzy 
 that ruined hinr ! ' 
 
 Both his hearers made an involuntary movement. 
 But Reuben had now lost all count of them. He was 
 intent on one thing, and capable only of one thing. 
 They had asked him for liis story, and lie was telling
 
 CHAP. VIII 
 
 YOUTH 357 
 
 it, with an immense effort of mind, recovering the past 
 as best he could, and feeling some of it over again 
 intensely. 
 
 So when he came to the marriage, he told the story 
 like one thinking it out to himself, with an appalling 
 plainness of phrase. It was, of course, impossible 
 for him to explahb Sandy's aberration — there were no 
 resources in him equal to the task. Louise Suveret 
 became in his account what she had always remained in 
 his imagination since Sandy's emjdoyers told him what 
 was known of her story — a mere witch and devil, sent 
 for his brother's perdition. All his resentment against 
 his brother's fate had passed into his hatred of this 
 creature whom he never seen. Nay, he even held 
 up the picture of her hideous death before her children 
 with a kind of sinister triumph. So let the ungodly 
 and the harlot perish ! 
 
 David stood opposite to the speaker all the while, 
 motionless, save for an uneasy movement here and there 
 when Eeuben's words grew more scripturally frank 
 than usual. Louie's face was much more positive than 
 David's in what it said. Reuben and Reuben's vehe- 
 mence annoyed and angered her. She frowned at him 
 from under her black brows. It was evident that he, 
 ratlier than his story, excited her. 
 
 ' An we buried him aw reet an proper,' said Reuben 
 at last, wiping his brow, damp with this unwonted 
 labour of brain and tongue. ' Mr. Gurney he would ha 
 it aw done handsome ; and we put liim in a corner o' 
 Kensal Green, just as close as might be to whar they'd 
 put her after th' crowner had sat on her. Yor feyther 
 had left word, an Mr. Gurney would ha nowt different. 
 But it went agen me — aye, it did — to leave him wi her 
 after aw ! ' 
 
 And falling suddenly silent, Reuben sat wrapped in 
 a sombre mist of memorv.
 
 358 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book ii 
 
 Then Louie broke out, rolling and unrolling the rib- 
 bons of her hat in hot fingers. 
 
 ' I don't believe half on't — I don't see how you could 
 know — nor Mr. Gurney either.' 
 
 Reuben looked round bewildered. Louie got up 
 noisily, Avent to the window and threAv it open, as 
 though oi^pressed by the nan^owness of the room. 
 
 'No, I don't,' she repeated, defiantly — 'I don't believe 
 the half on't. But I'll find out some day.' 
 
 She leaned her elbows on the sill, and, looking out 
 into the squalid bit of yard, threw a bit of grit that lay 
 on the window at a cat that sat sleepily blinking on 
 the flags outside. 
 
 Reuben rose heavily. 
 
 ' Gie me pen and ink, Davy, an let me go.' 
 
 The young man brought it him without a word. 
 Reuben put in the address. 
 
 ' Ha yo read it, Davy ? ' 
 
 David started. In his absorption he had forgotten 
 to read it. 
 
 * I wor forced to write it i' the top sheepfold,' 
 Reuben began to explain apologetically, then stopped 
 suddenly. Several times he had been on the point of 
 bringing Hannah into the conversation, and had al- 
 ways refrained. He refrained now. David read it. 
 It was written in Reuben's most laborious business 
 style, and merely requested that Mr. Gurney would 
 now communicate with Sandy's son direct on the 
 subject of his father's money. He had left Needham 
 Farm, and was old enough to take counsel himself 
 with Mr. Gurney in future as to what should be done 
 with it. 
 
 Reuben looked over David's shoulder as he read. 
 
 ' An Louie ? ' he said uncertainly, at the end, jerk- 
 ing his thumb towards her. 
 
 ' I'm stayin here,' said Louie peremptorily, still 
 looking out of window.
 
 CHAP. \^u YOUTH Son 
 
 Reuben said nothing. Perhaps a shade of relief 
 lightened his old face. 
 
 When the letter was handed back to him, he sealed 
 it and ])ut it into his pocket, buttoning up his coat for 
 departure. 
 
 *Yo wor talkin abeawt dinner, Davy — or sunimat,' 
 said the old man, courteously. 'Thankee kindly. I 
 want for nowt. I mun get home — I mun get home.' 
 
 Louie, standing absorbed in her own excited 
 thoughts, could hardly be disturbed to say good-bye 
 to him. David, still in a dream, led him through the 
 shop, where Eeuben peered about him with a certain 
 momentary curiosity. 
 
 But at the door he said good-bye in a great hurry 
 and ran down the steps, evidently impatient to be rid 
 of his nephew. 
 
 David turned and came slowly back through the 
 little piled-up shop, where John, all eyes and ears, sat 
 on a high stool in the corner, into the living room. 
 
 As he entered it Louie sprang upon him, and seiz- 
 ing him with both hands, danced him madly round the 
 little space of vacant boards, till she tripped her foot 
 over the oak stool, and sank down on a chair, laughing 
 Avildly. 
 
 'How much of that money am I going to have ? ' 
 she demanded suddenlj^, her arms crossed over her 
 breast, her eyes brilliant, her Avhole aspect radiant 
 and exulting. 
 
 David was standing over the fire, looking down into 
 it, and made no answer. He had disengaged himself 
 from her as soon as he could. 
 
 Louie waited a while ; then, with a contemptuous 
 lip and a shrug of the shoulders, she got up. 
 
 ' What's the good of Avorriting about things, I'd like 
 to know ? You won't do 'em no good. Why don't 
 you think about the money ? ]\Iy word, won't Aunt
 
 3G0 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Hannah be mad ! How am I to get my parcels from 
 the station, and where am I to sleep ? ' 
 
 ' You can go and see the house,' said David, shortly. 
 ' The lodgers upstairs are out, and there's the key of 
 the attic' 
 
 He threw it to her, and she ran off. He had meant 
 to take her in triumphal progress through the little 
 house, and show her all the changes he had been 
 making for her benefit and his own. But a gulf had 
 yawned between them. He was relieved to see her 
 go, and when he was left alone he laid his arms on 
 the low mantelpiece and hid his face upon them. His 
 mother's story, his father's fate, seemed to be burn- 
 ing into his heart. 
 
 Reuben hurried home through the bleak March 
 evening. In the train he could not keep himself still, 
 fidgeting so much that his neighbours eyed him with 
 suspicion, and gave him a wide berth. As he started 
 to walk up to Kinder a thin, raw sleet came on. It 
 drove in his face, chilling him through and through, 
 as he climbed the lonely road, where the black moor- 
 land forms lay all about him, seen dimly through the 
 white and drifting veil of the storm. But he was 
 conscious of nothing external. His mind was ab- 
 sorbed by the thought of his meeting with Hannah, 
 and by the excited feeling that one of the crises of his 
 timid and patient life was approaching. During the 
 last four years they had been very poor, in spite of 
 Mr. Gurney's half-yearly cheque, joartly because of 
 the determination with which he had stuck to his 
 secret saving. Hannah would think they were going 
 now to be poorer still, but he meant to prove to her 
 that what with Louie's departure and the restoration 
 of their whole income to its natural channels, there 
 would not be so much difference. He conned his fig-
 
 CHAT. VUI 
 
 YOUTH 361 
 
 ures eagerly, rehearsing what he would say. For the 
 rest he walked lightly and briskly. The burden of 
 his brother's children had dropped away from him, 
 and in those strange inner colloquies of his he could 
 look Sandy in the face again. 
 
 Had Hannah discovered his flight, he wondered ? 
 Some one, he was afraid, might have seen him and 
 Louie at the station and told tales. He was not sure 
 that one of the Wigsons had not been hanging about 
 the station yard. And that letter of David's to Louie, 
 which in his clumsy blundering way he had dropped 
 somewhere about the farm buildings or the house, and 
 had not been able to find again ! It gave him a cold 
 sweat to think that in his absence Hannah might have 
 come upon it and drawn her own conclusions. As he 
 followed out this possibility in his mind, his step 
 quickened till it became almost a run. 
 
 Aye, and Hannah had been ailing of late — there 
 had been often 'summat wrang wi her.' Well, they 
 were both getting into years. Perhaps now that 
 Louie with her sharp tongue and aggravating ways 
 was gone, now that there was only liini to do for, 
 Hannah would take things easier. 
 
 He opened the gate into the farmyard and walked 
 up to the house door with a beating heart. It struck 
 him as strange that the front blinds were not drawn, 
 for it was nearly dark and the storm beat against the 
 windows. There was a glimmer of fire in the room, 
 but he could see nothing clearl}'. He turned the 
 handle and went into the passage, nuiking a clatter 
 on purpose. But nothing stirred in the house, and he 
 pushed open the kitchen door, which stood ajar, filled 
 with a vague alarm. 
 
 Hannah was sitting in the rocking-chair, by the 
 fire. Beside her was the table partly spread with tea, 
 which, however, had been untouched. At Reuben's
 
 362 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ir 
 
 entrance she turned her head and looked at him fixedly. 
 In the dim light — a mixture of the dying fire and of 
 the moonlight from outside — he could not see her 
 plainly, but he felt that there was something strange, 
 and he ran forward to her. 
 
 ' Hannah, are yo bad ? — is there owt wrang wi 3-0? ' 
 
 Then his seeking eye made out a crumpled paper 
 in her left hand, and he knew at once that it must be 
 Davy's letter. 
 
 Before he could speak again she gave him a push 
 backwai'd with her free hand, and said with an effort: 
 
 ' Where's t' gell ? ' 
 
 'Louie? She's left i' Manchester. A've found 
 Davy, Hannah.' 
 
 There was a pause, after which he said, trembling : 
 
 ' Shall I get yo summat, Hannah ? ' 
 
 A hoarse voice came out of the dark : 
 
 ' Ha doon wi yo ! Yo ha been leein to me. Yo 
 wor seen at t' station.' 
 
 Reuben sat down. 
 
 'Hannah,' he said, 'yo mun just listen to me.' 
 
 And taking his courage in both hands, he told 
 everything without a break : how he had been ' feeart ' 
 of what Sandy might say to him 'at th' joodgment,' 
 how he had saved and lied, and how now he had seen 
 David, had written to Mr. Gurney, and stopped the 
 cheques for good and all. 
 
 When he came to the letter to Mr. Gurney, Hannah 
 sat suddenly upright in her chair, grasping one arm 
 of it. 
 
 ' It shall mak noa difference to tha, a tell tha,' he 
 cried hastily, putting up his hand, fearing he knew 
 not Avhat, ' nobbut a few shillins ony way. I'll work 
 for tha an mak it up.' 
 
 She made a sound which turned him cold with 
 terror — a sound of baffled weakness, pain, vindictive
 
 niAP. Mil YOUTH a63 
 
 passion all in one — then she fell helplessly to one 
 side in her chair, and her grey head dropped on her 
 shoulder. 
 
 In another moment he was crying madly for help in 
 the road outside. For long there was no answer — 
 only the distant roar of the Downfall and the sweep 
 of the wiiul. Then a labourer, on the path leading to 
 the Wigsons' farm, heard and ran up. 
 
 An hour later a doctor had been got hold of, and 
 Hannah was lying upstairs, tended by ]Mrs. Wigson 
 and Reuben. 
 
 'A paralytic seizure,' said the doctor to Reuben. 
 'This woman says she's been failing for some time 
 past. She's lived and worked hard, ^Er. Grieve ; you 
 know that. And there's been some shock.' 
 
 Reuben explained incoherently. The doctor did 
 not understand, and did not care, being a dull man 
 and comparatively new to the place. He did what he 
 could, said she would recover — oh, yes, she would 
 recover ; but, of course, she could never be the same 
 woman again. Her working days were done. 
 
 A servant came over from Wigsons' to sit up with 
 Reuben, Mrs. "Wigson being too delicate to undertake 
 it. The girl went to lie down first for an hour or two 
 in the room across the landing, and he was left alone 
 in the gaunt room with his wife. Poor quailing soul ! 
 As he sat there in the windy darkness, hour after 
 hour, open-mouthed and open-eyed, he was steeped in 
 terror — terror of the future, of its forlornness, of his 
 own feebleness, of death. His heart clave piteously to 
 the unconscious woman beside him, for he had nothing 
 else. . It seemed to him that the Lord had indeed dealt 
 hardly with him, thus to strike him down on the day 
 of his great atonement !
 
 364 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book n 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 No news of the catastrophe at Needhani Farm reached 
 the brother and sister in Potter .Street. The use of 
 the pen had always been to lleuben one of the main 
 torments and mysteries of life, and he had besides all 
 those primitive instincts of silence and concealment 
 which so often in the peasant nature accompany mis- 
 fortune. His brain-power, moreover, was absorbed by 
 his own calamity and by the changes in the routine of 
 daily life which his wife's state brought upon him, so 
 that immediately after his great effort of reparation 
 towards them — an effort which had taxed the Avhole 
 man physically and mentally — his brother's children 
 and their affairs passed for a while strangely and com- 
 pletely from his troubled mind. 
 
 ^Meanwhile, what a transformation he had wrought 
 in their fortunes ! When the shock of his parents' 
 story had subsided in him, and that other shock of 
 jarring temperaments, which the first hour of Louie's 
 companionship had brought with it, had been for the 
 time forgotten again in the stress of plans and practi- 
 cal detail, David felt to the full the exhilaration of his 
 new prospects. He had sprung at a leap, as it seemed 
 to him, from the condition of tlie boy-adventurer to 
 that of the man of affairs. And as lie looked back 
 upon their childhood and realised that all the time, 
 instead of being destitute and dependent orphans, they 
 and their money had really been the mainstay of Han- 
 nah and the farm, the lad seemed to cast from him 
 the long humiliation of years, to rise in stature and 
 dignity. That old skinflint and hypocrite, Aunt Han- 
 nah ! With the usual imperfect sympathy of the 
 young he did not much realise Reuben's struggle.
 
 CHAP. IX YOUTH <i6G 
 
 But he boi-e his uncle no grudge for these years' delay. 
 The contrivances and hardships of his Manchester 
 life had been, after all, enjoyment. Without them 
 and the extravagant self-reliance they had developed 
 in him his })ride and ambition would have run less 
 high. And at this moment the nerve and savour of 
 existence caiue to him from pride and from ambition. 
 
 But first of all he had to get his money. As soon 
 as Mr. Gurney's answer to Keuben's letter came, 
 David took train for London, made his way to the 
 great "West-End shop which had employed his father, 
 and saw the partner who had taken charge of Sandy's 
 money for so long. Mr. Gurney, a shrewd and pom- 
 pous person, was interested in seeing Grieve's son, in- 
 quired what he was about, ran over the terms of a let- 
 ter to himself, which he took out of a drawer, and 
 then, with a little flourish as to his own deserts in 
 the matter of the guardianship of the money — a flour- 
 ish neither unnatural nor unkindly — handed over to 
 the lad both the letter and a cheque on a London 
 bank, took his receipt, talked a little, but with a 
 blunted memory, about the lad's father, gave him a 
 little general business advice, asked whether his sis- 
 ter was still alive, and bade him good morning. Both 
 were satisfled, and the young man left the office with 
 the cheque lying warm in his pocket, looking slowly 
 and curiously round the shop where his father had 
 earned it, as he walked away. 
 
 Outside he found himself close to Trafalgar Square, 
 and, striking down to the river, he went to sit on the 
 Embankment and ponder the enclosures which jMr. 
 Gurney had given him. First he took out the cheque, 
 Avith infinite care, lest the breeze on the Embankment 
 should blow it out of his hand, and spread it on his 
 knee. 600?. ! As he stared at each letter and flourish 
 his eyes widened anew ; and when he looked up acrijss
 
 36G TllK HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 the grey and misty river, the hgures still danced be- 
 fore him, and in his exultation he could have shouted 
 the news to the passers by. Then, when the precious 
 paper had been safely stowed away again, he hesitat- 
 ingly took out the other — his father's dying memo- 
 randum on the subject of his children, so he had 
 understood Mr. Gurney. It was old and brown ; it 
 had been written with anguish, and it could only be 
 deciphered Avith difficulty. There had been no will 
 properly so called. Sandy had placed more confidence 
 in ' the firm ' than in the law, and had left behind him 
 merely the general indication of his wishes in the 
 hands of the partner who had specially befriended 
 him. The provisions of it were as Sandy had described 
 them to Reuben on his death-bed. Especially did the 
 father insist that there should be no artificial restric- 
 tion of age. ' I wanted money most when I was nine- 
 teen, and I could have used it just as well then as 1 
 could at any later time.' 
 
 So he might have been a rich man at least a year 
 earlier. Well, much as he had loathed Purcell, he was 
 glad, on the whole, that things were as they were. 
 He had been still a great fool, he reflected, a year ago. 
 
 Then, as to Louie, the letter ran : ' Let Davy have 
 all the money, and let him manage for her. I won't 
 divide it ; he must judge. He may want it all, and it 
 may be best for them both he should have it. He's got 
 a good heart ; I know that ; he'll not rob his sister. 1 
 lay it on him, now I'm dying, to be patient with her, 
 and look after her. She's not like other children. 
 But it's not her fault ; it was born in her. Let him 
 see her married to a decent man, and then give her 
 what's honestly hers. That little lad has nursed me 
 like a woman since I've been ill. He was always a 
 good lad to me, and I'd like him to know when he's 
 grown up that his father loved him '
 
 CHAF. i.\ YUUTII 367 
 
 But here the poor laboured scrawl came to au end, 
 save for a few incoherent strokes. David thrust it back 
 into his pocket. His cheek was red; his eyes burnt; 
 he sat for lontj. with his elbows on his knees, starin^,' 
 at the February river. The choking, passionate im- 
 pulse to comfort his father he had felt so often as a 
 child was there again, by association, alive and piteous. 
 
 Suddenly he woke up with a start. There, to either 
 hand, lay the bridges, with the moving figures atop and 
 the hurrying river below. And from one of them his 
 mother had leapt when she destroyed herself. In the 
 trance of thought that followed, it was to him as though 
 he felt her wild nature, her lawless blood, stirring 
 within him, and realised, in a fierce, reluctant way, 
 that he was hers as well as his father's. In a sense, he 
 shared Keuben's hatred ; for he, best of all, knew what 
 she had made his father suffer. Yet the thought of 
 her drew his restless curiosity after it. "Where did she 
 come from ? "^A'ho were her kindred ? From the south 
 of France, Reuben thought. The lad's imagination 
 travelled with difficulty and excitement to the far and 
 alien land whence half his being had sprung. A few 
 scraps of poetry and history recurred to him — a single 
 tattered volume of • ^Nlonte Cristo,' which he had lately 
 bought with an odd lot at a sale — but nothing that 
 suggested to his fancy anything like the peasant farm 
 in the Mont Ventoux, within sight of Aries, where 
 Louise Suveret's penurious childhood had been actually 
 cradled. 
 
 Two o'clock struck from the belfry of St. Paul's, 
 looming there to his left in the great bend of the river. 
 At the sound he shook off all his thoughts. Let him 
 see something of London. He had two hours and a 
 half before his train from Euston. Westminster first 
 — a hasty glance ; then an omnibus to St. Paul's, that 
 he might look down upon the city and its rush; then
 
 308 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GIUEVE book ii 
 
 iiorlli. He had a nui}) with him, and his quick intelli- 
 gence told him exactly how to use his time to the best 
 advantage. Years afterwards he was accustomed to 
 look back on this hour spent on the top of an omnibus, 
 which was making its difficult way to the Bank through 
 the crowded afternoon streets, as one of the stronii- 
 impressions of his youth. Here was one centre of 
 things; Westminster represented another; and both 
 stood for knowledge, wealth, and power. The boy's 
 liot blood rose to the challenge. His foot was on the 
 ladder, and many men with less chances than he had 
 I'isen to the top. At this moment, small Manchester 
 tradesman that he was, he had the constant presenti- 
 ment of a wide career. 
 
 That night he let himself into his own door some- 
 Avhere about nine o'clock. "What had Louie been do- 
 ing with herself all day ? She was to have her first 
 lesson from Dora Lomax ; but she must have been 
 dnll since, unless Dora had befriended her. 
 
 To his astonishment, as he shut the door he heard 
 voices in the kitchen — Louie and John. John, the 
 shy, woman-hating creature, who had received the 
 news of Louie's expected advent in a spirit of mingled 
 irritation and depression — who, after his first startled 
 look at her as she passed through the shop, seemed to 
 David to have fled the sight of her whenever it was 
 possible ! 
 
 Louie was talking so fast and laughing so much 
 that neither of them had heard David's latchkey, and 
 in his surprise the brother stood still a anoment in the 
 dark, looking round the kitchen-door, which stood a 
 little open. Louie was sitting by the fire with some 
 yards of flowered cotton stuff on her knee, at which 
 she Avas sewing ; John was opposite to her on the oak 
 stool, crouched over a box of nails, from which he was
 
 CHAP. IX YOUTH 369 
 
 laboriously sorting out those of a certain size, appar- 
 ently at her bidding, i'or she gave him sharp directions 
 from time to time. But his toil was intt^-mittent, for 
 whenever her sallies were louder or more amusin<' 
 than usual his hand paused, and he sat staring at her, 
 his small eyes expanding, a sympathetic grin stealing 
 over his mouth. 
 
 It seemed to David that she Avas describing her 
 lover of the winter; he caught her gesture as she 
 illustrated her performance with dim Wigson — the 
 boxing of the amorous lout's ears in the lane by the 
 Dye Works. Her beautiful curly black hair was 
 combed to-night into a sort of wild halo round her 
 brow and cheeks, and in this arrangement counteracted 
 the one fault of the face — a slightly excessive length 
 from forehead to chin. l>ut the brilliance of the eyes, 
 the redness of the thin lips over the small and perfect 
 teeth, tlie tlush on the olive cheek, the slender neck, 
 the distinction and delicacy of every sweeping line 
 and curve — for the first time even David realised, as 
 he stood there in the dark, that his sister was an ex- 
 traordinar}' beauty. Strange ! Her manner and voice 
 had neither natural nor acquired rehnement ; and yet 
 in the moulding of the head and face there was a 
 dignity and perfection — a touch, as it were, of the 
 grand style — which marked her out in a northern 
 crowd and riveted the northern eye. Was it the 
 trace of another national character, another civilisa- 
 tion, longer descended, less mixed, more deeply graven 
 than ours ? 
 
 But what was that idiot John doing here ? — the 
 young master wanted to know. He coughed loudly and 
 hung up his hat and his stick, to let them hear that he 
 was there. The pair in the kitchen started. Louie 
 sprang up, flung down her work, and ran out to him. 
 
 ' Well,' said she breathlessly, ' have you got it ? ' 
 
 VOL. I 2 b
 
 370 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GKIEVE book u 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 She gave a little shriek of excitement. 
 
 ' Show it then.' 
 
 ' There's nothing to show but a cheque. It's all 
 right. Is there anything for supper ? ' 
 
 ' There's some bread and cheese and cold apple-pie 
 in there/ said Louie, annoyed with him already ; then, 
 turning her head over her shoulder, 'Mr. Dal by, I'll 
 trouble you to get them out.' 
 
 With awkward alacrity John flew to do her bidding. 
 When the lad had ransacked the cupboard and placed 
 all the viands it contained on the table, he looked at 
 David. That young man, with a pucker in his brow, 
 was standing by the fire with his hands in his pockets, 
 making short answers to Louie's sharp and numerous 
 questions. 
 
 ' That's all I can find,' said John. ' Shall I run for 
 something ? ' 
 
 ' Thanks,' said David, still frowning, and sat liim 
 down, ' that '11 do.' 
 
 Louie made a face at John behind her brother's 
 back. The assistant slowly flushed a deep red. In 
 this young fellow, with his money buttoned on his 
 breast, both he and Louie for the first time realised 
 the master. 
 
 ' Well, good night,' he said, hesitating, ' I'm going.' 
 
 David jumped up and went with him into the pas- 
 sage. 
 
 ' Look here,' he said abruptly, ' you and I have got 
 some business to talk to-morrow. I'm not going to 
 keep you slaving here for nothing now that I can 
 afford to pay you.' 
 
 'Are you going to turn me off ?' said the other 
 hastily. 
 
 David laughed. The cloud had all cleared from his 
 brow.
 
 CHAF. IX YOUTH 371 
 
 ' Don't be such a precious fool ! ' he said. ' Now be 
 off — and seven sliary. I must go at it like ten horses 
 to-morrow. ' 
 
 John disappeared into the night, and David went 
 back to his sister. He found her looking red and 
 excited, and sewing energetically. 
 
 ' Look here ! ' she said, lifting a threatening eye to 
 liim as he entered the room. ' I'm not going to be 
 treated like a baby. If you don't tell me all about 
 that money, I'll write to Mr. Guruey myself. It's 
 part of it mine, and 77/ k)ioic, so there ! ' 
 
 M'll tell you everything,' he said quietly, putting 
 a hand into his coat pocket before he sat down to his 
 supper again. 'Tliere's the cheque — and there's our 
 father's letter, — what Mr. Gurney gave me. There 
 was no proper will — this was instead.' 
 
 He pretended to eat, but in reality he watched her 
 anxiously as she read it. The result was very mucli 
 what he had expected. She ran breathlessly through 
 it, then, with a look all flame and fury, she broke 
 out — 
 
 ' Upon my word ! So you're going to take it all, 
 and I'm to be beholden to you for every penny. I'd 
 like to see myself ! ' 
 
 'Now look here, Louie,' he said, firmly, pushing 
 back his chair from the table, 'I want to explain 
 things to you. I should like to tell you all about my 
 business, and what I think of doing, and then you can 
 judge for yourself. I'll not rob you or anyone.' 
 
 Whereupon with a fierce gesture she caught up her 
 work again, and he fell into long and earnest talk, set- 
 ting his mind to the task. He explained to her that 
 the arrival of this money — this capital — made just all 
 the difference, that the whole of it would be infinitely 
 more useful to him than the half, and that he proposed 
 to employ it both for her benefit and his own. He
 
 372 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 had already cleared out the commission agent from the 
 first floor, and moved down the lodgers — a young fore- 
 man and his wife — from the attics to the first-floor 
 back. Tliat left the two attics for himself and Louie, 
 and gave him the front first-floor room, the best room 
 in the lionse, for an extension of stock. 
 
 'Why don't you turn those people out altogether? ' 
 said Louie, impatiently. ' They pay very little, and 
 you'll be wanting that room soon, very like.' 
 
 'Well, I shall get it soon,' said David bluntly; 'but 
 I can't get it now. Mrs. Mason's bad ; she's going to 
 be confined.' 
 
 ' Well, I dare say she is ! ' cried Louie. ' That don't 
 matter; she isn't confined yet.' 
 
 David looked at her in amazement. Then his face 
 hardened. 
 
 ' I'm not going to turn her out, I tell you,' he said, 
 and immediatelv returned to his statement. Well, 
 there were all sorts of ways in which he might em- 
 ploy his money. He might put up a shed in the back 
 yard, and get a ^n-inting-press. He knew of a press 
 and a very decent fount of type, to be had extremely 
 cheap. John was a capital workman, and between 
 them they might reprint some of the scarce local 
 books and pamphlets, which were always sure of a 
 sale. As to his stock, there were endless possibilities. 
 He knew of a collection of rare books on early 
 America, which belonged to a gentleman at Cheadle. 
 He had been negotiating about them for some time. 
 Xow he would close at once ; from his knowledge of 
 the market the speculation was a certain one. He 
 was also inclined to largely increase his stock of foreign 
 books, especially in the technical and scientific direc- 
 tion. There was a considerable opening, he believed, 
 for such books in Manchester ; at any rate, he meant 
 to trv for it. And as soon as ever he could he should
 
 CHAP. IX YOT'TII 373 
 
 learn German. There was a fellow — a German clerk 
 — who haunted the I'arlour. who would teach him in 
 exchange for English lessons. 
 
 So, following a happy instinct, he opened to her all 
 his mind, and talked to her as though the}- were part- 
 ners in a firm. The event proved that he could have 
 done nothing better. Very early in his exposition she 
 began to put her wits to his, her irritation dropped, 
 and he was presently astonished at the intelligence 
 she showed. Every element almost in the problems 
 discussed was unfamiliar to her, yet after a while a 
 listener coming in might have thought that she too 
 had been Purcell'.s apprentice, so nimbly had she 
 gathered up the details involved, so quick she was to 
 see David's points and catch his phrases. If there 
 was no moral fellowship between them, judging from 
 to-night, there bade fair to be a comradeship of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 'There now/ he said, when he had come to the end 
 of his budget, "you leave your half of the mone}^ to 
 me. Mind. I agree it's your half, and I'll do the best 
 I can with it. I'll pay you interest on it for two years, 
 and I'll keep you. Then we'll see. And if you want 
 to improve yourself a bit, instead of going to work at 
 once, I'll pay for teachers. And look here, we'll keep 
 good friends over it.' 
 
 His keen eves softened to a charming, half-melau- 
 choly smile. Louie took no notice ; she was absorbed 
 in meditation ; and at the end of it, she said with a 
 long breath — 
 
 ' Well, you may have it, and I'll keep an eye on the 
 accounts. But you needn't think I'll sit at home 
 ••improving" myself! Xot I. I'll do that church- 
 work. That girl gave me a lesson this morning, and 
 I'm going again to-morrow.' 
 
 David received the news with satisfaction, remark-
 
 374 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE rook ii 
 
 ing heartily that Dora Lomax was a real good sort, 
 and if it weren't for her the Parlour and Daddy would 
 soon be in a fix. He told the story of the Parlour, 
 dwelling on Dora's virtues. 
 
 ' But she is a crank, though ! ' said Louie. ' Why, 
 if you make free with her things a bit, or if you call 
 'em by the wrong names, she'll fly at you ! How's any- 
 body to know what they're meant for ? ' 
 
 David laughed, and got up to get some books he 
 was repairing. As he moved away he looked back a 
 moment. 
 
 ' I say, Louie,' he began, hesitating, ' that fellow 
 John's worked for me like a dozen, and has never 
 taken a farthing from me. Don't you go and make a 
 fool of him.' 
 
 A flush i^assed over Louie's face. She lifted her 
 hand and tucked away some curly ends of long hair 
 that had fallen on her shoulders. 
 
 ' He's like one of Aunt Hannah's suet rolies,' she 
 said, after a minute, with a gleam of her white teeth. 
 ' Seems as if some one had tied him in a cloth and 
 boiled him that shape.' 
 
 Neither of them cared to go to bed. They sat up 
 talking. David was mending, sorting, and pricing a 
 inimber of old books he had bought for nothing at a 
 country sale. He knew enough of bookbinding to 
 do the repairing with much skill, showing the same 
 neatness of finger in it that he had shown years ago 
 in the carving of toy boats and water-wheels. Louie 
 went on with her work, which proved to be a curtain 
 for her attic. She meant to have that room nice, and 
 she had been out buying a fcAv things, whereby David 
 understood— as indeed Reuben had said— that she had 
 some savings. Moreover, with regard to certain odd 
 jobs of carpentering, she had already pressed John
 
 CHAP. IX 
 
 YOUTH 375 
 
 into her service, which explained his lingering after 
 hours, and his eagerness among the nails. As to the 
 furnitvu-p David had bought for her, on v hich, in the 
 intervals of his busy days, he had spent some time and 
 trouble, and of which he was secretly proud, humble 
 and cheap as it was — she took it for granted. He 
 could not remember that she had said any 'thank 
 vou's ' since she came. 
 
 Still, youth and comradeship were pleasant. The 
 den in which they sat was warm with light and tire, 
 and was their own. Louie's exultation, too, in their 
 change of fortune, which flashed out of her at every 
 turn, was infectious, and presently his spirits rose 
 with hers, and the two lost themselves in the excite- 
 ment of large schemes and new horizons. 
 
 After a time he found himself comparing notes with 
 her as to that far-off crisis of his running away. 
 
 ' I suppose you heard somehow about Jim Wigson 
 and me ? ' he asked her, his pulse quickening after all 
 these years. 
 
 She nodded with a little grin. He had already 
 noticed, by the way, that she, while still living among 
 the moors, had almost shaken herself free of the Kin- 
 der dialect, whereas it had taken quite a year of 
 ^Manchester life to rub off his own Doric. 
 
 'Well, you didn't imagine' — he went on — 'I was 
 going to stop after that ? T could put a knife between 
 Jim's ribs now when I think of it I ' 
 
 And, pushing his book away from him, he sat 
 recalling that long past shame, his face, glowing with 
 vindictive memory, framed in his hands. 
 
 ' I don't see, though, what you sneaked off for like 
 that after all you'd promised me,' she said with 
 
 energy 
 
 'iSTo, it was hard on you,' he admitted. 'But I 
 couldn't think of any other way out. I was mad with
 
 376 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE rook it 
 
 everybody, and just wanted to cut and run. But be- 
 fore 1 hit on that notion about Tom ' (he had just been 
 explaining to her in detail, not at all to her satisfaction, 
 his device for getting regular news of her) ' I used 
 to spend half my time wondering what you'd do. I 
 thought, perhaps, you'd run away too, and that would 
 have been a kettle of fish.' 
 
 ' I did run away,' she said, her wild eyes sparkling 
 — 'twice.' 
 
 ' Jiminy ! ' said David with a schoolboy delight, 
 ' let's hear ! ' 
 
 Wliereupon she took up her tale and told him a 
 great deal that was still quite unknown to him. She 
 told it in her own way with characteristic blindnesses 
 and hardnesses, but the truth of it was this. The very 
 day after David's departure she too had run away, in 
 spite of the fact that Hannah was keeping her in some- 
 thing very like imprisonment. She supposed that 
 David had gone to Manchester, and she meant to fol- 
 low him there. But she had been caught begging the 
 other side of Glossop by a policeman, who was a 
 native of Clough End and knew all about her. 
 
 ' He made me come along back, but he must have 
 got the mark on his wrist still where I bit him, 1 
 should think,' remarked Miss Louie, with a satisfac- 
 tion untouched apparently by the lapse of time. 
 
 The next attempt had been more serious. It was 
 some months afterwards, and by this time she was in 
 despair about David, and had made up her passionate 
 mind that she would never see him again. But she 
 loathed Hannah more and more, and at last, in the 
 middle of a snowy February, the child determined to 
 find her way over the Peak into the wild valley of the 
 Woodlands, and so to Ashopton and Sheffield, in which 
 last town she meant to go to service. But in the 
 effort to cross the plateau of the Peak she very nearly
 
 CHAP. IX 
 
 YOUTH 37' 
 
 lost her life. Long before she came in sight of the 
 Snake Inn, on the Woodlands side, she sank exhausted 
 in the snow, and, but for some Frimley shepherds 
 who were out after their sheep, she would have drawn 
 her last breath in that grim solitude. They carried 
 her down to Frimley and dropped her at the nearest 
 shelter, which happened to be Margaret Dawson's 
 cottage. 
 
 Margaret was then in the first smart of her widow- 
 hood. 'Lias was just dead, and she was withering 
 physically and mentally under the heart-hunger of her 
 loss. The arrival of the pallid, half-conscious child 
 — David's sister, with David's eyes — for a time dis- 
 tracted and appeased her. She nursed the poor waif, 
 and sent word to Xeedham Farm. Reuben came for 
 the girl, and Margaret, partly out of compassion, 
 partly out of a sense of her own decaying strength, 
 bribed her to go back home by the promise of teach- 
 ing her the silk-weaving. 
 
 Louie learnt the trade with surprising quickness, 
 and as she shot up in stature and her fingers gained in 
 cunning and rapidity, Margaret became more bowed, 
 helpless and ' fond,' until at last Louie did everything, 
 brought home the weft and warp, set it up, worked 
 off the 'cuts,' and took them to the warehouse in 
 Clough End to be paid ; while Margaret sat in the 
 chimney corner, pining inwardly for 'Lias and drop- 
 ping deeper day by day into the gulf of age. By this 
 time of course various money arrangements had been 
 made between them, superintended by Margaret's 
 brother, a weaver in the same village who found it 
 necessary to keep a very sharp eye on this girl-appren- 
 tice whom Margaret had picked up. Of late Louie 
 had been paying Margaret rent for the loom, together 
 with a certain percentage on the weekly earnings, 
 practically for ' goodwill.' And on this small sum
 
 378 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 the widow had managed to live and keep her home, 
 while Louie launched gloriously into new clothes, 
 started a savings-bank book, and snapped her fingers 
 for good and all at Hannah, who put up with her, 
 however, in a sour silence because of Mr. Gurney's 
 cheques. 
 
 ' And Margaret can't do anything for herself now ? ' 
 asked David. He had followed the story with eager- 
 ness. For years the remembrance had rankled in his 
 mind how during his last months at Kinder, when 
 'Lias was dying, and the old pair were more in want 
 than ever of the small services he had been accustomed 
 to render them, he had forgotten and neglected his 
 friends because he had been absorbed in the excite- 
 ments of ' conversion,' so that when Tom Mullins had 
 told him in general terms that his sister Louie was 
 supporting both Margaret and herself, the news had 
 soothed a remorse. 
 
 'I should just think not!' said Louie in answer to 
 his question. ' She's gone most silly, and she hasn't 
 got the right use of her legs either.' 
 
 ' Poor old thing ! ' said David softly, falling into a 
 dream. He was thinking of Margaret in her active, 
 happy days when she used to bake scones for him, or 
 mend his clothes, or rate him for ' worriting ' 'Lias. 
 Then wakening up he drew the book he was binding 
 towards him again. ' She must have been precious 
 glad to have you to do for her, Louie,' he said 
 contentedly. 
 
 'Do for her?' Louie opened her eyes. 'As if I 
 could be worrited with her! I had my work to do, 
 thank you. There was a niece used to come in and 
 see to her. She used to get in my way dreadful some- 
 times. She'd have fits of thinking she could work the 
 loom again, and I'd have to keep her away — regular 
 frighten her.'
 
 CHAP. IX 
 
 YOUTH 379 
 
 David started. 
 
 'Who'll work the loom now?' he asked ; his look 
 and tone altering to match hers. 
 
 'I'm sure I don't know,' said T.ouie, carelessly. 
 ' Very like she'll not get anyone. The work's been 
 slack a long while.' 
 
 David suddenly drew back from his bookbinding. 
 
 'Wlien did you let her know, Louie — about me?' 
 he asked quickly. 
 
 ' Let her know ? Who was to let her know ? Your 
 letter came eight o'clock and our train started half- 
 past ten. I'd just time to pitch my things together 
 and that was about all.' 
 
 ' And you never sent, and you haven't written ? ' 
 
 'You leave me alone,' said the girl, turning instantly 
 sulky under his tone. ' It's nowt to you what I do.' 
 
 ' Why ! ' he said, his voice shaking, ' she'd be wait- 
 ing and waiting — and she's got nothing else to depend 
 on.' 
 
 ' There's her brother,' said Louie angrily, ' and if he 
 won't take her, there's the workhouse. They'll take 
 her there fast enough, and she Avon't know anything 
 about it.' 
 
 'The ivorkhouse ." cried David, springing up, in- 
 censed past bearing by her callous way. 'Margaret 
 that took you in out of the snow ! — you said it your- 
 self. And you — you'd not lift a linger — not you — 
 you'd not even give her notice — "chuck her into the 
 workhouse — that's good enough for her I " It's vile, 
 — that's what it is ! ' 
 
 He stood, choked by his own wrath, eyeing her 
 fiercely — a young thunder god of disdain and con- 
 demnation. 
 
 Louie too got up — gathering up her work round 
 her — and gave him back his look with interest before 
 she flung out of the room.
 
 380 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 'Keep a civil tongue in your head, sir, or I'll let 
 you know,' she cried. 'I'll not be called over the 
 coals by you nor nobody. I'll do what I please, — and 
 if you don't like it you can do the other thing — so 
 there — now you know ! ' 
 
 And with a nod of the utmost provocation and 
 defiance she banged the door behind her and went up 
 to bed. 
 
 David flung down the pen with which he had been 
 lettering his books on the table, and, drawing a chair 
 up to the fire, he sat moodily staring into the embers. 
 So it was all to begin again — the long wrangle and jar 
 of their childhood. Why had he broken silence and 
 taken this burden once more upon his shoulders ? He 
 had a moment of passionate regret. It seemed to him 
 more than he could bear. No gratitude, no kindness ; 
 and this fierce tongue ! 
 
 After a while he fetched pen and paper and began 
 to write on his knee, while his look kindled again. 
 He wrote to Margaret, a letter of boyish effusion and 
 affection, his own conscience quickened to passion by 
 Louie's lack of conscience. He had never forgotten 
 her, he said, and he wished he could see her again. 
 She must write, or get some one to write for her — and 
 tell him what she was going to do now that Louie had 
 left her. He had been angry with Louie for coming 
 away without sending word. But what he wanted to 
 say was this : if Margaret could get no one to work 
 the loom, he, David, would pay her brother four shil- 
 lings a week, for six months certain, towards her ex- 
 penses if he would take her in and look after her. 
 She must ask somebody to write at once and say what 
 was to be done. If her brother consented to take her, 
 David would send a post-office order for the first 
 month at once. He was doing well in his business, 
 and there would be no doubt about the payments.
 
 CHAP. IX YOrTir 381 
 
 He made his proposal with a haste and impulsive- 
 ness very unlike the cool judgment he had so far 
 shown in his business. It never occurred to him to 
 negotiate with the brother who might be quite well 
 able to maintain his sister without help. Besides he 
 remembered him as a hard man of whom both Mar- 
 garet and 'Lias — soft, sensitive creatures — were both 
 more or less afraid. No, there should be no doubt 
 about it — not a day's doubt, if he could help it ! He 
 could help, and he would; and if they asked him 
 more he would give it. Nearly midnight ! But if he 
 ran out to the General Post Office it would be in time. 
 
 When he had posted it and was walking home, his 
 anger was all gone. But in its stead was the smart of 
 a baffled instinct — the hunger for sympathy, for love, 
 for that common everyday life of the affections which 
 had never been his, while it came so easilv to other 
 people. 
 
 In his chafing distress he felt the curb of something 
 unknown before ; or, rather, what had of late taken 
 the pleasant guise of kinship and natural affection 
 assumed to-night another and a sterner aspect, and in 
 this strait of conduct, that sheer • imperative ' \vhich 
 we carry within us made itself for the first time heard 
 and realised. 
 
 'I have done my duty and must abide by it. I 
 must bear with her and look after her.' 
 
 Why ? 
 
 ' Because my father laid it on me ? ' — 
 
 And because there is a life within our life which 
 urges and presses? — because we are 'not our own' ? 
 But this is an answer which implies a whole theology. 
 And at this moment of his life David had not a parti- 
 cle or shred of theology about him. Except, indeed, 
 that, like Voltaire, he was graciously inclined to think 
 a First Cause probable.
 
 382 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 Next day this storm blew over, as storms do. 
 Louie came down early and made the porridge for 
 breakfast. When David appeared she carried things 
 off with a high hand, and behaved as if nothing had 
 happened ; but anyone accustomed to watch her would 
 have seen a certain quick nervousness in her black, 
 Avild bird's eyes. As for David, after a period of 
 gruffness and silence, he passed by degrees into his 
 usual manner. Louie spent the day with Dora, and 
 he went off to Cheadle to conclude the purchase of 
 that collection of American books he had described to 
 Louie. But first, on his way, he walked proudly into 
 Heywood's bank and opened an account there, receiv- 
 ing the congratulations of an old and talkative cashier, 
 who already knew the lad and was interested in his 
 prospects, with the coolness of one who takes good 
 fortune as his right. 
 
 In the afternoon he was busy in the shop — not too 
 busy, however, to notice John. What ailed the lad ? 
 While he was inside, as soon as the door did but creak 
 in the wind he sprang to open it, but for the most part 
 he preferred to stand outside watching the stall and 
 the sti-eet. When Louie appeared about five o'clock — 
 for her hours with Dora were not yet regular — he 
 forthwith became her slave. She set him to draw up 
 the fire while she got the tea, and then, without tak- 
 ing any notice of David, she marched John upstairs to 
 help her hang her curtains, lay her carpet, and nail up 
 the coloured fashion plates and newspaper prints of 
 royalties or beauties with which she was adorning the 
 bare walls of the attic. 
 
 When all her additions had been made to David's 
 original stock; when the little deal dressing-table 
 and glass had been draped in the cheapest of muslins 
 over the pinkest of calicoes ; when the flowery cur- 
 tains had been tied back with blue ribbons ; when the
 
 CHAP. IX YOUTH 383 
 
 china vases on the mantelpiece had been filled with 
 nodding plumes of dyed grasses, mostly of a rosy red ; 
 and a long glass in a somewhat damaged condition, but 
 still presenting enough surface to enable Miss Louie to 
 study herself therein from top to toe, had been propped 
 against the wall ; there was and could be nothing in 
 the neighbourhood of Potter Street, so John reflected, 
 as he furtively looked aboiit him, to vie with the 
 splendours of Miss Grieve's apartment. There was 
 about it a sensuousness, a deliberate quest of luxury 
 and gaiety, which a raw son of poverty could feel 
 though he could not put it into words. Xo Manches- 
 ter girl he had ever seen would have cared to spend 
 her money in just this way. 
 
 'Now that 's real nice, Mr. Dalby, and I'm just 
 obliged to you,' said Louie, with patronising emj)hasis, 
 as she looked round upon his labours. ' 1 do like to 
 get a man to do things for you — he's got some strength 
 in liiui — not like a gcll !' 
 
 And she looked down at herself and at the long, 
 thin-fingered hand against her dress, with affected 
 contempt. John looked at her too, but turned his 
 head away again quickly. 
 
 ' And yet you 're pretty strong too, Miss,' he ven- 
 tured. 
 
 ' Well, })erhaps I am,' she admitted ; ' and a good 
 thing too, when you come to think of the rough time 
 I had over there ' — and she jerked her head behind her 
 — ' ever since Davy ran away from me.' 
 
 * Ran away from you, j\Iiss ? ' 
 
 She nodded, pressing her lips together with the 
 look of one who keeps a secret from the highest mo- 
 tives. But she brought two beautiful plaintive eyes to 
 bear on John, and he at once felt sure that David's 
 conduct had been totally inexcusable. 
 
 'V 
 
 Then suddenly she broke into a laugh. She was
 
 384 THE ULSTOKY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 sitting on the edge of the bed, swinging her feet lightly 
 backwards and forwards. 
 
 ' Look here ! ' she said, dropping her voice, and 
 looking ronnd at the door. ' Do you know a lot about 
 Davy's affairs ? — you 're a great friend of his, aren't 
 you ? ' 
 
 ' I s'i:)ose so,' said the lad, awkwardly. 
 
 ' Well, has he been making up to anybody that you 
 know of? ' 
 
 John's invisible eyebrows stretched considerably. 
 He was so astonished that he did not readily find an 
 answer. 
 
 'Why, of course, I mean,' said Louie, impatiently, 
 ' is he in love with anybody ? ' 
 
 ' Not that I know of. Miss.' 
 
 'Well, then, there's somebody in love with him,' said 
 Louie, maliciously; 'and some day, Mr. Dalby, if we 
 get a chance, perhaps I'll tell you all about it.' 
 
 The charming confidential smile she threw him so 
 bewildered the lad that he hardly knew where he was. 
 
 But an exasperated shout of ' John ' from the stairs 
 recalled him, and he rushed downstairs to help David 
 deal with a cargo of books just arrived. 
 
 That evening David ran up to the Parlour for half 
 an hour, to have a talk with Daddy and find out what 
 Dora thought of Louie. He had sent a message by 
 Louie about Reuben's revelations, and it occurred to 
 him that since Daddy had not been to look him up 
 since, that incalculable person might be offended that 
 he had not brought his great news in person. Besides, 
 he had a very strong curiosity to know what had hap- 
 pened after all to Lucy Purcell, and whether anything 
 had been commonly observed of Purcell's demeaiiour 
 under the checkmate administered to him. For the 
 past few days he had been wholly absorbed in his own
 
 CHAP. IX 
 
 Yorni 385 
 
 affairs, and during the previous week he had seen 
 nothing of either Daddy or Dora, except that at a casual 
 meeting in the street with Daddy that worthy had 
 described his attack on rurcell with a gusto worthy 
 of his Irish extraction. 
 
 He found the restaurant just shutting, and Daddy 
 apparently on the wing for the ' White Horse ' parlour, 
 to judge from the relief which showed in Dora's worn 
 look as she saw her father lay down his hat and stick 
 again and fall ' chaffing ' with David. 
 
 For, with regard to David's change of position, the 
 landlord of the Parlour was in a very testy frame of 
 mind. 
 
 ' Six hundred pounds ! ' he growled, when the young 
 fellow sitting cross-legged by the fire had made an end 
 of describing to them both his journey to London. 
 ' H'm, your fun's over : any fool can do on six hun- 
 dred pounds I ' 
 
 'Thank you. Daddy,' said the lad, with a sarcastic 
 lip. ' As for you, I wonder you have the face to talk ! 
 Who's coining money here, I should like to know ? ' 
 
 Dora looked up with a start. Her father met her 
 look with a certain hostility and an obstinate shake of 
 his thin shoulders. 
 
 ' Davj-, me boy, you're that consated by now, you'll 
 not be for taking advice. But I'll give it yon, bedad, 
 to take or to leave ! Xever pitch your tent, sir, where 
 you can't strike it when you want to I But there's 
 where your beastly money comes in. Xobody need 
 look to you now for any comprehension of the finer 
 sentiments of man.' 
 
 'What do vou mean, Daddv?' 
 
 ' Never you mind,' said the old vagrant, staring 
 sombrely at the floor — the spleen in person. ' Only I 
 Avant ni}' freedom, I tell you — and a bit of air, some- 
 
 times — and by gad I'll have 'em! ' 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 2c
 
 386 THE HISTOEY OF DAVID mUEVE hook ir 
 
 And throwing back his grey head with a jerk lie 
 fixed an angry eye on Dora. Dora liad grown paler, 
 but she said nothing ; her fingers went steadily on 
 with her work ; from early morning now till late night 
 neither they nor she were ever at rest. After a min- 
 ute's silence Lomax walked to the door, flung a good- 
 night behind him and disappeared. 
 
 Dora hastily drew her hand across her eyes, then 
 threaded her needle as though nothing had happened. 
 But David was perplexed and sorry. How white and 
 thin she looked, to be sure ! That old lunatic must 
 be worrying her somehow. 
 
 He moved his chair nearer to Dora. 
 
 'Is there anything wrong, Miss Dora?' he asked 
 her, dropping his voice. 
 
 She looked up with a quick gratitude, his voice and 
 expression putting a new life into her. 
 
 ' Oh ! I don't know,' she said, gently and sadly. 
 ' Father's been very restless these last few weeks. I 
 can't keep him at home. And I'm not always dull 
 like this. I've done my best to cheer him up. And I 
 don't think there's much amiss with the Parlour — j^et 
 — only the outgoings are so large every day. I'm 
 always feeart ' 
 
 She paused, and a visible tremor ran through her. 
 David's quick eye understood the signs of strain and 
 fatigue, and he felt a brotherly pity for her — a softer, 
 more normal feeling than Louie had ever called out in 
 him. 
 
 'I say,' he said heartily, 'if there's anything I can 
 do, you'll let me know, won't you ? ' 
 
 She smiled at him, and then turned to her work 
 again in a hurry, afraid of her own eyes and lips, and 
 Avhat they might be saying. 
 
 ' Oh ! I dare say I fret myself too mueh,' she said, 
 with the tone of one determined to be cheered. And.
 
 CHAP. IX YOUTH 387 
 
 by way of protecting her own quivering heart, she fell 
 upon the subject of Louie. She showed the brother 
 some of Luui(;'s first attempts — some of tlie stitches 
 she had been learning. 
 
 ' She's that quick ! ' she said, wondering. ' In a few 
 days I'm going to trust her with that,' and she pointed 
 to a fine old piece of Venetian embroidery, which had 
 to be largely re])aired before it could be made up into 
 an altar-cloth and presented to St. Damian's by a rich 
 and devoted member of the congregation. 
 
 ' Does she get in your way ? ' the brother in- 
 quired. 
 
 ' X-o/ she said in a low voice, paying particular 
 attention to a complicated stitch. " She'll get used to 
 me and the work soon. She'll make a first-rate hand 
 if she's patient a bit. They'll be glad to take her on 
 at the shop.' 
 
 ' But you'll not turn her out ? You'll let her work 
 here, alongside of you ? ' said the young man eagerly. 
 He had just met Louie, in the dark, walking up Mar- 
 ket Street with a seedy kind of gentleman, who he 
 had reason to know was a bad lot. John was off his 
 head about her, and no longer of much use to any- 
 body, and in these few days other men, as it seemed 
 to him, had begun to hang about. The difficulties of 
 his guardianship were thickening upon him, and he 
 clung to Dora's help. 
 
 ' No ; I'll not turn her out. She may work here if 
 she wants to,' said Dora, with the same slowness. 
 
 And all the time she was saying to herself passion- 
 ately that, if Louie Grieve had not been his sister, she 
 shoidd nevei' have set foot in that room again! In 
 the two days they had been together Louie had out- 
 raged almost every feeling the other possessed. And 
 there was a burning dread in Dora's mind that even 
 the secret of her heart of hearts had been somehow
 
 388 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GKIEVE book ii 
 
 discovered by the girl's hawk-like sense. But she 
 had promised to help him, and she would. 
 
 ' You must let me know Avhat I owe you for teach- 
 ing her and introducing her,' said David firmly. ' Yes, 
 you must, Miss Dora. It's business, and you mustn't 
 make any bones about it. A girl doesn't learn a trade 
 and get an opening found her for nothing.' 
 
 ' Uli no, nonsense I ' she said quickly, but with de- 
 cision equal to his own. ' I won't take anything. She 
 don't want much teaching ; she's so clever ; she sees a 
 thing almost before the words are out of your month. 
 Look here, ^Mr. Grieve, I want to tell you about Lucy.' 
 
 She looked up at him, flushing. He, too, coloured. 
 
 ' Well,' he said ; ' that's what I wanted to ask 
 you.' 
 
 She told him the whole story of Lucy's flight from 
 her father, of her illness and departure, of the prob- 
 able stepmother. 
 
 'Old brute!' said David between his teeth. 'I 
 say, Miss Dora, can nothing be done to make him 
 treat her decently ? ' 
 
 His countenance glowed with indignation and dis- 
 gust. Dora shook her head sadl}'. 
 
 'I don't see what anyone can do; and the worst of 
 it is she'll be such a long while getting over it. I've 
 had a letter from her this morning, and she says the 
 Hastings doctor declares she must stay there a year 
 in the warm and not come home at all, or she'll be 
 going off in a decline. I know Lucy gets nervous 
 about herself, but it do seem bad.' 
 
 David sat silent, lost in a medley of feelings, most 
 of them unpleasant. Now that Lucy Purcell was at 
 the other end of England, both her service to him and 
 his own curmudgeon behaviour to her loomed doubly 
 large. 
 
 'I say, Avill yoTi give me her address?' he said at
 
 niAP. X 
 
 YOUTH 380 
 
 last. ' I've got a smart book I've had bound for her. 
 I'd like to send it to her.' 
 
 Dora went to the table and wrote it for him. Then 
 he got up to go. 
 
 'Upon my word, you do look tired,' he broke out. 
 • Can't you go to bed ? It is hard lines.' 
 
 Which last words applied to that whole situation of 
 hers with her father which he was beginning dimly to 
 discern. In his boyish admiration and compassion he 
 took both her hands in his. Dora withdrew them 
 quickly. 
 
 <0h, I'll pull through:' she said, simply, and he 
 ■went. 
 
 When she had closed the door after him she stood 
 looking at the clock with her hands clasped in front 
 of her. 
 
 ' How much longer will father be ? ' she said, sigh- 
 ing. ' Oh, I think I told him all Lucy wanted me to 
 say ; I think I did.' 
 
 CHAPTEK X 
 
 Three or four months passed away. During that 
 period David had built up a shed in his back yard 
 and had established a printing-press there, with a 
 respectable, though not extensive, fount of type — 
 bought, all of it, secondhand, and a bargain. .lohn 
 and he spent every available moment there, and dur- 
 ing their first experiments would often sit up half the 
 night working off the sheets of their earliest produc- 
 tions, in an excitement which took no count of fatigue. 
 They began with reprinting some scarce local tracts, 
 with which they did well. Then David diverged 
 into a Eadical pamphlet or two on the subject of the 
 coming Education Bill, finding authors for them among
 
 390 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 the leading ministers of the town ; and these timely 
 wares, being freely pushed on the stall, on tlie whole 
 paid their expenses, with a little profit to spare — the 
 labour being reckoned at nothing. And now David 
 was beginning to cherish the dream of a new history 
 of Manchester, for which among his own collections 
 he already possessed a great deal of fresh material. 
 But that would take time and money. He must push 
 his business a bit further first. 
 
 That business, however, was developing quite as 
 rapidly as the two pairs of arms could keep pace with 
 it. Almost everything the young fellow touched suc- 
 ceeded. He had instinct, knoAvledge, a growing tact, 
 and an indomitable energy, and these are the qualities 
 which make, which are in themselves, success. The 
 purchase of the collection at Cheadle, bearing on the 
 early history of American states and towns, not only 
 turned out well in itself, but brought him to the notice 
 of a big man in London, who set the clever and daring 
 beginner on several large quests both in Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire by which both profited considerably. 
 In another direction he was extending his stock of 
 foreign scientific and technical books, especially such 
 as bore upon the industries of Northern England. Old 
 Barbier, who took a warmer and warmer interest in 
 his pupil's progress, kept him constantly advised as to 
 French books through old friends of his own in Paris, 
 who were glad to do the exile a kindness. 
 
 * But why not run over to Paris for yourself, form 
 some connections, and look about you ? ' suggested 
 Barbier. 
 
 Why not, indeed ? The young man's blood, quick 
 with curiosity and adventure, under all his tradesman's 
 exterior, leapt at the thought. But prudence restrained 
 him for the present. 
 
 As for German books, he was struggling with the
 
 CHAP. X YOUTH 391 
 
 language, and feeling his way besides through innu- 
 merable catalogues. How he found time for all the 
 miscellaneous acquisitions of these months it would 
 be ditticult to say. But whether in his free times or 
 in trade-hours he was hardly ever without a book or a 
 catalogue beside him, save when he was working the 
 printing-press ; and, although his youth would every 
 now and then break out against the confinement he 
 imposed upon it, and drive him either to long tramps 
 over the moors on days when the spring stirred in the 
 air, or to a spell of theatre-going, in which Louie 
 greedily shared, yet, on the whole, his force of pur- 
 pose was amazing, and the success which it brought 
 with it could only be regarded as natural and inevi- 
 table. He was beginning to be well known to the old- 
 established men in his own business, who could not 
 but show at times some natural jealousy of so quick 
 a rise. The story of his relations to Purcell spread, 
 and the two were watched with malicious interest at 
 many a book-sale, when the nonchalant self-reliance 
 and prosperous look of the younger drove the elder 
 man again and again into futile attempts to injure 
 and circumvent him. It was noticed that never till 
 now had Turcell lost his head Avith a rival. 
 
 Nevertheless, the lad had far fewer enemies than 
 might have been expected. His manner had always 
 been radiantly self-confident ; but there was about him 
 a conspicuous element of quick feeling, of warm 
 humanity, which grew rather than diminished with 
 his success. He was frank, too, and did not trj' to 
 gloss over a mistake or a failure. Perhaps in his 
 lordly way he felt he could afford himself a few now 
 and then, he was so much cleverer than his neighbours. 
 
 Upon no one did David's development produce 
 more effect than upon Mr. Ancrum. The lame, soli- 
 tary minister, who only got through his week's self-
 
 392 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 appointed tasks at a constaut expense of bodily tor- 
 ment, was dazzled and bewildered by the spectacle 
 of so much vitality spent with such ease and im- 
 punity. 
 
 ' How many years of Manchester must one give 
 him?' said Ancrum to himself one night, when he 
 was making his way home from a reading of the 
 ' Electra ' with David. ' That six hundred pounds has 
 quickened the pace amazingly ! Ten years, perhaps. 
 Then London, and anything you like. Bookselling 
 slips into publishing, and publishing takes a man into 
 another class, and within reach of a hundred new pos- 
 sibilities. Some day T shall be bragging of having 
 taught him ! Taught him ! He'll be turning the 
 tables on me precious soon. Caught me out twice 
 to-night, and got through the tough bit of the chorus 
 much better than I did. How does he do it ? — and 
 with that mountain of other things on his shoulders ? 
 There's one speck in the fruit, however, as far as I 
 can see — Miss Louie ! ' 
 
 Erom the first moment of his introduction to her, 
 Ancrum had taken particular notice of David's hand- 
 some sister, who, on her side, had treated her old min- 
 ister and teacher with a most thoroughgoing indif- 
 ference. He saw that now, after some three months 
 of life together, the brother and sister had developed 
 separate existences, which touched in two points only 
 — a common liking for Dora Loniax, and a common 
 keenness for Inisiness. 
 
 Here, in this matter of business, they were really at 
 one. David kept nothing from her, and consulted her 
 a good deal. She had the same shrewd head that he 
 had, and as it was her money as well as his that was 
 in question she was determined to know and to under- 
 stand what he was after. Anybody who had come 
 upon the pair on the nights when they made up their
 
 niAr. X YOUTH 39.3 
 
 accounts, their dark heads touching under the lamp, 
 might have gone away moralising on the charms of 
 fraternal affection. 
 
 And all tlie while David had once niore tacitly 
 given up the attempt either to love her or to control 
 her. riow indeed could lie control her ? He was 
 barely two years older, and she had a will of iron. She 
 made disreputable friends whom he loathed the sight 
 of. But all he coidd do was to keep them out of the 
 house. She led John by this time a dog's life. From 
 the temptress she had become the tease and tyrant, 
 and the clumsy fellow, consumed with feverish pas- 
 sion, slaved for her whenever she was near him with 
 hardly the reward of a kind look or a civil word in a 
 fortnight. David set his teeth and tried to recover 
 possession of his friend. And as long as they two 
 were at the press or in the shop together alone, John 
 was often his old self, and would laugh out in the old 
 way. But no sooner did Louie appear than he fol- 
 lowed her about like an animal, and David could make 
 no more of him. Whenever any dispute, too, arose 
 between the brother and sister, he took her part, 
 whatever it might be, with an acrimony which pushed 
 David's temper hard. 
 
 Yet, on the whole, so Ancrum thought, the brother 
 showed a wonderful patience. He was evidently 
 haunted by a sense of responsibility towards his sister, 
 and, at the same time, both tormented and humiliated 
 by his incompetence to manage or influence her. It 
 was curious, too, to watch how by antagonism and by 
 the constant friction of their life together, certain 
 qualities in her developed certain others in him. Her 
 callousness, for instance, did but nurture a sensitive 
 humanity in him. She treated the lodgers in the 
 first pair back with persistent indifference and even 
 brutality, seeing that Mrs. Mason was a young, help-
 
 394 THE HI8T0RV <•!• DAN ID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 less creature approaching every day nearer to a con- 
 finement she regarded with terror, and that a little 
 common kindness from the only other woman in the 
 house could have softened her lot consideraljly. But 
 David's books were stacked about in awkward and 
 inconvenient places waiting for the Masons' departure, 
 and Louie had no patience with them — with the wife 
 at any rate. It once or twice occurred to David tliat 
 if the husband, a good-looking fellow and a very hard- 
 worked shopman, had had inore hours at home, Louie 
 would have tried her blandishments upon him. 
 
 He on his side was goaded by Louie's behaviour into 
 an unusual complaisance and liberality towards his 
 tenants. Louie once contemptuously told him he 
 would make a capital 'general help.' He was Mrs, 
 Mason's coal-carrier and errand-boy already. 
 
 In the same way Louie beat and ill-treated a half- 
 starved collie — one of the short-haired black sort famil- 
 iar to the shepherd of the north, and to David himself 
 in his farm days — which would haunt the shop and 
 kitchen. Whereupon David felt all his heart melt 
 towards the squalid, unhandsome creature. He fed 
 and cherished it; it slept on his bed by night and fol- 
 lowed him by day, he all the while protecting it from 
 Louie with a strong hand. And the more evil was 
 the eye she cast upon the dog, who, according to her, 
 possessed all the canine vices, the more David loved 
 it, and the more Tim was fattened and caressed. 
 
 In another direction, too, the same antagonism 
 appeared. The sister's license of speech and behav- 
 iour towards the men who became her acquaintances 
 provoked in the brother what often seemed to Ancrum 
 — who, of course, remembered Eeuben, and had heard 
 many tales of old James Grieve, tlie lad's grandfather 
 — a sort of Puritan reaction, the reaction of his race 
 and stock against 'lewdness.' Louie's complete inde-
 
 CIIAI" 
 
 YOUTH 30r, 
 
 ])enclence, however, and the distance she preserved 
 between his amusements and hers, left David no other 
 weapon than sarcasm, which he employed freely. His 
 fine sensitive mouth took during these weeks a curve 
 lialf mocking, half bitter, Avhich changed the whole 
 expression of the face. 
 
 He saw, indeed, with great clearness after a month 
 or so tliat Louie's wildness was by no means the wild- 
 ness of an ignorant innocent, likely to slip unawares 
 into perdition, and that, while she had a passionate 
 greed for amusement and pleasure, and a blank absence 
 of principle, she was still perfectly alive to the risks 
 of life, and meant somehow both to enjoy herself and 
 to steer herself through. But this gradual perception 
 — that, in spite of her mode of killing spare time, she 
 was not immediately likely to take any fatal false 
 step, as he had imagined in his first dread — did but 
 increase his inward repulsion. 
 
 A state of feeling which Avas the more remarkable 
 because he himself, in Anerum's eyes, was at the mo- 
 ment in a temper of moral relaxation and bewilder- 
 ment ! His absorption in George Sand, and through 
 her in all the other French Romantics whose books he 
 could either find for himself or borrow from Barbier, 
 was carrying a ferment of passion and imagination 
 through all his blood. Most social arrangements, in- 
 cluding marriage, seemed to have become open ques- 
 tions to him. AVhy, then, this tone towards Louie and 
 her friends ? Was it that, apart from the influence of 
 heredity, the young fellow's moral perception at this 
 time was not ethical at all, but aesthetic — a matter of 
 taste, of the presence or absence of certain ideal and 
 poetic elements in conduct ? 
 
 At any rate his friendship for old Barbier drew 
 closer and closer, and Ancrum, who had begun to feel 
 a lively affection for him, could see but little of him.
 
 306 'I'lIK IIISTOKV OF DAVID GRIEVE hook ii 
 
 As to Barbier, it was a significant chance wliicli had 
 tlirowu him across David's path. In former days this 
 lively Frenchman had been a small Paris journalist, 
 whom the coup d'etat had struck down with his bet- 
 ters, and who had escaped to England with one suit 
 of clothes and eight francs in his pocket. He re- 
 minded himself on landing of a cousin of his mother's 
 settled as a clerk in JVIanchester, found his way north- 
 Avards, and had now, for some seventeen years, been 
 maintaining himself in the cotton capital, mainly by 
 teaching, but partly by a num'oer of small arts — orna- 
 mental calligraphy, wieuw-writing, and the like — too 
 odd and various for description. He was a fanatic, a 
 Red, much possessed by political hatreds which gave 
 savour to an existence otherwise dull and peaceable 
 enough. Religious beliefs were very scarce with him, 
 but he had a certain literary creed, the creed of 1830, 
 Avhen he had been a scribbler in the train of Victor 
 Hugo, which he did his best to put into David. 
 
 He was a formidable-looking person, six feet in 
 height, and broad in proportion, with Ijushy white 
 eyebrows, and a mouth made liideous by two project- 
 ing teeth. In speech he hated England and all her 
 ways, and was for ever yearning towards the mis- 
 guided and yet unequalled country which had cast 
 him out. In heart he was perfectly aware that Eng- 
 land is free as not even Republican France is free ; 
 and he was also sufficiently alive to the fact that he 
 had made himself a very tolerable niche in Manches- 
 ter, and was pleasantly regarded there — at least, in 
 certain circles — as an oracle of French opinion, a com- 
 modity which, in a great commercial centre, may at 
 any time have a casli value. He could, in truth, have 
 long ago revisited la patrie had he had a mind, for 
 governments are seldom vindictive in the case of peo- 
 ple who can clearly do them no harm. This, however,
 
 CHAP. X YDrrir .",07 
 
 was not at all his own honest view of the matter. In 
 the mirror of the mind he saw himself perpetually 
 draped in the pathos of exile and the dignity of per- 
 secution, and the phrases by which he was wont to 
 impress this inward vision on the brutal English sense 
 liad become, in the course of years, an effective and 
 touching habit with him. 
 
 J)avid had been Barbier's pujiil in the first instance 
 at one of the classes of the Mechanics' Institute. 
 Never in IJarbier's memory had any Manchester lad 
 so applied himself to learn French before. And when 
 the boy's knowledge of the Encyclop.^edists came out, 
 and he one day put the master right in class on some 
 points connected with Diderot's relations to Rousseau, 
 the ex-journalist gaped with astonishment, and then 
 went home and read up his facts, half enraged and 
 half enraptured. David's zeal piqued him, made him 
 a better Frenchman and a better teacher than he had 
 been for years. He was a vain man, and David's capac- 
 ities put him on his mettle. 
 
 Very soon he and the lad had become intimate. He 
 had described to David the first night of Hernani, 
 when he had been one of the long-haired band of 
 rapins, who came down in their scores to the Theatre 
 Fran<jais to defend their chief, Hugo, against the hisses 
 of the Philistine. The two were making coffee in 
 Barbier's attic, at the top of a side street off the 
 Oxford Road, when these memories seized upon the 
 old Romantic. He took up the empty coffee-pot, and 
 brandished it from side to side as though it had been 
 the sword of Hernani ; the miserable Academy hug- 
 ging its ]\roliere and Racine fled before him ; the world 
 was once more regenerate, and Hugo its high priest. 
 Passages from the different parts welled to his old 
 lips ; he gave the play over again — the scene between 
 tlie lover and the husband, where the husband lays
 
 398 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 down the strange and sinister penalty to wiiich tlie 
 lover submits — the exquisite love-scene in the fifth 
 act — and the cry of agonised passion with which Dona 
 Sol defends her love against his executioner. All 
 these things he declaimed, stumping up and down, till 
 the terrified landlady rose out of her bed to remon- 
 strate, and got the door locked in her face for her 
 pains, and till the bourgeois baby in the next room 
 woke up and roared, and so put au abrupt end to the 
 performance. Old Barbier sat down swearing, poked 
 the fire furiously, and then, taking out a huge red 
 handkerchief, wiped his brow with a trembling hand. 
 His stiff white hair, parted on either temple, bristled 
 like a high toupie over his round, black eyes, which 
 glowed behind his spectacles. And meanwhile the 
 handsome boy sat opposite, glad to laugh by way of 
 reaction, but at bottom stirred by the same emotion, 
 and ready to share in the same adorations. 
 
 Gradually David learnt his way about this bygone 
 world of Barbier's recollection. A vivid picture sprang 
 up in him of these strange leaders of a strange band, 
 these cadaverous poets and artists of Louis Philippe's 
 early days, — beings in love with Lord Byron and 
 suicide, having Art for God, and Hugo for prophet, 
 talking of were-wolves, vampires, cathedrals, sunrises, 
 forests, passion and despair, hatted like brigands, 
 cloaked after Vandyke, curled like Absalom, making 
 new laws unto themselves in verse as in morals, and 
 leaving all petty talk of duty or common sense to the 
 Academy and the nursery. 
 
 George Sand walking the Paris quays in male dress 
 — George Sand at Fontainebleau roaming the midnight 
 forest with Alfred de Musset or wintering with her 
 dying musician among the mountains of Palma; 
 Gerard de Nerval, wanderer, poet, and suicide ; Alfred 
 de Musset flaming into verse at dead of night amid an
 
 en A I'. X 
 
 YolTH 300 
 
 answeriii<,' and spendthrift blaze of wax candles ; 
 Baudelaire's blasphemies and eccentricities — these 
 characters and incidents Barbier wove into endless 
 highly colonred tales, to which David listened with 
 perpetual n-lish. 
 
 ' Man Dien .' Mon Dieu ! What times ! What 
 memories ! ' the old Frenchman would cry at last, 
 fairly re-transported to the word of his youth, and, 
 springing ui), he would run to the little cupboard by 
 his bed head, where he kept a score or so of little 
 paper volumes — volumes which the tradesman David 
 soon discovered, from a curious study of French cata- 
 logues, to have a fast-rising money value — and out 
 would come Alfred de ]\Iusset's ' Nuit de j\[ai,' or an 
 outrageous verse from Baudelaire, or an harmonious 
 nothing from Gautier. David gradually learnt to fol- 
 low, to understand, to range all that he heard in a 
 mental setting of his own. The France of his imagi- 
 nation indeed was a strange land ! Everybody in it 
 was either girding at priests like Voltaire, or dying 
 for love like George Sand's Stenio. 
 
 But whether the picture was true to life or no, it 
 had a very strongly marked effect on the person con- 
 ceiving it. Just as the speculative complexion of 
 his first youth had been decided by the chance which 
 brought him into daily contact with the French 
 eighteenth century — for no self-taught solitar}^ boy of 
 quick and covetous mind can read Voltaire continuously 
 without bearing the marks of him henceforward — so 
 in the same way, when he passed, as France had done 
 before him, from the philosophers to the Romantics, 
 this constant preoccupation with the French literature 
 of passion in its romantic and idealist period left deep 
 and lasting results. 
 
 The strongest of these results lay in the realm of 
 moral and social sense. What struck the lad's raw
 
 400 THE inSTOP^Y OF BAVTD GRIEVE p.ook ii 
 
 mind witli more and more force as lie gathered his 
 Frencli books about him was the profound gulf which 
 seemed to divide the average French conception of the 
 relation between the sexes from the average English 
 one. In the French novels he read every young man 
 liad his mistress ; every married woman her lover. 
 Tragedy frequently arose out of these relations, but 
 that the relations must and did obtain, as a matter of 
 course, was assumed. For the delightful heroes and" 
 heroines of a whole range of fiction, from 'Manon 
 Lescaut ' down to Murger's ' Vie de Boheme,' marriage 
 did not apparently exist, even as a matter of argument. 
 And as to the duties of the married woman, when she 
 passed on to the canvas, the code was equally simple. 
 The husband might kill his wife's lover — that was in 
 the game ; but the young man's right to be was as 
 good as his own. 'No linman being can control love, 
 and no one is to blame either for feeling it or for losing 
 it. }VJiat alone degrades a woman is falsehood.' So 
 says the husband in George Sand's ' Jacques ' when he 
 is just about to fling himself down an Alpine precipice 
 that his wife and Octave may have their way undis- 
 turbed. And all the time, what poetry and passion in 
 the presentation of these things ! Beside them the 
 mere remembrance of English ignorance, prudish ness, 
 and conventionality Avould set the lad swelling, as he 
 I'ead, with a sense of superior scorn, and of wild 
 sympathy for a world in which love and not law, 
 truth and not legal fiction, were masters of human 
 relations. 
 
 Some little time after Reuben's visit to him he one 
 day told Barbier the fact of his French descent. Bar- 
 bier declared that he had always known it, had always 
 realised something in David distinct from the sluggish 
 huckstering English temper. Why, David's mother 
 was from the south of France ; his own family came
 
 CHAP. X 
 
 YOUTH 401 
 
 from Carcassonne. No doubt the rich Gascon blood 
 ran in both their veins. SaliU an compatriote '. 
 
 Thenceforward tliere was a ^veater solidarity between 
 the two than ever. Jiarbier fell into an incessant gos- 
 sip of Paris — the Paris of Louis Philippe — reviving 
 memories and ways of speech w^hich had been long 
 dead in liim, and leaving on David's mind the impres- 
 sion of a place wliere life was from morning till night ' 
 amusement, exliilaration, and seduction ; where, under 
 the bright smokeless sky, and amid the stateliest 
 streets and public buildings in Europe, men were 
 idways witty and women always attractive. 
 
 Meanwhile the course of business during the spring 
 months and the rise of his trade in foreign books 
 rapidly brought the scheme of a visit to France, which 
 had been at first a mere dream and fancy, within the 
 region of practical possibility, and even advantage, for 
 the young bookseller. Two things he was set on. If 
 he went he was determined to go under such conditions 
 as would enable him to see French life — especially 
 French artistic and student life — from the inside. 
 And he saw with some clearness that he would have 
 to take his sister with him. 
 
 Against the latter notion Barbier protested vehe- 
 mently. 
 
 ' What do you want to tie yourself to a petticoat 
 for ? If you take the girl you will have to look after 
 her. Paris, my boy, let me inform you, is not the best 
 place in the world for la jeune jjersonne ; and the Paris 
 rapin may be an amusing scoundrel, but don't trust 
 him with young women if you can help it. Leave 
 Mademoiselle Louie at home, and let her mind the 
 shop. Get Mademoiselle Dora or some one to stay 
 with her, or send her to Mademoiselle Dora.' 
 
 So said the Frenchman with sharp dictatorial em- 
 phasis. What a preposterous suggestion I 
 
 VOL. I 2 u
 
 402 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 ' I can't stop her coming,' said David, quietly — ' if 
 she wants to come — and she'll be sure to want. Be- 
 sides, I'll not leave her alone at home, and she'll not 
 let me send her anywhere — you may be sure of that.' 
 
 The Frenchman stared and stormed. David fell 
 silent. Loiue was what she was, and it was no 
 use discussing her. At last Barbier, being after all 
 • tolerably well acquainted with the lad's relations to 
 his sister, came to a sudden end of his rhetoric, and be- 
 gan to think out something practicable. 
 
 That evening he wrote to a nephew of his living as 
 an artist in the Quartier Montmartre, Some months 
 before Barbier's vanity had been flattered by an adroit 
 letter from this young gentleman, written, if the truth 
 were known., at a moment when a pecuniary situation, 
 pinched almost beyond endurance, had made it seem 
 worth while to get his uncle's address out of his 
 widowed mother. Barbier, a bachelor, and a man of 
 some small savings, perfectly understood why he had 
 been approached, and had been none the less extraor- 
 dinarily glad to hear froni the youth. He was a 
 rapin? well and good; all the great men had been 
 rcqn'ns before him. Very likely he had the rapines 
 characteristic vices and distractions. All the world 
 knew what the life meant for nine men out of ten. 
 What was the use of preaching ? Youth was youth. 
 Clearly the old man — himself irreproachable — would 
 have been disappointed not to find his nephew a sad 
 dog on personal acquaintance. 
 
 'Tell me, Xavier,' his letter ran, 'how to put a 
 young friend of mine in the way of seeing something 
 of Paris and Paris life, more than your fool of a tour- 
 ist generally sees. He is a bookseller, and will, of 
 course, mind his trade ; but he is a young man of taste 
 and intelligence besides, and moreover half French. 
 It would be a pity that he should visit Paris as any
 
 fiiAr. X VorTTI • m^ 
 
 sacre Britisli Philistine does. Advise me where to 
 ])lace him. He woiihl like to see something of your 
 artist's life. ]h\t mind this, young man, he brings a 
 sister with liim as handsome as the devil, and not 
 much easier to manage : so if you do advise — no tricks 
 — tell me of something convenable.' 
 
 A few days later lUirbier appeared in Potter Street 
 just after David had put up the shutters, announcing 
 that he had a proposal to make. 
 
 David unlocked the shop-door and let him in. 
 Rarbier looked round with some amazement on the 
 small stuffy place, piled to bursting by now with books 
 of every kind, which only John's herculean efforts could 
 keep in passable order. 
 
 'Why don't you house yourself better — hein?' said 
 the Frenchman. 'A business growing like this, and 
 nothing but a den to handle it in ! ' 
 
 ' I shall be all right when I get my other room,' said 
 David composedly. ' Couldn't turn out the lodger before. 
 The woman was only confined last week.' 
 
 And as he spoke the wailing of an infant and a 
 skurrying of feet were heard upstairs. 
 
 * So it seems,' said Barbier, adjusting his spectacles 
 in bewilderment. J^sus ! What an affair ! What 
 did you permit it for? Why didn't you turn her out 
 in time ? ' 
 
 'I would have turned myself out first,' said David. 
 He was lounging, with his hands in his pockets, against 
 the books ; but though his attitude was nonchalant, his 
 tone had a vibrating energy. 
 
 ' Barbier ! ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' What do women suffer for like that ? ' 
 
 The young man's ej^es glowed, and his lips twitched 
 a little, as though some poignant remembrance were at 
 his heart.
 
 404 THE HISTOKY OF DAVTD ORTEVE book ii 
 
 Barbiei- looked at liim with some curiosity. 
 'Ask le hon Dieu and Mother E\-e, my friend. It 
 lies between them,' said the old scoffer, with a shrug. 
 
 David looked away in silence. On his quick mind, 
 greedy of all human experience, the night of Mrs. 
 Mason's confinement, with its sounds of anguish pene- 
 trating through all the upper rooms of the thin, ill- 
 Imilt house, had left an ineffaceable impression of awe 
 and terror. In the morning, when all was safely over, 
 he came down to the kitchen to find the husband — a 
 man some two or three years older than himself, and 
 the smart foreman of an ironmongery shop in Deans- 
 gate — crouching over a bit of fire. The man was too 
 much excited to apologise for his presence in the 
 Grieves' room. David shyly asked him a question 
 about his wife. 
 
 ' Oh, it 's all right, the doctor says. There 's the 
 nurse with her, and your sister 's got the baby. She '11 
 do; but, oh, my God! it 's awful — it '.s- awful! My 
 poor Liz ! Give me a corner here, will you ! I'm all 
 upset like.' 
 
 David had got some food out of the cupboard, made 
 him eat it, and chatted to him till the man was more 
 himself again. But the crying of the new-born child 
 overhead, together with the shaken condition of this 
 clever, self-reliant young fellow, so near his own age, 
 seemed for the moment to introduce the lad to new 
 and unknown regions of human feeling. 
 
 While these images were pursuing each other through 
 David's mind, Barbier was poking among his foreign 
 books, which lay, backs upwards, on the floor to one 
 side of the counter. 
 
 'Do you sell thein — hein?' he said, looking up and 
 pointing to thon with his stick. 
 
 'Yes. Especially the scientific books. These are 
 an order. So is that batch. Napoleon III.'s " C^sar,"
 
 I IIAP. X 
 
 YOUTH • 405 
 
 itsu't it ? Ami those over there are "on spec." Oh, I 
 could do something if I knew more ! There's a man 
 over at Oklhain. One ol' the biggest weaving-sheds — 
 cotton velvets— that kind of thing. He's awfully rich, 
 and he's got a French library ; a big one, I believe. 
 He came in here yesterday. I think I could make 
 something out of him ; but he wants all sorts of rum 
 things — last-century memoirs, out-of-the-wuy ones — 
 everything about Montaigne — first editions — Lord 
 knows what ! I say, Barbier, I dare say he'd buy 
 your books. What'll you let me have them for? ' 
 
 • Diantre ! Not for your heart's blood, my young 
 man. It's like your impudence to ask. You could 
 sell more if you knew more, you think '.' Well now 
 listen to me.' 
 
 The Frenchman sat down, adjusted his spectacles, 
 and, taking a letter from his pocket, read it with 
 deliberation. 
 
 It was from the nephew, Xavier Dubois, in answer 
 to his uncle's inquiries. Nothing, the writer declared, 
 could have been more opportune. He himself was 
 just off to Belgium, where a friend had procured him 
 a piece of work on a new Government building. Why 
 should not his uncle's friends inhabit his rooms dur- 
 ing his absence ? He must keep them on, and would 
 find it very convenient, that being so, that some one 
 should pay the rent. There was his studio, which 
 was bare, no doubt, but quite habitable, and a little 
 cabinet de toilette adjoining, and shut off, containing a 
 bed and all necessaries. Why should not the sister 
 take the bedroom, and let the brother camp somehow 
 in the studio ? He could no doubt borrow a bed from 
 some friend before they came, and with a large screen, 
 which was one of the ' studio properties,' a very toler- 
 able sleeping room could be improvised, and still leave 
 a good deal of the studio free. He understood that
 
 406 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 his uncle's friends were not looking for luxury. But 
 le stride necessaire he could provide. 
 
 Meanwhile the Englishman and his sister Avould 
 find themselves at once in the artists' circle, and 
 might see as much or as little as they liked of artistic 
 life. He (Dubois) could of course give them intro- 
 ductions. There was a sculptor, for instance, on the 
 ground floor, a man of phenomenal genius, joU garcon 
 besides, who would certainly show himself amiable for 
 anybody introduced by Dubois ; and on the floor above 
 there was a landscape painter, ancien prix de Home, 
 and his wife, who would also, no doubt, make them- 
 selves agreeable, and to whom the brother and sis- 
 ter might go for all necessary information— Dubois 
 would see to that. Sixty francs a month paid the 
 appartement; a trifle for service if you desired it — 
 there was, however, no compulsion — to the concierge 
 would make you comfortable ; and as for your food, 
 the Quartier Montmartre abounded in cheap restau- 
 rants, and you might live as you pleased for one franc 
 a day or twenty. He suggested that on the whole no 
 better opening was likely to be found by two young 
 persons of spirit, anxious to see Paris from the inside. 
 
 ' Now then,' said Barbier, taking off his spectacles 
 with an authoritative click, as he shut up the letter, 
 ' clecide-toi. Go ! — and look about you for a fortnight. 
 Improve your French ; get to know some of the Paris 
 bookmen; take some commissions out with you — buy 
 there to the best advantage, and come back twenty 
 per cent, better informed than when you set out.' 
 
 He smote his hands upon his knees with energy. 
 He had a love of management and contrivance ; and 
 the payment of Eugene's rent for him during his 
 absence weighed with his frugal mind. 
 
 David stood twisting his mouth in silence a moment, 
 his head thrown back against the books.
 
 cirvr. X YOUTH 107 
 
 ' Well, I don't see why not,' he said at last, his eyes 
 sparklinfij. 
 
 'And take notice, my friend,' said Barbier, tap[)ing 
 the open letter, 'the ancien prix de Rome has a wife. 
 Where wives are young women can go. Xavier can 
 l)repare the way, and, if you play your cards well, you 
 can get Mademoiselle Louie taken off your hands while 
 you go about.' 
 
 David nodded. lie was sitting astride on the 
 counter, his face shining with the excitement he was 
 now too uiuch of a man to show with the old freedom. 
 
 Suddenly there was a sound of wild voices from 
 the inside room. 
 
 ' Miss Grieve ! Miss Grieve ! don't j^ou take that 
 child away. Bring it back, I say ; I'll go to your 
 brother, I will ! ' 
 
 ' That's Mrs. Mason's nurse,' said David, springing 
 off the counter. ' What's up now ? ' 
 
 He threw open the door into the kitchen, just as 
 Louie swept into the room from the other side. She 
 had a white bundle in her arms, and her face was 
 flushed with a sly triumph. After her ran the stout 
 woman who was looking after ^Vlrs. Mason, purple with 
 indignation. 
 
 ' Isow look yo here, Mr. Grieve,' she cried at sight of 
 David, ' I can't stand it, and I won't. Am I in charge 
 of Mrs. Mason or am I not ? Here's Miss Grieve, as 
 soon as my back 's turned, as soon as I've laid that 
 blessed baby in its cot as quiet as a lamb — and it 's 
 been howling since three o'clock this morning, as yo 
 know — in she whips, claws it out of its cradle, and is 
 off wi' it, Lord knows where. Thank the Lord, ]\Irs. 
 .Mason's asleep ! If she weren't, she'd have a fit. She's 
 feart to death o' ]\Iiss Grieve. We noather on us know 
 what to make on her. She's like a wild thing soom- 
 timos — not a human creetur at aw — Gie me that chilt, 
 I tell tha ! '
 
 408 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVK i;,,.,k n 
 
 Louie vouchsafed no answer. She sat down com- 
 posedly before the fire, and, cradling the still sleeping 
 child on her knee, she bent over it examining its 
 waxen hands and tiny feet with an eager curiosity. 
 The nurse, who stood over her trembling with anger, 
 and only deterred from snatching the child away by 
 the fear of wakening it, might have been talking to 
 the wall. 
 
 ' Xow, look here, Louie, what d' you do that for ? ' 
 said David, remonstrating ; ' why can't you leave the 
 child alone ? You'll be putting jNfrs. Mason in a tak- 
 ing, and that '11 do her harm.' 
 
 'Xowt o' t' sort,' said Louie composedly, 'it 's that 
 woman there '11 wake her with her screeching. She's 
 asleep, and the baby's asleep, and I'm taking care of 
 it. Why can't Mrs. Bury go and look after Mrs. 
 Mason ? She hasn't swept her room this two days, 
 and it 's a sight to see.' 
 
 Pricked in a tender point, :\rrs. Bury broke out 
 again into a stream of protest and invective, only 
 modified by her fear of waking her patient upstairs, 
 and interrupted by appeals to David. But whenever 
 she came near to take the baby Louie put her hands 
 over it, and her wide black eyes shot out intimidating 
 flames before which the aggressor invariably fell back. 
 
 Attracted by the fight, Barbier had come up to look, 
 and now stood by the shop-door, riveted by Louie's 
 strange beauty. She wore the same black and scar- 
 let dress in which she had made her first aj^pearance 
 in Manchester. She now never wore it out of doors, 
 her quick eye having at once convinced her that it was 
 not in the fashion. But the instinct which had origi- 
 nally led her to contrive it was abundantly justified 
 Avhenever she still condescended to put it on, so start- 
 ling a relief it lent to the curves of her slim figure, de- 
 veloped during the last two years of growth to all
 
 CHAP. X 
 
 YOUTH 400 
 
 womanly roundness and softness, and to the dazzling 
 colour of her dark head and thin face. As she sat 
 by the fire, the white bundle on her knee, one pointed 
 foot swinging in front of her, now hanging over the 
 baby, and now turning her bright dangerous look and 
 compressed lips on Mrs. Bury, she made a peculiar 
 witch-like impression on Barbier which thrilled his 
 old nerv^es agreeably. It was clear, he thought, that 
 the girl wanted a husband and a family of her own. 
 Otherwise why should she run off with other people's 
 children ? But he would be a bold man who ventured 
 on her ! 
 
 David, at last seeing that Louie was in the mood 
 to tear the babe asunder rather than give it up, with 
 difficulty induced Mrs. Bury to leave her in possession 
 for half an hour, promising that, as soon as the 
 mother woke, the child should be given back. 
 
 'If I've had enough of it,' Louie put in, as a saving 
 clause, luckily just too late to be heard by the nurse, 
 who had sulkily closed the door behind her, declaring 
 that 'sich an owdacious chit she never saw in her 
 born days, and niver heerd on one oather.' 
 
 David and Barbier went back into the shop to talk, 
 leaving Louie to her nursing. As soon as she was 
 alone she laid back the flannel which lay round the 
 child's head, and examined every inch of its downy 
 poll and puckered face, her warm breath making the 
 tiny lips twitch in sleep as it travelled across them. 
 Then she lifted the little nightgown and looked at the 
 pink feet nestling in their flannel wrapping. A glow 
 sprang into her cheek ; her great eyes devoured the 
 sleeping creature. Its weakness and helplessness, its 
 plasticity to anything she might choose to do with it, 
 seemed to intoxicate her. She looked round her 
 furtively, then bent and laid a hot covetous kiss on the 
 small clenched hand. The child moved: had it been
 
 410 THE IIISTOKY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 a little older it would have wakened ; but Louie, has- 
 tily covering it up, began to rock it and sing to it. 
 
 The door into the sliop was ajar. As David and 
 I'.arbier Avere hanging together over a map of Paris 
 which David had hunted out of his stores, Barbier 
 suddenly threw u[) his head with a queer look. 
 'What's that she's singing?' he said quickly. 
 He got up hastily, overturning his stool as he did 
 so, and went to the door to listen. 
 
 * I haven't heard that,' he said, with some agitation, 
 ' since my father's sister used to sing it me when I 
 was a small lad, up at Augoumat in the mountains 
 near Puy ! ' 
 
 Sur le pout d' Avignon 
 Tout le monde y danse en rond ; 
 Les beaux messieurs font comme §a, 
 Les beaux messieurs font comme 9a. 
 
 The words were but just distinguishable as Louie 
 sang. They were clipped and mutilated as by one 
 who no longer understood what they meant. But the 
 intonation was extraordinarily French, French of the 
 South, and Barbier could hardly stand still under it. 
 
 ' Where did you learn that ? ' he called to her from 
 the door. 
 
 The girl stopped and looked at him with her bright, 
 bird-like glance. But she made no reply. 
 
 ' Did your mother teach it you ? ' he asked, coming 
 in. 
 
 ' I suppose so,' she said indifferently. 
 
 ' Can you talk any French — do you remember it ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' But you'd soon learn. You haven't got the Eng- 
 lish mouth, that's plain. Do you know your brother 
 thinks of taking you to Paris ? ' 
 
 She started. 
 
 ' He don't,' she said laconically.
 
 ciiAr 
 
 YOUTH 411 
 
 * Oh, don't he. Just ask him then ? ' 
 
 Ten minutes later Louie had been put in possession 
 of the situation. As David had fully expected, she 
 took no notice whatever of his suggestion that after 
 all she might not care to come. They might be rough 
 quarters, he said, and queer people about; and it 
 would cost a terrible deal more for two than one. 
 Sliould he not ask Dora Lomax to take her in for a 
 fortnight ? John, of course, would look after the shoj). 
 He spoke under the pressure of a sudden qualm, know- 
 ing it would be no use ; but his voice had almost a 
 note of entreaty in it. 
 
 ' When do you want to be starting ? ' she asked 
 him sharply. ' I'll not go to Dora's — so you needn't 
 talk o' that. You can take the money out of what 
 you'll be owing me next month.' 
 
 Her nostrils dilated as the quick breath passed 
 through them. Barbier was fascinated by the extraor- 
 dinary animation of the face, and could not take his 
 eyes off her. 
 
 'Not for a fortnight,' said David reluctantly, an- 
 swering her question. ' Barbier's letter says about 
 the tenth of May. There's two country sales I must 
 go to, and some other things to settle.' 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 ' Well, then, I can get some things ready,' she said 
 half to herself, staring across the baby into the fire. 
 
 When David and Barbier were gone together ' up 
 street,' still talking over their plans, Louie leapt to 
 her feet and laid the baby down — carelessly, as though 
 she no longer cared anything at all about it — in the 
 old-fashioned armchair wherein David spent so many 
 midnight vigils. Then locking her hands behind her, 
 she paced up and down the narrow room with the 
 springing gait, the impetuous feverish grace, of some 
 prisoned animal. Paris I Her education was small.
 
 412 THE HISTOKY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 and her ignorance enormous. But iu the columns of 
 a 'lady's paper' she had often bought from the station 
 bookstall at Clough End she had devoured nothing 
 more eagerly than the Paris letter, with its luscious 
 descriptions of 'Paris fashions,' Avhereby even Lan- 
 cashire women, even Clough End mill-hands in their 
 Sunday best, were darkly governed from afar. All 
 sorts of bygone dreams recurred to her — rich and 
 subtle combinations of silks, satins, laces, furs, imag- 
 inary glories clothing an imaginary Louie Grieve. 
 The remembrance of them filled her with a greed 
 j)ast description, and she forthwith conceived Paris 
 as a place all shops, each of them superior to the best 
 in St. Ann's Square — where one might gloat before 
 the windows all day. 
 
 She made a spring to the door, and ran upstairs to 
 her own room. There she began to pull out her 
 dresses and scatter them about the floor, looking at 
 them with a critical discontented eye. 
 
 Time passed. She was standing absorbed before an 
 old gown, planning out its renovation, when a howl 
 arose from downstairs. She fled like a roe deer, and 
 pounced upon the baby just in time to checkmate Mrs. 
 Bury, Avho was at her heels. 
 
 Quite regardless of the nurse's exasperation with 
 her, first for leaving the child alone, half uncovered, 
 in a chilly room, and noAV for again withholding it, 
 Louie put the little creature against her neck, rocking 
 and crooning to it. The sudden warm contact stilled 
 the baby ; it rubbed its head into the soft hollow thus 
 presented to it, and its hungry lips sought eagerly for 
 their natural food. The touch of them sent a deli- 
 cious thrill through Louie ; she turned her head round 
 and kissed the tiny, helpless cheek with a curious 
 violence ; then, tired of Mrs. Bury, and anxious to get 
 back to her plans, she almost threw the child to her.
 
 CHAP. X 
 
 YOUTH 413 
 
 'There — take it! I'll soon get it again when 1 
 want to.' 
 
 And slie was as good as her word. The period of 
 convalescence was to poor Mrs. ]\rason — a sickly, 
 plaintive creature at the best of times — one long 
 struggle and misery, Louie represented to her a sort 
 of bird of prey, who was for ever descending on her 
 child and carrying it off to unknown lairs. For neither 
 mother nor nurse had Louie the smallest consideration ; 
 she despised and tyrannised over them both. But her 
 hungry fondness for the baby grew with gratification, 
 and there was no mastering her in the matter. Warm 
 weather came, and when she reached home after her 
 work, she managed by one ruse or another to get hold 
 of the child, and on one occasion she disappeared with 
 it into the street for hours. David was amazed by 
 the whim, but neither he nor anyone else could control 
 it. At last, ^Irs. ]\Lason was more or less hysterical 
 all day long, and hardly sane when Louie was within 
 reach. As for the husband, who managed to be more 
 at home during the days of his wife's weakness than 
 he had yet been since David's tenancy began, he com- 
 plained to David and spoke his mind to Louie once or 
 twice, and then, suddenly, he ceased to pay any atten- 
 tion to his wife's wails. With preternatural quickness 
 the wife guessed the reason. A fresh terror seized 
 her — terror of the girl's hateful beauty. She dragged 
 herself from her bed, found a room, while Louie was 
 at her work, and carried off baby and husband, leaving 
 no address. Luckily for her, the impression of Louie's 
 black eyes proved to have been a passing intoxication, 
 and the poor mother breathed and lived again. 
 
 Meanwhile Louie's excitement and restlessness over 
 the Paris i)lan made her more than usually trying to 
 Dora. During this fortnight she could never be counted 
 on for work, not even when it was a question of finish-
 
 414 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 ing an important commission. She was too full of her 
 various preparations. Barbier offered her, for instance, 
 a daily French lesson. She grasped in an instant the 
 facilities which even the merest smattering of French 
 would give her in Paris ; every night she sat up over 
 her phrase book, and every afternoon she cut her work 
 short to go to Barbier. Her whole life seemed to be 
 one flame of passionate expectation, though what 
 exactly she expected it would have been hard to say. 
 
 Poor Dora ! She had suffered many things in 
 much patience all these weeks. Louie's clear, hard 
 mind, her sensuous temperament, her apparent lack 
 of all maidenly reserve, all girlish softness, made her 
 incomprehensible to one for whom life Avas an irides- 
 cent web of ideal aims and obligations. The child of 
 grace was dragged out of her own austere or delicate 
 thoughts, and made to touch, taste, and handle what 
 the 'world,' as the Christian understands it, might be 
 like. Like every other daughter of the people, Dora 
 was familiar enough with sin and weakness — Daddy 
 alone had made her amply acquainted with both at one 
 portion or another of his career. But just this par- 
 ticular temper of Louie's, with its apparent lack both 
 of passion and of moral sense, was totally new to her, 
 and produced at times a stifling impression upon her, 
 without her being able to explain to herself with any 
 clearness what was the matter. 
 
 Yet, in truth, it often seemed as if the lawless 
 creature had been in some sort touched by Dora, as if 
 daily contact with a being so gentle and so magnani- 
 mous had won even upon her. That confidence, for 
 instance, which Louie had promised John, at Dora's 
 expense, had never been made. When it came to the 
 point, some touch of remorse, of shame, had sealed the 
 girl's mocking lips. 
 
 One little fact in particular had amazed Dora.
 
 CIIAI'. X 
 
 YOUTH 410 
 
 Louie insisted, for a caprice, on going with her one 
 night, in Easter week, to St. Damian's, and thence- 
 forward went often. What attracted her, Dora ])uz- 
 zled herself to discover. When, however, Louie had 
 been a diligent spectator, even at early services, for 
 some weeks, Dora timidly urged that she might be 
 eontirmed, and that Father liussell would take her 
 into his class. Louie laughed immoderately at the 
 idea, but continued to go to St. Damian's all the same. 
 Dora could not bear to be near her in church, but 
 however far away she might place herself, she was 
 more conscious than she liked to be of Louie's con- 
 spicuous figure and luit thrown out against a particular 
 pillar which the girl affected. The sharp uplifted 
 profile with its disdainful expression drew her eyes 
 against their will. She was also constantly aware of 
 the impression Louie made upon the crowd, of the 
 Avay in which she was stared at and remarked upon. 
 Whenever she passed in or out of the church, people 
 turned, and the girl, expecting it, and totally una- 
 bashed, flashed her proud look from side to side. 
 
 But once in her place, she was not inattentive. The 
 dark chancel with its flowers and incense, the rich 
 dresses and slow movements of the priests, the excite- 
 ment of the processional hymns — these things caught 
 her and held her. Her look was fixed and eager all 
 the time. As to the clergy, Dora spoke to Father 
 Russell's sister, and some efforts were made to get 
 hold of the new-comer. r)Ut none of them were at all 
 successful. The girl slipped through everybody's 
 hands. Only in the case of one of the curates, a man 
 with a powerful, ugly head, and a penetrating person- 
 ality, did she show any wavering. Dora fancied that 
 she put herself once or twice in his way, that some- 
 thing about him attracted her, and that he might have 
 influenced her. But as soon as the I'aris project rose
 
 416 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 on the horizon, Louie thought of nothing else. Father 
 Impe}' and St. Damian's, like everything else, were 
 forgotten. She never went near the church from the 
 evening David told her his news to the day they left 
 Manchester. 
 
 David ran in to say good-bye to Daddy and Dora on 
 the night before they were to start. Since the Paris 
 journey had been in the air, Daddy's friendliness for 
 the young fellow had revived. He was not, after all, 
 content to sit at home upon his six hundred pounds 
 ' like a hatching hen,' and so far Daddy, whose interest 
 in him had been for the time largely dashed by his 
 sudden accession to fortune, was appeased. 
 
 When David appeared Lomax was standing on the 
 rug, with a book under his arm. 
 
 'Well, good-bye to you, young man, good-bye to 
 you. And here's a book to take with you that you 
 may read in the train. It will stir you up a bit, give 
 you an idea or two. Don't you come back too soon.' 
 
 'Father,' remonstrated Dora, who was standing by, 
 ' who's to look after his business ? ' 
 
 ' Be quiet, Dora ! That book '11 show him what can 
 be made even of a beastly bookseller.' 
 
 David took it from him, looked at the title, and 
 laughed. He knew it well. It was the ' Life and 
 Errors of John Dunton, Citizen of London,' the ec- 
 centric record of a seventeenth-century dealer in books, 
 who, like Daddy, had been a character and a vagrant. 
 
 ' Och ! Don't I know it by heart ? ' said Daddy, with 
 enthusiasm. ' Many a time it's sent me off tramping, 
 when my poor Isabella thought she'd got me tied safe 
 by the heels in the chimney corner. " Though love is 
 strong as death, and every good man loves his wife as 
 himself, yet — many's the score of times I've said it off 
 pat to Isabella — yet I cannot tliink of being confined
 
 Cll.Vl'. 
 
 YOUTH 417 
 
 ill a narrower study than thu whole world." There's 
 a man for you ! He gets rid of one wife and saddles 
 himself with another — sorrow a bit will he stop at 
 home for either of them! "Finding I am for trav- 
 elling, Valeria, to show the height of her love, is as 
 willing I should see Europe as Eliza was 1 should see 
 America." Och ! give me the book, you divil,' cried 
 Daddy, growing more and more Hibernian as his pas- 
 sion rose, ' and, bedad, but I'll drive it into you.' 
 
 And, reaching over. Daddy seized it, and turned over 
 the pages with a trembling hand. Dora flushed, and 
 the tears rose into her eyes. She realised perfectly 
 that this performance was levelled at her at least as 
 much as at David. Daddy's mad irritability had grown 
 of late with every week. 
 
 * Listen to this, Davy ! ' cried Daddy, putting up his 
 hand for silence. ' " When I have crossed the Helles- 
 pont, where poor Leander was drowned, Greece, China, 
 and the Holy Land are the other three countries I'm 
 bound to. And perhaps when my hand is in "' ' 
 
 'My hand is in." repeated Daddy, in an ecstasy. 
 ' What a jewel of a man ! ' 
 
 ' I may step thence to the Indies, for I am a true, 
 lover of travels, and, when I am once mounted, care 
 not whether I meet the sun at his rising or going 
 down, provided only I may but ramble . . . He is 
 truly a scholar who is versed in the volume of the 
 Universe, who doth not so much read of Xature as 
 study Xature herself.' 
 
 ' Well said — well said indeed I ' cried Daddy, fling- 
 ing the book down with a wild gesture which startled 
 them botli. ' Was that the man, Adrian Lomax, to 
 spend the only hours of the only life he was ever likely 
 to see — his first thought in the morning, and his last 
 thought at night — in tickling the stomachs of Man- 
 chester clerks '.' ' 
 
 VOL. I 2 E
 
 418 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 His peaked chin and straggling locks fell forward 
 on his breast. He stared sombrely at the young peo- 
 ple before him, in an attitude which, as usual, was the 
 attitude of an actor. 
 
 David's natural instinct was to jeer. But a glance 
 at Dora perplexed him. There was some tragedy he 
 did not understand under this poor comedy. 
 
 ' Don't speak back,' said Dora, hurriedly, under her 
 breath, as she passed him to get her frame. ' It only 
 makes him worse.' 
 
 After a few minutes' broken chat, which Daddy's 
 mood made it difficult to keep up, David took his 
 departure. Dora followed him downstairs. 
 
 'You're going to be away a fortnight,' she said, 
 timidly. 
 
 As she spoke, she moved her head backwards and 
 forwards against the wall, as though it ached, and she 
 could not find a restful spot. 
 
 ' Oh, we shall be back by then, never fear ! ' said 
 David, cheerfully. He Avas growing more and more 
 sorry for her. 
 
 ' I should like to see foreign parts,' she said wist- 
 fully. 'Is there a beautiful church, a cathedral, in 
 Paris ? Oh, there are a great many in France, I know .' 
 I've heard the people at St. Damian's speak of them. 
 I would like to see the services. But they can't be 
 nicer than ours.' 
 
 David smiled. 
 
 ' I'm afraid I can't tell you much about them, Miss 
 Dora; they aren't in my line. Good-bye, and keej) 
 your heart up.' 
 
 He was going, but he turned back to say quickly — 
 
 ' Why don't you let him go off for a bit of a tramp ? 
 It might quiet him.' 
 
 ' I would ; I would,' she said eagerly ; ' but I don't 
 know what would come of it. We're dreadfully be-
 
 CHAP. X 
 
 YOUTH 419 
 
 hindhand this month, and if he were to go away, 
 people wouhl be down on us ; they'd think he wanted 
 to get out of paying.' 
 
 He stayed talking a bit, trying to advise her, and, 
 in the first place, trying to find out how wrong things 
 were. But she had not yet come to the point of dis- 
 closing her father's secrets. She parried his questions, 
 showing him all the while, by look and voice, that she 
 was grateful to him for asking — for caring. 
 
 He went at last, and she locked the door behind 
 him. But when that was done, she stood still in the 
 dark, wringing her hands in a silent jxassion of longing 
 — longing to be with him, outside, in the night, to hear 
 his voice, to see his handsome looks again. Oh ! the 
 fortnight would be long. So long as he was there, 
 within a stone's throw, though he did not love her, and 
 she was sad and anxious, yet ^Manchester held her treas- 
 ure, and ]\lanchester streets had glamour, had charm. 
 
 He walked to Piccadilly, and took a 'bus to Mor- 
 timer Street. He must say good-bye also to INIr. 
 Ancrum, who had been low and ill of late. 
 
 ' So you are off, David ? ' said Ancrum, rousing 
 himself from what seemed a melancholy brooding 
 over books that he was in truth not reading. As 
 David shook hands with him, the small fusty room, 
 the pale face and crippled form awoke in the lad a 
 sense of indescribable dreariness. In a flash of recoil 
 and desire his thought sprang to the journey of the 
 next day — to the Maj^ seas — the foreign land. 
 
 'Well, good luck to you!' said the minister, alter- 
 ing his position so as to look at his visitor full, and 
 doing it with a slowness which showed that all move- 
 ment was an effort. ' Look after you sister, Davy.' 
 
 David had sat down at Ancrum's invitation. He 
 said nothing in answer to this last remark, and Ancrum
 
 420 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ii 
 
 could not decipher him in the darkness visible of the 
 ill-trimmed lamp. 
 
 ' She's been on your mind, Davy, hasn't she ? ' he 
 said, genth", laying his blanched hand on the young 
 man's knee. 
 
 'Well, perhaps she has,' David admitted, with an 
 odd note in his voice. ' She's not an easy one to 
 manage.' 
 
 ' Xo. But you've got to manage her, Davy. 
 There's only you and she together. It's your task. 
 It's set you. And you're young, indeed, and raw, 
 to have that beautiful self-willed creature on your 
 hands.' 
 
 'Beautiful? Do you think she's that?' David 
 tried to laugh it off. 
 
 The minister nodded. 
 
 'You'll find it out in Paris even more than 3-ou 
 have here. Paris is a bad place, they sa}-. So's Lon- 
 don, for the matter of that. Davy, before you go, I've 
 got one thing to say to you.' 
 
 ' Say away, sir.' 
 
 ' You know a great deal, Davy. My wits are noth- 
 ing to yours. You'll shoot ahead of all your old 
 friends, my boy, some day. But there's one thing 
 3^ou know nothing about — absolutely nothing — and 
 you prate as if you did. Perhaps you must turn 
 Christian before you do. I don't know. At least, so 
 long as you're not a Christian you won't knoAv what 
 loe mean by it — what the Bible means by it. It's one 
 little word, Davy — sin.'' 
 
 Tlie minister spoke with a deep intensity, as though 
 his whole being were breathed into what he said. 
 David sat silent and embarrassed, opposition rising in 
 him to what he tliouglit ministerial assumption. 
 
 ' Well, I don't know what you mean,' he said, after 
 a pause. ' One needn't be very old to find out that a
 
 CHAP. X 
 
 YOUTH 421 
 
 good many people and things in the world are pretty- 
 bad. Only we Secularists explain it differently from 
 you. We put a good deal of it down to education, or 
 health, or heredity.' 
 
 'Oh, I know — I know!' said the minister hastily, 
 as though shrinking from the conversation he had 
 himself evoked. ' I'm not fit to talk about it, Davy. 
 I'm ill, I think ! But there were those two things I 
 wanted to say to you — your sister — and ' 
 
 His voice dropped. He shaded his eyes and looked 
 away from David into the smouldering coals. 
 
 <]Sro— no,' he resumed almost in a whisper; 'it's 
 the will— it's the icill. It's not anything he says, and 
 Christ— 67i/7'sf 's the only help.' 
 
 Again there was a silence. David studied his old 
 teacher attentively, as far as the half-light availed 
 him. The young man was simply angry with a relig- 
 ion wliich could torment a soul and body like this. 
 Ancrum had been • down ' in this way for a long time 
 now. Was another of his black fits approaching ? If 
 so, religion was largely responsible for them ! 
 
 When at last David sighted his own door, he per- 
 ceived a figure lounging on the steps. 
 
 'I say,' he said to himself with a groan, 'it's John!' 
 
 ' What on earth do you want, John, at this time of 
 night ? ' he demanded. But he knew perfectly. 
 
 'Look here!' said the other thickly, 'it's all straight. 
 You're coming back in a fortnight, and you'll bring 
 her back too ! ' 
 
 David laughed impatiently. 
 
 ' Do you think I shall lose lier in Paris or drop her 
 in the Channel ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know,' said Dalby, with a curiously heavy 
 and indistinct utterance. 'She's very bad to me. 
 She won't ever marry me ; I know that. But when I
 
 422 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GR1P:VE hook ii 
 
 think I might never see her again I'm fit to go and 
 hang myself.' 
 
 David began to kick the pebbles in the road. 
 
 ' You know what I think about it all,' he said 
 at last, gloomily. 'I've told you before now. She 
 couldn't care for you if she tried. It isn't a ha'p'orth 
 of good. I don't believe she'll ever care for anybody. 
 Anyway, she'll marry nobody who can't give her 
 money and fine clothes. There ! You may put that 
 in your pipe and smoke it, for it's as true as you 
 stand there.' 
 
 John turned round restlessly, laid his hands against 
 the wall, and his head upon them. 
 
 ' Well, it don't matter,' he said slowly, after a pause. 
 ' I'll be here early. Good night ! ' 
 
 David stood and looked after him in mingled disgust 
 and pity. 
 
 ' I must pack him off,' he said, ' I must.' 
 
 Then he threw back his young shoulders and drew 
 in the warm spring air with a long breath. Away 
 with care and trouble ! Things would come right — 
 must come right. This weather was summer, and in 
 forty-eight hours they would be in Paris !
 
 BOOK III 
 STOKM AND STRESS
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The brother and sister left Manchester about midday, 
 and spent the night in London at a little City hotel 
 much frequented by Nonconformist ministers, which 
 Ancrum had recommended. 
 
 Then next day ! How little those to whom all the 
 widest opportunities of life come for the asking, can 
 imagine such a zest, such a freshness of pleasure I 
 David had hesitated long before the expense of the 
 day service vid Calais ; they could have gone by night 
 third class for half the money ; or they could have 
 taken returns by one of the cheaper and longer routes. 
 But the eagerness to make the most of every hour 
 of time and daylight prevailed; they were to go by 
 Calais and come back by Die])pe, seeing thereby as 
 much as possible on the two journeys in addition to 
 the fortnight in Paris. The mere novelty of going 
 anything but third class was full of savour ; Louie's 
 self-conscious dignity as she settled herself into her 
 corner on leaving Charing Cross caught David's eye ; 
 he saw himself reflected and laughed. 
 
 It Avas a glorious day, the firstling of the summer. 
 Tu the blue overhead the great clouds rose intensely 
 thunderously white, and journeyed seaward under a 
 light westerly wind. The railway banks, the copses 
 were all primroses; every patch of Avater had in it the 
 white and azure of the sky ; the lambs were lying in 
 the still scanty shadow of the elms ; every garden 
 
 425
 
 426 TIIK IIISTOIJY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 showed its tupils and wallflowers, and the air, the sun- 
 lii;ht, the vividness of each hue and line bore with 
 them an intoxicating joy, especially for eyes still 
 adjusted to the tones and lights of JManchester in 
 winter. 
 
 The breeze carried them merrily over a dancing sea. 
 And once on the French side they spent their first 
 liour in crossing from one side of their carriage to the 
 other, pointing and calling incessantly. For the first 
 time since certain rare moments in their childhood 
 they were happy together and at one. Mother earth 
 unrolled for them a corner of her magic show, and 
 they took it like children at the play, now shouting, 
 now spell-bound. 
 
 David had George Sand's ' jVfauprat ' on his knee, but 
 he read nothing the whole day. Never had he used 
 his eyes so intently, so passionately. Xothing escaped 
 them, neither the detail of that strange and beautiful 
 fen from which Amiens rises — a country of peat and 
 peat-cutters where the green plain is diapered with 
 innumerable tiny lakes edged with black heaps of turf 
 and daintily set with scattered trees — nor the delicate 
 charm of the forest lands about Chantilly. So much 
 thinner and gracefuller these woods were than Eng- 
 lish woods ! French art and skill were here already 
 in the wild country. Each tree stood out as though 
 it had been personally thought for; every plantation 
 was in regular lines ; each woody walk drove straight 
 from point to point, following out a plan orderly and 
 intricate as a spider's web. 
 
 By this time Louie's fervour of curiosity and atten- 
 tion had very much abated ; she grew tired and cross, 
 and jjresently fell asleep. But, with every mile less 
 between them and Paris, David's pulse beat faster, 
 and his mind became more absorbed in the flying 
 scene. He hung beside the window, thrilling with
 
 CHvr. I S'l'nliM AND STUKSS 127 
 
 enchantment and delight, drinking in the soft air, the 
 beauty of the evening clouds, the wonderful greens 
 and silvers and fiery browns of the poplars. His mind 
 was full of images — the deep lily-sprinkled lake 
 wherein Stenio, Lelia's poet lover, plunged and died ; 
 the grandiose landscape of Victor Hugo ; Rene sitting 
 on the cliftside, and looking farewell to the white 
 home of his cliildhood; of lines from 'Childe Harold' 
 and from Shelley. His mind was in a ferment of 
 youth aud poetry, and the France he saw was not the 
 workaday France of peasant and high road and fac- 
 tory, but the creation of poetic intelligence, of igno- 
 rance and fancy. 
 
 I'aris came in a flash. He had realised to the full 
 the squalid and ever-widening zone of London, had 
 frittered away his expectations almost, in the passing 
 it ; but here the great city had hardly announced it- 
 self before they were in the midst of it, shot out into 
 the noise, and glare, and crowd of the Nord station. 
 
 They had \u) luggage to wait for, and David, trem- 
 bling with excitement so that he could hardly give the 
 necessary orders, shouldered the bags, got a cab and 
 gave the address. Outside it was still twilight, but 
 the lamps were lit and the Boulevard into wliicli they 
 presently turned seemed to brother and sister a blaze 
 of light. The young green of the trees glittered under 
 the gas like the trees of a pantomime ; the kiosks 
 threw their lights out upon the moving crowd ; shops 
 and cafes were all shining and alive ; and on either 
 hand rose the long line of stately houses, unbroken 
 by any London or ]\[anchester scpialors and inequali- 
 ties, towering as it seemed into the skies, and making 
 for the great spectacle of life beneath them a setting 
 more gay, splendid, and complete thaii any English- 
 man in his own borders can ever see, 
 
 Louie had turned white with pleasure and excite-
 
 428 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE rook hi 
 
 meut. All lier dreams of gaiety and magnilicence, of 
 whicli the elements had been gathered from the illus- 
 trated papers and the Manchester theatres, were more 
 than realised by these Paris gas-lights, these vast 
 houses, these laughing and strolling crowds. 
 
 'Look at those people having their coffee out of 
 doors,' she cried to David, ' and that white and gold 
 place behind. Goodness ! what they must spend in 
 gas ! And just look at those two girls — look, quick — 
 there, with the young man in the black moustache — 
 they are loud, but aren't their dresses just sweet ? ' 
 
 She craned her neck out of window, exclaiming 
 — now at this, now at that — till suddenly they passed 
 out of the Boulevard into the comparative darkness of 
 side ways. Here the height of the houses produced 
 a somewhat different impression ; Louie looked out 
 none the less keenly, but her chatter ceased. 
 
 At last the cab drew up with a clatter at the side of 
 a particularly dark and narrow street, ascending some- 
 what sharply to the north-west from the point where 
 they stopped. 
 
 'Xow for the cona'en/e,' said David, looking round 
 him, after he had paid the man. 
 
 And conning Barbier's directions in his mind, he 
 turned into the gateway, and made boldly for a cur- 
 tained door behind which shone a light. 
 
 The woman, who came out in answer to his knock, 
 looked him all over from head to foot, while he ex- 
 l^lained himself in his best French. 
 
 ' Tiens/ she said, indifferently, to a man behind her, 
 ' it's the people for No. 26 — cles Anglais — 3f. Paul te 
 Va dit. Hand me the key.' 
 
 The honhomme addressed — a little, stooping, wizened 
 creature, with china-blue eyes, showing widely in his 
 withered face under the light of the paraffin lamp his 
 wife was holding — reached a key from a board on the 
 wall and gave it to her.
 
 CHAP. I STORM AND STRESS 429 
 
 The woman again surveyed them botli, the 3'oung 
 man and the girl, and seemed to debate with lierself 
 whether she shouhl take the trouble to be civil. 
 Finally she said in an unE^raeions voice — 
 
 ' It's the fourth tloor to the right. 1 must take you 
 up, I suppose.' 
 
 David thanked her. ;iiul she preceded them with the 
 light through a door opposite and uj) some stone stairs. 
 
 When they had mounted two flights, she turned 
 abruptly on the landing — 
 
 'You take the appartement from M. Dubois ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said David, enchanted to find that, thanks to 
 old Barbier's constant lessons, he could both under- 
 stand and reply with tolerable ease; 'for a fortnight.' 
 
 ' Take care ; the landlord will be descending on 
 you ; M. Dubois never pays ; he may be turned out 
 any day, and his things sold. AYhere is Mademoiselle 
 going to sleep ?' 
 
 ' l)ut in ]\I. Dubois' appartement' said David, hop- 
 ing this time, in his dismay, that he did not under- 
 stand ; ' he i)romised to arrange everything.' 
 
 *He has arranged nothing. Do you wish that I 
 shoidd provide some things ? You can hire some 
 furniture from me. And do you want service ? ' 
 
 The woman had a grasping eye. David's frugal 
 instincts took alarm. 
 
 ' Merci, IVfadame ! My sister and I do not require 
 much. We shall wait upon ourselves. If Madame 
 will tell us the name of some restaurant near ' 
 
 Instead, j\[adame made an angry sound and thrust 
 the key abruptly into Louie's hand, David being laden 
 with the bags. 
 
 ' There are two more flights,' she said roughly ; 
 'then turn to the left, and go up the staircase straight 
 in front of you — first door to the right. You've got 
 eyes ; you'll find the way.'
 
 430 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 'Mais, Madame — ' cried David, bewildered by these 
 directions, and trying to detain her. 
 
 But she was already halfway down the flight below 
 them, throwing back remarks which, to judge from 
 their tone, were not complimentary. 
 
 There was no help for it. Louie was dropping with 
 fatigue, and beginning to be much out of temper. 
 David with difficulty assumed a hopeful air, and up 
 they went again. Leading off the next landing but 
 one they found a narrow passage, and at the end of it 
 a ladder-like staircase. At the top of this they came 
 upon a corridor at right angles, in which the first door 
 bore the welcome figures ' 26.' 
 
 * All right,' said David ; ' here we are. Now we'll 
 just go in, and look about us. Then if you'll sit and 
 rest a bit, I'll run down and see where we can get 
 something to eat.' 
 
 ' Be quick, then — do,' said Louie. ' I'm just fit to 
 drop.' 
 
 "With a beating heart he put the key into the lock 
 of the door. It fitted, but he could not turn it. Both 
 he and Louie tried in vain. 
 
 * What a nuisance ! ' said he at last. ' I must go 
 and fetch up that woman again. You sit down and 
 wait.' 
 
 As he spoke there was a sound below of quick steps, 
 and of a voice, a woman's voice, humming a song. 
 
 * Some one coming,' he said to Louie ; ' perhaj)s they 
 understand the lock.' 
 
 They ran down to the landing beloAV to reconnoitre. 
 There was, of course, gas on the staircase, and as they 
 hung over the iron railing they saw mounting towards 
 them a young girl. She wore a light fawn-coloured 
 dress and a hat covered with Parma violets. Hearing 
 voices above her, she threw her head back, and stopped 
 a moment. Louie's eye was caught by her hand and
 
 ciiAi'. I STURM AND STRESS 431 
 
 its tiny wrist as it lay on the balustrade, and by the 
 coils and twists of her fair hair. David saw no details, 
 only what seemed to him a miracle of grace and colour, 
 born in an instant, out of the dark — or out of his own 
 excited fancy ".' 
 
 She came slowly up the steps, looking at them, at 
 the tall dark youth and the girl beside him. Then 
 on the top step she paused, instead of going past them. 
 David took off his hat, but all the practical questions 
 he had meant to ask deserted him. His French 
 seemed to have flown. 
 
 * You are strangers, aren't you ? ' she said, in a clear, 
 high, somewhat imperious voice. 'What number do 
 you want ? ' 
 
 Her expression had a certain hauteur, as of one 
 defending her native ground against intruders. Under 
 the stimulus of it David found his tongue. 
 
 ' We have taken M. Paul Dubois' rooms,' he said. 
 'We have found his door, but the key the concierge 
 gave us does not fit it.' 
 
 She laughed, a free, frank laugh, which had a cer- 
 tain wild note in it. 
 
 'These doors have to be coaxed,' she said; 'the}^ 
 don't like foreigners. Give it me. This is my way, 
 too.' 
 
 Stepping past them, she preceded them up the nar- 
 row stairs, and was just about to try the key in the 
 lock, when a sudden recollection seemed to flash upon 
 her. 
 
 'I know!' she said, turning upon them. ' Tenez — 
 que je stiis Mle ! You are Dubois' English friends. 
 He told me something, and I had forgotten all about 
 it. You are going to take his rooms ? ' 
 
 'For a week or two,' said David, irritated a little 
 by the laughing malice, the sarcastic wonder of her 
 eyes, ' while he is doing some work in Brussels. It
 
 432 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 seemed a convenient arrangement, but if we are not 
 pomfortable we shall go elsewhere. If you can open 
 the door for us Ave shall be greatly obliged to you, 
 Mademoiselle. But if not I must go down for the 
 concierge. We have been travelling all day, and my 
 sister is tired.' 
 
 ' Where did you learn such good French ? ' she said 
 carelessly, at the same time leaning her weight against 
 the door, and manipulating the key in such a way that 
 the lock turned, and the door tiew open. 
 
 Behind it appeared a large dark space. The light 
 from the gas-jet in the passage struck into it, but 
 beyond a chair and a tall screen-like object in the 
 middle of the floor, it seemed to David to be empty. 
 
 'That's his atelier, of course,' said the unknown; 
 'and mine is next to it, at the other end. I suppose 
 he has a cupboard to sleep in somewhere. Most of us 
 have. But I don't know anything about Dubois. I 
 don't like him. He is not one of my friends.' 
 
 She spoke in a dry, masculine voice, which contrasted 
 in the sharpest Avay with her youth, her dress, her 
 dainty smallness. Then, all of a sudden, as her eyes 
 travelled over the English pair standing bewildered 
 on the threshold of Dubois' most uninviting apartment, 
 she began to laugh again. Evidently the situation 
 seemed to her extremely odd. 
 
 'Did you ask the people downstairs to get anything 
 ready for you ? ' she inquired. 
 
 ' Xo,' said David, hesitating ; ' we thouglit we could 
 manage for ourselves.' 
 
 'Well — perhaps — after the first,' she said, still 
 laughing. ' But — I may as well warn you — the Meri- 
 chat will be very uncivil to you if you don't manage 
 to pay her for something. Hadn't you better explore ? 
 That thing in the middle is Dubois' easel, of course.' 
 
 David groped his way in, took some matches from
 
 CHAP. I STORM AND STRESS 433 
 
 his pocket, found a gas-bracket with some difficulty, 
 and lit ui). Then he ami Louie looked round them. 
 They saw a gaunt high room, lit on one side by a huge 
 studio-window, over which various tattered blinds 
 were drawn ; a floor of bare boards, with a few rags of 
 carpet here and there ; in the middle, a table covered 
 with painter's apparatus of different kinds ; palettes, 
 paints, rags, tin-pots, and, thrown down amongst them, 
 some stale crusts of bread; a large easel, with a num- 
 ber of old and dirty canvases piled upon it ; two chairs, 
 one of them without the usual complement of legs ; 
 a few etchings and oil-sketches and fragments of 
 coloured stuffs pinned against the wall in wild confu- 
 sion ; and, S})read out casually behind the easel, an 
 iron folding-bedstead, without either mattress or bed- 
 clothes. In the middle of the floor stood a smeared 
 kettle on a spirit-stove, and a few odds and ends of 
 glass and china were on the mantelpiece, together 
 with a paraffin-lamp. Every article in the room was 
 thick in dust. 
 
 AVhen she had, more or less, ascertained these 
 attractive details, Loixie stood still in the middle of 
 M. Dubois' apartment. 
 
 ' What did he tell all those lies for ? ' she said to 
 David fiercely. For in the very last communication 
 received from him, Dubois had described himself as 
 liaving made all necessary preparations ' et pour la 
 toilette et pour h manger.' He had also asked for the 
 rent in advance, which David with some demur had 
 paid. 
 
 'Here's something,' cried David; and, turning a 
 handle in the wall, he pulled a flimsy door open and 
 disclosed what seemed a cupboard. The cupboard, 
 however, contained a bed, some bedding, blankets, and 
 washing arrangements; and David joyously announced 
 his discoveries. Louie took no notice of him. She 
 
 VOL. I 2 F
 
 434 THE HISTORY OP DAVID GRIEVE book in 
 
 was tired, angry, disgusted. The illusion of Paris was, 
 for the moment, all gone. She sat herself down on 
 one of the two chairs, and, taking off her hat, she 
 threw it from her on to the belittered table with a 
 passionate gesture. 
 
 The French girl had so far stood just outside, 
 leaning against the doorway, and looking on with 
 unabashed amusement while they made their inspec- 
 tion. Kow, however, as Louie uncov^ered, the specta- 
 tor at the door made a little, quick sound, and then 
 ran forward. 
 
 ' 3fais, mon Dieu! how handsome you are!' she 
 said with a whimsical eagerness, stopping short in front 
 of Louie, and driving her little hands deep into the 
 pockets of her jacket. ' What a head !— what eyes ! 
 Why didn't I see before ? You must sit to me — you 
 must! You will, won't you? I will pay you anything 
 you like ! You sha'n't be dull — somebody shall come 
 and amuse you. Voyons — monsieur!^ she called im- 
 periously. 
 
 David came up. She stood with one hand on the 
 table leaning her light weight backward, looking at 
 them with all her eyes — the very embodiment of 
 masterful caprice. 
 
 ' Both of them ! ' she said under her breath, 'superbe ! 
 Monsieur, look here. You and mademoiselle are tired. 
 There is nothing in these rooms. Dubois is a scamp 
 without a sou. He does no work, and he gambles on 
 the Bourse. Everything he had he has sold by de- 
 grees. If he has gone to Brussels now to work hon- 
 estly, it is for the first time in his life. He lives on 
 the hope of getting money out of an uncle in England 
 — that I know, for he boasts of it to everj^body. It is 
 just like him to play a practical joke on strangers. 
 Xo doubt you have paid him already — n'est-ce ikis 7 I 
 thought as much. Well, never mind ! My rooms are
 
 CHAP. II STORM AND STRESS 430 
 
 next door. I am Elise Deliiuuay. I work in Taranne's 
 (itelier. I am an artist, pure and simple, and I live to 
 please myself and nobody else. But 1 have a chair or 
 two, and the woman downstairs looks after me because 
 i make it worth her while. Come with me. 1 will 
 give you some supper, and I will lend you a rug and a 
 I)illow for that bed. Then to-morrow you can decide 
 what to do.' 
 
 David protested, stammering and smiling. But he 
 had Hushed a rosy red, and there was no real resist- 
 ance in him. He explained the invitation to Louie, 
 who had been looking lielplessly from one to the 
 other, and she at once accepted it. She understood 
 perfectly that the French girl admired her ; her face 
 relaxed its frown ; she iiodded to the stranger with a 
 sort of proud yielding, and then let herself be taken 
 by the arm and led once more along the corridor. 
 
 Elise Delaunay unlocked her own door. 
 
 ' Bien ! ' she said, putting her head in first, ' Meri- 
 chat has earned her money. Xow go in — go in ! — and 
 see if I don't give you some suj)per,' 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 She pushed them in, and shut the door behind them. 
 They looked round them in amazement. Here was an 
 atelier precisely corresponding in size and outlook to 
 Dubois'. But to their tired eyes the change was one 
 from squalor to fairyland. The room was not in fact 
 luxurious at all. But there was a Persian rug or two 
 on the ]wlished floor ; there was a Avood fire burning 
 on the hearth, and close to it there was a low sofa or 
 divan covered with pieces of old stuffs, and flanked 
 bv a table whereon stood a little meal, a roll, some cut
 
 436 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 ham, part of a flat fruit tart from the ])dtissier next 
 door, a coffee pot, and a spirit kettle ready for light- 
 ing. There were two easels in the room ; one was 
 laden with sketches and photographs ; the other carried 
 a half-finished picture of a mosque interior in Oran— 
 a rich splash of colour, making a centre for all the 
 rest. Everywhere indeed, on the walls, on the floor, 
 or standing on the chairs, were studies of Algeria, done 
 with an ostentatiously bold and rapid hand. On the 
 mantelpiece was a small reproduction in terra cotta 
 of one of Dalou's early statues, a peasant woman in 
 a long cloak straining her homely baby to her breast 
 — true and passionate. Books lay about, and in a 
 corner was a piano, open, with a confusion of tattered 
 music upon it. And everywhere, as it seemed to 
 Louie, were shoes ! — the daintiest and most fantastic 
 shoes imaginable— Turkish shoes, Pompadour shoes, 
 old shoes and new shoes, shoes with heels and shoes 
 without, shoes lined Avith fur, and shoes blown to- 
 gether, as one might think, out of cardboard and rib- 
 bons. The English girl's eyes fastened upon them at 
 once. 
 
 'Ah, you tink my shoes pretty,' said the hostess, 
 speaking a few words of English, ^c'est mon clada, 
 voyez-vous — ma coUection! — Tenez — I cannot say dat in 
 English, Monsieur ; explain to your sister. My shoes 
 are my passion, next to my foot. I am not pretty, but 
 my foot is ravishing. Dalou modelled it for his Siren. 
 That turned my head. Sit doAvn, jVIademoiselle — we 
 will find some plates.' 
 
 She pushed Louie into a corner of the divan, and 
 then she went over to a cupboard standing against the 
 wall, and beckoned to David. 
 
 'Take the plates — and this potted meat. Now for 
 the petit vin my doctor cousin brought me last week 
 from the family estate. I have stowed it away some-
 
 CUM'. II STOKM AND STKKSS 437 
 
 where. Ah I here it is. AVe are from the Gironde — 
 at least ni\' mother was. My father was nobody — 
 bourgeois from tip to toe, thou<,di he culled himself an 
 artist. It was a me.salluotre for her when she married 
 him. Oil, lit' led her a life ! — she died when I was 
 small, and last year he died, eleven months ago. I 
 (lid my best to er}-. J m possible ! He had made Ma- 
 man and me cry too mucli. And now I am perfectly 
 alone in the world, and perfectly well-behaved. Mon- 
 sieur Prudhomme may talk — I snap my finger at him. 
 You will have your ideas, of course. Xo matter I If 
 you eat my salt, you will hardly be able to speak ill 
 of me.' 
 
 ' Mademoiselle I ' cried David, inwardly cursing his 
 shyness — a shyness new to him — and his complete 
 apparent lack of an3'thing to say, or the means of say- 
 ing it. 
 
 • ( )h, don't protest I — after that journey j-ou can't 
 afford to waste your breath. Move a little. Monsieur 
 — let me open the other door of the cupboard — there 
 are some chocolates worth eating on that back shelf. 
 Do you admire my armoire? It is old Breton — it be- 
 longed to my grandmother, who was from jMorbihan. 
 She brought her linen in it. It is cherry wood, you 
 see, mounted in silver. You may search Paris for 
 another like it. Look at that flower work on the 
 panels. It is not banal at all — it has character — there 
 is real design in it. Xoav take the chocolates, and 
 these sardines — put them down over there. As for 
 me, I make the coffee.' 
 
 She ran over to the spirit lamp, and set it going ; 
 she measured out the coffee ; then sitting dowai on 
 the floor, she took the bellows and blew up the logs. 
 
 ' Tell me your name, Monsieur ? ' she said sud- 
 denly, looking round. 
 
 David gave it in full, his own name and Louie's.
 
 438 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book iu 
 
 Tlien he walked up to her, making an effort to be at 
 liis ease, and said something about their French de- 
 scent. His mode of speaking was slow and bookish — 
 correct, but wanting iu life. After this year's devo- 
 tion to French books, after all his compositions 
 with Barbier, he had supposed himself so familiar with 
 French ! AVith the woman from the loge, indeed, he 
 could hav^e talked at large, had she been conversa- 
 tional instead of rude. But here, with this little 
 glancing creature, he felt himself plunged in a perfect 
 quagmire of ignorance and stupidity. When he spoke 
 of being half French, she became suddenly grave, and 
 studied him with an intent piercing look. 'No,' she 
 said slowly, ' no, at bottom you are not French a bit, 
 you are all English, I feel it. I should fight you — 
 (1 outraace ! Grive — what a strange name ! It's a 
 bird's name. You are not like it — you do not belong 
 to it. But David ! — ah, that is better. Voyons ! ' 
 
 She sprang up, ran over to the furthest easel, and, 
 routing about amongst its disorder of prints and 
 l)hotographs, she hit upon one, which she held up 
 triumphantly. 
 
 'There, Monsieur ! — there is your prototype. That 
 is David — the young David — scourge of the Philis- 
 tine. You are bigger and broader. I would rather 
 fight him than you — but it is like you, all the same. 
 Take it.' 
 
 And she held out to him a photograph of the 
 Donatello David at Florence — the divine young hero 
 in his shepherd's hat, fresh from the slaying of the 
 oppressor. 
 
 He looked at it, red and wondering, then shook 
 his head. 
 
 ' What is it ? Who made it, Mademoiselle ? ' 
 
 '■ Donatello — oh, I never saw it. I was never in 
 Italy, but a friend gave it me. It is like you, I tell
 
 CHAP. II STOKM AM) STKKhS 430 
 
 you. But, what usi; is that '.' Vou arc English — yes, 
 you are, in s))ite of your mother. It is very well to bo 
 called David — you may be Goliath all the time I ' 
 
 Her tone had grown hard and diy — insulting almost. 
 Her look sent him a challenge. 
 
 He stared at her dundjfounded. All the self-con- 
 fidence with which he had liitherto governed his own 
 world had deserted liim. He was like a tongue-tied 
 child in her hands. 
 
 She enjoyed her mastery, and his discomfiture. Her 
 look changed and melted in an instant. 
 
 • I am rude,' she said, ' and you can't answer me 
 back — not yet — for a day or two. Pardon ! IMonsieur 
 David — Mademoiselle — Avill you come to sup})er?' 
 
 She put chairs and waved them to their places with 
 the joyous animation of a child, waiting on them, 
 fetching this and that, with the quickest, most grace- 
 ful motions. She had V)rought from i\\e armoire some 
 fine ■white napkins, and now she produced a glass or 
 two and made her guests provide themselves with the 
 red Avine which neither had ever tasted before, and 
 over which Louie made an involuntary face. Then 
 she began to chatter and to eat — both as fast as pos- 
 sible — now laughing at her own English or at David's 
 French, and now laying down her knife and fork that 
 she might look at Louie, with an intent professional 
 look which contrasted oddly with the wild freedom of 
 her talk and movements. 
 
 Suddenly she took up a wineglass and held it out to 
 David with a piteous childish gesture. 
 
 'Fill it, ]\lonsieur, and then drink — drink to my 
 good luck. I wish for sometliing — with my life — my 
 sold; but there are people who hate me, who would 
 delight to see me crushed. And it will be three weeks 
 — three long long weeks, almost — before I know.' 
 
 She was very pale, the tears had sprung to her
 
 440 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 eyes, and the hand holding the glass trembled. David 
 flushed and frowned in the vain desire to understand 
 her. 
 
 ' What am I to do ? ' he said, taking the glass 
 mechanically, but making no use of it. 
 
 ' Drink ! — drink to my success. I have two pictures. 
 Monsieur, in the Salon ; you know what that means ? 
 the same as y onv Academie? Par/a item,e)if ! ah! you 
 understand. One is well hung, on the line ; the other 
 has been shamefully treated — but shamefully ! And all 
 the world kuows why. I have some enemies on the 
 jury, and they delight in a mean triumph over me — a 
 triumph which is a scandal. But 1 have friends, too — 
 good friends — and in three weeks the rewards will be 
 voted. You understand ? the medals, and the men- 
 tions honorahles. As for a medal ! — no ! I am only 
 two years in the atelier ; I am not unreasonable. But 
 a mention ! — ah ! Monsieur David, if they don't give it 
 me I shall be very miserable.' 
 
 Her voice had gone through a whole gamut of 
 emotion in this S[)eecli — pride, elatiou, hope, anger, 
 offended dignity — sinking finally to the plaintive note 
 of a child asking for consolation. 
 
 And luckily David had followed her. His French 
 novels had brought him across the Salon and the jury 
 system ; and Barbier had told him tales. His courage 
 rose. He })Oured the wine into the glass with a quick, 
 uncertain hand, and raised it to his lips. 
 
 ' A la glorie de Mademoiselle ! ' he cried, tossing it 
 down with a gesture almost as free and vivid as her 
 own. 
 
 Her eye followed him with excitement, taking in 
 every detail of the action — the masculine breadth of 
 chest, the beauty of the dark head and short upper 
 lip. 
 
 'Very good — very good!' she said, clapping her
 
 r-HAr. II STORM AND STKESS 441 
 
 small hands. ' Vou did that admirably — you improve 
 — n^est-ce pas, Mademoiselle ? ' 
 
 But Louie only stared blankly and somewhat 
 haughtily in return. She was beginning to be tired 
 of her silent rdle, and of the sort of subordination 
 it implied. The French girl seemed to divine it, nnd 
 her. 
 
 'She does not like me,' she said, with a kind of 
 wonder under her breath, so that David did not catch 
 the words. ' The other is quite different.' 
 
 Then, springing up, she searched in the pockets of 
 her jacket for something — lips pursed, brows knitted, 
 as though the quest were important. 
 
 ' Where are my cigarettes ? ' she demanded sharply. 
 'Ah! here they are. Mademoiselle — Monsieur.' 
 
 Louie laughed rudely, pushing them back without 
 a word. Then she got up, and began boldly to look 
 about her. The shoes attracted her, and some Alge- 
 rian scarves and burnouses that were lying on a dis- 
 tant chair. She went to turn them over. 
 
 Mademoiselle Delaunay looked after her for a 
 moment — with the same critical attention as before — 
 then with a shrug she threw herself into a corner of 
 the divan, drawing about her a bit of old embroidered 
 stuff which lay there. It was so flung, however, as to 
 leave one dainty foot in an embroidered silk stocking 
 visible beyond it. The tone of the stocking was re- 
 peated in the bunch of violets at her neck, and the 
 purples of the flowers told with charming effect 
 against her white skin and the pale fawn colour of her 
 dress and hair. David watched her with intoxication. 
 She could hardly be taller than most children of four- 
 teen, but her proportions were so small and delicate 
 that her height, whatever it was, seemed to him the 
 perfect height for a woman. She handled her ciga- 
 rette with mannish airs ; unless it were some old har-
 
 442 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE rook hi 
 
 ridan in a collier's cottage, he had never seen a woman 
 smoke before, and certainly he had never guessed it 
 could become her so well. ISTot pretty! He was in 
 no mood to dissect the pale irregular face with its subt- 
 leties of line and expression ; but, as she sat there 
 smoking and chatting, she was to him the realisation 
 — the climax of his dream of I'aris. All the lightness 
 and grace of that dream, the strangeness, the thrill of 
 it seemed to have passed into her. 
 
 ' Will you stay in those rooms ? ' she inquired, 
 slowly blowing away the curls of smoke in front of 
 her. 
 
 David replied that he could not yet decide. He 
 looked as he felt — in a difficulty. 
 
 *0h ! you will do well enough there. But your sis- 
 ter — Tenez! There is a family on the floor below — 
 an artist and his wife. I have known them take j^e/i- 
 sionuaires. They are not the most distinguished per- 
 sons in the world — mais enfin! — it is not for long. 
 Your sister might do worse than board with them.' 
 
 David thanked her eagerly. He would make all 
 inquiries. He had in his pocket a note of introduc- 
 tion from Dubois to Madame Cervin, and another, he 
 believed, to the gentleman on the ground floor — to 
 M. Montjoie, the sculptor. 
 
 <Ah! M. Montjoie!' 
 
 Her brows went up, her grey eyes flashed. As for 
 her tone it was half amused, half contemptuous. She 
 began to speak, moved restlessly, then apparently 
 thought better of it. 
 
 'After all,' she said, in a rapid undertone, 'qu'e^t- 
 ce que cela me fait ? AUons. Why did you come here 
 at all, instead of to an hotel, for so short a time ? ' 
 
 He explained as well as he was able. 
 
 'You wanted to see something of French life, and 
 French artists or writers?' she repeated slowly, 'and
 
 f-HAr. II STOKM AND STIJKSS 44?, 
 
 you coiiip with iiit nulurt ions from Xavier Dubois I 
 C'est flnVr, ni. Jlavf you .studied art '." 
 
 He lauj^hed. 
 
 ' Xo — except in l)ooks.' 
 
 ' What books ? ' 
 
 'Novels — (Jeorge Sand's.' 
 
 Tt was her turn to laugh now. 
 
 ' Vou are really too amusing I Xo, Monsieur, no ; 
 you interest me. I hav^c the best will in the world 
 towards you ; but I cannot ask Consuelos and Teveri- 
 nos to meet you. Pas j'ossible. I regret ' 
 
 She fell into silence a nu)ment, studying him with 
 a merry look. Then she broke out again. 
 
 ' Are you a connoisseur in pictures, ]V[onsieur ? ' 
 
 He had reddened already under her pers{flage. At 
 this he grew redder still. 
 
 'I have never seen any, Mademoiselle/ he said, 
 almost piteously ; 'except once a little exhibition in 
 Manchester.' 
 
 ' Nor sculpture ? ' • 
 
 'No,' he said honestly; 'nor sculpture.' 
 
 Tt seemed to him he was being held under a 
 microscope, so keen and pitiless were her laughing 
 eyes. But she left him no time to resent it. 
 
 'So you are a blank page. Monsieur — virgin soil — 
 and you confess it. You interest me extremely. 1 
 should even like to teach you a little. I am the most 
 ignorant person in the world. I know nothing about 
 artists in books. Main je suis artiste, moi! Jille cV artiste. 
 I could tell you tales ' 
 
 She threw her graceful head back against the 
 cushion behind her, and smiled again broadly, as 
 though her sense of humour were irresistibly tickled 
 by the situation. 
 
 Then a whim seized her, and she sat up, grave and 
 eager.
 
 444 I'ln-: HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 'I have drawn since I was eight years ohl,' she 
 said ; ' Avould you like to hear about it ? It is not 
 romantic — not the least in the world — but it is true.' 
 
 And with what seemed to his foreign ear a mar- 
 vellous swiftness and fertility of phrase, she poured 
 out her story. After her mother died she had been 
 sent at eight years old to board at a farm near Rouen 
 by her father, Avho seemed to have regarded his 
 daughter now as plaything and model, now as an in- 
 tolerable drag on the freedom of a vicious career. 
 And at the farm the child's gift declared itself. She 
 began with copying the illustratious, the saints and 
 holy families in a breviary belonging to one of the 
 farm servants ; she went on to draw the lambs, the 
 carts, the horses, the farm buildings, on any piece of 
 white wood she could find littered about the yard, or 
 any bit of paper saved from a parcel, till at last the 
 old cure took pity upon her and gave her some chalks 
 and a drawing-book. At fourteen her father, for a 
 caprice, reclaimed hei^ and she found herself alone 
 with him in Paris. To judge from the hints she threw 
 out, her life during the next few years had been of the 
 roughest and wildest, protected only by her indomi- 
 table resolve to learn, to make herself an artist, come 
 what would. ' I meant to be famous, and I mean it 
 still ! ' she said, with a passionate emphasis which 
 made David open his eyes. Her father refused to be- 
 lieve in her gift, and Avas far too self-indulgent and 
 brutal to teach her. But some of his artist friends 
 were kind to her, and taught her intermittently ; by 
 the help of some of them she got permission, although 
 under age, to copy in the Louvre, and with hardly any 
 technical knowledge worked there feverishly from morn- 
 ing to night ; and at last Taranne — the great Taranne, 
 from whose atelier so many considerable artists had 
 gone out to the conquest of the public — Taranne had
 
 CHA1-, II 
 
 STOmr AND STRESS 445 
 
 seen some of her drawings, heard her story, and gen- 
 erously taken lier as a puj)!!. 
 
 Then enmlation took hold of her— the fierce desire 
 to be first in all the conii)etitions of the atelier. David 
 had the greatest ditncultv in following her rapid speech, 
 with its slang, its technical idioms, its extravagance and 
 variety ; bnt he made out that she had been for a long 
 time deficient in sound training, and that her rivals at 
 the atelier had again and again beaten her easily in 
 spite of her gift, because of her weakness in the gram- 
 mar of her art. 
 
 'And whenever they beat me I could have killed 
 my conquerors ; and Avhenever 1 beat them, 1 despised 
 my judges and wanted to give the prize away. It is 
 not my fault. Je svisfaite comme ca — voih\ I I am as 
 vain as a peacock ; yet when people admire anything 
 I do, I think them fools— /bo/s .' 1 am jealous and proud 
 and absurd— so they all say ; yet a word, a look from a 
 real artist— from one of the great men who knorc — can 
 break me, make me cry. Demelez <;a, Monsieur, si vous 
 ponvez ! ' 
 
 She stopped, out of breath. Their eyes were on each 
 other. The fascination, the absorption expressed in the 
 Englishman's look startled her. She hurriedly turned 
 away, took up her cigarette again, and nestled into the 
 cushion. He vainly tried to clothe some of the quick 
 comments running through his mind in adequate French, 
 could find nothing but the most commonplace phrases, 
 stammered out a few, and then blushed afresh. In her 
 pity for him she took up her story again. 
 
 After her father's sudden death, the shelter, such as 
 it was, of his name and companionship was withdrawn. 
 What was she to do ? It turned out that she possessed 
 a small rente which had belonged to her mother, and 
 which her father had never been able to squander. 
 Two relations from her mother's country near Bordeaux
 
 446 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 tunii'd up to claim her, a country doctor and his sister 
 — middle-aged, devout — to her wild eyes at least, alto- 
 gether forbidding. 
 
 They made too much of their self-sacrifice in taking 
 me to live with them,' she said with her little ringing- 
 laugh. ' I said to them — " My good uncle and aunt, 
 it is too much — no one could have the right to lay such 
 a burden upon you. Go home and forget me. I am 
 incorrigible. I am an artist. 1 mean to live by myself, 
 and work for myself, I am sure to go to the bad — good 
 morning." Tliey went home and told the rest of my 
 mother's people that I was insane. But they could not 
 keep my money from me. It is just enough for me. 
 Besides, 1 shall be selling soon, — certainly I shall be 
 selling! I have had two or three inquiries already 
 about one of the exhibits in the Salon. Now then — 
 talk, Monsieur David ! ' and she emphasised the words 
 by a little frown ; ' it is your turn.' 
 
 And gradually by skill and patience she made him 
 talk, made him give her back some of her confidences. 
 It seemed to amuse her greatly that he should be a 
 bookseller. She knew no booksellers in Paris ; she 
 could assure him they were all pure bourgeois, and 
 there was not one of them that could be likened to 
 Donatello's David. Manchester she had scarcely heard 
 of; she shook her fair head over it. But when he 
 told her of his French reading, when he waxed elo- 
 quent about Rousseau and George Sand, then her mirth 
 became uncontrollable. 
 
 'You came to France to talk of Rousseau and 
 George Sand ? ' she asked him with dancing eyes — 
 ' Mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! what do you take us for ? ' 
 
 This time his vanity was hurt. He asked her to 
 tell him what she meant — why she laughed at him. 
 
 ' I will do better than that,' she said ; ' I will get 
 some friend of mine to take you to-morrow to "Les 
 Trois Rats." '
 
 CHAP. II STORM AND STRESS 447 
 
 'What is "Les Trois Rats?"' W askp.1, lialf 
 "wounded and liulf niystilied. 
 
 '''Les Trois Kats," ]\[onsieur, is an artist's cafe. 
 It is famous, it is characteristic ; if you are in searcli 
 of local colour you must certainly go tliere. When 
 you come back you will have some fresh ideas, 1 
 promise you.' 
 
 He asked if ladies also went there. 
 
 ' Some do ; 1 don't, Conventions mean nothing to 
 me, as you perceive, or 1 should have a companion 
 here to play proj)riety. lint like j-ou, perhaps, I am 
 Romantic. I believe in the grand style. T have ideas 
 as to how men should treat me. I can read Octave 
 Feuillet. 1 have a terrible weakness for those cava- 
 liers of his. And garbage makes me ill. So I avoid 
 the " Trois Rats." ' 
 
 She fell silent, resting her little chin on her hand. 
 Then with a sudden sly smile she bent forward and 
 looked him in the eyes. 
 
 'Are you pious. Monsieur, like all the English? 
 There is some religion left in your country, isn't 
 there ? ' 
 
 'Yes, certainly,' he admitted, 'there was a good 
 deal.' 
 
 Then, hesitating, he described his own early reading 
 of Voltaire, watching its effect upon her, afraid lest 
 here too he should say something fatuous, behind the 
 time, as he seemed to have been doing all through. 
 
 'Voltaire!' — she shrugged her little shoulders — 
 ' Voltaire to me is just an old perruque — a jDrating 
 philanthropical person who talked about le boa Dieu, 
 and wrote just what every hourcjeois can understand. 
 If he had had his will and swept away the clergy and 
 the Church, how many fine subjects we artists should 
 have lost ! ' 
 
 He sat helplessly staring at her. She enjoyed his
 
 448 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book in 
 
 perplexity a laiiiute ; then she returned to the 
 charge. 
 
 'Well, my credo is very short. Its first article is 
 art — and its second is art — and its third is art ! ' 
 
 Her words excited her. The delicate colour flushed 
 into her cheek. She flung her head back and looked 
 straight before her with half-shut eves. 
 
 ' Yes — I believe in art — and expression — and coloxir 
 — and le vrai. Velazcpiez is my God, and — and he has 
 too many prophets to mention ! I was devout once 
 for three months — since then I have never had as much 
 faith of the Church sort as would lie on a ten-sous 
 piece. But ' — with a sudden whimsical change of voice 
 — ' I am as credulous as a Breton fisherman, and as 
 superstitious as a gipsy ! Wait and see. Will you 
 look at my pictures ? ' 
 
 She sprang up and showed her sketches. She had 
 been a winter in Algiers, and had there and in Spain 
 taken a passion for the East, for its colour, its mj^s- 
 tery, its suggestions of cruelty and passion. She chat- 
 tered away, explaining, laughing, haranguing, and 
 David followed her submissively from thing to thing, 
 dumb with the interest and curiosity of this new world 
 and language of the artist. 
 
 Louie meanwhile, who, after the refreshment of 
 suppei', had been forgetting both her fatigue and the 
 other two in the entertainment provided her by the 
 shoes and the Oriental dresses, had now found a little 
 inlaid coffer on a distant table, full of Algerian trink- 
 ets, and was examining them. Suddenly a loud crash 
 was heard from her neighbourhood. 
 
 Elise Delaunay stood still. Her quick speech died 
 on her lips. She made one bound forward to Louie ; 
 then, with a cry, she turned deathly pale, tottered, and 
 would have fallen, but that David ran to her. 
 
 ' The glass is broken/ she said, or rather gasped ;
 
 cHAi-. It STOKM AND STRESS 449 
 
 ' slie has broken it — that ohl Venetian glass of Maman's. 
 Oil ! my pictures ! — my pictures I How can I undo it ? 
 Je suis penlue! Oh go! — go! — go — both of you I 
 Leave me alone 1 Why did T ever see you ? ' 
 
 She was beside herself with rage and terror. Slie 
 laid hold of Louie, who stood in sullen awkwardness 
 and dismay, and pushed hei- to the door so suddenly 
 and so violently that the stronger, taller girl yielded 
 without an attem])t at resistance. Then holding the 
 door open, she beckoned imperiously to David, while 
 the tears streamed down her cheeks. 
 
 'Adieu, Monsieur — say nothing — there is nothing to 
 be said — go I ' 
 
 He went out bewildered, and the two in their 
 amazement walked meehanieally to their own door. 
 
 ' She is mad ! ' said Louie, her eyes blazing, when 
 they paused and looked at each other. ' She must be 
 mad. AVhat did she say ? ' 
 
 ' What happened ?' was all he could reply. 
 
 ' 1 threw down that old glass — it wasn't my fault — 
 T didn't see it. It was standing on the floor against 
 a chair. I moved the chair back just a trifle, and it 
 fell. A shabby old thing — I could have paid for 
 another easily. Well, I'm not going there again to 
 be treated like that.' 
 
 The girl was furious. All that chafed sense of 
 exclusion and slighted importance which had grown 
 u})OU her during David's U'te-d.-tPte with their strange 
 hostess came to violent expression in her resentment. 
 She opened the door of their room, saying that what- 
 ever he might do she was going to bed and to sleep 
 somewhere, if it was on the floor. 
 
 David made a melancholy light in the squalid room, 
 and Louie went about her preparations in angry si- 
 lence. When she had withdrawn into the little cup- 
 board-room, saying carelessly that she supposed he 
 
 VOL. I 2 G
 
 450 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 could manage with one of the bags aud his great 
 coat, he sat down on the edge of the bare iron bed- 
 stead, and recognised with a start that he was quiver- 
 ing all over — with fatigue, or excitement ? His chief 
 feeling perha})s was one of utter discomfiture, flatness, 
 and humiliation. 
 
 He had sat there in the dark without moving for 
 some minutes, when his ear caught a low uncertain 
 tapping at the door. His heart leapt. He sprang up 
 and turned the key in an instant. 
 
 There on the landing stood Elise Delaunay, her 
 arms filled with what looked like a black bearskin 
 rug, her small tremulous face and tear-wet eyes raised 
 to his. 
 
 ' Pardon, Monsieur,' she said hurriedly. 'I told you 
 I was superstitious — well, now you see. Will you 
 take this rug ? — one can sleep anywhere with it 
 though it is so old. And has your sister what she 
 wants ? Can I do anything for her ? Xo ! Alors — 
 I must talk to you about her in the morning. I have 
 some more things in my head to say. Pardon! — et 
 honsoir.' 
 
 She pushed the rug into his hands. He was so 
 moved that he let it drop on the floor unheeding, and 
 as she looked at him, half audacious, half afraid, she 
 saw a painful struggle, as of some strange new birth, 
 pass across his dark young face. They stood so a 
 moment, looking at each other. Then he made a 
 quick step forward with some inarticulate words. In 
 an instant she was halfway along the corridor, and, 
 turning back so that her fair hair and smiling eyes 
 caught the light she held, she said to him with the 
 queenliest gesture of dismissal : 
 
 ^ Axi, revoir, Monsieur David, sleep well.'
 
 LHAF. Ill STORM AND STRESS 4ol 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 David woke early t'lum a restless sleep. He sprang 
 up and dressed. Never had the IVEay sun shone so 
 brightly ; never had life looked more alluring. 
 
 In the first place he took care to profit by the hints 
 of the night before. He ran down to make friends 
 with ^Madame ]NIerichat — a process which was accom- 
 plished without much difficulty, as soon as a franc or 
 two had passed, and arrangements had been made for 
 the passing of a few more. She was to take charge 
 of the apparteriient, and provide them with their morn- 
 ing coffee and bread. And upon this her grim coun- 
 tenace cleared. She condescended to spend a quarter 
 of an hour gossiping with the Englishman, and she 
 promised to stand as a buffer between him and Dubois' 
 irate landlord. 
 
 ' A job of work at Brussels, you say, Monsieur ? 
 Bien; T will tell the proprietaire. He won't believe 
 it — ^Monsieur Dubois tells too many lies ; but perhaps 
 it will keep him quiet. He will think of the return — 
 of the money in the pocket. He will bid me inform 
 him the very moment ]\ronsieur Dubois shows his nose, 
 that he may descend upon him, and so you will be let 
 alone.' 
 
 He mounted the stairs again, and stood a moment 
 looking along the passage with a quickening pulse. 
 There was a sound of low singing, as of one crooning 
 over some occupation. It must be she ! Then she had 
 recovered her trouble of the night before — her strange 
 trouble. Yet he dimly remembered that in the farm- 
 houses of the Peak also the breaking of a looking-glass 
 had been held to be unlucky. And, of course, in inter-
 
 452 TTTE TTTSTORY OF PAVID GRTF.VE book hi 
 
 preting the omen she liad thought of her pictures and 
 the jury. 
 
 How couhl he see her again ? Suddenly it occurred 
 to him that she had spoken of taking a holiday since 
 the Salon opened. A lioliday which for her meant 
 ' copying in the Louvre.' And Avhere else, pray, does 
 the tourist naturally go on the first morning of a visit 
 to Paris ? 
 
 The young fellow went back into his room with a 
 radiant face, and spent some luinutes, as Louie had 
 not yet appeared, in elaborating his toilette. The 
 small cracked glass above the mantelpiece was not 
 flattering, and David was almost for the first time 
 anxious about and attentive to what he saw there. 
 Yet, on the whole, he was pleased with his short serge 
 coat and his new tie. He thought they gave him 
 something of a student air, and would not disgrace 
 even her should she deign to be seen in his company. 
 As he laid his brush down he looked at his own 
 brown hand, and remembered hers with a kind of 
 wonder — so small and Avhite, the wrist so delicately 
 rounded. 
 
 )Yhen Louie emerged she was not in a good temper. 
 She declared that she had hardly slept a wink ; that 
 the bed was not fit to sleep on ; that the cupboard 
 was alive with mice, and smelt intolerably. David 
 first endeavoured to appease her with the coffee and 
 rolls which had just arrived, and then he broached 
 the plan of sending her to board with the Cervins, 
 which Mademoiselle Delaunay had suggested. What 
 did she think ? It would cost more, perhaps, but he 
 could afford it. On their way out he would deliver 
 the two notes of introduction, and no doubt they 
 could settle it directly if she liked. 
 
 Louie yawned, put up objections, and refused to see 
 anything in a promising light. Paris was horrid, and
 
 rnvr. ni SlOinf AX1> STHKSS 453 
 
 the mail who had let theni the rooms ought to be * had 
 up.' As for people who coukln't talk any English she 
 hated the sight of them. 
 
 The remark from an Englishwoman in France had 
 its humour. But David did not see that point of it. 
 He flushed hotly and with difftculty held an angry 
 tongue. However, he was possessed with an inward 
 dread — the dread of the idealist Avho sees his pleasure 
 as a beautiful whole — lest tliey should so quarrel as to 
 spoil the visit and the new experience. Under this 
 curb he controlled himself, and presently, with more 
 savoir vivre than he was conscious of, proposed that 
 they should go out and see the shops. 
 
 Louie, at the mere mention of shops, passed into 
 another mood. After she had spent some time on 
 dressing they sallied forth, David delivering his notes 
 on the way down. Both noticed that the house was 
 squalid and ill-kept, but apparently full of inhabitants. 
 David surmised that they were for the most part 
 struggling persons of small means and extremely 
 various occupations. There were three ateliers in the 
 building, the two on their own top floor, and ]\I. Mont- 
 joie's, which was apparently built out at the back on 
 the ground floor. The first floor was occupied by a 
 dressmaker, the proprietaire' s best tenant, according to 
 >radame ]\Ierichat. Above her was a clerk in the 
 ^Ministry of the Interior, with his wife and two or 
 three children; above them again the Cervins, and a 
 couple of commercial travellers, and so on. 
 
 The street outside, in its general aspect, suggested 
 the same small, hard-pressed professional life. It was 
 narrow and dull ; it mounted abruptly towards the 
 hill of Moutmartre, with its fort and cemetery, and, 
 but for the height of the houses, which is in itself a 
 dignified architectural feature, would have been no 
 more inspiriting than a street in London.
 
 454 Tin-: IIISTOUV OF I).\\'in GKn':VK book III 
 
 A few steps, however, brought thein on to the Boule- 
 vard Montmartre, ancl then, taking the Eue Lafitte, 
 they emerged upon tlie IJoulevard des Ttaliens. 
 
 Louie looked round her, to this side and that, paused 
 for a moment, bewildered as it were by tlie general 
 movement and gaiety of the scene. Then a lingerie 
 sho}) caught her eye, and she made for it. Soon the 
 last cloud had cleared from the girl's brow. She gave 
 herself with ecstasy to the shops, to the people. 
 What jewellery, what dresses, what delicate cobwebs 
 of lace and ribbon, what miracles of colour in the 
 florists' windows, what suggestions of wealth and 
 lavishness everywhere ! Here in this world of costly 
 contrivance, of an eager and inventive luxury, Louise 
 Suveret's daughter felt herself at last at home. She 
 had never set foot in it before ; yet already it was 
 familiar, and she was part of it. 
 
 Yes, she was as well dressed as anybody, she con- 
 cluded, except perhaps the ladies in the closed car- 
 riages whose dress could only be guessed at. As for 
 good looks, there did not seem to be much of them in 
 Taris. She called the Frenchwomen downright plain. 
 Tliey knew how to put on their clothes ; there was 
 style about them, she did not deny that ; but she was 
 prepared to maintain that there was hardly a decent 
 face among them. 
 
 Such air, and such a sky ! The trees were rushing 
 into leaf; summer dresses were to be seen every- 
 where; the shops had swung out their aw^nings, and 
 the day promised a summer heat still tempered by a 
 fresh spring breeze. For a time David was content 
 to lounge along, stopping when his companion did, 
 lost as she was in the enchantment and novelty of the 
 scene, drinking in Paris as it were at great gulps, say- 
 ing to himself they would be at the Opera directly, 
 then the Thedtre-Fran9ais, the Louvre, the Tuileries,
 
 CHAT. Ill STOK.M AM) SIKKSS 405 
 
 the Place de la Concorde I Every lj(jok that liad ever 
 passed thrnu<,di his hands contauiin;^' illustrations and 
 descriptions of Paris he had read w ith avidity, lie, 
 too, like Louie, though in a different way, was at 
 home in these streets, and hardly needed a look at the 
 map he carried to find his way. Presently, when he 
 could cscai)o from Louie, ho would go and explore to 
 his heart's content, see all that the tourist sees, and 
 then penetrate further, and judge for himself as to 
 those sweeping and iconoclastic changes which, for its 
 own tyrant's purposes, the Empire had been making 
 in tlie older city. As he thought of the Emi)eror and 
 the government his gorge rose within him. I>arbier"s 
 talk had insensibly determined all his ideas of the 
 imperial regime. How much longer would France 
 suffer the villainous gang who ruled her ? He began 
 an inward declamation in the manner of Hugo, excit- 
 ing himself as he walked — while all the time it was 
 the spring of 1870 which was swelling and expanding 
 in the veins and branches of the i)lane trees above 
 him — ]\ray was hurrying on, and Worth lay three 
 short months ahead I 
 
 Then suddenly into the midst of his political mus- 
 ings and his traveller's ardour the mind thrust for- 
 ward a disturbing image — the tigure of a little fair- 
 haired artist. He looked round impatiently. Louie's 
 loiterings began to chafe him. 
 
 ' Come along, do,' he called to her, waking up to the 
 time ; ' we shall never get there.' 
 
 ' Where ? ' she demanded. 
 
 ' Wh}', to the Louvre.' 
 
 ' What's there to see there ? ' 
 
 * It's a great palace. The Kings of France used to 
 live there once. Now they've put pictures and statues 
 into it. You must see it, Louie — everybody does. 
 Come along.'
 
 456 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GEIEVE book hi 
 
 • rU not hurry/ she said perversely. ' I don't care 
 that about silly old pictures.' 
 
 And she went back to her shop-gazing. David felt 
 for a moment precisely as he had been used to feel in 
 the old days on the Sco\it, when he had tried to civi- 
 lise her on the question of books. And now as then 
 he had to wrestle with her, using the kind of argu- 
 ments he felt might have a chance Avith her. At last 
 she sulkily gave way, and let him lead on at a quick 
 pace. In the Rue Saint-Honore, indeed, she was once 
 more almost unmanageable ; but at last they were 
 safely on the stairs of the Louvre, and David's brow 
 smoothed, his eye shone again. He mounted the in- 
 terminable steps with such gaiety and eagerness that 
 Louie's attention was drawn to him. 
 
 'Whatever do you go that pace for?' she said 
 crossly. 'It's enough to kill anybody going up this 
 kind of thing ! ' 
 
 ' It isn't as bad as the Downfall,' said David, laugh- 
 ing, ' and I've seen you get up that fast enough. 
 Come, catch hold of my umbrella and I'll drag you 
 up.' 
 
 Louie reached the top, out of breath, turned into 
 the first room to the right, and looked scornfully round 
 her. 
 
 ' Well I never ! ' she ejaculated. ' What's the good 
 of this?' 
 
 Meanwhile David shot on ahead, beckoning to her 
 to follow. She, however, would take her own pace, 
 and walked sulkily along, looking at the people who 
 were not numerous enough to please her, and only 
 regaining a certain degree of serenity when she per- 
 ceived that here as elsewhere people turned to stare 
 after her. 
 
 David meanwhile threw wondering glances at the 
 great Veronese, at Raphael's archangel, at the tower-
 
 CHAP, in STORM AND STRESS 457 
 
 ing Vandyke, at the ' Virgin of the Rocks.' But he 
 passed them by quickly. Was she here ? Could he 
 find her in this wilderness of rooms ? His spirits 
 wavered between delicious expectancy and the fear of 
 disappointment. The gallery seemed to him full of 
 copyists young and old : beardless ropina laughing and 
 chatting with fresh maidens ; old men sitting crouched 
 on high seats with vast canvases before them ; or 
 women, middle-aged and plain, with knitted shawls 
 round their shoulders, at work upon the radiant 
 Greuzes and Laucrets ; but that pale golden head — 
 nowhere ! 
 
 At last ! 
 
 He hurried forward, and there, in front of a Vel- 
 azquez, he found her, in the company of two young 
 men. who were leaning over the back of her chair 
 criticising the picture on her easel. 
 
 ' Ah, Monsieur David ! ' 
 
 She took up the brush she held with her teeth for a 
 moment, and carelessly held him out two fingers of 
 her right hand. 
 
 'Monsieur — make a diversion — tell the truth — these 
 gentlemen here have been making a fool of me.' 
 
 And throwing herself back with a little laughing, 
 coquettish gesture, she made room for him to look. 
 
 'Ah, but I forgot; let me present you. M. Al- 
 phonse, this is an Englishman ; he is new to Paris, 
 and he is an acquaintance of mine. You are not to 
 play any joke upon him. ]\r. Lenain, this gentleman 
 wishes to be made acquainted with art; you will 
 undertake his education — you will take him to-night 
 to ''Les Trois Eats." I promised for you.' 
 
 She threw a merry look at the elder of her two 
 attendants, who ceremoniously took oft" his hat to 
 David and made a polite speech, in which the word 
 enchant4 recurred. He was a dark man, with a short
 
 458. THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book ui 
 
 black beard, and full restless eye ; some ten years 
 older apparently than the other, who was a dare-devil 
 boy of twenty. 
 
 ' Allans ! tell me what you think of my picture, 
 M. David.' 
 
 The three waited for the answer, not without malice. 
 David looked at it perplexed. It was a copy of the 
 black and white Infanta, with the pink rosettes, which, 
 like everything else that France possesses from the 
 hand of Velazquez, is to the French artist of to-day 
 among the sacred things, the flags and battle-cries of 
 his art. Its strangeness, its unlikeness to anything of 
 the picture kind that his untrained provincial eyes 
 had ever lit upon, tied his tongue. Yet he struggled 
 with himself. 
 
 'Mademoiselle, I cannot explain — I cannot find the 
 words. It seems to me ugly. The child is not pretty 
 nor the dress. But ' 
 
 He stared at the picture, fascinated — unable to 
 express himself, and blushing under the shame of his 
 incapacity. 
 
 The other three watched him curiously. 
 
 ' Taranne should get hold of him,' the elder artist 
 murmured to his companion, with an imperceptible 
 nod towards the Englishman. ' The models lately 
 have been too common. There was a rebellion yester- 
 day in the atelier de femmes ; one and all declared the 
 model was not worth drawing, and one and all left.' 
 
 ' Minxes ! ' said the other coolly, a twinkle in his 
 wild eye. ' Taranne will have to put his foot down. 
 There are one or two demons among them ; one should 
 make them know their place.' 
 
 Lenain threw back his head and laughed — a great, 
 frank laugh, which broke up the ordinary discontent 
 of the face agreeably. The speaker, M. Alphonse Du- 
 chatel, had been already turned out of two ateliers for
 
 CHAP. Ill STORM AXD STRESS 459 
 
 a series of the most atrocious charges on record. He 
 was now with Taranue, on trial, the authorities keep- 
 ing a vigiUmt eye on hivii. 
 
 Meanwhile Elise, still leaning back with her eyes 
 on her picture, was talking fast to David, who hung 
 over her, absorbed. She was explaining to him some 
 of the Infanta's qualities, pointing to this and that 
 with her brush, talking a bright, untranslatable artist's 
 language which dazzled him, tilled him with an exciting 
 medley of new im})ressions and ideas, while all the time 
 his quick sense responded with a delightful warmth and 
 eagerness to the personality beside him — child, proph- 
 etess, egotist, all in one — noticing each characteristic 
 detail, the drooping melancholy trick of the eyes, the 
 nervous delicacy of the small hand holding the brush. 
 
 ' David — David ! I'm tired of this, I tell you ! I'm 
 not going to stay, so I thought I'd come and tell you. 
 Good-bye ! ' 
 
 He turned abruptly, and saw Louie standing defiantly 
 a few paces behind him. 
 
 'What do you want, Louie?' he said impatiently, 
 going up to her. It was no longer the same man, the 
 same voice, 
 
 ' I want to go. 1 hate this I ' 
 
 ' I'm not ready, and you can't go by yourself. Do 
 you see' — (in an undertone) — 'This is ^Mademoiselle 
 Delaunay ? ' 
 
 'That don't matter,' she said sulkily, making no 
 movement. ' If you ain't going, I am.' 
 
 By this time, however, Elise, as well as the two 
 astists, had perceived Louie's advent. She got up from 
 her seat with a slight sarcastic smile, and held out her 
 hand. 
 
 • Bo II jour, ]\Iademoiselle ! You forgave me for dat 
 I did last night ? I ask your pardon — oh, de tout mon 
 coeur!'
 
 460 THE HISTOEY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 Even Louie perceived that the tone was enigmatical. 
 She gave an inward gulp of envy, however, excited by 
 the cut of the French girl's black and white cotton. 
 Then she dropped Elise's hand, and moved away. 
 
 ' Louie ! ' cried David, pursuing her in despair ; 
 ' now just wait half an hour, there's a good girl, while 
 I look at a few things, and then afterwards I'll take 
 you to the street where all the best shops are, and you 
 can look at them as much as you like.' 
 
 Louie stood irresolute. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' said Elise to him in French. ' Your 
 sister wants to go ? Why, you have only just come ! ' 
 
 ' She finds it dull looking at pictures,' said David, 
 with an angry brow, controlling himself with difficulty. 
 ' She must have the shops.' 
 
 Elise shrugged her shoulders and, turning her head, 
 said a few quick words that David did not follow to 
 the two men behind her. They all laughed. The 
 artists, however, were both much absorbed in Louie's 
 appearance, and could not apparently take their eyes 
 off her. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Elise, suddenly. 
 
 She had recognised some one at a distance, to whom 
 she nodded. Then she turned and looked at the Eng- 
 lish girl, laughed, and caught her by the wrist. 
 
 ' Monsieur David, here are ^Monsieur and Madame 
 Cervin. Have you thought of sending your sister to 
 them ? If so, I will present you. Why not ? They 
 would amuse her. Madame Cervin would take her to 
 all the shops, to the races, to the Bois. Que sais-je ? ' 
 
 All the while she was looking from one to the other. 
 David's face cleared. He thought he saw a way out 
 of this mijmsse. 
 
 ' Louie, come here a moment. I want to speak to 
 you.' 
 
 And he carried her off a few yards, while the Cer-
 
 CHAP. HI STORM AND STRESS 461 
 
 vius came up and greeted the group round the Infanta. 
 A powerfully built, thickset man in a grey suit, who 
 had been walking with them, fell back as they joined 
 Elise Delaunay, and began to examine a Pieter de 
 Hooghe with minuteness. 
 
 Meanwhile David wrestled with his sister. She 
 had much better let Mademoiselle Delaunay arrange 
 Avith these people. Then jNIadame Cervin could take 
 her about wherever she wanted to go. He would 
 make a bargain to that effect. As for him, he must 
 and would see Paris — pictures, churches, public build- 
 ings. If the Louvre bored her, everything would bore 
 her, and it was impossible either that he should spend 
 his time at her apron-string, flattening his nose against 
 the shop-windows, or that she should go about alone. 
 He was not going to have her taken for ' a bad lot,' 
 and treated accordingly, he told her frankly, with an 
 imperious tightening of all his young frame. He had 
 discovered some time since that it was necessary to 
 be plain with Louie. 
 
 She hated to be disposed of on any occasion, except 
 by her own will and initiative, and she still made dif- 
 liculties for the sake of making them, till he grew 
 desperate. Then, when she had pushed his patience 
 to the very last point, she gave way. 
 
 * You tell her she's to do as I want her,' she said, 
 threateningly. ' I won't stay if she doesn't. And P'll 
 not have her paid too much.' 
 
 David led her back to the rest. 
 
 ' ]\ry sister consents. Arrange it if you can. Made- 
 moiselle,' he said imploringly to Elise. 
 
 A series of quick and somewhat noisy colloquies 
 followed, watched with disapproval by the garcUen 
 near, who seemed to be once or twice on the point of 
 interfering. 
 
 Mademoiselle Delaunay opened the nuitter to
 
 403 THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE book hi 
 
 Madam Cervin, a short, stout woman, with no neck, 
 and a keen, small eye. Money was her daily and 
 hourly preoccupation, and she could have kissed the 
 hem of Elise Delaunay's dress in gratitude for these 
 few francs thus placed in her way. It was some time 
 now since she had lost her last boarder, and had not 
 been able to obtain another. She took David aside, 
 and, while her look sparkled with covetousness, ex- 
 plained to him volubly all that she would do for Louie, 
 and for how much. And she could talk some English 
 too — certainly she could. Her education had been 
 excellent, she was thankful to say. 
 
 'Mon Dieu, qit'elle est belle!' she wound up. 'Ah, 
 Monsieur, you do very right to entrust your sister to 
 me, A young fellow like you — no I — that is not con- 
 venable. But I — I will be a dragon. Make your mind 
 quite easy. With me all Avill go well.' 
 
 Louie stood in an impatient silence while she was 
 being thus talked over, exchanging looks from time to 
 time with the two artists, who had retired a little 
 behind Mademoiselle Delaunay's easel, and from that 
 distance were perfectly competent to let the bold- 
 eyed English girl know what they thought of her 
 chaxms. 
 
 At last the bargain was concluded, and the Cervins 
 walked away with Louie in charge. They were to 
 take Jier to a restaurant, then show her the Eue Royale 
 and the Rue de la Paix, and, finally — David making no 
 demur whatever about the expense — there was to be an 
 afternoon excursion through the Bois to Longchamps, 
 where some of the May races Avere being run. 
 
 As they receded, the man in grey, before the Pieter 
 de Hooghe, looked up, smiled, dropped liis eyeglass, 
 and resumed his place beside Madame Cervin. She 
 made a gesture of introduction, and he bowed across 
 her to tlie young stranger.
 
 CHAP. Ill STOKM AND STRESS 463 
 
 For the first time Elise perceived hiin. A look of 
 annoyance and disgust crossed her face. 
 
 'Do you see,' she said, turning to Lenain ; 'there 
 is that animal, Montjoie ? He did well to keep his 
 distance. What do the Cervins want with him ? ' 
 
 The others shrugged their shoulders. 
 
 ' They say his Msenad would be magnificent if he 
 could keep sober enough to finish her,' said Lenain ; 
 ' it is his last chance ; he will go under altogether if 
 he fails ; he is almost done for already.' 
 
 *And what a gift!' said Alphonse, in a lofty tone 
 of critical regret. 'He should have been a second 
 Barye. Ah, la vie Parisienne — la maudite vie Pari- 
 sienne ! ' 
 
 Again Lenain exploded. 
 
 'Come and lunch, you idiot,' he said, taking the 
 lad's arm ; ' for whom are you posing ? ' 
 
 But before they departed, they inquired of David 
 in the politest way what the}'' could do for him. He 
 was a stranger to Mdlle. Delaunay's acquaintance ; 
 they were at his service. Should they take him some- 
 where at night ? David, in an effusion of gratitude, 
 suggested ' Les Trois Rats.' He desired greatly to 
 see the artist world, he said. Alphonse grinned. An 
 appointment was made for eight o'clock, and the two 
 friends walked off. 
 
 END OF VOL. I
 
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